the tyranny of the majority over the minority.
But an India without strong central authority
accommodating autonomy for Muslim-dominant
regions was anathema to Nehru and the Congress
leaders, who believed it would be ungovernable.
Well aware of mounting tensions, Mountbatten
calculated that the best chance of a peaceful trans-
fer and agreement between the leaders lay in mak-
ing them face a short deadline. He announced that
the transfer would take place not in over a year, but
in just six months on 15 August 1947. Nehru and
Jinnah, Congress and the Muslim League would
have to reach a practical solution for partition or
they would be responsible for chaos on the date of
transfer. Brought to the edge of catastrophe the
Indian leaders were forced to accept the implica-
tions of Mountbatten’s timetable and the plan he
now put on the table. This involved partition but
with the mixed Muslim–Hindu Punjab and Bengal
provinces being allowed to choose which way they
wished to go. They too voted for partition. A
British jurist headed a commission which was given
the task of demarcating the frontiers of India and
Pakistan. The princes of the 562 states in 1947
were left to make the best terms they could with
one or the other of the successor states to the
British Raj.
Even if Muslim and Congress leaders had
accepted the demarcation between the two states
arrived at by the commission, immense practical
problems would still have had to be overcome.
The unified administration, police force, army and
treasury would all need to be split up. Most of
industry was located within those parts of India
where Hindus were in a majority; the economy
and communications would be dislocated. Would
the break-up into two nations heighten tensions
between Hindus and Muslims and lead to
renewed violence and strife? It was clear from the
outset that the creation of Pakistan was bound to
entail the division of Bengal in the east and the
Punjab in the north with one predominantly
Muslim part being incorporated in Pakistan and
the Hindu-majority districts going to India. Yet
the Muslim and Hindu populations were mixed
throughout the subcontinent, with millions living
on the ‘wrong’ side of any partition line that
could be devised. The Punjab was a powder-keg
of conflict, for here another minority of militant
Sikhs saw an opportunity as a result of partition
of becoming a majority and even gaining their
own state of Khalistan. Communal suspicions,
resentments and hatreds would not need much
provocation to set the subcontinent alight.
Bengal, the Punjab, Delhi and Calcutta were par-
ticular areas of danger at a time when the loyalty
of the army and the police would be gravely
weakened by the transfer of power. Gandhi could
not permanently put out the flames of religious
and ethnic hatred and himself fell victim to the
bullets of a Hindu extremist, who shot him at a
prayer meeting on 30 January 1948. Ethnic and
religious strife and bloodshed not only in India
and Pakistan but throughout the world has
proved the hardest to halt, the most resistant to
the supposed progress of civilisation.
Bloody communal violence had also erupted in
the Punjab. Jinnah, Nehru, Gandhi and the lead-
ers of Congress had been aware of the dangers
ahead and were determined to avoid them or at
least to contain violence. Reports from the Punjab
before partition clearly warned of the likelihood
of conflict, and preventive plans were drawn up.
A British officered force (which included Gurkhas)
of some 55,000 men was available to preserve law
and order in the Punjab. But the scale of the vio-
lence that would follow on partition was not fully
anticipated in Delhi and was to stain the transfer
of power with the blood of many hundreds of
thousands of innocent victims.
Independence Day in Pakistan on 14 August
and in India on 15 August passed off with cele-
brations and praise for Mountbatten and the
British. Jinnah publicly acknowledged that ‘such
voluntary and absolute transfer of power and rule
by one nation over others is unknown in the
whole history of the world’. He wished to live in
amity with his neighbour. Yet the celebrations
were hardly over before the tragedy of the trans-
fer became manifest and relations between India
and Pakistan were deeply scarred and damaged for
decades to come. The demarcation of the frontier
had been announced on 16 August. The militant
section of the Sikhs then set upon the Muslims,
killing and raping and destroying their homes.