ON THIS DAY ·
Independence of India
15 Aug 1947 — “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” Nehru’s tryst with destiny had arrived. So, too, had trains from Punjab, already full of the dead.
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The moment in context
Mountbatten came to India in March 1947 with broad powers and a deadline of June 1948 for transferring power. Within ten weeks he had concluded that the interim government could not hold. Congress and the Muslim League could not agree on a workable center, and partition became the settlement: British India would be divided into two dominions, while the princely states would follow a separate process of accession. Nehru and Patel accepted the division of Punjab and Bengal; Jinnah accepted what he called a “moth-eaten Pakistan.”
From Partition of India, chapter 13 of Indian Independence & Partition, 1857–1964 (AUG 1947).
The place: Independence of India — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The seventy-three-day timetable. Mountbatten’s defenders saw a state in danger of dissolving. The Punjab crisis suggested that delay might bring civil war and an army no longer…
- The turn — The award published, 17 August 1947. The flags rose before the border was announced. On 17 August the award revealed the line, and fifteen million people discovered which side their…
- What it changed — Two states built from one civil service. A single government’s assets had to be divided between two states. The division reached from army regiments split by religion to library sets…
Then ask the room: Mountbatten advanced independence by ten months. Weigh the decision: did speed avert a greater catastrophe, or cause the one that happened? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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