New Delhi, December 12: As the demand for separate states is becoming loud and clear from many parts of the country after UPA government has decided to carve out Andhra Pradesh in order to create Telangana state, all those with keen interest in partition of India, would be thinking as to how India was carved more than six decades ago.
Well, it is also pretty well-known fact that India was divided by the scissors of barrister Cyril John Radcliffe. What, however, most of the people might not know that during his stay in Delhi to carve out India, he used to live at a same place where now Press Club is there? That was then his both residence cum camp office. It was a small bungalow, also known as hutment, built during second world war time. Later this abode of Radcliffle also allotted to Feroz Gandhi when he was elected Lok Sabha. Eminent writer journalist and historian, RV Smith says that despite his busy and punishing schedules,Radcliffe used to visit at some of the churches of New Delhi on every Sunday.
He was born in 1899 who later became a lawyer in England. He did not travel much outside England except going for a vacation somewhere in Italy. At the age of 48, he was summoned toNew Delhi barely on June 3, 1947 barely 37 days before India would be partitioned into two independent nations. He was appointed as the chairman of the Boundary Commission whose sole job was to submit a report that would contain “the partition map.”
Radcliffe’s office had a good number of staffers in New Delhi where they were working feverishly to partition the undivided India. His main task was to divide the maps of two very important provinces of undivided India namely, East and West Bengal and Punjab. He was given this momentous job to divide these provinces based not only on census data but also on the geography of the land. Special consideration was given on the flow of the river; therefore, theRadcliffe could still give a Muslim-dominated part to India and a Hindu-dominated part to Pakistan at his whim. His decision would be final and that would seal the fate of tens and thousands of people living in those disputed areas both Bengal and Punjab.
Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of pre-partition India, wanted Cyril Radcliffe to work inside an office (now Press Club ).Cyril Radcliffe fulfill his duty by carving out India and Pakistan and by slicing densely populated Punjab and Bengal just in time to deliver the political map of India and Pakistan to Lord Mountbatten on August 13, 1947. He died at the age of 78 in 1977. Six years before his death he saw the erstwhile East Pakistan whose map he so “carefully” constructed become an independent nation, Bangladesh.
In his their great book ‘Freedom at Midnight’, celebrated authors Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre have described in great detail as to how Redcliff carved out India.Incidentally, Collin and Lapierre had pictured Cyril Radcliffe rather comically and they thought the British lawyer was ideally suited to divide India because he had no connection to India whatsoever.
It is said that Radcliffe was so petrified when he realized that his sharp scissors that cut the two provinces of British India would dramatically change the lives of crores of people; he even asked the last viceroy, to send him back to England immediately after the independence of India andPakistan . He had this idea inside his head that any disgruntled Hindu or Muslim may kill him for the job he did in short 5 weeks. It was a thankless job forRadcliffe to partition undivided India and while doing so he must have made many enemies. Is it a small wonder that the diminutive British lawyer was so eager to hop into an airplane parked on the tarmac inNew Delhi Safderjung airport (Palam and IG international airports built much later)?
–Agencies