India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act broadened the circumstances around which this property could be taken and used to compensate Hindus and Sikhs who had come from Pakistan. These laws would later be noted for their stringency and caprice — Jawaharlal Nehru himself said in Parliament in the early 1950s that these laws increased minority fears and forced migration. 49 From March 1948, questions around the rights of returning minorities and their citizenship weighed upon the Constituent Assembly of India. Pakistan’s alleged refusal to restore the property of ‘returnees’ in West Pakistan was contrasted with Indian ‘alacrity to restore property’ to those returning to India. Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination the previous month, together with Pakistan’s initial economic difficulties, resulted in a situation where Muslims were returning to UP, Rajputana and Delhi; as this was seen as an ‘influx,’ 50 Nehru was required to remind his fellow parliamentarians of the pledge India had made to restore minorities their property irrespective of Pakistan’s conduct. As this return continued through the summer of 1948, the question of restoration of property enhanced fears around the creations of ‘miniature Pakistans’ within Indian territory. Even involuntary migration during times of communal strife, organised by military escorts, was seen as disloyalty to the infant dominion, ‘kicking’ India to go to Pakistan. Furthermore, as minorities from Pakistan showed little desire to return to their homelands, this ‘one-way traffic’ interfered with the ‘legitimate’ task of rehabilitating minorities. Nehru’s suggestion, in correspondence, to allow for a special officer in the Relief and Rehabilitation Ministry to deal with Muslim migrants from Pakistan whose property had been taken over by the Government was summarily rejected by the Ministry itself. 51 With reports coming in from UP at the end of June 1948 about ‘whispering campaigns’ against the Government of India undertaken by recently returned ‘Muslim Leaguers’ through secret missives they brought through ‘courier services’ 52, the Government of India decided to take decisive and sudden action. This was done through that favourite instrument of the colonial period, the ordinance. 53 Ordinances had long been anathema to those fighting for the sub-continent’s freedom. As ‘temporary’ laws for emergency circumstances, they did not need legislative approval and could be speedily introduced. After Independence, though, they provided mechanisms by which both governments armed themselves to deal with emergency situations, particularly before both Constitutions came into force. 54 In this interim period, the extension of late colonial instruments of power like the Government of India Act 1935 gave governments untrammelled power. 55 Doing so allowed the permit system to be introduced suddenly, virtually overnight, 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 ibid. India, Constitutive Assembly Debates, Legislative Chamber, 6 April 1948, 2484–87 (Desh Bandhu Gupta). Letter from Jawaharlal Nehru to Mohanlal Saxena, 19 May 1949, 72 reproduced in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol 11 (May–June 1949) (‘Nehru Selected Works’); see also Letter from Jawaharlal Nehru to Mohanlal Saxena, 31 May 1949, 75–77 reproduced in Nehru Selected Works (n 51). Letter from BN Jha, Chief Secretary of the Home Ministry, Uttar Pradesh to the Chief Secretary, Home Ministry, Government of India, 1948 (Archived at 211/1948, Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow). Copy on hand with the author. ‘No One-Way Evacuee Traffic from Pakistan to India’, Times of India (20 May 1948). AP Pandey, ‘Hundred Years of Ordinances in India: 1861–1961’ (1968) 10(2) Journal of the Indian Law Institute 259, 263. ibid. 217