Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the part that the exchange of population and redistribution of ‘evacuee property’– the agricultural land abandoned by departing Hindus and Sikhs during the mass migrations after Partition – played in changing the balances of power in the Pakistan Punjab.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore the long-term consequences of the refugee settlement by arguing the departure of agriculturalist Hindu and Sikh landlords and the arrival of incoming smallholding peasantry stiffened the grip of large landlords in West Punjab in the early years of the nation-state's history. The schemes of redistribution of evacuee property not only provided the opportunity to the local landholders to consolidate their power, but also big refugee landlords needed to rebuild their constituencies by siphoning off the vacated resources for their former clients and tenants as they had no political base in Pakistan. The local tenantry faced hardship because of the migration of their former patrons, as their holdings were greatly reduced to resettle the incoming Muslim refugees. The paper will also explain the ways in which the governing landlord gentry in Punjab watered down every effort of the migrant-dominated Central Government of Pakistan to introduce any prospect of the land reforms in the province. Instead, they tried to contrive the different schemes for the 'nationalisation' of the large properties of the so-called 'anti-national and unpatriotic'- namely Khizar Hayat Tiwana and other main members of the Unionist Party. The paper concludes that despite nation-building mythology, the early post-independence period in Pakistan was marked by disharmony, rather than unity and that this focused around the scramble for resources left behind by departing Hindus and Sikhs. The conflict was especially corrosive of democratic consolidation in the Punjab heartland of the country. This study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the transitional state in Pakistan