In the 1930s, the British Raj summered in Quetta. While day temperatures could reach the blistering highs of the plains, nights in Quetta were far cooler than what the lowlands of the Indian Subcontinent offered. Given the lakes, mountains, and serenity of the area, Quetta’s population swelled in the summer months, adding thousands more people compared to those who generally resided in the city.
Over time, Quetta had been established as one of a string of garrison towns along the future Durand Line dividing Afghan territories with the plains and other towns including Razmak, Peshawar, Dir, and Chitral.
After the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839, which had kept Punjab and Ranjit’s Sikh army as a buffer between the Afghans and the British, the colonists aimed to find a new layer of protection. This was also after the events of the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, where, after the British captured Kandahar and Ghazni, they later installed Shah Shuja in Kabul.
Shah Shuja’s tyranny and the Afghans’ displeasure at having foreign invaders and a puppet ruler being installed, rebelled incessantly and by 1843, any British they could find in their territories was slaughtered.
Soon, the Balochistan Agency was established in 1877 following the “Sandemanisation” of Balochistan, in which tribal chiefs were given patronage by the British. At the same time, Russian influence was growing in Afghanistan and in 1878, the British launched the second Anglo-Afghan War and once again occupied Kabul. The second success of the British was even more short-lived, however, since in September 1879, the British envoy was killed in Kabul, and an even larger number of British forces had to be sent to the city. By 1880, Abdur Rehman Khan became Emir of Afghanistan, and the Durand Line was drawn in 1893. The last British troops had left Afghanistan by April 1881.
An Afghanistan that the British could not quite control placed Quetta and the line of garrison towns that dotted the Durand Line at increased importance as the years went by. Quetta would later become the home of the Royal Air Force’s No. 31 Squadron, becoming one of the first military units to fly in British India. During the Third Anglo-Afghan War (May-August 1919), No. 31 Squadron RAF conducted raids in Jalalabad and, for the next decade, would be involved in military operations suppressing any insurgencies in the region.
It was through this military lens that the British primarily saw Quetta.
When the earth trembled
When the earthquake on May 31 struck a few minutes after 3am, [how do we know this so precisely? Pictures and text from government accounts of the earthquake show that the clock at the Central Post Office was stuck at 3:03am] the city of Quetta had been flattened in a mere 45 seconds. Quetta Cantonment in the north-east of the city suffered far less.
Even in the design of the city — much like the city today — the Cantonment featured wide streets. The main municipality of Quetta, however, was not only its most populous area, but also had narrow streets and houses made with mud or bricks with poor mortar. When the earthquake struck, not only could people not leave their homes since it was so early in the morning, but the narrowness of the streets meant that even if one were to miraculously dig themselves out of the rubble, navigating outside of it was impossible.
At around 3:30am, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Karslake, witnessing the city from the Cantonment, could see multiple large fires that had erupted across the landscape.
Writing 18 months after the disaster in the ‘Report on The Quetta Earthquake of 31st May 1935’, Captain LAG Pinney, who was serving as the additional political agent, Quetta, listed eight “major problems” at dawn when first light appeared.
Some of the major problems, which rose at daybreak on the morning of May 31, can be summarised as follows:
The subordinate civil officials and the Quetta Police Force had been practically wiped out and were not available for any of their usual functions
The most pressing need of all was the rescue of those in the city who were buried under the débris and were still alive
Communication with the outside world had to be established – All the houses of the civilian population had been destroyed, and as food supplies were cut off, immediate shelter, food and medical attention had to be provided.
The water supply had to be assured
The ingress of people into Quetta had to be stopped, as the rations at the disposal of the Military were limited in quantity
Arrangements had to be made to evacuate all survivors, particularly those who were injured, and to provide them with food and clothing for their journey
The prevention of looting by irresponsible people in the city or by tribesmen
For the first point, the Pinney Report states that Karslake, as General Officer Commanding (GOC), gave control of his command to the Agent to the Governor General (and Chief Commissioner of Balochistan) Sir Norman Carter.
Carter and Karslake then decided that since the civilian administration and the police force had been completely decimated by the earthquake, martial law had to be imposed on Quetta immediately. Karslake then began rescue efforts, carving the city into units to expedite recovery efforts, while also imposing complete martial law over the city.
As news of the earthquake reached other cities in the morning, several people asked to help in relief efforts. Miraculously, the railway link between Quetta and the rest of British India was still operational, which not only meant that survivors could quickly be taken out of the city, but aid workers could come in to rescue those who were trapped in the rubble.
As the list in the Pinney Report shows, while rescuing survivors was one priority that emerged, Karslake and Pinney also decided to have a cordon of British troops patrolling the perimeter and streets of Quetta. Pinney wrote, “Those troops who were not required for rescue work were put on duty round the city and on patrol work in the city to prevent any untoward events, and to deal with the various outbreaks of fire which occurred.”
The controversies
Official British accounts mention repeatedly that a cordon was thrown around the city because of a fear of looting from Pashtun and Brahui tribesmen. While Quetta today is predominantly a Pashtun city, Quetta in 1935 was home to a large Punjabi population, which had settled there following the Sandeman Plan. As The Times of India reported on June 17, 1935, the largest number of refugees out of Quetta were coming back to their hometowns in Dera Ghazi Khan, Lahore, Amritsar, Gujranwala, Multan, Rawalpindi and Ludhiana.
Workers and entrepreneurs had gone to Quetta not only for its climate, but also for work, the remittances of which they would send back to their hometowns. The Government of Punjab had to send in police and medical staff to aid in evacuation efforts and tend to refugee camps, the largest of which were at Quetta’s Racecourse and Polo Ground.
Meanwhile, rumours were also rife, in which it seems that word had gotten out that the city would be “sealed” or that it would be completely levelled with dynamite. According to The New York Times, Indian leaders protested against any measures by the British to completely destroy the city, and referred to survivors from the Bihar Earthquake of 1934 being found even after a week of the earthquake.
However, while this was later touted to be a confusion or a rumour, a cable to The New York Times on June 3, 1935, four days after the earthquake, came with the headline, “Quake-Ruined City Will be Abandoned” where a communique by the British government in Delhi not only wrote that the city has been sealed under military guard on medical advice, but also, “it is estimated that 20,000 corpses remain beneath the debris. There is no hope of rescuing more of the living”.
As we also see in the June 3 news report, the British Raj had quoted 20,000 people dead with 10,000 survivors — later government reports would show that 30,000 people died. The same New York Times article mentions that those survivors reaching Karachi claimed that the number of dead was much higher. On June 5, the number of dead had reached 56,000 according to an Associated Press wire. However, officially still on June 17, the Under-Secretary of the India Office, Richard Butler (later Deputy Prime Minister of the UK), placed the death toll at 40,000.
However, the greatest controversy that emerged from the time was still the matter of not allowing anyone else to enter the city. Karslake and Carter argued that there were not enough provisions, that outsiders would start looting, and that ultimately that an epidemic could arise from the sheer amount of dead bodies that were rotting inside the rubble and outside on the streets.
Efforts were underway to properly bury the bodies, and a pamphlet issued by the Raj in August 1935 titled “The Quetta Earthquake 1935” noted how, on the first day, 18,000 pounds of firewood was supplied for cremating the Hindus that had died.
The same report from August 1935 attempted to respond criticism that volunteers were not allowed to enter the city, in which while it accepted that the first 48 hours are the most critical in rescue work, it stated that “the first application from any political organisation for permission to carry on relief work was made several days after the earthquake”. Why was permission needed? The British had imposed martial law in the area and would not allow any outsiders to come in unless approved prior. The report does not mention which political organisation made the request, though newspaper articles mention that Mahatma Gandhi, with his Congress Party, had been stopped from entering the area.
Calls for inquiry
Controversy over the conduct of British troops reached a head in September 1935, when Kumaraswami Raju moved a resolution in the Legislative Assembly, where “a committee consisting of officials and non-officials be forthwith appointed to investigate the report as to whether the situation arising out of the recent earthquake in British Baluchistan, and particularly in the town of Quetta, was properly handled, particularly with regard to the search for the rescue of the living, wounded and buried, salvage of property and transference of the wounded and injured to places outside the affected area”.
Sir Abdullah Haroon was in support of the motion, and spoke on how the authorities had not only not taken the help of the honorary magistrates in Quetta, but that anyone who opposed the martial law was removed. Lalchand Navalrai then quoted a telegram from Sir Norman Carter, who had refused him permission to enter Quetta on June 3 and also refused the excavation of a building of his relative. Additionally, he spoke about how “trainloads of people left Karachi for Quetta on May 31, but they were held up at Sibi”. Lastly, quoting the opinion of “a Dewan Bahadur in Quetta”, Carter had been willing to allow volunteers in, but the military authority denied these requests.
Bhulabhai Desai, who had drafted the resolution, said that the motion “contained no charge and no insinuation” against the Raj, and speakers in the assembly were all in agreement that the army had done an incredible feat in what it had accomplished in saving human lives. However, it was a practice of the government to conduct inquiries after calamities such as famine to use as a reference in the future. Desai then read from a report (not mentioned which one) where rescue work was abandoned on June 2, and when the Mayor of Karachi (Qazi Khuda Buksh) had offered volunteers, the military had replied, “We are able to cope with all work.”
British authorities, however, felt that the resolution was unfairly putting blame on the Raj, and even Indian leaders debated against an inquiry. Sir Cowasjee Jehangir was quoted as saying that “he had never had the misfortune to hear a more atrocious speech” and that the resolution “contained malicious insinuations against the British and Indian troops and the speaker would be no party to it”. Dr Ziauddin Ahmed also explained how it would be difficult for anyone to be alive after three days of lying under debris.
Sir Zafarullah Khan, in his speech, said that the “governments are not prepared to agree to an inquiry” but were ready for the appointment of a committee to assist authorities in the salvage of property (which became the Quetta Claims Committee) and the resettlement of the civilian population.
Congress’ resolution for the formation of a committee by the Legislative Assembly was lost by 4 votes on September 21, a day after debates. Officially, 30,000 people died in Quetta; unofficially, 60,000 perished. No. 31 Squadron RAF moved to Karachi at RAF Drigh Road, today PAF Base Faisal.
Research on the Quetta earthquake of 1935 has remained shockingly limited, where anthropologists and historians can study colonial policies and particularly as they stand with reconstruction efforts following the disaster. The Directorate of Archives Balochistan has a treasure trove of reconstruction documents and has also republished the Pinney Report, which it has available for sale. Images of the earthquake surface not only on eBay auctions, but also from the children of survivors and troops who were involved in rescue efforts.
Daniel Haines at University College London has written on the lens through which tensions emerged between the Raj and South Asians following the earthquake.
A recent monograph titled ‘Acts of Aid: Politics of Relief and Reconstruction in the 1934 Bihar–Nepal Earthquake’ by Eleonor Marcussen shows that archival work on natural disasters in South Asia during the British Raj might find some pace. Marcussen analyses the role of the British Raj and civil society in rebuilding their lives following the 8.0-magnitude earthquake, which killed 7,000 people in Bihar alone, and nearly 12,000 in its total destruction.
While 60,000 people died, the 1935 Quetta earthquake is remembered as a footnote in colonial records — a logistical challenge that was overcome by the Raj rather than a human catastrophe. As we see from the lack of an independent inquiry, its memory remains fragmented, and its survivors’ voices largely absent from the official record.
