Dominion of India

• 1. The Last Viceroy's Rush

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  Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived in India in March 1947 to find violence between Hindus and Muslims raging in Punjab and Bengal. The British Army was unprepared for the potential chaos that followed. Mountbatten decided to advance the date for independence from June 1948 to August 1947. This decision allowed him to rush the British withdrawal forward before the situation spiraled further out of control. Nationalist leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Baldev Singh agreed to a partition plan. They accepted the division of Muslim-majority provinces like Punjab and Bengal into two separate nations. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India while predominantly Muslim areas went to Pakistan. Critics later argued that if Britain had stayed longer with better institutions and army readiness, the transfer might have been less violent. Supporters felt the early transfer forced Indian politicians to stop petty quarrels and accept their obligations.

• 2. Blood on the Radcliffe Line

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  The Radcliffe Commission announced its award on the 17th of August 1947, two days after the transfer of power. It divided the Sikh-dominated regions of Punjab in equal proportion between the two dominions. A 50,000-strong Indian Boundary Force had been formed to counter expected violence but proved ineffectual. Most units recruited locally had stronger ties to one religious group than another. In a matter of days, Sikhs and Hindus attacked Muslims in East Punjab while Muslims returned the ferocity in West Punjab. Trains taking refugees to their new lands were stopped and their occupants slaughtered regardless of age or gender. Long lines of humans and oxcarts traveling East and West were intercepted and overwhelmed. Judge G. D. Khosla estimated the death toll at about 500,000 though it may never be known. Historian Percival Spear called it an involuntary exchange of population involving five and a half million people traveling each way across the new border. From Sind, some 400,000 Hindus migrated to India as did a million Hindus from East Pakistan to West Bengal province.

• 3. Gandhi's Final Fast

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  Mahatma Gandhi arrived in Delhi in October 1947 with a mission to bring back peace to the city. He chose to direct his activities from the scheduled caste Balmiki Temple in the Gole Market area before moving to two rooms in Birla House. On the 12th of January 1948, Gandhi undertook several hunger strikes to stop religious violence. The government took the decision on the 15th of January to release assets it owed to Pakistan. Gandhi broke his fast only after significant politicians and leaders of communal bodies showed commitment to a joint plan for restoration of peace. Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist member of the Hindu Mahasabha, assassinated Gandhi on the 30th of January 1948. Godse shot Gandhi three times in the chest as he walked toward his evening prayer meeting at Birla House. Nehru addressed the nation by radio that evening saying the light had gone out of their lives. The British prime minister Clement Attlee offered deep sympathy for the loss of their greatest citizen. After the mourning period ended, blame was pointed at Hindu extremists who plotted the assassination.

• 4. Patel's Steel and Silk

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  Sardar Patel and his assistant V. P. Menon employed a combination of threats and inducements to integrate princely states. Special privileges and tax-free pensions were used as inducements within a few months. All states that had acceded in August 1947 were blended into a new federal union. Baroda State and Kathiawar combined to form Saurashtra while Rajputana states united to form Rajasthan. Travancore and Cochin became Kerala while Mysore remained a large federal unit by itself. Hundreds of small states were absorbed and soon lost within larger federal units. Except for Kashmir where military conflict began in October 1947, two states Hyderabad and Junagadh remained independent. Indian troops marched into Junagadh within weeks after its Nawab acceded to Pakistan. A plebiscite took place and was declared for India though Pakistan protested without taking further action. Hyderabad presented a different challenge since it was landlocked surrounded on all sides by India. The Nizam rejected generous terms for accession brokered by the British before India militarily invaded the state in what was called a police action.

• 5. The War That Never Ended

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  Kashmir's population was 77% Muslim yet it shared a border with what would later become Pakistan. Hari Singh the reigning Maharaja signed a standstill agreement with Pakistan to facilitate trade and communication. When he hesitated to accede to Pakistan, Pakistan launched a guerrilla onslaught meant to frighten its ruler into submission. The Maharaja appealed to Mountbatten who agreed that Indian soldiers could enter only if the ruler acceded to India. Indian soldiers drove Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small section of the state. The United Nations invited to mediate insisted that the opinion of Kashmiris must be ascertained while India demanded no referendum until all irregulars were cleared. A ceasefire was agreed under UN auspices in the last days of 1948. Since the plebiscite demanded by the UN was never conducted, relations between India and Pakistan soured. This eventually led to two more wars over Kashmir in 1965 and 1999.

• 6. A Republic Forged In Fire

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  The Constituent Assembly drafted the final constitution with uncommon speed and absence of irregularities between 1946 and 1949. Long passages from the Government of India Act 1935 were included as model and framework. The constitution described a federal state with a parliamentary system of democracy. Fundamental rights definitions were based on the Constitution of the United States while constitutional directives came from the Constitution of Ireland. Untouchability became illegal under Article 17 and caste distinctions were derecognized under Articles 15(2) and 16(2). The promulgation transformed India into a republic within the Commonwealth. Rajendra Prasad was elected as first President of India on the 26th of January 1950 when Lord Mountbatten's term ended. The assembly had 299 representatives including 15 women such as Purnima Banerjee Kamla Chaudhry Malati Choudhury Durgabai Deshmukh Rajkumari Amrit Kaur Sucheta Kriplani Annie Mascarene Hansa Jivraj Mehta Sarojini Naidu Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit Begum Aizaz Rasul Renuka Ray Leela Roy Ammu Swaminathan and Dakshayani Velayudhan.

• 7. Poverty And The First Census

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  A National Income Committee set up in 1949 computed average annual income per person to be Rs. 260 or $55. Some Indians earned less especially among domestic help tenant farmers and agricultural laborers. Judith M. Brown described this poverty as almost perpetual hunger with monotonous unbalanced diets and cramped squalid housing. In rural areas 14-15 million households owned no land at all while top 25% owned 83% of cultivated land. Literacy levels varied from region to region depending on history urbanization and average per-person income. In 1951 literacy was still very low especially among rural women at 7.62%. Improving economy changing social attitudes and reducing economic deprivation depended crucially upon improving education standards. Most deprived groups included Untouchables who remained in ritual pollution despite Gandhi's anti-untouchability campaigns. Land ownership education and skilled work were out of reach for the vast majority of these communities.