he positions of the members of the Punjab Boundary Commission and the Radcliffe Award Except for the chairman

of the Commsion, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the other four members of the commission were nominees of the Congress, Sikhs and Muslim League. The CongressSikh nominees, Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan and Justice Teja Singh, recommended that Lahore

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should go to India. Mahajan proposed, however, that Lahore could be jointly administrated by India and Pakistan, since all communities had genuine rights and claims to it. The Muslim League nominees, Justice Din Muhammad and Justice Muhammad Munir, agreed with the Muslim Leagues position and recommended that Lahore should go to Pakistan. The Radcliffe Award was announced on 17 August. It awarded Lahore to Pakistan.102 The international boundary between India and Pakistan was fixed some 20 kilometres east of Lahore at Wagah. On the opposite side the Indian border started at Attari, just outside Amritsar. In between was the narrow strip of the so-called No Mans Land.

The Lahore riots remembered Short excerpts from interviews

Som Anand, 69. He works as a journalist in Delhi and is the author of, Lahore: Portrait of a Lost City. The Congress leaders are responsible for the huge loss of life of Hindus and Sikhs in Lahore The Congress leadership is largely responsible for giving wrong advice and assurances to the non-Muslims that Lahore should not be abandoned. However, towards the very end they secretly agreed with the Muslim League leaders to an exchange of population. One day Nehru visited a camp of Hindu and Sikh refugees in D.A.V. College, Lahore. The angry crowd cursed him for not telling them the truth that Congress had agreed to the exchange of population. Gandhi continued to believe that once the violence subsides he will lead a congregation of non-Muslims back to Lahore and friendship and harmony will again be restored. We lived in Model Town, an upper middle class locality, comprising mostly Hindus and Sikhs. It was a Sunday. A friend of my father, Mr B.P.L. Bedi (father of the internationally-known actor Kabir Bedi), who was a famous Communist leader in Lahore called upon us and said to my father Lalaji I need some money. My father, who was a

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banker, replied, Bediji today is Sunday, the banks are closed. But he insisted that since he

had the keys they could go and fetch the money. My father agreed and they went away. A relative of ours was staying with us at that time. He was about four-five years older than me. We decided to call upon an acquaintance. During our absence, some Afridi Pathans raided our house. At that time many Pathan gangs had descended from the tribal areas upon Lahore. They would go around looting and plundering non-Muslims. Some ten, twelve of them came to our house in tongas. Just at that moment, our Muslim neighbour, Maulvi Sahib, who was a supporter of the Congress Party, arrived. Our families shared the same porch at the entry. When he saw the Pathans he came over and admonished them, telling them to fear the wrath of God for their misdeeds. Instead they became angry and shouted at him for defending Hindus. In the commotion an elderly Sikh gentleman Kartar Singh, who lived right opposite our house, came towards our house to find out what the matter was. His whole family had left and he was waiting for a truck that would transport his buffalo away. When the Pathans saw him they shot him dead. They people heard them regret that they had to waste a bullet; a stab with a knife would have done the job cheaply. My father stayed on in Lahore in spite of all the killings. He had actually married a Muslim woman. He was a managing director of a bank and the Pakistan government needed his services. When he died in 1957, I came over from India to attend the cremation ceremony. A Brahmin who continued to live in Lahore and was a government employee performed the funeral rites although he was not a practising priest.