Half a Legacy

ON THE AFTERNOON OF FEBRUARY 20, 1947, A HUSH settled over the House of Commons as Prime Minister Clement Attlee rose to speak. There was no fanfare, just the crisp cadence of a man delivering history in plain words. British rule in India, he announced, would end by June 1948.

“It is not the intention of His Majesty’s Government to remain any longer than necessary in India. British rule in India will end by June 1948.”

For years, the Viceroy in Delhi, Lord Wavell, had been writing in increasingly bleak terms. “We no longer rule India,” he told White­hall. “We merely manage its decline.” The tipping point had come with the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946, which saw over 20,000 sailors revolt across 78 ships and 20 shore establishments. That and the tidal wave of support for Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) sent a shiver up the colonial spine. The fear wasn’t just of rebellion; it was that even British-led Indian forces might no longer obey.

The pillars of Empire were cracking from above, from within, from below. And so, Attlee stood not to promise reform, but to de­clare retreat. What had once been controlled through railways, rifles, and red tape was now dissolving into strikes, slogans, and street fury. The British were not with­drawing. They were being ejected.

To stage-manage the depar­ture, the Crown turned to one of its own: Lord Louis Mountbatten. Before heading east, Mountbatten held consultations with nearly everyone—Attlee, India Office mandarins, even Churchill. His brief was, preserve unity if possible, but do not delay exit. “India is slipping through our fingers,” one official warned. “And we must not let it explode in our hands.”

Mountbatten landed in Palam, Delhi on March 22, 1947 into a thick haze and suspicion.

The political atmosphere was simmering. Rumours of a loom­ing Partition swirled through the bazaars and backrooms. Meet­ings began almost immediately. Gandhi, frail but forceful, greeted him in his dhoti at Birla House, quietly insisting that division was a “vivisection” of the soul. “Cutting a nation in two,” he said, “is like cutting a living body.” Nehru, emotionally drained by years of ne­gotiation and jail, was impatient. Patel was blunt. Jinnah was firm on a separate Muslim state—Pakistan.

Jinnah, coughing blood between sentences, was icy in tone but lucid in logic. “We are not seceding,” he told Mountbatten. “We are demanding what was promised.” For him, Pakistan was not a dream but a demand. Mountbatten compared Partition to splitting a baby in two. “Not a baby,” Jinnah corrected. “Two brothers. And we cannot live in the same house.”

By April, illusions of unity had evaporated. The pace had to change. The viceroy proposed a dramatically early timeline: In­dia and Pakistan would both be granted independent status by August 15, 1947 barely four months away. His own British aides were stunned. But Mountbatten believed delay would mean di­saster. “We must get out before the house catches fire,” he said. Attlee supported the timeline. Jinnah agreed. Congress, after brief hesitation, went along.

And so, on the evening of June 3, 1947, the decision was made public.

Two nations. One line. Not yet drawn.

The radio broadcast was choreographed like a play in three acts. That evening, All India Radio and the BBC aired simulta­neous speeches by Mountbatten, Nehru, and Jinnah. Millions huddled near crackling sets as a viceroy, a future prime minister, and a would-be quaid-e-azam addressed the same subcontinent each framing the same outcome in a different light. Mountbatten spoke of duty and dignity. Nehru called it a necessary sacrifice. Jinnah, calm and clinical, said only: “We have obtained our goal.”

The man assigned to draw the fateful border had never set foot in India. Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a respected barrister from Lon­don, was summoned in haste. His brief was as bewildering as it was brutal: divide 175,000 square miles, and 88 million people, in five weeks. Armed with Census maps, a few outdated surveys, and no personal knowledge of India, he began drawing the line. He never visited Lahore, Amritsar, or Dacca. And yet his pen decid­ed the fate of cities, canals, railway junctions, rivers, and shrines.

The results were as chaotic as the process. In Punjab, Sikh farmers discovered that their fields had been cut in half: one side Indian, the other Pakistani. In Bengal, traders saw their homes and shops suddenly fall on opposite sides. Villagers woke up to find the well they drank from was now ‘foreign’. Clarity was promised. It never came.

And in what became fiction’s most profound reflection of this madness, Saadat Hasan Manto gave us Toba Tek Singh—a deranged inmate who collapses in no-man’s land, neither Indian nor Pakistani. A citizen of nowhere.

In Karachi, on the evening of August 14, 1947, the air was thick with promise. The new flag of Pakistan was hoisted, Lord Mountbatten stood beside Jinnah, and the crowds rejoiced. But the solemn transfer of power had not yet occurred. It was only the next morning, August 15, that Muhammad Ali Jinnah took oath as Pakistan’s first governor general, sworn in by Chief Justice Mian Abdul Rashid.

Later that day, Mountbatten flew back to Delhi. And as the clock inched towards midnight, he stood once again in the frame of his­tory, this time beside Nehru, as India awoke to freedom.

Two capitals, two ceremonies. Two speeches that would echo for generations. And one man, Mountbatten, moving like a shadow between them.

Inside the grandeur of Constituent Assembly Nehru’s words soared: “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom…”

But outside a darker saga was underway.

Trains that left Lahore never reached Amritsar. Some arrived with every passenger slaughtered. Coaches returned silent, soaked in blood. Railway stations in Bengal bore warnings in chalk: “Safe”. “Not safe”. “Don’t stop”. Families clung to ladders, roofs, even each other. Some died clasping identity papers for the wrong country.

From Rawalpindi to Calcutta, millions moved. Carts over­flowed. Children vanished. Wells were poisoned. Doors locked with keys never used again.

To make sense of this chaos, a Partition Council was formed on June 27, 1947. Chaired by Mountbatten, it became the apex body for dividing the empire’s infrastructure—military, financial, and administrative.

Its members from India included:

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Home)
Jawaharlal Nehru (External Affairs)
VP Menon (Liaison Officer)

From Pakistan:

Liaquat Ali Khan (Finance)
Muhammad Zafarullah Khan (Legal Affairs)
II Chundrigar (Liaison Officer)

Below the council, Partition subcommittees tackled division of the armed forces, postal system, embassy properties, banks, etc.

The numbers were staggering. The army was split 64 per cent to India, 36 per cent to Pakistan. Horses, medals, rifles, bugles, uniforms even camels were counted and listed. On August 13, officers dined together. On the 15th, they saluted different flags.

Even overseas, Partition played out in absurdities. Who would get the embassy house in London? The silver cutlery in Washington? The roll of carpets in Cairo? In Washington DC, the shared embassy was split. The Pakistani delegation used bor­rowed typewriters and trays. A British diplomat recalled: “The Indian staff left the teacups but took the teaspoons.”

The Reserve Bank of India continued to serve as Pakistan’s central bank for nearly six months after Independence. Pakistan initially used Indian postage stamps, overprinted with ‘Pakistan’, until July 1948 when it issued its own. The division of libraries led to comic extremes. Encyclopaedias were split alphabetically—A to P went to India; Q to Z to Pakistan. It was decided India would keep the National Library’s holdings in Calcutta, but Pakistan could access them when needed. Office disputes took on satirical tones. India would keep government safes. Pakistan could take the desks. But the pens were contested as they bore the Indian insignia.

And in the end, they signed.

Each side took its share. And then some rifles and radios, em­bassies and elephants, encyclopaedias and safes, bugles and car­pets, even postage stamps still scented with empire’s ink.

What followed was not just the division of land but the dis­membering of a shared civilisation torn at its seams, down to its files, flags, and furniture. The stories that follow trace some ex­traordinary moments from this immense bureaucratic surgery. Each story illuminates a facet of how India and Pakistan were not only born apart but divided at birth.

HARMONY DISRUPTED India’s Military Bands

In the chaotic weeks after August 15, 1947, Partition’s strange ques­tions included: Who gets the military bands? Regimental brass bands, trained in British traditions, were integral to battalions now split between India and Pakistan. The 8th Punjab Regiment moved to Pakistan; the Rajput Regiment stayed in India. A Band Division Subcommittee was formed to divide instruments, mu­sic sheets, even ceremonial maces. A surreal midnight audition in Delhi ended with a colonel snapping, “This is Partition, not Philharmonic!” (Shamsher Khan, Reveille Over Rawalpindi.)

At Pachmarhi’s Military Music Wing, both nations agreed that the 1947 batch of bandmaster trainees would graduate to­gether. Lacking its own academy, Pakistan paid India to train its bandmasters until 1950. India adopted Jana Gana Mana ear­ly. Pakistan used ‘God Save the King’ until composer Ahmed G Chagla’s instrumental was introduced in 1949. In 1952, Hafeez Jullundhri’s Qaumi Tarana, was officially adopted as Pakistan’s national anthem. It remains the national anthem of Pakistan today.

All India Radio shared 12,000 recordings with Pakistan in 1948. In East Bengal, Abdul Latif’s banned Bangla Jaya Dhwani (1948) resurfaced in 1971 as a Mukti Bahini anthem, Parti­tion’s echo in song.

SPLIT SHELVES Libraries and Legal Knowledge

Amid the bureaucratic mayhem of 1947, even libraries, those quiet guardians of law, history, and memory were not spared. Nowhere was the rupture more symbolic than in the stately Lahore High Court Library, established in 1866, housing over 15,000 volumes.

While the library building remained in Pakistan, India’s Min­istry of Law, citing the migration of judges and litigants, sent a convoy to retrieve select volumes. On September 1, 1947, under Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan, around 3,000 law books were moved to Delhi. Pakistan protested, calling it the looting of shared legal heritage. India replied with inventories and offers to microfilm or duplicate what was taken.

Absurdities abounded. A Partition Council subcommittee reportedly proposed splitting encyclopaedias alphabetically A-M to India, N-Z to Pakistan. “It was suggested, half-seriously, the Ox­ford Dictionary be torn down the middle,” recalled YD Gundevia.

Calcutta’s Imperial Library, rich in Urdu, Persian, and East Ben­gal records, remained intact. Pakistan sought access; India allowed reading rights, but no transfers.

In Dacca, the university library was left ghosted. “We had bricks and walls, but not books,” lamented Enamul Haq. Reconstruction began with help from Turkey, Egypt, and Iran, but Partition had torn more than just borders; it had bisected knowledge itself.

VAULTS AND VALUES Reserve Bank and Currency

In the chaotic birth of two nations, sovereignty did not rest solely in flags or borders; it was also in vaults, currencies, and control over coins. In 1947, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) found itself in the extraordinary role of serving not one but two countries. Under a Partition Council agreement, RBI would act as Pakistan’s central bank for one year beyond Independence, managing its cur­rency and clearing operations until June 30, 1948. RBI’s Karachi office handled Pakistan’s day-to-day needs while Delhi retained ultimate authority over issuance and reserves.

India transferred ₹20 crore of Pakistan’s ₹75 crore cash entitle­ment in August 1947. But in January 1948, as conflict raged in Kashmir, the government withheld the remaining ₹55 crore. Con­cerns were raised that the funds might fuel hostilities. Protests broke out in Karachi and Lahore. In Delhi, Gandhi, alarmed by what he saw as a breach of moral responsibility, began a fast unto death on January 13. “A nation does not go back on its word,” he said. “Even if Pakistan behaves wrongly, India must not. That is the path of Dharma.” Under intense moral pressure, the Cabinet relented. On January 15, ₹55 crore was released.

Far away in Pune, the editor and founder of Hindu Rashtra, Narayan Apte, read the news aloud in his pressroom. With Nathuram Godse beside him, both men concluded that Gandhi’s moral influence had become intolerable. “Enough is enough,” they said. Five days later, on January 20, Godse attempted to assassinate Gandhi. The attempt failed. Ten days later, on January 30, he succeeded.

Meanwhile, India moved swiftly to end RBI’s role in Paki­stan. In March 1948, India notified Pakistan that the arrange­ment would terminate on July 1, six months ahead of schedule. Pakistan scrambled to establish the State Bank of Pakistan, which opened in Karachi that day and began issuing its own crescent-bearing currency. Until then, Pakistan used Indian rupee notes overprinted with ‘Government of Pakistan’ in Urdu and English printed in Nasik, bearing King George’s portrait.

That same year, a symbolic handover took place: keys to the RBI vaults marked ‘Lahore/Karachi branch’ were duplicated and delivered under a British locksmith’s supervision. No gold was moved; balances were settled on paper. But the symbolism of trust and fracture echoed long after the keys changed hands.

CROSS-BORDER BROADCASTS All India Radio and Radio Pakistan

As midnight approached on August 14, 1947, millions across In­dia and Pakistan leaned in towards the crackling sound of their ra­dio sets. The first moments of freedom weren’t marked by drums or gunfire but by the voices carried on airwaves—Mountbatten’s farewell, Nehru’s “Tryst with Destiny”, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s solemn declaration: “Pakistan is now a reality.” Ironically, Jinnah’s speech was broadcast from AIR Delhi. Radio Pakistan did not yet exist.

Before Partition, All India Radio (AIR), established in 1936, was the cultural nerve centre of the subcontinent, with major stations in Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Lahore, and Peshawar. AIR La­hore was a particular gem—home to literary debates, ghazals and classical music, produced and broadcast by a multi-religious team. Melville de Mellow and Ustad Bismillah Khan, et al continued with AIR India, while Malika Pukhraj and Mehdi Hassan became some of the iconic voices that crossed over to Radio Pakistan.

On the morning of August 15, engineers at AIR Lahore scraped off ‘All India Radio’ from the signage. By noon they were announc­ing, “Yeh Radio Pakistan hai…” even as their technical links with Delhi remained intact. AIR’s Delhi headquarters continued to provide news bulletins and relay lines to Lahore, Peshawar, and Dacca for several weeks.

In September 1947, the Broadcasting Division Subcom­mittee of the Partition Council formally divided radio assets. AIR retained control of transmitters, central archives, and engineering staff. Pakistan was granted rights to form Radio Pakistan, headquartered in Lahore with regional centres in Karachi and Dacca. India sent duplicate copies of Urdu cultural programmes and offered six months of technical training, but refused to hand over original recordings. Only 43 tapes—mostly ghazals by Malika Pukhraj and recitations by Faiz Ahmed Faiz— were duplicated and dispatched. The rest remained in Delhi un­der the ‘AIR Pre-Partition Collection’.

In Bengal, Dacca’s new radio station was starved of equip­ment. Early broadcasts were made using borrowed microphones and reused discs. Nurul Islam, a pioneer at Dacca station, recalled recording folk songs “between generator failures, with micro­phones stitched together by copper wire and hope.”

Though divided, the airwaves remained porous. In border towns like Amritsar, citizens tuned into Radio Pakistan Lahore. In Lahore and Rawalpindi, AIR Jalandhar crackled through. What governments drew in ink, radio quietly dissolved in sound.

COURIERS OF DIVISION Postal Services, Stamps and Letters

At midnight on August 15, 1947, even the post didn’t know where to go. The vast postal network of British India, one of the world’s largest, was severed by Partition. Post offices, railway mail services, stamps, and stationery were suddenly caught between two sovereignties. Letters in transit were left directionless; postmen didn’t know which side of the border they served.

Before Partition, India’s Imperial Post was uni­fied, with over 1.75 lakh post offices under one Directorate General in Delhi. But Independence brought urgent questions: Which offices now belonged to Pakistan? Could Indian stamps still be used? Initially, Pakistan used existing British Indian postage overprinted with ‘PAKISTAN’ in English or Urdu. Some stamps bore hand-stamped rubber seals. Local offices improvised until July 8, 1948 when Pakistan issued its first independent series featuring the crescent moon, Kashmir’s mountains, and ‘Pakistan Zindabad’.

The postal division itself was methodical, if sometimes sur­real. Sealing wax, pens, and inland letters were split by weight and number. In one case, officials sliced ledgers into thirds. Confusion followed: letters returned unopened, parcels vanished, and a postal train was attacked between Jodhpur and Hyderabad in Sindh, its sacks burned.

In Bengal, the Jessore-Barasat line was cut, and post offices in Dacca had to draw revenue seals by hand. One letter from Shan­tipur to Faridpur was returned stamped: “Undeliverable. Foreign Address. Redirect or destroy.”

The symbolism was stark. Pakistan’s first stamps depicted the Khyber Pass and Minar-e-Pakistan. India replaced colonial imagery with Ashokan lions and charkhas. What had once been a single, humming network became a story of divided paths, torn enve­lopes, and two nations trying to speak across a line drawn by ink.

NOTHING CAPTURES THE poignancy of Partition, so mov­ingly recounted by historian Anwesha Sengupta, as the quiet rebellion of an elephant. Joymoni, the elephant, belonged to the Bengal Forest Department and, in the great bureaucratic division of assets, was allotted to East Bengal. West Bengal, in exchange, re­ceived a station wagon. But on August 15, 1947, Joymoni was graz­ing peacefully in Malda, on the Indian side. Her lifelong mahout chose to remain in India. When East Bengal sent a new team to escort her ‘home’, Joymoni simply refused to move. No tug, no plea, no sugarcane could shift her resolve.

What followed was not just a standoff but a diplomatic conun­drum. For 10 months she stood firm, until West Bengal demanded ₹1,900 for her upkeep. East Bengal protested: the elephant was theirs on paper from Day One. But India, having sheltered her, wanted rent.

She was eventually taken across, though the pa­perwork took longer. Whether she ever settled is unclear. But for those who once trusted her trunk or whispered to her flapping ears, the damage had already been done. Joymoni, like the subcon­tinent itself, had been divided against her will.

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