The Sikh Minority and the Partition of the Punjab 1920-1947 by Chatterjee Chhanda;

Author:Chatterjee, Chhanda;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Muslim League Attempts to Increase its Influence

Sikh apprehensions of the Pakistan plan were exacerbated as the Unionist leaders were seen to be playing in the hands of the Muslim League. The cry for Pakistan seemed to have caught the imagination of the Muslims as days wore on. The Punjab Premier Sikander Hayat Khan, who could sense the intensity of public feelings, did not risk an open rupture with Jinnah and had to attend a Muslim League meeting held in Lyallpur in November 1942. It left the Sikhs ‘injured and bewildered’ and put an end to all hopes of cooperation from the Muslims, which the Sikander–Baldev Pact had inspired.35

The unexpected death of Sikander on 26 December 1942 came as a further setback for the prospects of inter-communal understanding. The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, who was understandably anxious to hold the communal balance in this province, which was serving the imperial government as a major recruiting centre in the peak of war efforts, wrote to the Secretary of State Amery on 28 December 1942 that:

He has with great skill for a number of years kept together a delicate political mosaic. Sikander was well known to be very non-communal in temper and outlook and he had conciliated a far greater degree of general support in that most important Province than anyone whom I can think of as a possible successor is likely to manage to do.36

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