According to Police Special Branch intelligence reports, amidst the chaos of Partition, over 60,000 ounces of gold were stolen from fleeing Hindus and Sikhs in 1947. Alongside political identity and religious organisation and territorialisation, desire for wealth or property was a key trigger for the continuation of the Partition violence. This article documents organised communal violence which erupted in the NWFP and Punjab during 1946–47 using largely underutilised police and intelligence reports from the period. The empirical focus of the article is two-fold.

In the present work, it is my endeavour to discuss the growth of the Muslim politics in the Punjab from 1919 to 1947. The study of this period forms an important and interesting subject of research for a variety of reasons. The period from 1919 to 1947 marks an important phase in the history of the Punjab. At the close of the World War I in 1919, the Punjab was passing through a very critical period. The passage of the MontaguChelmsford Reforms, the Rowlatt Bills and Jallianwala Bagh tragedy created anarchy in the province.