123- Reasons for partition-3

एक दुखी परिवार-123

Transfer of power

A group migrates to its new homeland after the partition of India in 1947  ©An act of parliament proposed a date for the transfer of power into Indian hands in June 1948, summarily advanced to August 1947 at the whim of the last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Nehru was his what? An ally? A friend? A colluding indian participant? A pick of the bunch of India's father of the nation-in waiting? Clubbed together, projected as attorney holders for the people of India though people never gave them any open mandate.

This preponement, better say collusive preponement , in Indian leaders' haste to climb the throne which the British were more eager to quit rather than freedom fighters eager to have them vacated , left a great many issues and interests unresolved at the end of colonial rule.

In charge of negotiations, the viceroy exacerbated difficulties by focusing largely on Jinnah's Muslim League and the Indian National Congress (led by Jawaharlal Nehru).

The two parties' representative status was established by Constituent Assembly elections in July 1946, but fell well short of a universal franchise.

Tellingly, although Pakistan celebrated its independence on 14 August and India on 15 August 1947, the border between the two new states was not announced until 17 August.

It was hurriedly drawn up by a British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe, who had little knowledge of Indian conditions and with the use of out-of-date maps and census materials.

Communities, families and farms were cut in two, but by delaying the announcement the British managed to avoid responsibility for the worst fighting and the mass migration that had followed.

(Cont.   .)