Interview Basil Poff (Historian)

POFF (P): The Golden Temple I went with your dad, that was in 1979 I think. We saw the bullet holes in the walls, and the well where people jumped in to evade the bullets.. Yeah, and in 1980 around there, there was a militant Sikh body in Pinjame, who wanted to be independent of India Akali, the army of god. Well it was a militant inversion.. INTERVIEWER (I): Sorry inversion? P: Oh different examples of them, exemplifications of them. Like modern terrorists, there are many different varieties. These were just extreme nationalists I: Oh okay P: Brave people. But they took over the Golden temple in 1983(?), under the leadership of Bhindrenwale. Then when Indira Ghandi was Prime Minister, a woman with no relation to Ghandi, sent the troops in and they were blasted out. And that really antagonised the whole of the Sikh people, not just the militants, because this sacred place was being shelled. And when she was assassinated, which was, when was that, 3 years later(?), it was her Sikh bodyguards. I: When you say Sikh? Is that a religion? P: Yes, and they have come to have a reputation as militantsI: Wait so is Sikh the major religion of India at the time? P: No, in Punjab in the North West of India - which was divided/partitioned in 1947 into Indian Punjab and Pakistani Punjab. So Amritsar is in India, and 30 miles away is Lahore, which is in Pakistan, and that was awful because it was one people really, the size of France. And Panjab is of all religions, and they accommodated to each other really well. And the partition came, and they massacred each other, it cut the country in two. I: Sorry Im a little confused about Punjabi? P: Oh well Punjab was a provence. It had been a kingdom back in the 18 century, and had been invaded by Central Asia and other countries.. I: But it was still part of India? P: Well at that time India wasnt one state, but was several provinces, or kingdoms, but the British gradually over 200 yea rs, took over most of it. I: So by 1919 India was by then one state under British rule? P: It was nearly one state, under direct british rule, but then there were Im not sure, 2 or 3 hundred princely states, which existed scattered all over the place. Which were nominally independent, but they were in treaty relations with the british and such.. But Punjab was an independent princely state, with a maharaja [Ranjit Singh], which was where I was at one point, but in reality this state was very closely linked with the British. And in WWI, he actually put his own army together and went and fought in France. I: So why was there a split down Punjab? Well India was advancing to independence, so the contest became not between Indians of all sorts against the British rule, who by that time had announced they were leaving in 1947. General Mountbatten. I: So there was a contest during this, power vacuum? P: Well yes, between Hindu and Muslims, but they are both so diverse, and they had been living together for years, and often Indian muslims were regarded as heretics by Saudi Arabian Muslims, because they took on some of the beliefs and practices of the Hindu. I: So why did the split happen?
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P: To bring the Sikhs in, the Sikhs started as a reform movement, of Hinduism in the 15 century, there was guru Nanak who was the founding guru. So they started off as not particularly distinctive, but they were more devotional and less ritualistic. And over the subsequent centuries they hardened into a distinctive people, with a distinctive dress, the men with the turbans - we see them here in Palmerston North, and formed, uh, the khalsa. This is Sikhs who have undergone the sacred Amrit ceremony th initiated by the 10 Guru Gobind Singh, (this is further down the line) which is the army of god. I: Ok, and so Hinduism was present all over India, etc, but the Sikhs were concentrated in Punjab? P: Well, yes, the Muslim and Hindu concentrations, where they are roughly equal, is in Punjab, and Bengal, which was much the same, but far apart, with different language etc. And they were both split, because it became disorderly as competition for succession to the british rule, by uh.. Naoru and the Congress who claimed to be the single National party for the whole country, however there were other politicians who didnt want to be part of the Congress raj as they called it, and they found a w ay to build resistance to it, by emphasising that Muslims, would not be able to live happily in such a state. I: By Congress you mean? P; Oh no Congress was the National party formed in 1885, like the African National Congress which was modelled on this Indian National Congress. Not exactly democratic, but they were heading in that direction. It was a popular movement. I: Wait so there were, two parties? The national Congress Party, which Ghandi played a part in..? P:Ghandi was a Congress politician, his vision for India was a religious one, but he was mainly for harmony. Striving for reconciliation between the different religions. Ghandi was the visionary prophet, a shrewd politician, but he wasnt the leader of the party. The party was secular, national, modelled on Western politics of democratic parties and industrialisation, etc. Ghandi didnt want industrialisation. I: The politicians in Punjab didnt want Congress? P: Well there pockets of very influential Muslims. Until the 18 Century the [Muslim] Moghal Empire had ruled India, they built the Taj Mahal, amazing people. Who originated in Central Asia, Mongol really. But on the whole Moghals were very tolerant, they were Muslims, but they werent fanatics. This Empire spread out over the whole of india practically, placed and created elites, who were in the service of the Empire, particularly in Central North India, which was where its heart was.. Delhi. This was th during the 18 Century, and so by the late 1900s they had been there a long time, princes, highly civilised people, etc. So there were these entrenched Muslim elites, who were a minority in population terms in the provinces where they were elites [central India], and the mass of the people were actually Hindu, or in the case of Penjab, Sihk. When the competition for the succession of the British rule came to be acute, there were various ways you could drum up support for your claim, one of which was to say India was Hindu, and Hindu nationalism is still very strong today nasty, and they destroyed mosques, claiming that they were built on sites of ancient temples, all that sort of thing. And these elites, in central india, could see that if the country went democratic with the Congress *Hindu+ leading the way, they would be out of it. Theyd lose all their privileges, and with the m only being 14% of the population. So they began to argue that Hindus and Muslims couldnt live together, taking the whole of India, not just their own part, so that enlarged the threat to them, as a threat to Muslims all over India, even though the Muslims in Punjab and Bengal were not feeling threatened, because theyd lived for centuries more or less, and on the whole peacefully with Hindus, they were a majority in those places. But as the competition for the succession to the British rule built up, this is now 1920-30-40s by the way, it culminated in 1947, the hostility was exaggerated where Muslims were being lead by people who were telling them their religion was in danger. And the irony was the leading figure, in fact the leading figures were scarcely Muslim at all, atheists really. So simple people in the villages in Punjab and Bengal get excited, and the whole communal balance that had been maintained for many years, cooperation in the villages you know, most villages would be a mix of Hindu and Muslim that began to disintegrate, and ended in all-out violence. KILLING MILLIONS< AND CAUSING THE MIGration of millions more, o all the Sikhs and Hindus, shifted into India, and Muslims went the other way into Pakistan. And the British, this was in the 1930s, and became extreme in 1946, and these elite opportunistic leaders using this to rally the Muslims against the Congress party, and the British had by that time said they were leaving. So to avoid a civil war before they left they sent a commission of Englishmen to Punjab and Bengal, who drew a line through the middle of the two states. One side of each state was east or west Pakistan, and the Muslims were forced to move across that line. P: It didnt last, because these Pakistanis were from Bengal and were landed with the national language of Punjab, which they didnt speak *Punjab and Bengal were on opposite sides of India; East and West+ yet the Government etc was conducted in that
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language - Urdu. Tension between the two wings of Pakistan and in 1971 East Pakistan broke off and declared its independence, and there was a war there. I: but back to my focussing questions.. What was happening in India at the time of the Massacre? What was happening that prompted the 1919 Amritsar Massacre? P: Well there was the National movement we spoke of, and that had accumulated quite a lot of support, and that support had flown into resistance to war, to taking part in the war. So the National movement, and added to that, Ghandi had worked endlessly to harmonise, in the india national Congress, Hindu and Muslims, and other faiths, so that they could all be subsumed in one Indian nation. Regardless of faith. And he set up a thing called a khilafat, promoting the notion of a caliph, to unify all muslims, and he promoted that because it gave the Muslims some sense of being part of this national body. So that got Muslims excited involved. P: The war itself and the recruitment of soldiers during the war by the British was another crucial thing, because Indian recruits were basically being coerced. And they went to France, and theyd never seen such hell in their lives you know. Anything you say doesnt cover everybody though, some Indian leaders and Princes were eager for war and supplied their own army. P: Yes so there was the National Movement which had developed, and in 191 there was an orchestrated protest, khalifut, there was the war and the legacy there, there was impending reforms, which the British always offered when things started to get dodgy. But in 1917 thered been reforms and constitutional changes, and councils elected, and so on. I: Wait so the Indians were in charge? P: Well.. in charge of the drains. It was a british run government, the critical thing for the British were the army and the revenues, and they kept those. So thats four things I th ink; National party, Hindu Muslim unity in khalifut, reforms by the british, the whole attitude that things were changing. As well as Sihk militism. And there were protests food shortages, all the things that come with war, which was happening in Britain as well, but easily generated protests. Protests in Amritsar and the other big cities of Punjab, and in most of the big cities. People on the streets there were black flag days, where they waved black flags, like the devil regime is coming and were all going to resist it. Um, and strikes. In the 1920s, there was the whole noncooperation. And this was Gandhis strategy non-cooperation, its no use going out and fighting people, because youre going to lose anyway, they have more guns, and its as immoral for you to beat them as it is for them to beat you. So dont cooperate. If youre a government servant, resign. Dont go to the bank. And the Government will fall. P: There were only about 1000 British was part of the Government, and the other 700million were Indians, working for the British Government good people, but if they could be disengaged, the British government would collapse. Then came these particular protests in Nehal, and also in the countryside. The peasantry were aroused railway stations were burned down. The odd person was killed, but then meetings were banned. The Governor, Oduire, ordered curfews, no meetings, censorhip, arrest without trial, all the things that repeat themselves all over the world. And in defiance of that, a meeting was called at the Jallianwala Bagh, and so general Dyer was dispatched, to break it up. So he marched in there, with his Gurkhas, why these were Nepalese, recruited into the British army, and theyre the ones who did all the shooting. And they just shot and shot and shot and shot. Dyer had an armoured car with him, but he couldnt get it through the lanes, because its congested around the Golden Temple, and the car had to stop 40 yards away, and it had a machine gun on it. If it had gotten through t here wouldve been more than 400 people killed, or however many people were killed. So thats what happened. I: So at this meeting.. they were just protesting? P: Yes well, it was speeches and all that, it was seditious, it was about ending British rule in India you know. But it was the fact that it occurred against orders, that it was so big, and that it came on top of all that other stuff, the khalifut and non-cooperation and all that. And the disorder that had been created, like an English lady had been knocked off her bicycle.. I: Oh dear P: Things like that. And the fear that this would blow up into something bigger, or thats how General Dyer justified himself, if we had not done our duty, India would have been lost to them along those lines. I: Do you know who organised the meeting? Or groups that were part of the meeting?

P: Well I remember they were mostly Barristers, Indians, who had studied British law and courts, and these people made a lot of use of the law. Using the machinery the opposite side use, rather than trying to fight them to achieve something clever lawyers. Gandhi was along these lines as well. It was nearly revolutionary. In fact if you want to add to the mix, the baltivek Revolution, of the communist nationalisation of peasant land, and that sort of quite radical views. Because Russia had had its revolution you see I: So how does that relate to Amritsar? P: Well it creates a Communist element, within this bigger nationalist movement, the lawyers for example, were often socialist in their formation, they were all western educated a lot of them had been to Cambridge and Oxford and that, so they were up to date with these ideologies. The Russian revolution was an eye-opener, it shattered the confidence of the old classes, and excited ambitions. I: What was the general opinion of normal citizens in Amritsar? P: Good question, and one I worked on years ago. I was focusing on the countryside the peasants blew up some train stations, blocking these armoured trains with machine guns.. I: Werent they non-violent? Gandhi? P: Well non-cooperative, but of course it tipped over into violence all the time. The core of the protest was non-violent noncooperative, but thats pretty hard to hold toget her for an undisciplined crowd. I read a young mans diary who was caught up in a Government protest, and he was just calmly talking and drinking tea with mates, and they heard the band coming, drums beating, black flags flying, and they couldnt see what was going on so they joined the crowd, a nd they went to the District Headquarters, and someone set fire to it, and he was thinking this is exciting, and a couple of pages later he was a fully fledged protester, but he didnt really have any idea what it was about. P: But out in the countryside, the most critical was the recruitment during the war, when they were basically seized and solf into the army. Because the landlords were all given men quota, so what did they do, they wouldnt get their cousins and sons, and so went out into the countryside to get what they called rabbits, which were little people, too weak to organise against them. Some were even shipped across the country to someone else, and the landlords took these people to the recruiting officers.. here we are, brave soldiers for you, and that broke down the authority of the village, because these landlords were meant to be protectors of the village, and now they were just looting the village for men. And resentment was powerful, and these peasants just wanted to get stuck into someone. I: So the officials, landlords, etc, were in league with the British? Ie it was the peasants with no authority who suffered? P: Uh the British, the way they ruled, was to co-opt, which is every successful imperial system. The British were there for 200 years, and they did this by co-opting the elites, and they did this by giving them more land, or a title, and its a very status orientated society. If you can sit on a chair, its a hell of an honour, or if you can have a gun. So as the district off icers went around, they dished out these petty rewards, bit of land here, and a tax job there, favouritism to a son.. And thats the way it operated, so these um, higher class Indians were very incorporated into the British rule. I: So who attended the actual meeting? P: Well there were villagers there, but they were mostly urban people, almost middle-class, well not exactly. They had become convinced nationalists, the injuries just built up, and then leaders went through these cities gathering support. I: So the British opinion? P: Was to stay in power. I: What happened during the event again? The Golden Temple? P: No the Golden Temple is about 300m away, its a different complex, if it had happened in the temple, god that would just b e unbelievable If that happened. And there were both Muslims and Hindus. I: So no specific religion at this time? Focusing on becoming independent rule?

P: Well yes, there were just too many grievances against the British, the determination to be strong, and not to take it anymore was becoming more apparent. I: So these people had their protest meeting, the British soldiers arrived and ordered them to dispatch, which they didnt, s o the soldierd just brough out their guns and started shooting? P: Yes the Gurkhas lined up either side, rested their guns, and shot. Some got over the wall, others jumped into the well, over a hundred died in that well there was an exit at the far end, which soon got jammed, and the soldiers just kept firing until t heir ammunition ran out. Then they just clicked their heels, and marched out again. It stunned everyone. And of course Dyers, I: Consequences? P: Well on the Indian side it was a shock, because the British had not usually acted in this directly brutal manner, the brutality was more individual you know, on the whole their rule was accepted which made it possible for many people, but after this Indian resignations from government posts, judges, etc, - known as collaborators with the British, but they didnt see themselves as that, they would do their job equally whether it was a Moghul, a Sikh, or a British officer, but there was a lot of resignation. So when 1920 came there was non-cooperativeness on a big scale throughout the whole country. There was a lot of support for the movement now. I: So the Massacre shocked the Indians into standing up against the British? P: It widened the pool of support, so when Gandhi, what the hell can you do when bullets are flying, itss almost at a point when you either run away, or stand and get shot, or fight. But with what? They had no weapons. Therefore Gandhis non -cooperation became for the first time a fully organised program, over the whole of India, as a method of protest and passive resistance. We will not cooperate. And that resonated. Every one caught that vibration, because you couldnt cooperate with that, so it was relatively easy, it wasnt easy in terms of jobs, families to feed, expensive educations, people who had invested in them. Bu t they did try to set up some parallel Governments to sort this out. I: Did any of them work? P: No Gandhis government was running parallel to the British, so they didnt have to cooperate. Swa Rag Gandhis call, self rule, not quite independence, because Gandhi was a religious prophet, and self rule was someone who was totally in control of themselves, dont worry about other people, start with the self. Not everyone did that! But the strategy was the important thing, and by 1921 this developed into civil disobedience, on a massive scale, so things took time. I: So how you were talking about the split Indian states into Pakistan, and the National Congress Party being challenged by Muslim elites, umm, so the added support to Gandhis movement, did that lead on to British rule ending, and then onto that split? P: The Congress had been there since 1885, but it had started off as a club of lawyers, elite people speaking about constitutional niceties they operated at a high level [constitution], what this did was generate popular dimension. So the Congress became a popular movement, that is a lot of people joined, and it only cost 4 Anas [Islamic Currency], so it was made deliberately nonelite. I: Wait so it isnt a government party? P: Well it is now, it was an opposition party, a nationalist protest, if you take it in 1919, and had been such since 1885. But it worked in subtle ways, to get Indian judges appointed to the benches, smaller things like that, but not a free India or anything like that, but now Indian free of all british rule is a recognisable ca ll, because coming back to the intolerability, cant cooperate with the British regime, especially after the direct brutality of the Massacre. Its immoral. P: This also brought in, and Gandhi always intended this, Muslims, because there was no discrimination in the shooting between Muslims and Hindus. I: So it was a lot later when the Muslim elites started to oppose the Hindu Congress party? P: Thats quite a bit later, it came to head in the 1940s, at the end of the British rule, under which some of them had prospered as a minority.

I: So in summary the Massacre lead onto more support for the Nationalist Congress movement with Muslims as well in accordance with what Gandhi wanted, and then this lead onto the end of the British rule, then the power struggle between the.. P: Different elites I: Yes, who didnt want the mainly Hindu Nationalist Congress to fully take over, because they believed that would be the end of them, so they used the excuse? that Muslims couldnt live in such a state? P: Well it was a bit more than an excuse, it was a fear they had, amongst the leaders of the Muslim League it was called, dating right back to 1906, and they were a minority in some places, such as in Central india new Delhi, but in Bengal and Punjab they were a majority you see. It gets a bit complicated, trade-offs, as the post Britain india is being designed, there were the Muslim elites who.. traded away the majorities Punjab and Bengal had, which was around 50%, to ensure their continued advantageous position of being a minority. I: Wait so being a minority was a good thing?.. P: Well they were elite, and to be elite you dont want to be too many. In the leadership of the central part, New Delhi, was focussed on ensuring that they didnt lose, not the whole of Ind ia, the superiority they enjoyed in their region, which was the superiority of being a minority. I: What I dont get is why being a minority means they got superiority? P: Oh they werent superior because they were a minority, they had superiority because they went back to Moghul times which I explained before, they were the heart of the Moghul Empire. The British didnt destroy things, they just sort of took them over, and modified them, and they took over these courts and schools and things like this, which supported this old Muslim elites, and kept it that way. Dazzling people, but they were only about 14% of that central part of India but they had about 50% of the jobs in the courts and the army, and things like that, and they didnt want that to ch ange. So they had to say they were in danger, but they couldnt say we are in danger, because they were only 14%, it was anti -democratic you know, didnt sound good. So they said we as in the Muslims of india are in danger, and they buried their 14% in the 50% of Muslims in states like Bengal and Punjab. They said that their numbers were such across the whole of india, and that they couldnt stand against the thrust of Hindu and Congress. They essentially said - how can our 50% of Muslims across all of India survive against a Hindu Government? I: oh that makes sense P: But there are actually more Muslims in India today than there are in Pakistan, so a lot of the Muslims who were forced to migrate across the border, will have moved back. I: Just going back, so 200 years before, the Muslims were the rulers? P: Hindu was always there, they were there B.C., Muslims only really arrived in the 16 century, coming mainly from Central th th Asia, and there had been a lot of trade with Arabian Gulf and others like that, Iran, historically back to 8 and 9 centuries. But there were Muslim imperial rulers the Moghul Empire. P: But the last thing these Muslim elites dating back to the Moghul Empire wanted, was to be shunted off to Karatse, they were hoping to stay in a new independent India, in Delhi, where theyd been for generations with their princes and palaces. It got totally out of hand, once the theme that Islam [Muslims] was in danger, and it resulted in the splitting of the two provinces into Pakistan and India, and a lot of these elite leaders became refugees in Pakistan. I: Awesome, so what about the British perspective on the shooting? P: Youll need to emphasise that the shooting at Amritsar really undermined British rule, and it took a while for that to happen. At first there was condemnation from the British towards the event, and there was a court marshall and inquiry against General Dyer and the shooting, but there were others who regarded General Dyer as a hero, giving him things such as a jewelled sword. The Daily Telegraph in England, opened a purse for him donations, and it was enormous, 20,000 pounds sterling millions were poured into this purse. And for many Indians who were prepared to accept that this was an abhorration that had happened, and to just swallow it then in Britain the Conservative Party, and papers such as the Morning Post started to bark Dyer up as a hero who had saved British India from falling under the heel of the mob, you know, Indian attitudes towards him and the event changed quickly and suddenly against him.
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I: What about his superiors? P: Well the lieutenant Governor, who was the architect behind this harsh way of dealing with things, the censorship and the suchlike. He stood behind Dyer, and in his book, supported him and tried to take away responsibility from Dyer about the shooting. Then there was also a report published by Lord Hunter, who was well-established, and whitewashed what happened as well he named it the Punjab disturbances. I: One more thing long-term consequences? Significance to New Zealand? P: I doubt that 1 in a 100 new Zealanders wouldve heard of it, because it`s not Parihaka or something like that. Possibly if this had happened before Parihaka, then we wouldve called it NZs Jallianwala Bagh. But it was 1919, it was a lot later than any equivalent action in NZ. Short answer: none. I: Damn. And there werent any NZ soldiers involved were there. P: No, but maybe that NZ attitude, that Britain could never do anything wrong. NZ soldiers have been in places like Egypt in 1915, the Cairo Riots. Our insularity, not concerning ourselves with others, because were imperial people ourselves. We we re white, and they were coloured niggers. I was reading the letters home of a NZ soldier who went to fight in the war in 1915, and they went to Columbo in Sri Lanka, and he said it was good to get off the ship and all that sort of thing, and then said that there a nice place, but that there was so many niggers! And he was in someone elses country it just shows that attitude that privileged our imperial English superiority, that attitude people had. I: Yup that makes sense! Awesome thanks, Ill stop the recording now.