Mass murder: a matter of terminology and counting

The mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime is proverbially called the Holocaust. It means destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. A synonym for it is genocide, which is now used generically for all cases of mass murder. Some writers have argued that the Holocaust is sui generis, a Jewish tragedy — nothing of the same sort has happened before or afterwards. Six million European Jews out of a total of nine million, that is two-thirds, perished in Nazi gas chambers, forced labour camps, appalling living conditions and other forms of human degradation. 

However, the Nazis targeted other ‘inferior races’ with great savagery as well even though in Hitler’s Mein Kampf the Jews are specifically identified as the evil race. For example, of the estimated one million Roma (gypsies) in Europe, up to 220,000 were killed, which means nearly one-fourth. The worst mass murder in terms of total numbers was that of Soviet citizens who overwhelmingly belonged to another inferior race, the Slavic. Some 25 to 27 million Soviet citizens were killed, most of them civilians. In one Nazi concentration camp above the hills near Strasbourg, I came across the identity card of a Soviet Muslim Tartar with his picture on it; he was also sent to death in that gas chamber. I am sure he was not the only one. There could be thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands, of Muslims who along with other Soviet citizens were consigned to the gas chambers. 

The Jewish holocaust, however, has become the hallmark of the crimes of western civilisation. Nevertheless, a conspicuous holocaust deniers’ lobby exists in the west, which dismisses that something of the sort happened or asserts that the numbers have been grossly inflated by the Zionists. On the other end of the spectrum is the Israeli Zionist state, which has successfully thwarted international attempts to hold to account its excesses in the occupied Palestinian territories. Professor Norman G Finkelstien, a Jewish political scientist, has argued that the US Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of Israel. According to Finkelstein, the Holocaust industry has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.

The mass murder that took place during the partition of India, Punjab and Bengal, has been ignored in western discussions though some universities have now begun to collect evidence. In my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, I argued that if anything like genocide took place during the partition, it was in Punjab (I prefer the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe the Punjab tragedy). However, since the three major communities of Punjab — Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs — were both victims as well as perpetrators of those crimes, which originated from all three of them, the politics of the Punjabi mass murder is somewhat different. It comprises of vain blame games, most notoriously by champions and detractors of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Jinnah, Master Tara Singh and other lesser players. Another angle is to mention figures that are too low or too high. Some even-handed studies are also present and the search for the truth is ongoing. 

An old Punjab civil servant, Sir Penderel Moon, suggested 180,000 to 200,000 dead, of which 60,000 were Hindus and Sikhs who perished in what became the Pakistani West Punjab and 120,000 Muslims in the Indian East Punjab. This is now discarded by all serious researchers because the estimate is scandalously low though the basic point that more Muslims were killed has remained constant. A report prepared on behalf of the Shriromani Gurdwara Prabandhik Committee highlights the crimes committed only by Muslims and is virtually quiet about the Sikh excesses. Justice Gopal Das Khosla conducted an extensive study and suggested that 200,000 to 250,000 Hindus and Sikhs were killed during the partition. The figure included those of NWFP and Sindh but those did not exceed more than one or two thousand. The rest were in Punjab. He admitted that more Muslims could have been killed in East Punjab and quoted some people who were involved in these attacks on Muslims. His total figure was 500,000 for all deaths during the partition. He did not cover Bengal or any other part of India. 

Lieutenant General (retd.) Aftab Ahmad Khan of the Pakistan army, who was part of the Punjab boundary force and later of the joint operations of the Indian and Pakistan armies to supervise the transfer of people across the borders, wrote to me in a personal letter dated February 2, 2007 that at least 500,000 Muslims died in East Punjab. He believed that Hindu-Sikh casualties were far less in western Punjab. Then Punjab Refugee and Rehabilitation Minister Mian Iftikharuddin wrote in an official report dated November 9, 1947 that 200,000 Muslims from Patiala state alone were still unaccounted for. 

Now, if we compare this with the overall estimates for the loss of life in the partition riots for India as a whole, figures of 600,000, 800,000 and one million have been suggested by Britons who were present in India at the time. Over the years, the estimates for fatalities have been climbing and a figure as high as two million has been mentioned. The exact numbers will never be known but one million can be considered a reliable though conservative estimate for the whole of India. For Punjab alone, I have suggested that 500,000 to 800,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were killed. The Muslims took the initiative in western Punjab to organise and carry out planned genocidal attacks but, in the end, more Muslims were killed in East Punjab than Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab. 

On the whole, I noticed that while in Pakistan all the evil that happened in 1947 is blamed on Hindus and Sikhs, in India it is the opposite and Muslims are blamed for the deaths, rapes and abductions. A conspiracy of silence about one’s own group’s crimes has prevailed on both sides in which not only politicians but academics are equally complicit. My book is one attempt to lay bare that conspiracy. Ajay Bhardwaj’s documentaries, Rabba Hunn Kee Kariye and Milange Babe Ratan Dey Mele Tey, are steps in the right direction from the other side to tell the truth