2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) Raghavan points out, categories of ‘minorities’ and ‘citizens’ were threshed out through complicated bilateral negotiations. 86 It was sometimes unclear, even to delegates, which populations came within which categories. In April 1948, an Inter-Dominion Conference between India and Pakistan in Calcutta underlined each state’s responsibility for protecting the lives and properties of the minority communities and the equal rights of all citizens. 87 Here, too, there was disagreement on what this entailed. Delegates from the Indian side were clear that the issue was only to pertain to both Bengals; Pakistani delegates, including two future Governor-Generals, were insistent that peace in Bengal could not be maintained were Muslims to be prevented from returning to their homes in UP and Gujarat. 88 Again, who the nationals were and who respective governments took responsibility for were often blurred — it was often said that the High Commissioner of India was ‘looking after the interests of Hindus in Sind as his people’ 89 whereas Pakistani delegates were accused of being more concerned about fake propaganda about Indian Muslims than East Bengali Hindus! 90 In December 1948, a subsequent agreement, concluded in New Delhi, continued to underscore the importance given to the other dominion in protecting national minorities. 91 There was precedent for this — the imperatives of an unstable and volatile Punjab in the winter of 1947 had meant that Indian troops took responsibility for Hindu and Sikh refugees and, correspondingly, Pakistani troops assumed responsibility for Muslim refugees. 92 Muslim refugee camps in Delhi were perceived as only theoretically within the domain of the Government of India.93 Indeed, a significant proportion of the duties of the High Commissioners of both countries, in the initial years, involved dealing with petitions and documents that the minority populations had presented to them and reports about the welfare of minorities formed an integral part of despatches sent back by High Commissioners throughout the decade after Independence. 94 Almost exactly a month after the Constitution of India was promulgated in December 1949, this system was placed under threat. Riots in East Bengal, 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 Pallavi Raghavan, ‘The Making of South Asia's Minorities: A Diplomatic History, 1947– 52’ (2016) 51(21) Economic and Political Weekly 45, 49–50. Inter-Dominion Conference in Calcutta: Implementation (Archived at F8/48 Pak I., National Archives of India) (‘Calcutta Conference’). Copy on hand with the author. Ghulam Mohamed and Khwaja Nazimuddin, Proceedings of the Inter-Dominion Conference held on Saturday, the 17th April 1948 at the Writer’s Building, Calcutta; Proceedings of the Conference Held on the 18th and 19th April 1948 (Archived at F8-15/48- Pak I., National Archives of India, April 1948). Copy on hand with the author. ibid. As Ghulam Mohammed said on the day the conference convened: Sri Prakasa looks after the interests of Hindus in Sind. My government gives him every facility to do so. Every day many people see him. My government never stops them. Ask him if his house is not the beehive of lakhs of people? Sardar Patel calls them ‘our people’ … I can also say ‘Musalmans are my people’ prompting a furious exchange about ‘naked Hinduism’ and ‘naked [I]slamicism’ at the conference. ibid. Inter-Dominion Agreement For Preventing Mass Exodus Of Minorities, India–Pakistan, signed 14 December 1948. Chatterji (2012) (n 26) 1059. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History In India (Cambridge University Press 2001) 139–43. Pallavi Raghavan, Animosity at Bay: An Alternate History of the India–Pakistan Relationship, 1947–52 (C Hurst and Co 2001) 1. 222