Table Of ContentKhizr Tiwana, the Punjab
Unionist Party and the
Partition of India
The Proud Premier of the Punjab
Khizr Tiwana, the Punjab
Unionist Party and the
Partition of India
Ian Talbot
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LONDON AND NEW YORK
First Published in 1996
by Curzon Press
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1996 Ian Talbot
Typeset in Sabon by LaserScript Ltd, Mitcham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 13: 978-0-700-70427-9 (hbk)
Contents
Preface vii
Foreword IX
Dr. L.M. Singh vi. Indian High Commissioner in the UK
List of Abbreviations Xlll
Introduction 1
Part One Inheritance
1 The Tiwanas of Shahpur 12
2 Father and Son 36
3 The Unionist Party 51
Part Two The Pinnacle of Power
4 Apprentice to Power 67
5 Inheriting the Crown 83
6 Leader in War and Peace 99
Part Three The Passing of a World
7 Sailing in Two Boats 111
8 'Pakistan Zindab ad' 129
9 General Without an Army 145
Epilogue 167
Conclusion 177
Glossary 182
Select Bibliography 184
Index 190
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Preface
The mid-1990s provide a good vantage point for a reconsideration
of the Punjab Unionist Party and its last leader, Khizr Hayat Khan
Tiwana. Khizr remains a little studied and much misunderstood
figure who fits uneasily in both Indian and Pakistani historio
graphy of the freedom movement against the Raj.
This volume argues that his career deserves serious evaluation not
just because of the rapid approaching golden jubilee of the partition
of India which he so steadfastly opposed. But because of the insights
it provides into the ability of consociational devices to maintain
stability in highly segmented socities. Indian and Pakistani experi
ences of recent communal and ethnic conflict call for a serious
examination of the prescription of consociational power-sharing.
The Unionist experience of the 1940s provides a key historical case
study for such an evaluation. Khizr's career is likely to become of
increasing interest in the emerging debate on consociationalism.
This work has grown out of a number of years study of the
Punjab and its peoples and the emergence of Pakistan. I am deeply
indebted to a large number of people who have helped and
encouraged me during this period. Thanks go to such doyens of
Punjab history as Clive Dewey, Craig Baxter, Iftikhar Malik and
David Gilmartin. I also owe an immense debt to Francis Robinson
who introduced me to research on South Asia more years ago now
than I care to remember.
I am much obliged for the work of the Librarians and Staff of
The India Office Library, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library,
Southampton University Library, Chicago University Library and
the South Asia Institute Library, Heidelberg University. I must
thank Dietmar Rothermund for his kind invitation to work in the
latter institution.
VB
Khizr Tiwana, the Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India
I am especially grateful to my friend and colleague Gurharpal
Singh who encouraged me to delve into the literature on
consociationalism and political accommodation. This interest
was further stimulated by a chance meeting with Arend Lijphart
at the India International Centre in New Delhi.
Mr. K.Y.F. Morton, Mr.C.H. Barry, Mr. R.A.F. Holroyd, Alan
Campbell-Johnson, Stuart Abbott, Swaran Singh, Azim Husain,
Barkat Hayat, Narinder Saroop and Justice Kalwant Singh Tiwana
all gave generously of their time during the preparation of the
manuscript. Dr Manohar Sondhi, Pran Neville and Bikram Singh
acted as the perfect hosts during a brief visit to New Delhi. I must
especially thank Nazar Tiwana for the great trouble he has taken in
helping me with my research and for his frienship and gracious
hospitality. Finally, I am grateful for the comments of numerous
colleagues over the years. Any errors of fact or omissions are my
responsibility alone.
Coventry, May 1995
Ian Talbot
Vlll
Foreword
Dr. Ian Talbot's study "Khizr Tiwana, the Unionist Party and the
Partition of India" reflects on the well known maxim of Carlyle
that history is a series of innumerable biographies. In a similar
vein, Emerson had observed that there was probably no history,
only biography. Dr. Talbot's study however is not only political
biography and history, it is much more. It is an inter-disciplinary
study which also has the advantage of being an absorbing narrative
of the life and time of Sir Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana, a biography
which constitutes the stuff of history and political sociology
without which the traumatic event of the partition of India in 1947
can never be fully comprehended.
Describing the backdrop of Sir Khizr's patrimony and political
inheritance, his ascendancy to the premiership of Punjab and the
tragic denouement of the frustration of Unionist politics in Punjab
which paved the way for the partition of India, Dr. Talbot has
made a significant contribution to the study of an extremely
complex and difficult period in the history of modern undivided
India which becomes increasingly obscure with the passage of time.
I believe that the history of that period has not ceased to be
relevant. Indeed, it has some valuable lessons and insights to offer
even at this distance of time if we are disposed to fathom the social
and psychological depths of that era which drew to a close with the
partition of India but which appears to have transmitted some of
its genes to the post-partition era both in India and Pakistan.
Dr. Talbot's study throws considerable light on the dynamics and
deadlocks in the pre-partition politics of the Punjab. Its strength is
its biographical focus which provides an authentic understanding
of the ground realities of class, caste, religion and politics. The
story of the Tiwanas of Shahpur, culled and woven painstakingly
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