The Communal Problem in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent

A CCORING TO INFORMATION compiled by the government of Pakistan, utilizing reports appearing in the Indian press, some 3000 Muslims have lost their lives in India in the course of some 730 civil disturbances of HinduMuslim character. These statistics cover the period from the signing in i950 of the Liaquat-Nehru Pact on the protection of minorities to November i967.' Corresponding figures for Hindus killed in Pakistan in disturbances of like character do not seem to be available, but sources published in Pakistan indicate that the number of Hindus so killed, in the same period, could not have been less than 200, taking the minimum published figure in every case.2 It is clear that the accuracy of any of these figures from press sources cannot be taken as reliable. Whatever doubts may have lingered as to the veracity or otherwise of officially disclosed figures relating to death or injury caused during civil disturbances have surely been resolved by the pregnant words with which begins an editorial appearing in the Indian newspaper, Statesman: Like the communal riots in Jamshedpur and Rourkela in i964, those in Ranchi in August last year were far more serious than the Press was able to publish at the time.3 It is clear that this view is of very wide application and is by no means restricted to the Indian Republic. Briefly stated, therefore, the precise reliability of such reporting is not a subject on which further speculation is necessary, nor is it necessary to venture into such questions as to further loss of life on both sides, as between India and Pakistan, incurred in the course

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