Why did Cyril Radcliffe change borders at the last minute?

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75 years after the partition of India, why is it that the British Crown has kept Lord Mountbatten’s diary and partition documents secret and not made public despite public pressure and court battles?

It is also ridiculous that two independent states have been established on the night of 14th and 15th August, but nobody knew whose border is where and the borders are being announced on 17th August.

Great-grandson of Viceroy Queen Victoria and head of the Boundary Commission, lawyer to British King George VI. The Indian Independence Act was announced by British Prime Minister Clement Attlee on 20 February 1947, while King George VI of Great Britain signed the document on 18 July. The time frame set for the independence of Pakistan and India under the Act was 30 June 1948, but the haste shown in the matter resulted in the deaths of over a million people and the displacement of over a million and a half million people.

On July 8, Radcliffe arrived as the head of the Boundary Commission, and by August 8 he was in office. Cyril Radcliffe, the head of the Boundary Commission, had never been to India before or after partition, but once asked about it, he said, “If I had stayed there after partition, people would have killed me.” Give

Be it the partition of Punjab and Bengal or the four wars over the Kashmir issue, the series of bloodshed that started 75 years ago is now looming over the region in the form of a nuclear war.

Radcliffe himself never wrote a book about this, but two years before his death, the famous Indian journalist Kuldeep Nair interviewed him in 1976, in which he was asked whether Pakistan says that this award is for regional killings. was synonymous and their character was shameful who had the label of neutrality on their foreheads.

To this, Cyril Radcliffe replied that ‘I had no alternative solution because I had very little time, if I had been given two or three years for this work, I could probably have done a better job. If the desires could not be fulfilled, I had nothing to do with it.’ Kuldeep Nair next asked that Lahore was the center of the Sikhs since the time of Ranjit Singh, Lahore was also the capital of the Sikhs in terms of population and property, how did you give it to Pakistan.

To this, Radcliffe replied, ‘I was about to give Lahore to India, then I thought that Pakistan would not have a big city because I had already given Calcutta to India.’

The Boundary Commission consisted of five members including Chairman Cyril Radcliffe. Two members Justice (retd) Deen Muhammad and Muhammad Munir were nominated from Muslim League and two members Mr. Mehr Chand Mahajan and Mr. Teja Singh were nominated by Congress. Radcliffe met Lord Mountbatten on his arrival in India and subsequently spent July 14 and 15 in Lahore.

Among the two lawyers nominated by Quaid-e-Azam on behalf of the Muslims to assist the commission were Sir Zafarullah Khan and the other Syed Muhammad Shah who was the father of the former Federal Minister of Pakistan Justice (R) Syed Afzal Haider. Afzal Haider writes that the Quaid-e-Azam wanted six provinces of Pakistan including Bengal, Assam, Sarhad, Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab. He was in no way in favor of the partition of Bengal and Punjab, but Lord Mountbatten was told by the Congress that they agreed to Pakistan’s demand, but it would not include the 13 eastern districts of Punjab, which were Muslim-majority. The districts of Gurdaspur and Amritsar were also included.

Therefore, Lord Mountbatten had convinced the Congress and the Muslim League that whatever the decision of the commission would be, it would be acceptable to all. Redcliffe seems to have merely announced, the original lines had already been drawn by Lord Mountbatten.’

Giving an example of this, he writes that ‘after the Lahore meeting, Radcliffe told Justice Deen Muhammad that the aerial survey of the borders, you also go along, Lord Mountbatten has sent a private plane. On reaching the airport, the plane could not fly due to bad weather, however, a line was drawn on the map that Justice Deen Muhammad saw with the pilot. Seeing this, Justice Muhammad Deen’s ears perked up.

‘He came back and told Chaudhry Zafarullah Khan that the commission appears to me to be a pretence, Lord Mountbatten has already decided how he is to make the distribution. When he told the Quaid-e-Azam, he sent Chaudhary Muhammad Ali to the Viceroy. Chaudhary Muhammad Ali was surprised to see that the same line was present on the map in the secretary’s room as Justice Deen Muhammad saw on the map in the pilot’s hand.

Regarding Punjab, the meetings of the Boundary Commission in the Lahore High Court were held on a daily basis between July 21 and July 31, the proceedings of which were sent to the Viceroy’s Office on a daily basis. Congress and Muslim League were allotted four days each to present their case and one day for the rest. For entering the court, 20 tickets were kept for Muslims and 20 for non-Muslims, while separate seats were reserved for the press.

Muslims and Hindus gave their arguments. On the last day, Harnam Singh, the lawyer of the Sikhs, presented his case and said that ‘We are the real heirs of the land of Punjab. The British took away the government from us, so give it back to us. We are very involved in the settlement of Punjab and have done great services to make Lahore an important place in the country. We deposit more revenue in the treasury than Muslims. Our holy places are here. Lahore, Gurdaspur, Sheikhupura, Faisalabad and Sahiwal should be made part of East Punjab. We are the real inheritors of Punjab, Muslims are few and far between. The British should talk to us.’

After that, SP Singha, the lawyer of the Christian community, appeared before the commission. He said that after hearing the words of Harnam Singh, his head has bowed in shame. Wealth is everything to Sikhs and Hindus. The Sikh representative also did not follow the teachings of his Guru Nanak who preached against caste division. We Christians are four percent of India’s population and Muslims constitute 52 percent of the population in Gurdaspur. I request the commission to put our population in the account of Muslims and Gurdaspur should be given to Muslims because our prophet is also sent by God and also the prophet of Muslims, we accept to live with Muslims.

But later on August 17, Lord Mountbatten ceded the three Muslim-majority tehsils of Gurdaspur, Batala and Pathankot to India, bordering West Punjab, so that India could have a land link with Kashmir. Similarly, two tehsils of Jalandhar district, Nikodar and Jalandhar, Ajnala in Amritsar district, Zira and Ferozpur tehsils of Ferozepur should also be given to India.

A book by Bernie Wyatt Spinner, son of Cyril Radcliffe’s private secretary Christopher Firbemount, “Partition, The Story of Indian Independence and Creation of Pakistan in 1947” was published in 2017, in which he wrote that “Radcliffe wrote Lord Mountbatten’s Under pressure, the boundaries of Punjab were changed at the last moment. The reason for this was that Lord Mountbatten was under pressure from Nehru, so Radcliffe was asked to hand over the Ferozepur and Zeera areas from Pakistan to India, which destroyed the credibility of the commission. Because at the time of formation of this commission it was claimed that it will be non-political and impartial.

He wrote that my father had said in a statement in 1992 that ‘the real truth about partition is that no one knows why it was done.’