Exactly 65 years ago, today, on 17 August 1947, one of the most critical decisions on pre-partition Punjab, the Radcliffe Award, was made public. It also became one of the most controversial episodes in the drama of India’s and Punjab’s partitions, though I have demonstrated in my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, [1] that the conspiracy theories surrounding it derive primarily from biased accounts, incorrect information and bad research.

The demand to partition India on a religious basis was made by the Muslim League in March 1940. It took the stand that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations and thus entitled to separate states. Since the Muslims were in a majority in the north-eastern and north-western zones of the subcontinent, it was asserted, those two zones should be separated from India to create Muslim states. Later, it was demanded that the two zones should be part of one state: Pakistan, albeit with 1000 miles of Indian territory in between.

The Indian National Congress opposed such a demand and stood for a united India. The Sikhs of Punjab took the stand that if the Muslim League wanted a partition of India then Punjab should also be divided also on the same basis: the non-Muslim areas of the province being separated to given to India. On the question of Bengal and Punjab, which had Muslim majorities, the Muslim League took a diametrically opposite stand: claiming that the Bengalis and Punjabis shared the same culture and language. It contradicted its argument that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations because of their different religions. The Congress Party came out in support of the Sikh demand for the partition of Punjab on 8 March 1947.

On 3 June 1947 the Partition Plan was announced by the British Government. It prescribed that the Muslim majority areas of the subcontinent were to be separated from the rest of India to create Pakistan. However, the same principle was extended to the provinces of Bengal and Punjab. Their legislative assemblies were to decide if they wanted their provinces to be partitioned. Bengal and Punjab were to be split into two blocs notionally (that is for the convenience of voting and not the actual final demarcation of the international boundary). The members of the two blocs were to vote separately. If one of the two blocs of a province voted in favour of partition it would be accepted as the basis for its division between India and Pakistan. To determine the international boundary a Boundary Commission was to be appointed comprising a Bengal and a Punjab Boundary Commission.

In this article we are concerned with the outcome in Punjab only. In the terms of references for fixing the international border the 3 June Plan laid down not one but two principles: that the province should be partitioned on the basis of geographically contiguous Muslim-majority and non-Muslim majority as well as on the consideration of “other factors”. Other factors was included to take into consideration logistical difficulties and bottlenecks created by waterworks, irrigation networks, communication and transport systems that had been built for a united Punjab as well as the special claims to specific places and assets that the conflicting parties could legitimately invoke. This condition was especially included to take into consideration the interests of the Sikhs of Punjab.

Consequently, Punjab’s 29 districts were notionally divided into 17 Muslim-majority districts and 12 non-Muslim majority districts on the basis of the 1941 census. The two blocs met on 23 June 1947 to vote. 50 members of the East Punjab bloc voted in favour of partitioning Punjab and 22 against it. In the West Punjab bloc, 69 voted against the partition of Punjab and 27 in favour of it. All the Muslim members including those of the Punjab Unionist Party voted against the partition of Punjab while all Hindus and Sikhs in favour of it. Two Indian Christians and one Anglo-Indian voted for a united Punjab while a number of scheduled castes member voted in favour of the division of Punjab.

British lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe was appointed, with the consent of the disputing parties, as chairman of the Commission. Radcliffe had not set foot on Indian soil before 8 July 1947 and soon after announcing his award he left for Britain. Besides him the Punjab Boundary Commission also consisted of four judges nominated by the disputing parties: two by the Muslim League and one each by the Congress Party and the Sikhs. He never himself attended the secessions of either commission. Every day, the proceedings in Lahore were flown to him by air.

The Punjab Boundary Commission deliberated for 10 days (21 -31 July 1947) over written memorandums as well as very spirited pleading by counsels representing the three main parties to the division of the Punjab, the All-India Muslim League, the Indian National Congress and the Sikhs, as well as of minor religious and caste-based groups. From the outset it became clear that an agreed settlement on the boundary in a partitioned Punjab was out of the question. The two sides – the Muslim League, on the one hand, and the Congress-Sikh duo, on the other, assumed maximalist strategies.

Not surprisingly, the Muslim League asserted that contiguous Muslim, non-Muslim majority areas was the main factor on which the borders should be determined while “other factors” applied only to modify the overriding contiguous majority principle. In sharp contrast, Congress and Sikhs emphasized the equal weight and importance of other factors. These were primarily about property ownership and contribution to the development of Punjab rendered by Hindus and Sikhs who together owned roughly 75-80 percent of commerce, manufacturing and even real estate. In the case of the Sikhs, they also wanted their sacred shrines and places, including Lahore to be considered as important for determining the international border.

The four judges endorsed the standpoints taken by the sides that had nominated them. Only Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan, nominated by the Congress Party, took a relatively more independent line with regard to Lahore, which he opined should be jointly administered by both India and Pakistan. Additionally he said that while the canal colonies of Lyallpur (Faisalabad) should remain in Pakistan since these were placed deep inside West Punjab those of Montgomery (Sahiwal) should be given to India so that both sides are fairly rewarded. The canal colonies were creations of British planning which had converted virgin soil into robust granaries and cash crop producers of quality cotton.

Roughly, the Muslim League wanted the international border to be drawn as far away in the east with river Sutlej being accepted as the natural boundary while the Congress-Sikh side wanted it to be pushed as much towards the west with river Chenab being the cut-off point to draw the line for the international border. While the Muslim League claimed Amritsar district, which had a non-Muslim majority, Congress-Sikh duo demanded Lahore to remain in India even when the district had a 60 percent Muslim majority. Since an agreed settlement was out of the question, the chairman had to literally give an award based on his own discretion and sense of justice and fair play.

The Award ready on August 13 (announced 16-17 August)

Although the Radcliffe Award was ready on 13 August it was revealed to the political leaders on 16 August and made public on 17 August – two days after India and Pakistan had celebrated their independence! People in general got to know about it only on 17 August. The most controversial aspect of the boundary award was that three of the four tahsils (revenue unit) of Gurdaspur district on the eastern bank of the Ujh River (which joined the Ravi a little further down) – the tahsils of Gurdaspur, Batala and Pathankot were awarded to India, and only Shakargarh to Pakistan.

The border then followed the boundary that already existed between the tahsils of Ajnala of Amritsar district and Lahore and tahsil Taran Taran of Amritsar and Lahore. This was to continue till the tahsils of Kasur of Lahore district, Lahore tahsil and Taran Taran tahsil meet. Thereafter the border went southwards but portions of Kasur tahsil were taken away and given to India. Thereafter it went southwards, following the Sutlej largely till it reached Bahawalpur State.

The Radcliffe Award: An Analysis

Great controversy has surrounded the Radcliffe Award. Considerable literature available alleges that Viceroy Mountbatten had the original text altered, so that the whole of Gurdaspur, in which Muslims formed a very slim majority, would not be awarded to Pakistan. Three of the four tahsils of Gurdaspur district were awarded to East Punjab. The reason he did so, it is alleged, was to provide a land route for India into Kashmir through Pathankot. On the other hand, the counter-argument is that Pathankot was a Hindu-Sikh majority tahsil and would have gone to India in any case if the tahsil had been adopted as the unit for marking contiguous Muslim and non-Muslim areas. The Muslim League had argued that contagious tahsils and not districts should be accepted as the unit for determining religious contiguities. In that case Pathankot would have logically gone to India and thus blocked Pakistan’s access to Kashmir.

According to Pakistani sources, Zira and Ferozepore tahsils in Ferozepore District had been awarded originally to Pakistan. In the final award, however, these were included in the Indian Punjab. Justice Muhammad Munir who was a member of the Punjab Boundary Commission has claimed that Radcliffe had agreed that Ferozepore and Zira tahsils and portions of Fazilka and Muktsar tahsils as well as the Ferozepore headworks would be allocated to Pakistan. He even claims that the non-Muslims had tried to bribe him to let Montgomery go to India and that Radcliffe had toyed with the idea of giving Lahore to India but that his (Munir’s) vehement protest had made Radcliffe change his mind. Similarly Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, later prime minister of Pakistan, who was the Muslim member of the two-man Steering Committee of the Partition Council presided over by Mountbatten, asserted that the British were clearly biased in favour of the Sikhs. Hence, the Muslim-majority Gurdaspur district as well as the Muslim-majority tahsils of Ferozepore, Amritsar and Jullundhar districts were awarded to India, he alleges.

Kirpal Singh agrees that there is evidence to suggest that the tahsils of Ferozepore and Zira were included in a map drawn by Mountbatten’s secretary, Sir George Abel, and sent to Jenkins. However, Singh asserts that it was an informal map, which reflected on-going negotiations rather than the final outcome. He also asserts that the Muslim nominees on the Punjab Boundary Commission, Justice Din Muhammad and Justice Munir were aware of the fact that Gurdaspur would go to India. He quotes from a statement of Munir in the Tribune of 26 April 1960 (then published from Ambala cantonment):

Today I have no hesitation in disclosing…. It was clear to both Mr. Din Mohammed and myself from the very beginning of the discussions with Radcliffe that Gurdaspur was going to go to India and our apprehensions were communicated at a very early stage to those who been deputed by the Muslim League to help us.

Alastair Lamb, however, asserts that the map in question was a printed one and was therefore official till 8 August. Then some British officers tampered with it under instructions from Mountbatten and changed it in accordance with the Wavell Plan, which had been drafted by the pro-Congress, V. P. Menon. The changes were wrought to placate the Sikhs who had escalated violence from 8 August because they had got hold of the map on that date.

After a careful perusal of the discussions of the Punjab Boundary Commission, another thesis can be put forth: the Radcliffe Award basically relied upon the principle of Muslim and non-Muslim majority contiguity and did not recognize claims to property as a valid basis for awarding territory. In particular the Congress-Sikh claim to Lyallpur and Montgomery, other canal colonies and to Lahore, which was based on the ownership of overwhelming property rights in these places, was not considered legitimate to override the population factor. Therefore these areas in which Sikhs in particular owned much of the land and Hindus and Sikhs together most of the urban property went to Pakistan. In this sense, therefore, the Radcliffe Award was more sympathetic to the claims of the Muslim League than to that of Congress and the Sikhs.

Moreover, it can be argued that awarding the seven Muslim-majority tahsils to East Punjab was Radcliffe’s idea of fair play towards meeting in some substantial measure the Sikh demand to be consolidated in East Punjab. Such an inference is plausible because in the various public statements of the British government a consideration of the special status of the Sikhs had been mentioned. Had Radcliffe openly admitted this, perhaps the controversy which has surrounded his decision would not have given birth to so many conspiracy theories.

Radcliffe Award almost identical to Wavell’s Boundary Demarcation Plan

The most interesting point to note is that the Radcliffe Award was almost identical to the Boundary-Demarcation Plan of 7 February 1946 that Viceroy Wavell had prepared as a part of his top secret Breakdown Plan of 27 December 1945. Wavell had argued that Amritsar must go to India as it was the holiest city for the Sikhs. Also, Gurdaspur district must be awarded to India, otherwise Amritsar would be surrounded by Pakistan in the north and west, which could jeopardize its security. The Ferozepore district in the south had a non-Muslim majority even when its Zira and Ferozepore tahsils had a Muslim majority. Wavell was at that time most certainly thinking in terms of contiguous districts and not tahsils as the unit for demarcation of the boundary. Radcliffe added portions of Kasur tahsil to the Indian East Punjab, though Muslims were in majority in that tahsil. In Kasur tahsil there were 34,591 Hindus including Scheduled castes; 237,036 Muslims; and 123,446 Sikhs [2].

The Radcliffe Award apparently accepted Wavell’s reasoning, even though it is possible that Mountbatten exercised pressure on Radcliffe to alter an earlier version of the award. Radcliffe did not mention it explicitly, but the main consideration seems to have been to prevent Amritsar being surrounded on three sides by Pakistani territory – north, west and south. Portions of the Kasur tahsil were given to India so that the border between Lahore and Amritsar should be equidistant. Thus it was drawn between Wagah on the Pakistani side and Attari on the Indian side.

All Hell Broke Loose

The public announcement of the Radcliffe Award found millions of Hindus, Muslim and Sikhs on the wrong side of the international border. From March 1947 onwards a steady movement of Hindus and Sikhs to safe havens in the eastern districts and especially the Sikh princely states had been taking place. The reason was that most violence and clashes took place in areas which now became part of West Pakistan where Hindus and Sikhs were in a minority. Nearly 500,000 of them had crossed the border before the Radcliffe Award was made public. On the other hand, organised violence against the Muslim minority of the eastern districts and the Sikh princely states started only in July and picked up momentum in August. Therefore more Muslims, unprepared and unarmed were in what became East Punjab on 17 August than Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab.

From both sides violence against the minorities assumed entirely different proportions with the connivance, backing and participation of partisan officials. At end of 1947, most of the 10 million unwanted Punjabis had been forced to flee their homes in the opposite direction to find refuge among their co-religionists. Some 500,000 to 800,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were killed. More Muslims lost their lives than Hindus and Sikhs combined. All these aspects have been presented in great detail with the most extensive review of primary and secondary sources as well more than 200 interviews with witnesses and survivors from both sides of divided Punjab. It was the first grand-scale successful experiment after World War II in religious cleansing, which I have argued is a manifestation of ethnic cleansing, a generic term that covers religious, sectarian and other types of group conflict as well.

Punjab’s partition was the bloodiest and dwarfed the suffering of all other regions and nationalities including that of Bengalis. It cast a long shadow over relations between India and Pakistan and especially for Punjabis to visit the other side of their once united and same homeland became nearly impossible. India and Pakistan became veritable enemies that have gone to war many times and are now nuclear powers. Any future reconciliation between the two nations will depend on the Punjabis seeking reconciliation and forgiveness from one another and seeking new ways of cooperating with one another.

Ishtiaq Ahmed