Who among the following was responsible for demarcating the borders between India and Pakistan during the partition in 1947?

Correct — A, Cyril Radcliffe. The Indian Independence Act of 1947 required the boundary between the two new dominions to be settled in Punjab and in Bengal, and two Boundary Commissions were set up in June 1947 with an equal number of Congress and Muslim League nominees on each. Because the nominees on both sides were certain to deadlock, the decision effectively rested on the joint chairman, and that was Sir Cyril Radcliffe, an English barrister who had never visited India and knew nobody in the country. His inexperience was treated as a guarantee of impartiality. He landed on 8 July 1947 and was given about five weeks. Working largely from maps and outdated census returns, he produced awards that were completed just before the transfer of power but withheld from publication until 17 August 1947, two days after independence — so the millions who moved in those first days did so without knowing which country their district had been placed in. The line he drew, since called the Radcliffe Line, split Punjab and Bengal and remains the basis of the India-Pakistan and India-Bangladesh boundaries. The three names offered against him are all real frontier-makers or declaration-makers, but each belongs to a different map.

• (b)Mortimer Durand — Sir Mortimer Durand, of the Indian Civil Service, negotiated the Durand Line on 12 November 1893 between the Emirate of Afghanistan and British India — the western frontier, and today the disputed Afghanistan-Pakistan boundary.
• (c)Henry McMahon — Sir Henry McMahon gave his name to the McMahon Line, drawn at the Simla Convention of 1914 as the boundary between Tibet and British India — the eastern sector of what is now the India-China frontier, which China does not accept.
• (d)Arthur Belfour — The paper's spelling of Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary whose declaration of 1917 favoured a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. He had nothing to do with the partition of India.

Partition was decided in principle by the Mountbatten Plan of 3 June 1947 and given legal effect by the Indian Independence Act, passed in July 1947. The Act provided for two Boundary Commissions, one for Punjab and one for Bengal, each with four high court judges — two nominated by the Congress and two by the Muslim League — under a joint chairman. That chairman was Cyril Radcliffe. The commissions were told to demarcate the two provinces on the basis of contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims, taking other factors into account, and the phrase 'other factors' left the decisive discretion with the chairman.

Four frontier names recur across this syllabus and the examiner rotates them: Radcliffe for India and Pakistan in 1947, Durand for British India and Afghanistan in 1893, McMahon for Tibet and British India in 1914, and the Line of Control that emerged from the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir. Fix each to its year and its two sides and this class of question stops being guesswork. It is worth knowing what made the Radcliffe award so damaging in practice. He had roughly five weeks and no local knowledge, the population data was a decade old, and irrigation systems, rail links and district boundaries were cut without survey on the ground. Withholding the award until two days after independence meant the migration and the violence of mid-August happened in ignorance of where the line actually ran. One printed detail in this item is worth noting honestly: the paper prints the fourth name as 'Arthur Belfour', which is a misspelling of Balfour. It does not affect the answer, and the option is wrong for reasons of substance rather than spelling.

• The Punjab and Bengal Boundary Commissions were set up in June 1947 under the Indian Independence Act, with Cyril Radcliffe as joint chairman of both.
• Radcliffe reached India on 8 July 1947 and had about five weeks; he had never previously visited the country.
• The awards were finished shortly before the transfer of power but published only on 17 August 1947, two days after independence.
• The Durand Line of 12 November 1893 was negotiated by Sir Mortimer Durand between Afghanistan and British India.
• The McMahon Line was drawn at the Simla Convention of 1914 between Tibet and British India, and is not accepted by China.
• The Balfour Declaration of 1917 concerned a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine and has no connection with India's partition.

• Attaching Radcliffe to the Afghanistan or China frontier; those are Durand and McMahon.
• Assuming the boundary award was known on 15 August 1947. It was published on 17 August, after independence.
• Confusing the 1905 partition of Bengal, an administrative measure by Curzon, with the 1947 partition of the province between two countries.

As a straight who-drew-which-line item like this one, as a match-the-pairs between boundary lines and the countries they separate, or through the Radcliffe Committee's terms of reference.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Durand Line was agreed in 1893 as the boundary between British India and which one of the following?

  • (a)Tibet
  • (b)Afghanistan
  • (c)Burma
  • (d)Nepal

  Answer(b) Afghanistan — Sir Mortimer Durand negotiated it on 12 November 1893, and it is today the disputed Afghanistan-Pakistan boundary.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Boundary Commission awards partitioning Punjab and Bengal were made public on which date?

  • (a)3 June 1947
  • (b)14 August 1947
  • (c)15 August 1947
  • (d)17 August 1947

  Answer(d) 17 August 1947 — the awards were ready earlier but were withheld until two days after the transfer of power.