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However, Punjab’s record on communalism was perhaps the worst in India. Just before the elections of 1923, when people like C.R. Das, Nehru, Azad and Sarojini Naidu visited the province, (in March 1923) they found the situation virtually beyond control. It has to be understood that there was an inbuilt conflict of interests between a Muslim majority working the 1919 reforms, and a highly literate, professional and politically aware urban Hindu minority, suffering the unintended adverse consequences of the 1919 reforms. A reconstitution of municipal committees did then take place, under the terms of Municipal Amendment Act 27 , but it benefited, again, only the Muslims, and that too, unrealistically. Though no Hindu seats, as such, were lost, providing for extra Muslim seats changed the entire balance of power in several municipalities, thus in the process, generating even greater Hindu discontent.

On top of all this Gandhi’s attacks then on the Arya Samaj added to the existing discontents, for the Samaj was then a very significant influence in the Punjab, indeed much more so than Gandhi or the Congress. After the Kohat riots of September 1924, a large number of Hindus left the Frontier, actually being transported away through arrangements made by the government itself, seeking refuge as far away as in Rawalpindi. No one then asked of the government: ‘why, when their principal responsibility is to preserve order, protect the citizens and not escort them away from their own homes, was such a step taken?’ These displaced, disenchanted, and discontented urban Hindus slowly began to reorder their political priorities. The first manifestation of this became visible in December 1924, when Gandhi visited Lahore in an effort to improve communal relations. On that occasion, the urban Hindu of Punjab stood disapprovingly aloof, even from the Mahatma’s efforts, and this was when Gandhi strode the Indian political firmament as a colossus.

Excerpted from Page 129-130 of ‘Jinnah: India-Partition Independence’ by Jaswant Singh