COMMUNAL RIOTS IN PUNJAB

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25136, 18 March 1947, Page 7

COMMUNAL RIOTS IN PUNJAB

Jinnah’s Call To Moslems

HELP to RESTORE

ORDER

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) . LONDON, March 17. presldei )l of the All India Mosm tMr Jitmah) has called ?estnl» SI X^ S “ “I? Punjab to help „ e . der . ln the, province. The general secretary of the Punjab Mosl?™ . k ? agu ? (Mr Miam Mumta Daultana) has been in Bombay giving Mr the n punjab aCCoUnt ° f the situation in Before leaving Bombay Mr DaulUna told a correspondent that he had been asked by Mr Jinnah to take mandatory orders bw:k -with him. These were that all Moslems in the Punjab must give their unstinted and wholehearted co-operation to the adminisii mus t offer co-operation tc all those concerned in maintaining

order. The secretary added that Mr Jinnah had said that it was the sacred duty of the Moslems of the Punjab to protect minorities and live among them in peace. There was an outbreak of communal disturbances in Calcutta last night. Fourteen persons were injured, and today police were patrolling the streets. Most of the Punjab trouble areas are now peaceful, but communal rioting continues in the hill district of the north-west Punjab. It is officially stated that troops opened fire to disperse a crowd which was assembling for an attack on the village of Odhwal. Moslems* looted two villages near Pindi Gheb, 60 miles south-west of Itawalpindi, and heavy casualties are reported in the village of Nullah, where more than 50 houses were burned. Hindus have evacuated* the land and villages in the neighbourhood of Pindi Gheb.

Forty-seven Hindus and Sikhs were killed and three were wounded in Chaij an, a village 80 miles east of Peshhwar, according to an official announcement from Peshawar. The authorities have evacuated 1500 villagers to Haripur. Ninety Hindus and Sikhs were forcibly converted at two villages near Peshawar. In Peshawar city itself, a Hindu was stabbed. A curfew has now. been enforced. The Exchange Telegraph Agency correspondent, in a delayed dispatch from Peshawar, says that an iron curtain of secret censorship has sur-

rounded Peshawar, and is not yet entirely lifted. The correspondent’s messages on Saturday were stopped as “objectionable.” The Bengal Hindu Maha Sabha (the orthodox Hindu organisation) called on the British and Indian Governments to divide Bengal into two separate provinces for Hindus and Moslems before the British quit India. It said that partition was. “the best means of preventing thp destruction of the fabric of Bengal’s national life.”