17 Facts About Radcliffe Line

Radcliffe Line was the boundary demarcated between the Indian and Pakistani portions of the Punjab Province and Bengal Presidency of British India.

Radcliffe Line's calculations showed a Muslim majority in 16 western districts of Punjab and non-Muslim majority in 13 eastern districts.

Radcliffe Line thought the Muslims could have no objection to redrawing provincial boundaries.

Radcliffe Line justified the exclusion of the Amritsar district because of its sacredness to the Sikhs and that of Gurdaspur district because it had to go with Amritsar for 'geographical reasons'.

Radcliffe Line espoused the doctrine of self-reliance, opposed the partition of India and called for independence on the grounds that no single religious community should control Punjab.

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Radcliffe Line "bitterly complained" that the Viceroy was ruining his Pakistan by cutting Punjab and Bengal in half as this would mean a 'moth-eaten Pakistan'.

Radcliffe Line proposed that a British judge of the High Court be appointed as the chairman of the commission.

Radcliffe Line soon met with his fellow college alumnus Mountbatten and travelled to Lahore and Calcutta to meet with commission members, chiefly Nehru from the Congress and Jinnah, president of the Muslim League.

Radcliffe Line justified the casual division with the truism that no matter what he did, people would suffer.

Radcliffe Line departed on Independence Day itself, before even the boundary awards were distributed.

Radcliffe Line explained that the reason for deviating from the notional award in the case of Gurdaspur was that the headwaters of the canals that irrigated the Amritsar district lay in the Gurdaspur district and it was important to keep them under one administration.

Pakistan maintains that the Radcliffe Line Award was altered by Mountbatten; Gurdaspur was handed over to India and thus was manipulated the accession of Kashmir to India.

Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, who represented the Muslim League in July 1947 before the Radcliffe Line Boundary Commission, stated that the boundary commission was a farce.

Zafruallh Khan states that Radcliffe used district, tehsil, thana, and even village boundaries to divide Punjab in such a way that the boundary line was drawn much to the prejudice of Pakistan.

Andrew Roberts believes that Mountbatten cheated over India-Pak frontier and states that if gerrymandering took place in the case of Ferozepur, it is not too hard to believe that Mountbatten pressurized Radcliffe Line to ensure that Gurdaspur wound up in India to give India road access to Kashmir.

Radcliffe Line had little difficulty in getting Radcliffe to change his boundaries to allot the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur to India instead of Pakistan, thus giving India the only road access from Delhi to Kashmir.

On his motivation to write Drawing the Line, playwright Howard Brenton said he first became interested in the story of the Radcliffe Line while vacationing in India and hearing stories from people whose families had fled across the new line.