How Partition violence affected Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan

In September 1947, authorities in Kabul watched the spiralling communal violence following the Partition of India with growing dread, fearing the bloodshed would leap across the border into Afghanistan.

“During the week, F.M. Muhammad Asif Khan, the Police Commandant, Kabul, invited 20 leading Muslim Pakistani traders to his residence,” wrote the British military attache in a September 19 memo. While the Commandant expressed sympathy for Muslims in India, his message was one of restraint: he advised the traders to remain calm, cautioning them against any provocation that might disturb the city’s tranquility. Crucially, “he asked them not to take revenge on Hindus and Sikhs residing in Afghanistan”.

While the attache’s report confirmed that Kabul remained largely peaceful, the same could not be said for the provinces. Violent communal incidents erupted in Kandahar, triggering internal displacement.

“Many Hindus and Sikhs have arrived in Kabul, not only from Kandahar, but also from small towns and villages from other parts of the country,” the attache wrote. “Hindus and Sikhs are reported to be selling their household articles and disposing of Afghanis in their possession in exchange for gold and jewellery in order that they may carry their wealth with them more easily, if forced to flee the country.”

The Afghan government tried to de-escalate tensions by publicising its direct diplomatic outreach to leaders in Punjab, such as the Maharaja of Patiala, to demand an end to violence against Muslims.

Evacuation efforts

Word of the violence in Afghanistan eventually reached the dwindling Hindu and Sikh community in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Concerned for the safety of his community, Gurdip Singh Kataria, a dry fruit and carpet merchant in Peshawar, sent a telegram to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, imploring the Indian government to intervene and protect Kabul’s non-Muslims.

At the time, the government of newly independent India had no reliable figures on the number of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan. There was also uncertainty over classification, given the presence of both Indian migrants and indigenous Afghan Hindus and Sikhs.

In November, the British legation sent a telegram to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations reporting that a section of Kabul’s Hindu and Sikh population had reached a point of desperation. “160 Hindus and Sikhs, mostly traders, including 25 women and children [are] anxious to leave… on account of stagnation of trade, approaching winter and feeling of insecurity,” a squire from the legation reported. He emphasised that while practically all were residents of what was now Pakistan, their business interests and properties there had been destroyed or seized, so “they wish to be considered subjects of the Indian Dominion and travel to India”.

The squire noted that roughly 100 of these individuals possessed the means to pay for air passage, should New Delhi be able to arrange it. Among the others were 21 refugees who had fled the town of Parachinar, near Peshawar, and were subsisting on the charity of wealthier Hindus and Sikhs in Kabul. The remainder were described as “low-paid employees” working in the city.

“If the Government of India [is] agreeable to accept them as subjects of the Indian Dominion, I could issue either British passports or temporary travel documents valid for India as may be necessary,” the squire proposed.

HVR Iengar, a high-ranking civil servant working directly with Nehru, who held the external affairs portfolio, forwarded the British legation’s telegram to the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, which was established in September 1947 to manage the staggering Partition refugee crisis. “The Prime Minister thinks we should make every effort to evacuate the 160 non-Muslims referred to in the telegram,” wrote Iengar, later the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, in a letter to the rehabilitation ministry.

The Indian government initially struggled with the question of nationality: whether these individuals were Afghan citizens or Indians who had crossed into Afghanistan. Tarachand, the director of evacuation at the rehabilitation ministry, questioned the Ministry of External Affairs on December 6, 1947, “whether these 160 non-Muslims who have expressed a desire to be evacuated from Afghanistan form the entire non-Muslim population in Afghanistan”. He cautioned that a partial evacuation might incite a “greater feeling of insecurity and panic” among those left behind.

Further inquiries clarified that the group consisted of Hindus and Sikhs who had fled the North-West Frontier Province amid the Partition violence or traders who regularly crossed the Durand Line for business and could no longer return to Pakistan.

The Ministry of External Affairs ultimately clarified that nationality should not be the deciding factor. In a response to Tarachand’s letter, PA Menon, an officer at the Ministry of External Affairs, wrote that, “in view of the large migrations of non-Muslim populations from Pakistan, place of birth can no longer be considered as a proper test for nationality. Non-Muslims wishing to be considered subjects of the Indian Dominion are to be treated as such, till an Indian Nationality Act can be enacted.”

Pinning responsibility

Over the following months, a small number of refugees managed to leave Afghanistan via Iran and travel by ship to Bombay. The Ministry of External Affairs instructed the British legation to issue one-year British passports to these refugees. Those who could risk the journey through Pakistan were permitted to use red and green passes issued before independence to Indians visiting Afghanistan.

The financial burden of supporting destitute refugees was also raised. Wealthier Hindus and Sikhs in Kabul indicated they could not indefinitely support others, so the Indian government agreed to cover their travel costs. But the biggest obstacle in evacuating them by air was the inclement weather.

“We have no planes with de-icing contrivances to send to Kabul,” the Ministry of External Affairs wrote to the British legation in December 1947. “Present weather conditions therefore make it impossible to evacuate them by air. Flights will be possible only after winter.”

A proposal to route flights to Zahidan in Iran also failed to materialise.

Over the next few months, the logistics of the evacuation and its funding remained a point of contention between the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation.

In April 1948, Tarachand insisted that it was the external affairs ministry’s responsibility. “The functions of this Ministry are restricted to the evacuation of persons from areas of danger in India and Pakistan to the other Dominion,” he wrote in a letter. “All questions of evacuation from any foreign country other than Pakistan would be the responsibility of the Ministry of E.A. and C.R. and this Ministry is not concerned.”

Prem Krishen, deputy secretary at the external affairs ministry, countered this by highlighting the refugees’ origins. “These refugees are persons normally resident in what is now Pakistan, who ran away during the disturbances consequent upon partition, who have been accepted as being Indian nationals, and who must now be evacuated to India,” he said in a memo. “The Director General of Evacuation, however, does not consider that these points make any difference to the stand taken by his Ministry.”

Arduous journeys

Eventually, the rehabilitation ministry relented, agreeing to fund the evacuation of those who were destitute and dependent on charity. One proposal was to transport refugees on return flights carrying Indian diplomatic staff.

But by the spring of 1948, new obstacles emerged. Pakistan, which had previously allowed evacuation flights to Peshawar, rescinded permission for Indian aircraft to fly over the restive tribal areas along the Afghan border.

By April 1948, the number of Sikh and Hindu refugees remaining in Afghanistan had dwindled to less than a hundred. Many of those who managed to leave undertook arduous journeys to reach India, trekking by land into Iran and sailing to Bombay, or travelling to Baluchistan and taking a train from Quetta to Karachi before boarding a ship for Bombay. Direct land crossings from west to east Punjab remained largely unsafe due to the presence of vengeful mobs still attacking refugees.

A plan was finalised in April 1948 to airlift the remaining refugees from Kabul. The estimated cost for three Dakota aircraft, each with a capacity of 34 passengers, was Rs 19,500. But with many passengers agreeing to pay Rs 163 each, the government’s burden was reduced.

Despite persistent hiccups, the established route for Indian diplomatic personnel travelling between New Delhi and Kabul provided a reliable framework for the evacuation. The external affairs ministry ultimately oversaw the departure of most Hindus and Sikhs who had sought to leave Afghanistan for a new life in independent India.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His latest book, Colombo: Port of Call, has been published by Penguin Random House.