Torbjørn Færøvik: The British lawyer who cut India in two and unleashed a human tragedy

Meet Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the pipe-smoking British lawyer who in 1947 divided India in two. He was given a six-week deadline and had only rather crude maps to go by. “My God, what an inhuman job!” he sighed midway through the assignment. Once he was finally done, he hurried home. Since then, he has been cursed by millions of people.

In recent days, his name has gained new relevance. India and Pakistan are rattling their sabers, threatening each other with war, death, and destruction. Why do they never make peace?

In 1947, the bells of freedom rang in India. The British, who had ruled the country for nearly a hundred years, realized their time was up. At that time, India—known as British India—was much larger than it is today. Freedom fighters Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were determined to keep the country united, but the Muslim minority had other plans.

The tensions between Hindus and Muslims eventually grew so intense that Gandhi and Nehru had to give in. But where should the border between India and Pakistan—the future state of the Muslims—be drawn? It was well known that Muslims formed a large majority in India’s western and northeastern regions, but there were many grey areas. Lord Mountbatten, the British Viceroy, and the conflicting parties finally agreed to leave the task to “a neutral and impartial authority.”

Sir Cyril Radcliffe had never been east of Paris when he was summoned in June 1947 to a highly confidential meeting at the British Foreign Office. Would he be willing to divide India, the most populous country in the world, in two? Beneath the chandeliers of the ministry's India Office, the bureaucrats rolled out a large map. Radcliffe was told the country was 34 times larger than the British Isles and covered 8.2 million square kilometers.

“How much time do I have?” he asked.

“A few weeks. You must be finished by August 15.”

The British had long since announced that colonial rule would end that day, and that India and Pakistan would then become independent.

Radcliffe recounted years later what he felt in that brutal moment: “Powerlessness! Hopelessness! Fear! Despair! I cast a quick glance at the exit and felt the strongest urge to flee. But something held me back. Pride, self-respect, a sense of duty—and the challenge.”

Days later, after a brief meeting with Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Radcliffe was on his way to India. Upon arrival, he was met by forty degrees Celsius and the demands and threats of half a billion people.

Given the circumstances, the new Pakistan had to be split in two as well, with one part to the northwest of India and the other to the northeast. Many realized it would be difficult to hold such a peculiar country together, and they were right. But Radcliffe couldn’t take that into account. He had been tasked with dividing India along religious lines, “and that was it.”

So he got to work. Radcliffe and his team of cartographers locked themselves in for days and weeks. To meet the deadline they had to mark ten kilometers of border each day. Ruler and fountain pen were used extensively. Now and then, Nehru and Jinnah would stop by. “How’s it going?” they asked impatiently, and in the distance, the Briton seemed to hear the angry cries of the masses.

The work proceeded at a breathless pace, but when they neared Kashmir in the north, they had to give up. The local ruler was Hindu and preferred to remain independent, while the Muslim majority had other ideas. Violence and war were inevitable. What is happening now in this beautiful mountain region is merely a continuation of the conflicts sparked by the 1947 partition.

Early on the morning of August 13, Radcliffe drew his final line. India, the crown jewel of the once-mighty British Empire, was cut in two. The map with the red borderlines was immediately folded and deposited in the colonial government’s thick vault. Mountbatten had decided the borders should not be revealed until the independence celebrations two days later. Otherwise, India and the new Pakistan might erupt into a bloodbath.

So it was done. But the result was that India and Pakistan became free nations without knowing where the actual borders lay.

Radcliffe returned home in haste the next day. When the new borders were finally revealed, both Hindus and Muslims reacted with outrage and riots. Millions of people on both sides claimed they had been treated unfairly—and not without reason. In some cases, entire villages were split in two. Families were torn apart, and desperate farmers suddenly discovered that their land lay on the wrong side of the border. Hindus could no longer walk to the nearest temple, and Muslims had to gaze longingly at the mosque on the opposite side.

Even before independence day, millions of people had begun to flee in both directions. The Hindus in Pakistan wanted to go to India, and many Indian Muslims sought their new promised homeland. The Sikhs, who lived in the border province of Punjab, fled both ways, but most preferred to live under Indian rule.

After the borders were made known, even more people fled. Today, it is estimated that between 14 and 18 million people were displaced from their homes. Roughly the same number crossed the borders in both directions. In addition, a large number—perhaps as many as two million—were killed in countless clashes between the three religious groups. This was one of the greatest human tragedies in modern Asian history.

Thus, in an orgy of violence and blood, the new states were born. Independent India’s population was then estimated at around 350 million, and Pakistan’s at just over 30 million. Many years later, in 1971, the union between West Pakistan and East Pakistan broke apart, and East Pakistan became an independent state under the name Bangladesh. Sir Cyril followed this drama closely, which ended with several hundred thousand deaths.

Back home in England, Radcliffe burned all his Indian papers. He returned to his old profession and in the 1950s was considered one of the British Isles’ leading lawyers. His friends noticed that he felt a deep responsibility for the suffering caused by the partition, and that India remained a troubling memory for him as long as he lived. “I was given too little time,” he said on one occasion. “Had I been given two or three years, I could have done a better job.”

In reality, he had done the best he could under extremely difficult circumstances. If anyone was to be blamed, it was the government in London, which did not take its task seriously enough.

In 1977, two months before he died, Radcliffe was asked if he had ever wanted to return to India. He had received no shortage of invitations. “Never,” he replied. “If I did, I’d risk being killed.”

Today, India is the most populous country in the world with over 1.4 billion inhabitants, while Pakistan boasts around 250 million. Both are heavily armed and possess enough nuclear weapons to annihilate each other. The borders that Sir Cyril Radcliffe once drew are guarded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides. 

May Allah and all the gods of Hinduism forbid a bloody war between them.



MY READING TIPS:


• Yasmin Khan: The Great Partition. The Making of India and Pakistan, Yale University Press, New York 2017

• Narendra Singh Sarila: The Shadow of the Great Game. The Untold Story of India’s Partition, Constable Books, London 2017

• Ramachandra Guha: India After Gandhi. The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, HarperCollins, New York 2007