The Radcliffe Line, the geopolitical border that divides India and Pakistan, came into existence on this day, August 17, in the year 1947. A crude border was already formed by Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India. However, in order to determine as to which territory should go to which country, Britain appointed Sir Cyril Radcliffe. The Indo-Pak border is one of the most heavily guarded international boundaries in the world. There are only five crossing points along the 2,900-kilometre long border.
On August 17, 1947, the Radcliffe Line was declared as the boundary between India and Pakistan, following the Partition of India. The line is named after Sir Cyril Radcliffe who was commissioned to equitably divide 4, 50,000 km sq. of territory with 88 million people.
On July 15, 1947, the Indian Independence Act 1947 of the British Parliament stipulated that the British Raj of India would end in just one month’s time on August 15, 1947. It also stipulated the partition of India into two sovereign dominions: the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan as a homeland for the Muslims in British India. Pakistan was intended as a Muslim homeland while India was secular with a Hindu majority.
The idea behind the Radcliffe Line was to create a boundary which would divide India along religious demographics, under which Muslim majority provinces would become part of the new nation of Pakistan and Hindu and Sikh majority provinces would remain in India.
Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a barrister by profession, was commissioned by the British to examine the territories that needed to be allocated for both countries. He was appointed as the Chairman of Boundary Commission that was to mark a border line – a line that would split one country into two independent nations
After arriving in India on 8 July, Radcliffe was given just 5 weeks to decide on a border. Neither had he visited India before, nor did he have adequate understanding of the socio-political culture of the country. All lawyers by trade, Radcliffe and the other commissioners had no advisers to inform them of the well-established procedures and information needed to draw a boundary. Upon meeting with Mountbatten, Radcliffe travelled to Lahore and Kolkata to meet his Boundary Commission members, who were primarily Jawaharlal Nehru representing the Congress and Muhammad Ali Jinnah representing the Muslim League. Both parties were keen that the boundary be finalized by 15th August 1947, in time for the British to leave India. The Radcliffe Line was formally revealed on 17th August 1947, two days after Independence.
Since the Partition of India was done on the basis of religious demographics, Muslim majority regions in the north of India were to become part of Pakistan. Baluchistan and Sindh (which had a clear Muslim majority) automatically became part of Pakistan. The challenge however, laid in the two provinces of Punjab (55.7% Muslims) and Bengal (54.4% Muslims) which did not have an overpowering majority. Eventually, the Western part of Punjab became part of West Pakistan and the Eastern part became part of India (Eastern Punjab was later divided into three other Indian states). The state of Bengal was also partitioned into East Bengal (which became part of Pakistan) and West Bengal, which remained in India.
The Indian Independence Act was to replace The Parliament of the United Kingdom that stipulated the governance of British would come to an end in the country on 15 August. The Act also stipulated that the country would be split into two sovereign nation-states, as the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.
The line, which came to be recognized as Radcliffe line, today serves as the International Border between India and Pakistan on the west and India and Bangladesh — which came into existence after the 1971 Indo- Pakistan war — on the east.
