The Radcliffe Line: Partitioning Indian Civilisations

August 1947 ushered in historical realities that would drastically impact the very essence of
what ‘Indian Civilisations’ meant for the years to come. The Radcliffe Line, borne out of the
‘3rd June Plan’ defined the borders between India and Pakistan, borders that essentially entailed
the vivisection of the cultures that had held sway in the subcontinent.

Unlike his predecessor, Lord Wavell, who had explored to no avail all the possibilities of
maintaining a united Indian Union, Lord Louis Mountbatten had been sent to India with an
unambiguous mission of dismantling ‘British India’ as quickly as possible. He set up a
boundary commission to demarcate the border lines, consisting of an independent chairman
and four other persons, two of whom were to be nominated by the Muslim League and two by
the Congress. (Tan and Kudaisya 79-83)

The person chosen to jointly head the Commission was Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the vice-chairman
of the General Council of the English Bar, who was recommended for the post by the Secretary
of State as a man of “great legal abilities, right personality and wide administrative experience.”
(Tan and Kudaisya 84) Mountbatten was struck by Radcliffe’s ability and fully supported his
appointment. Aside from this, Radcliffe possessed what the British perceived as a very
important virtue: He had no connections with Indian politics and had absolutely no knowledge
or opinion on the territories he was assigned to divide. It was this promise of ‘impartiality’ that
was valued over all else. With the commission in a constant deadlock due to the equal
opposition by the Muslim League to the Congress and vice versa, the Chairman had
considerable power in breaking the deadlock. For all intents and purposes, it was he alone who
would demarcate the boundary. Radcliffe, however, was aware that his lack of knowledge
would be a serious handicap and pointed out to Mountbatten that “it would take the most careful
arbitrators years to decide on a boundary.” Radcliffe was thus shocked when he was told he
had only five weeks to complete his work. (Mosley 195) The narrow timeframe in which he
was expected to delineate the boundary was largely imposed by the impatience of Nehru, who
didn’t wish for the transfer of power be delayed in any way by the Boundary Commissions.

While the demarcation was to be made on the basis of contiguous majority areas of Muslims
and non-Muslims, the commission was also tasked to look into and take into consideration
‘other factors.’

The problems posed by the ambiguity of factoring in ‘other factors’ into their task is clear when
one focuses on the Council’s mandate to divide up historical monuments and objects. When
the dust settled, it seemed that India would become the repository of the rich Islamic
Mughal/Sultanate heritage, while Pakistan would include almost the whole of the Indus valley,
the seat of what is often considered the first ‘Indian Civilisation.’ (Roy 60-61) The Partition
Council in October 1947 decided that these monuments and ancient exhibits would be divided
purely on a territorial basis. (Minutes) But a snafu arose when they had to decide the status of
the exhibits that were on loan and caught on the ‘wrong’ side of the border. India considered
the Indus valley artefacts to be an integral part of their civilizational heritage. The Indus Valley
Civilisation as such did not merely represent the civilisation of Pakistan, but had a direct
bearing on the civilisation of the whole of India and Pakistan, and over 300 million Indians had
quite a larger interest in that civilisation, particularly as India no longer had any jurisdiction
over these sites. (Chakravarti) After mulling over it, the Council declared that all objects that
had been removed for temporary display after the 1st of January 1947 would be repatriated to
their respective museums. This decision caused around twelve thousand objects from the
Mohenjo-Daro site to become a bone of contention between India and Pakistan. The illogical
conclusion to this was the division of those collections even if it meant breaking up some of
these artefacts. The history of the ‘Indian Civilisation’ was thus partitioned at the expense of
its integrity and preservation. (Lahiri 7)

With the partition made on what seemed to be primarily communal lines, and with the copious
bloodshed that accompanied it, a sense of animosity began to develop between Hindu and
Muslim communities. Hindus began to view Muslims as outsiders and thus began the
separation of Islamic culture from what Hindu dominated India considered ‘Indian
Civilisation.’

Islamic monuments in several parts of India came under siege in 1947, with mass desecration
by looters, rioters and wilful negligence by various government departments. A perfect
example of this is Delhi. Its repertoire of Indo-Islamic monuments that were widely distributed
across the city began to be systematically attacked from September 1947 onwards. Delhi in
that month became the site of a particularly vicious campaign in which Muslims were
butchered by the thousands. (Lahiri 139)

This exclusion of Islamic heritage from Indian Civilisation is problematic according to

historians such as Romila Thapar. She notes that “While the British did conquer India, they did
not settle in the land, instead they drained its resources to enhance industrial capitalism in
Britain and find markets for their goods. On the contrary, the Sultanate and Mughals—
commonly bunched together as “the Muslim rulers”—invaded India, but also settled in the
country. New communities and new patterns of thought and expression came into being. To
treat all Hindu and Muslim cultures as separate cultures, entirely segregated and demarcated
from each other, is historically untenable, nor is it viable in cultural terms.” (Thapar)

Bibliography
Chakravarti, Niranjan Prasad. Note entitled Division of Antiquities between India and Pakistan. New
Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1949.

Lahiri, Nayanjot. Marshalling the Past: Ancient India and its Modern Histories. Permanent Black,
2012.

Minutes. "Minutes of the Proceedings of the Museum Committee set up by the Inter-Dominion
conference to discuss the division of Museum exhibits between India and Pakistan." New
Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 5 January 1949.

Mosley, Leonard. The Last Days of the British Raj. Jaico Books, 1965.

Roy, Haimanti. Oxford India Short Introductions: The Partition of India. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Tan, Tai Yong and Gyanesh Kudaisya. The Aftermanth of Partition in South Asia. Routledge, 2000.

Thapar, Romila. Indian Cultures as Heritage: Contemporary Pasts. Aleph Book Company, 2018.