When a ‘neutral umpire’ almost gave Lahore to India

Indian Independence Day: Partition of Indiawhich marked the end of the British Raj, was a rushed, if not botched, affair, so it may sound strange to know Mr. Mountbattenwho literally carried out the Partition, said that he wanted a united India. He said that he tried everything to stop the Partition. He even said that he regretted it, but that he had no other option.

Speaking to veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar, the last British Viceroy and Governor-General of India accepted that he could not “control” the country and had to speed up the process of independence, leading to a massacre that killed nearly two million people.

Read also: How a multinational took over an entire country

The date was postponed from the original June 6, 1948, to 10 months earlier, on August 15, 1947. And now, the British had the daunting task of dividing one India into two parts, into two independent nations: India and Pakistan.And all in 36 days.

Interestingly, the man chosen for the task was Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had never been to India before.

While drawing a dividing line between India and Pakistan may seem simple in words, this line drawn 78 years ago continued to shape the relationship between the two nations. Radcliffe, the chairman of the Boundary Committee, did not, as Nayar writes in his book Scoop, have “any fixed rules to follow when he drew the borders between India and Pakistan.”

From the Inner Temple to India

Imagine waking up in a foreign land and suddenly realising that the fate of nearly 40 million people is in your hands. Radcliffe, a barrister at the Inner Temple, was appointed chairman of two boundary committees and had to divide the Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims in such a way that the majority of the former would stay in India and the latter in India. Pakistan.

From 8 July 1947, Radcliffe, the so-called “neutral referee”, began his work of demarcating the borders.

The cartographer lived in seclusion most of the time. However, he often shared meals with notable figures such as British military commander Claude Auchinleck, who was dealing with a heartbreak at the time, Lord Mountbatten, Governor of Punjab Sir Evan Jenkins, and several other distinguished members of British high society. However, he did not speak to anyone about his plans.

Read also: X-rays locked away in a Mumbai clinic could have prevented Partition

Nayar writes that Radcliffe came prepared because he had read tons of material. In fact, Radcliffe’s work was almost half done when Viceroy Archibald Wavell, in February 1946, saw what was coming for the subcontinent. Knowing the impending need, he meticulously prepared a boundary plan with Vice President Menon and Sir Benegal Rau before being replaced by Mountbatten.

When India almost took over Lahore

“Lahore deserved to belong to India,” Cyril Radcliffe had told Nayar, adding that Pakistanis should be grateful to him. So why did he not hand over the city, which was the main cultural centre of northern India at that time, to India?

The neutral umpire soon realised that India already had Calcutta, but giving LahoreAlso, having a majority of Sikhs and Hindus, it would leave Pakistan without a major city.

Radcliffe went so far as to say that he favoured Muslims over Hindus when Nayar told an irritated Radcliffe that Pakistan’s Muslims had a grievance over his alignment with countries like India. “If the aspirations of some people have not been met,” Radcliffe said, “the blame must be sought in political arrangements, of which I am not involved.”

The issue of Ferozepur, Gurdaspur and Zira tehsil, parts of which were dominated by Muslims, was also raised.

Nayar writes in his book that the Pakistani allegation was that Mountbatten had put pressure on Radcliffe to hand over the Ferozepur and Zira tehsils to India. However, Radcliffe denied this and said that he was only put under pressure to submit the report which he submitted on August 13.

Something worth mentioning here is that Ferozepur and Gurdaspur were crucial for India in terms of irrigation and served as connecting points with Kashmir respectively. But, for the neutral arbiter, he was not even “aware” of Kashmir.

In fact, he had almost handed over a part of Ferozepur to West Punjab i.e. Pakistan as per the original draft but it was later amended and made a part of India after Mountbatten “was more than willing to oblige the Indian leaders” as Pakistani writer Aziz Beg put it in his book ‘Jinnah and His Times’.

According to Beg, the decision to award these two districts to the Indian subcontinent was not Radcliffe’s but Mountbatten’s after Nehru had indeed explained the gravity of the situation that Bikaner had brought to light and put pressure on him to change the award.

Admission and decision never to return

Radcliffe’s presentation took place on August 13, but the awards were not announced until August 16, 1947. What happened in those three days?

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Sir Zafrullah Khan has complained about the Radcliffe Award changes at the Security Council, prompting British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to order Philip Noel-Baker, the Commonwealth Secretary, to investigate the allegations.

Read also: The Japanese angle behind August 15 as India’s Independence Day

In the report to Atlee, it was noted that neutral arbitrator Radcliffe admitted to having shown the award to Delhi authorities, including Lord Ismay and Lord Mountbatten, after which it was reviewed. Christopher Beaumont ICS, who served as secretary to the Radcliffe Commission in Punjab in 1936, revealed that the borders had been secretly redrawn to favour India.

When Nayar asked Radcliffe in 1971 if he was satisfied with the way he had drawn the border lines between India and Pakistan, the cartographer replied that he could not have done a better job with the time he had. “I had no alternative; the time at my disposal was so short that I could not have done a better job. Given the same time, I would have done the same thing. However, if I had had two or three years, I could have improved what I did,” Radcliffe said.

Radcliffe left India on 14 August 1947, never to return to the country he divided. The lawyer, known for his integrity, also refused his £5,000 fee. When once asked if he would ever like to visit India, his answer was exactly what you would expect: “God forbid. Not even if they asked me. I suspect they would shoot me without a second thought.”