Independence

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Introduction

For India as a whole the most momentous event in the 1940 was undoubtedly independence.

Calcutta had always been closely tied to both the Empire and all its history, politics and most of all its economic realities.

Simultaneously the city's inhabitants were also some of the earliest and most radical in rejecting the empire and fighting for India’s freedom. Consequently independence had a deep effect on the life of the city as a whole and of all of its inhabitants.

With the charged up emotions surrounding the issue of independence it was impossible for this process to happen without unforeseen events.

As Indian independence was only the first of a wave of decolonisation there was also interest and support in Calcutta for other countries (such as French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies) which were facing a much harder fight to throw of the colonial yoke.

By the end of our decade India (which at the start of it had been committed to a world war by the sole decision of a British Viceroy) had finally gained full independence and became a republic in 1950.

[Please note that much of the agitation for Independence, the partition and its effects, as well as the independence of Chandernagore, each form a separate chapter]

_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta_________________________

_____Contemporary Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___

How Much Longer?

The whole Far East was atremble. From Burma, waves of refugees were already breaking over India's borders. Calcutta, Madras and other seaboard cities were being partly evacuated. If the Japanese struck at India and the Indian Ocean, 200 years of British-Indian argument might go up like tissue paper in a bonfire.

Yet in London the British Government was still mulling over the old argument. The incredibly complicated India problem threatened to become purely academic, a mass of mere words. Sir Stafford Cripps politely told Parliament that the Government had postponed comment on India's demands for self-government. While the British public cried for action, London rumor held that Government proposals had struck snags both in London and New Delhi.

In India the heat was creeping north from Cape Comorin, the heat which would grow to a relentless blaze scorching the country until the June monsoon. Much-traveled General Sir Archibald Wavell, back in New Delhi to resume his Indian command (see p. 19), waited in the heat for London to make up its mind. A U.S. air mission had arrived, the first tangible sign that U.S. fighters might join in India's defense. They too waited for London's words. And in New Delhi the Viceroy, who rules India for Britain, also waited.

Big, dignified, Roosevelt-jawed Victor Alexander John Hope, 54, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, strolled among the splashing fountains of his colossal, copper-domed viceregal palace. A mighty and beglamored figure, Britain's deputy over 352,000,000 Indians, he reviewed Indian troops of the New Delhi area, conferred with his Executive Council, talked with his private secretary Sir Gilbert Laithwaite, fed worms to his pet turtle, Jonah, whom Mohandas Gandhi once asked especially to see. Like the rest of India's millions, the Viceroy was waiting in the heat, waiting while the Japanese won Java and Rangoon, waiting to see whether, among other things, he would keep his post-waiting for London to make up its mind.

To much of the outside world, the British Government seemed like the Heifetz of all fiddlers while the Rome of all Romes burned. History might soon make the description fit. But after centuries of British-Indian relations, and even with the loss of India much more than a possibility, few British statesmen could be expected to do anything decisive about India. There were many reasons for this indecision.

Two Faces East. Britain has long shown India two different faces. One face has been ruthlessly imperialist. The harshness of this face can scarcely be exaggerated. During the Mutiny of 1857, the last widespread, violent revolt against the British Raj, Britons slaughtered harmless elderly Hindus of both sexes by the score (and were sometimes slaughtered themselves by the sepoys-see cut, p. 28). They seized Moslems, whose religion forbids contact with pork, and sewed them into pig skins before killing them. They tied some rebellious sepoys to the muzzles of cannon, and then fired the cannon. As late as 1919, at Amritsar, British General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer ordered his troops to disperse a prohibited meeting of unarmed Indians by firing into the crowd; the volley killed 379.

The other British face toward India has been liberal, reformist, seeking to redress imperialism's economic and personal ravages. Steadily through the years India has been championed by such Englishmen as Edmund Burke, who in 1788, speaking of the great Indian empire builder, Warren Hastings, said: "Was there ever heard, or could it be conceived, that a man would dare to mention the practices of all the villains, all the mad usurpers, all the thieves and robbers in Asia, that he should gather them all up, and form the whole mass of abuses into one code and call it the duty of a British Governor?"

In 1833 Lord Macaulay was intoning: "It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government. . . . Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history." It was such men who nurtured India's own liberal ideals and ambitions by inviting Indians into Britain's universities.

A British Case. Today many British liberals favor immediate Dominion status for India. Some favor immediate independence. But today, also, many liberals make perhaps the strongest possible case for extreme caution in Britain's India policy. The fact that the same case is adopted hypocritically by some archimperialists obviously does not impair its merits as a case. It rests on the undeniable major premise that the wrongs of the imperialist past cannot be undone, that present and future are what matter. The text is taken from the inscription on the $10,000,000 palace in which the Viceroy waited last week : "Liberty will not descend to a people ; a people must raise themselves to Liberty." The case goes on to claim that Indian self-government must be extended gradually, that sudden granting of it would result in civil war, ruinous to India and all its relations.

India is not a nation ; it is a subcontinent with many races and languages. It is only under British rule that India has known general unity. The bulk of India's population is made up of 250,000,000 Hindus and 80,000,000 Moslems; their religious and ethical ideals are widely divergent. Moreover, a third of India's space, a fourth of its population are in the 562 Indian States, of many sizes and conditions of government, which have their own rulers under an elastic "paramountcy" of the British Raj. These potentates generally incline toward British rule as safeguarding their own powers.

Since the Amritsar massacre of 1919, the British Government has been moving slowly but steadily toward Indian self-government. By the Act of 1935, provincial self-government became a fact. Eight of the eleven British provinces came under majority Governments of Mohand as Gandhi's and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's Indian National Congress, a great nationalist catchall of rich & poor, Hindu & Moslem, left & right. The Congress is the most powerful political group in India, though it has never had more than 4,500,000 paying members. The other three provinces had coalition governments.

But in 1939, when the Viceroy, following the Constitution, declared India in the war, the Congress forsook provincial self-government, withdrew its ministries, began demanding Indian independence as the price of war cooperation. Meanwhile India's second largest political party, Mohamed Ali Jinnah's Moslem League, loudly claimed that it could never submit to united Indian self-government unless it had 50% representation, since otherwise India's Moslems would be a permanent minority under the Congress-dominated Hindu majority. The Moslem League claimed heavy discrimination against Moslems, even atrocities, by Congress bureaucracies under the Act of 1935. The League began violent agitation for a separate Moslem state, Pakistan, taking over Moslem-majority provinces.

Still another great yeast cake of dissension were India's 60,000,000 Untouchables (peoples of the lowest caste), whose chief political spokesman was Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. He distrusted Congress ambitions, since they would lead to Hindu majority Governments which might sustain caste discrimination.

The British hold that rifts such as these would be fatal to self-government, that no such government can be established until the Indian National Congress and the Moslem League get together in a constitutional program. The British Government has repeatedly urged them to do so. If anything, they seem to grow farther apart. The British also emphasize the dangers of self-government in a country where only 95 out of 1,000 can read and write, where caste differences still hold firm among the vast Hindu majority, strongly inhibiting any idea of political equality.

Finally, the British case holds that immediate moves toward Indian demands would not galvanize India's war effort. It points out that India's war production has made astronomical increases-for India-in the past two years, that a great Indian Army, recruited as fast as equipment can be provided, has jumped from 170,000 to 1,000,000 since 1939. And despite the Congress' political views, many party leaders have plunged into civil defense, supply and morale activities. In short, the British case holds that India would rise to meet a Japanese attack, far more unitedly under British rule than it could during the internal struggle for political control that would arise between its own factions if independence were suddenly granted.

Indian Cases. Replying to this case for caution, India makes several cases. But they all agree that high-minded British liberalism is still much less evident than imperial British greed. Anti-British India cannot forget the long exploitation of India through British business and finance. It accuses British lust for profit and fear of Indian industrial competition of keeping India's population 75% supported by agriculture, only 2% by modern industry.

For decades India's chief exports have remained the same (cotton, jute, oilseeds, tea, tobacco). Yet India has iron-ore reserves three-fourths the size of U.S. deposits, huge reserves of coal, manganese, bauxite and many other minerals. Despite this raw wealth, Indian steel production, even under the spur of war, is under 1% of world production. India has a hydroelectric potential second only to that of the U.S., but only 3% is used.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, British-Indian tariffs have shaped India as a raw-material producer for British industry, a market for British finished goods, and persistently cracked down on Indian industry. Machine-made British goods drove India's ancient handicrafts out of business, forced millions back to the overpopulated soil.

During World War I, for purposes of supply, strategy and defeating foreign competition for the Indian market, Britain began — encouraging Indian industry. But after British capital had enjoyed a brief post-war Indian industrial boom, the crash came and tariffs were readjusted to protect Britain. World War II has once again brought British encouragement of Indian industry. Even so, Indians have charged Britain with discrimination against Indian firms wishing to build air craft, ships and automobiles.

The chief Indian parties and groups all believe that politically educated Indians can govern India -for India's sake -better than the British. But their programs greatly differ:

> The Congress wants complete independence, rather than Dominion status. It declares that Britain has deliberately set Moslems against Hindus for Britain's political advantage. It wants a national central government, claims that the Moslem League would cooperate, if Britain granted independence.

> The Moslem League still demands a separate Moslem state.

> Dr. Ambedkar, spokesman of the Untouchables, wants Dominion status with representative government, has recently urged Britain to impose such a government by fiat, if the Congress-Moslem parties will not unite.

> From somewhere in Axis territory, debonair Subhas Chandra Bose, veteran Indian National Congress leader who fled India in 1941, preaches Axis propaganda by radio. The effect of Bose and other scattered Axis partisans in India is impossible to gauge.

>The chief Indian exponent of compromise with Britain, Liberal Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, has recently been gaining ground fast. Speaking for a group of nonparty leaders, he urges that Britain give a definite assurance of Dominion status after the war, make certain immediate changes:

1) The Viceroy's Executive Council of twelve (now eight Indians, four Britons) should be entirely Indianized, thus giving Indians the important portfolios of Finance and Defense. This would also force the Congress and Moslem parties to agree on councilmen or let Britain pick them.

2) Britain should give assurances that the Secretary of State for India will not use his powers to oppose the new Indianized Council.

Viceroy. The Indian apologists, at their best, reveal a passionate conviction; the British, a rational caution. There could be few better examples of this typical British temper than Scottish Viceroy Linlithgow. He is a model of sober British effort, often suspected of misunderstanding, frequently attended by friction. Son of Australia's first Governor-General, he was born to great wealth, went to Eton, served throughout World War I, thereafter specialized in agriculture. In 1926-28 he traveled exhaustively in India as Chairman of the Royal Commission on Indian Agriculture. Later he served on the Parliamentary committee which formulated the Government of India Act of 1935 (he accomplished a minor revolution by having Parliament open its windows in the summertime). He became Viceroy in 1936.

Lord Linlithgow's own estates had prepared him to occupy the Viceroy's staggering marble "lodge"-which has six miles of corridors-with casual ease. His innate conservatism was softened by sociability and humor-his London town house once bore the deeply felt legend in brass "This Is Not the Russian Embassy" (which was next door). The Viceroy was at first greatly admired in New Delhi for his hard work, conciliatory attitude, patient fact finding, agricultural knowledge. When the Congress party's provincial ministers balked at taking office under the 1935 Act, because of the extraordinary powers still reserved for the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow was able to persuade them that he could imagine few emergencies great enough to call for those powers.

Since the war crisis it has been said that Lord Linlithgow's conservatism has played into British industrial hands, which have held down India's industrial development and hence her war effort. A recent Indian cartoon showed the Viceroy hunting, with the legend: "This week the Viceroy shot down 247 enemy partridges." His persistence in official dignities has come in for criticism. He still uses a ten-car viceregal train, steps from it to scarlet carpets. Last month, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek paid his momentous visit to India, the Viceroy sent an aide to welcome him instead of going himself.

But many feel that the Viceroy has done as well as any rational, cautious Briton might be expected to do in terrible, irrational times. Beyond doubt, he reflects the attitude of most of his colleagues and superiors in London. The great question is whether, in Indian policy, the times call for less rationality and more risk.

The most that was expected from the British Government last week was a compromise along the lines suggested by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. The Labor Party was urging it. Sir Stafford Cripps was probably urging it even more. The still-potent Tory imperialists were working hard against it.

But a new pressure was fast rising that might well force the British Government to do its bidding. This was the pressure of British public opinion. The British people in general were not experts on India. They could not judge the Indian issues either from first-hand experience or deep scholarship. They did not judge the issues from the standpoint of vested interests in India. But the British Government could ill afford to ignore their massed judgment, inexpert and instinctive as it might be. And, whatever the experts and officials and vested interests were saying last week, the British people were calling for Indian self-government, calling for it in such words as these: "We treat them like dirt and then expect them to fight."

Only time could fairly judge the complex Indian cases. But neither Japan nor the British people had time to waste. Unless every possible iota of Indian strength and spirit were called on, a day might soon come when Britain's Captains and Kings would depart from India, and the fire of Britain's power and glory would sink, perhaps forever, from India's dunes and headlands.

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, Mar. 16, 1942)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)

_____Memories of 1940s Calcutta_________________________

Enthusiasm for Congress in the Forces

A most remarkable change had in the meantime come over all the public services. The Defence Forces had recruited during the war large number of young men who came from different provinces and different social classes. The earlier British practice of only recruiting from certain groups had to be abandoned under the pressure of war needs. The young men who had now joined the armed forces accepted the British at their word that after the war India would be free. This belief had moved them to make great efforts during the period of hostilities. Now that hostilities were over they expected that India would become free.

All the three branches of the Armed Forces — the Navy, the Army and the Air Force — were inspired by a new spirit of patriotism. They were in fact so full of enthusiasm that they could not conceal their feelings whenever they saw any of the Congress leaders. Wherever I went during this period, young men of the Defence Forces came out to welcome me and expressed their sympathy and admiration without any regard for the reaction of their European officers. When I went to Karachi, a group of naval officers came to see me. They expressed their admiration for Congress policy and assured me that if Congress issued the necessary orders, they would come over to me. If there was a conflict between the Congress and the Government they would side with the Congress and not the Government. Hundreds of naval officers in Bombay expressed the same feelings.

These sentiments were widespread not only among officers but also among the ranks. I flew to Lahore in connection with the formation of the provincial Ministry. A Gurkha regiment which was stationed in Lahore had its quarters near the aerodrome. When the soldiers heard that I had landed, they lined up in hundreds and said that they wanted to have my darshan. Even policemen exhibited the same feelings. In the history of the Indian political struggle, the police has always been the staunchest supporters of the Government. They had in fact little sympathy with political workers and often acted harshly towards them. They had also undergone a transformation of sentiment and were not behind any other group in their feeling of loyalty to the Congress.

Once when I was passing along Lal Bazar in Calcutta, my car was held up by a traffic jam. Some police constables recognised me and reported to their barracks which were nearby. In a few minutes a large gathering of constables and head constables surrounded my car. They saluted me, and some touched my feet. They all expressed their regard for Congress and said that they would act according to our orders.

I remember another incident clearly. The Governor of Bengal had expressed a wish to meet me. When I went to the Government House, the constables on duty surrounded my car and as I came out each man came up individually and saluted me. They all assured me that they would act according to my orders. Since I had gone to the Government House at the invitation of the Governor, I did not think it proper that there should be any slogans. The constables would not however keep quiet and they shouted slogans in my honour. This was clear evidence that their sympathies were with Congress and they were no longer afraid of expressing them openly. If the Government wished to punish them for their sympathy with Congress, they were even ready for it.

These developments were naturally reported to the authorities. Government received detailed reports and passed them on to the Secretary of State for India. The British realised that for the first time in Indian history, the entire people were aflame with the desire for independence. Political freedom was no longer the objective of the Congress alone but of all sections of the people. Still more important was the fact that all sections of the Services — Civil and Military — were moved by the same impulses. There was no longer anything secret about this upsurge for freedom. Men and officers of the defence forces declared openly that they had poured out their blood in the war on the assurance that India would be free after the cessation of hostilities. They demanded that this assurance must now be honoured.

Maulana Azad, president of Indian National Congress. Calcutta, 1945

(source pages 133-35 Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad: “India Wins Freedom” London: Orient Longman, 1988.)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Orient Longman 1988)

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Negotiations for Independence

_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta_________________________

_____Contemporary Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___

THE GOVERNMENT

POLITICALLY, India is composed of two parts, the one called "British India" and the other, "the Indian States." Both are subject to the authority of a Governor General, known as the Viceroy, appointed by the British Government in London. He is assisted by a Council of 15 members whom he appoints. He and his Council have final authority in India, but they are subject to the rule of the British Parliament back home.

In British India there is a central legislative assembly elected by the people which makes laws and votes on the spending of the government's money, except appropriations for defense. The legislature has wide powers although the Viceroy may veto its actions if he so wishes. British India has 11 provinces each of which has a governor appointed by London. Also in each province there is a legislature elected by the people. The system is somewhat like that of our own country where we have a Federal Government in Washington and a Government in each State which deals with local affairs.

Each of the provinces of British India has roughly 25 districts, with a capital and a group of civil-service officials to administer it. The head officer in any district is the magistrate. Usually an Indian, he is also the liaison man for his district with the outside world. At district headquarters there is also a doctor and the superintendent of police, plus other officials who deal with problems of agriculture, forestry, and public health. If you want to get something from the Government, the place to go is district headquarters. It is customary for army officers to call on the magistrate and the police chief when they arrive in a district.

In the Indian states, government is organized differently. These states are ruled by Indian princes who have treaties with the British Government under which they have surrendered all control over their foreign affairs, but have retained the right to run their own internal business. Some of the biggest states have small armies, all the larger ones have at least police forces. There are 562 of these states, whose princes may have curious names, such as the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar or the Wali of Swat. The largest is about the size of Kansas; one of the smallest, Bilbari, has a total population of 27 and an area of 1¾ square miles. The Indian states, scattered all over the country, all together make up about two-fifths of India.

In British India there are schools, hospitals, irrigation works and many other things which the country needs. Many of the Indian States have the same sort of advantages and some are even more progressive. There are others which have made almost no modern progress. The reason is that in the Indian States, the ruler is able to do as he pleases, within limits. When he wishes, the state is well governed. When he spends the state's money on luxuries and takes no interest in the welfare of his people, conditions are most appalling.

Many of the improvements in living conditions and in political development of the Indian people have come about in the last 50 years. You may think there is a good deal more to be done. There is. At the same time, you should realize that much has been done and that the problem in India has been partly one of how fast it is possible to advance.

(source: “A Pocket Guide to India” Special Service Division, Army Service Forces, United States Army. War and Navy Departments Washington D.C [early 1940s]: at: http://cbi-theater-2.home.comcast.net/booklet/guide-to-india.html)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)

There is a great deal of feeling in India that the country should be entirely self-governing …

There is a great deal of feeling in India that the country should be entirely self-governing and no controlled at all by the British Parliament. A number of Indian parties exist which are trying to get full self-government, but they do not entirely agree with one another on the details of how this self-government should be organized.

The strongest party is the Indian National Congress, most of whose members are Hindu. Its chief leaders are Mohandas Gandhi, called Mahatma, meaning "great soul" and Jawaharlal Nehru, both of whom are Hindus, and Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, a Moslem, who is the president of the party. Most members of the Congress wear round white caps shaped somewhat like an American soldier's service cap. The Congress wants the British to give the government of India completely over to the Indian people.

(source: “A Pocket Guide to India” Special Service Division, Army Service Forces, United States Army. War and Navy Departments Washington D.C [early 1940s]: at: http://cbi-theater-2.home.comcast.net/booklet/guide-to-india.html)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)

Definition of Non-Violence

On the eve of India's ponderous election campaign (the provincial elections will continue for four or five months), Lord Wavell spoke his mind on the mounting spirit of violence. Said he emphatically: India's political problem "cannot and will not be resolved by violence. . . . No solution will be satisfactory that would result in chaos, bloodshed. .

The same day, in Calcutta's imposing Government House, he granted an audience sought by Mohandas K. Gandhi. For an hour they talked privately. When Gandhi emerged he gave fresh meaning to the Viceroy's words. To the waiting crowd he said: "India has attained her great position in the East because of her message of peace."

Next day the influential Working Committee of the All-India Congress Party pinpointed a closer definition. Resolved the Committee: the policy of non-violence . . . "does not include burning public property, cutting telegraph wires, derailing trains, and intimidation."

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, Dec. 24, 1945)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)

Slaves, Promises, Passions

By every sign & portent this would be India's year of decision—a decision that would be bitterly contested by all three partners to India's future: the British Raj, 256 million Hindus, 92 million Moslems.

Votes & Issues. As the year opened, Secretary of State for India Lord Pethick-Lawrence dutifully reiterated Britain's old promise: she would do all she could to help India reach Dominion status. For over three years, in one form or another, Britain had been offering just that—postwar independence inside the Empire (i.e., Dominion status), provided Indians could agree among themselves on what form of self-rule they wanted. Hindus wanted a united, free India; Moslems wanted a separate state for themselves (Pakistan) inside a free India. Both Hindus and Moslems wanted the British to get out.

Last week the results of the first election in eleven years for the Central Legislative Assembly were announced. Because of franchise restrictions, which made them among the least representative of India's elections, only about 600,000 voted. In this preliminary test, the predominantly Hindu Congress Party won all the non-Moslem seats (56) and the Moslem

League won all the Moslem seats (30); minor groups won 16, with 39 members still to be nominated.

Words & Moods. In the far more significant provincial elections (30,000,000 voters), to be held between January and April, the issue will be Pakistan—whether or not to slice off the four predominantly Moslem provinces in India's northwest corner, plus Bengal and Assam in the east, as a separate Moslem land.

The Moslem League's shrewd, elegant President Mohamed AH Jinnah put it coolly: "India has never been a nation. It only looks that way on a map. ... I want to eat the cow the Hindu worships. When the Hindu shakes hands with me, he must go wash his hands. Our religion is not all. Culture, history, customs, all make Moslem India a different nation from Hindu India. The Moslem has nothing in common with the Hindu except his slavery to the British."

The Congress Party's grim, potent boss, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who hates Jinnah almost as much as he does the British, was openly scornful of both. The Moslem League, he said, had won electoral advantages during the war by stooping to aid Britain. "Do I think the British are sincere," he asked, "in their promise to leave India? They have been making promises ever since Queen Victoria's time, and they have always broken them."

While Hindus and Moslems were snarling at each other, Jawaharlal Nehru, ardent champion of Indian independence, summed up for them and for the world India's New Year's mood: "[We] will not willingly submit to any empire or any domination, and will revolt against it. It will be a continuing revolt of millions, with a passion behind it which even the atomic bomb will not suppress."

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, Jan. 14, 1946)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)

Impetuous Pandit

india's biggest political party contains many likeable men. Prominent among them is Pandit Nehru, perhaps in large part because, though silver-haired now, he is manifestly still very young at heart. Boyishness in statesmen, and the buoyancy of spirits it gives, have advantages. Mr Churchill is a conspicuous recent exemplar of them. But they have drawbacks too; and these, we think, are exemplified in Pandit Nehru's impetuous conduct this week.

Kashmir's problems may be important. We confess that we find some of them hard to understand. But manifestly they are less important than the negotiations in Delhi for agreeing upon a framework to the future constitution of the whole of India, and for the speediest possible formation of a strong and representative Interim Central Government. While these negotiations were still incomplete, indeed while they were in a very delicate phase, Pandit Nehru, the President-designate of this country's biggest political party, chose to go off at a tangent, off on a provocative mission to distant Kashmir. We have failed. to see the necessity for this venture.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, June 22, 1946)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

Maps and Chaps

MR Bevin's speech at a dinner given in London to Mr Asaf Ali was, we imagine, spontaneous. His reference to "the threat of Russian imperialism and the financial imperialism of the USA" seems strange commentary on his own exchanges with Generalissimo Stalin and the assurances recently given by Lord Inverchapel to Mr George Marshall. It is a salutary exercise for foreign secretaries to look at maps. But it was, we think, in the first of his published clerihews that Mr E. C. Bentley cogently observed:

The Art of Biography

Is different from Geography,

Geography is about Maps,

But Biography is about Chaps.

In looking at the map of India and its neighbours, Mr Bevin perhaps forgot about the chaps. Mr Asaf Ali might well, considering his own ambassadorial status, have felt, as he said, "overwhelmed" by the seeming hint that India should take seriously this friendship not of the country to which he is accredited, nor of Russia but only of Britain. He did well in his reply to emphasize that India wanted to be friendly with everybody.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, February 17, 1947)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

"Mr Gandhi"

WHO is "Mr M. K. Gandhi"? Reflection identifies him; but the unusual phrase somewhat Jars. Nevertheless it appeared in the Court Circular announcing his talk on Tuesday with Sir John Colville [Governor of Bombay] —just as in the pompous insensitive days when the resplendent Imperial palace in New Delhi was opened nearly twenty years ago. The same Circular termed Pandit Nehru "Hon'ble". He and at least some of his colleagues are widely believed to dislike that prefix. If so, would it not be gracious in these changed times, to omit it?

India, and the world, know Mr Gandhi. They know, Mahatma Gandhi too, or (some of them) "Mahatmaii", But Mr M. K. Gandhi—no. The unfamiliar form seems vaguely derogatory, discourteous. Other holders of his family name— which he has made so renowned—need public differentiation by their first names or their initials—not he.

From the Viceroy's House much chilly stiffness and formality have already been enterprisingly banished by Lord Mountbatten and his wife since their arrival in March. Admittedly, few callers not born to the purple could ever feel quite normal in a building of such excessive grandeur; but several deft innovations on the new occupants' initiative, have made it less forbidding, a friendlier place than before. Visitors both Indian and British have been numerous—the former particularly—and seem to feel more at home. Further unparalleled development —the Viceroy's ADCs nowadays, like the C-in-C's are not all British. Already from Viceregal Court Circulars some of the antique official phrases that rather jarred on the sensitive have been dropped—though not yet from the Circulars about the doings of certain provincial Governors—smaller fry who might all fittingly fall in step with New Delhi's sensible lead. For example we cannot remember yet to have read of Lord or Lady Mountbatten "honouring" so-and-so "with their presence" at such-and-such function. Nor do they "grant interviews" to important callers—they merely receive them. Such genial changes were quickly noticed, and commented upon with pleasure. We venture therefore to suggest that, when India's most famous man next visits the Viceroy's House, It should be announced that plain uninitialled "Mr Gandhi" has done so.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, May 29. 1947)

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Indian India

WE have no affection for the Indian States. This is a liberal, democratic, independent newspaper, traditionally among the upholders in this country of the down-trodden, of minority interests, of "the little man". Such democracy as exists in the States is in the main reluctant, granted belatedly and grudgingly from mere force of modernizing pressures. All retain the autocratic principle, which is democracy's negation, reaction's friend. Some are or have been tyrannical, inefficient, grossly maladministered. In many more there has existed conspicuously wasteful ostentation, coupled with callousness towards the poor and active victimization of political dissidents. Freedom-loving Britons—and this British newspaper—have long felt misgivings, nay at times shame, that the British Raj in India has latterly in part upheld itself by support from antique despotisms, a proportion of them undeniably effete and corrupt.

Nevertheless, it is also undeniable that among the larger States, are some not only capably governed, and enlightened in some particulars—but strong. Most of them have contrived to escape involvement in the virtual civil war which in recent months has ravaged British India—an impressive fact. Monarchy in this country yet shows itself in diverse ways to have surprisingly deep roots.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, June 18, 1947)

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_____22nd December, 1939 Resignation of Congress Provincial governments____________________________________

_____1942 Cripps Mission_________________________________

Goodbye, Mr Cripps

THE men who take their colour from Moscow are all coming out in a rash of spots. Their former professed sympathies with Czechoslovakia, Poland, and China prove completely worthless and their dislike o£ Hitler and Nazis equally superficial. Aggression is no longer aggression if Stalin commits it.

Sir Stafford Cripps sounded most sincere a few months ago. He was even pleading with the extremist Left to range themselves manfully behind Mr Chamberlain in a common effort to save Europe from Hitler. Now he finds that the point of "supreme importance" is that there should be "a strong and powerful Russia" and he thinks that she is free from blame in regard to Finland and would be Justified in "taking every step to strengthen her position". Every step' Like the sky apparently the new slavery has no limit. Is Sir Stafford. Cripps coming to preach this vile doctrine in India ?

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, December 5, 1939)

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Final resolution of Cripps Mission

STATEMENT AND DRAFT DECLARATION BY HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT WITH CORRESPONDENCE AND RESOLUTIONS CONNECTED THEREWITH (Sir Stafford Cripps' Mission to India)

Draft Declaration for Discussion with Indian Leaders Published 30th March, 1942

India White Paper, London, 1942.

The conclusions of the British War Cabinet as set out below are those which Sir Stafford Cripps has taken with him for discussion with the Indian Leaders and the question as to whether they will be implemented will depend upon the outcome of these discussions which are now taking place.

His Majesty's Government, having considered the anxieties expressed in this country and in India as to the fulfillment of the promises made in regard to the future of India, have decided to lay down in precise and clear terms the steps which they propose shall be taken for the earliest possible realisation of self-government in India. The object is the creation of a new Indian Union which shall constitute a Dominion, associated with the United Kingdom and the other Dominions by a common allegiance to the Crown, but equal to them in every respect, in no way subordinate in any aspect of its domestic or external affairs.

His Majesty's Government therefore make the following declaration:-

(a) Immediately upon the cessation of hostilities, steps shall be taken to set up in India, in the manner described hereafter, an elected body charged with the task of framing a new Constitution for India.

(b) Provision shall be made, as set out below, for the participation of the Indian States in the constitution-making body.

(c) His Majesty's Government undertake to accept and implement forthwith the Constitution so framed subject only to:-

(i) the right of any Province of British India that is not prepared to accept the new Constitution to retain its present constitutional position, provision being made for its subsequent accession if it so decides.

With such non-acceding Provinces, should they so desire, His Majesty's Government will be prepared to agree upon a new Constitution, giving them the same full status as the Indian Union, and arrived at by a procedure analogous to that here laid down.

(ii) the signing of a Treaty which shall be negotiated between His Majesty's Government and the constitution-making body. This Treaty will cover all necessary matters arising out of the complete transfer of responsibility from British to Indian hands; it will make provision, in accordance with the undertakings given by His Majesty's Government, for the protection of racial and religious minorities; but will not impose any restriction on the power of the Indian Union to decide in the future its relationship to the other Member States of the British Commonwealth.

Whether or not an Indian State elects to adhere to the Constitution, it will be necessary to negotiate a revision of its Treaty arrangements, so far as this may be required in the new situation.

(d) the constitution-making body shall be composed as follows, unless the leaders of Indian opinion in the principal communities agree upon some other form before the end of hostilities:-

Immediately upon the result being known of the provincial elections which will be necessary at the end of hostilities, the entire membership of the Lower Houses of the Provincial Legislatures shall, as a single electoral college, proceed to the election of the constitution-making body by the system of proportional representation. This new body shall be in number about one-tenth of the number of the electoral college.

Indian States shall be invited to appoint representatives in the same proportion to their total population as in the case of the representatives of British India as a whole, and with the same powers as the British Indian members.

(e) During the critical period which now faces India and until the new Constitution can be framed His Majesty's Government must inevitably bear the responsibility for and retain control and direction of the defence of India as part of their world war effort, but the task of organising to the full the military, moral and material resources of India must be the responsibility of the Government of India with the co-operation of the peoples of India. His Majesty's Government desire and invite the immediate and effective participation of the leaders of the principal sections of the Indian people in the counsels of their country, of the Commonwealth and of the United Nations. Thus they will be enabled to give their active and constructive help in the discharge of a task which is vital and essential for the future freedom of India.

India White Paper, London, 1942.

(Source: http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1942/420330a.html seen 25.06.2003)

American soldiers should keep out of argument on this controversy

After the Cripps Mission in the spring of 1942 failed to reach a solution with the Indian parties to India's bewildering political problems, Gandhi began preparations for a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience and non-cooperation. This weapon has been frequently used. Its principle is to avoid the use of violence but to refuse to work, to refuse to obey Government orders, to paralyze the country by strikes in shops, stores, and communications. When the campaign was attempted in the summer of 1942, the British authorities arrested Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and other Congress Party leaders.

You can see how complicated all this matter is. The British say that they will give India full self-government after the war but claim that they cannot do so now when the Indian parties disagree among themselves. Many Indians, on the other hand, want full self-government now and believe if it is granted, their political differences could be settled.

American soldiers should keep out of argument on this controversy with either British or Indians, no matter where their sympathy lies. Americans are in India to fight the Axis. You should stick to that and not try to settle the Indian political problem. What we want is to cooperate with both the British and Indians to beat the Japanese. Your place is to keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.

(source: “A Pocket Guide to India” Special Service Division, Army Service Forces, United States Army. War and Navy Departments Washington D.C [early 1940s]: at: http://cbi-theater-2.home.comcast.net/booklet/guide-to-india.html)

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Q. E. D.

GREAT Britain says India is to have Dominion Status as defined in the Statute of Westminster very soon. Dominion Status of the Westminster type carries the right to secede from the Empire and declare complete independence. The Congress and the Moslem League agree in choosing independence. Therefore India will have complete independence.

The Congress says the whole of India must be one independent country. The Princes say they will refuse to belong to this country in those circumstances and will fight for the independence of their States. Mr Jinnah and the Moslem League say that the Moslems will form completely independent sovereign States with contiguous frontiers in the North and East.

It follows that India is headed for a smash. Mr Gandhi on the eve of Ramgarh wrote that the British troops would be expected to remain for a period. He wrote as if this would be pleasing to Britain and would of course be accepted. But this cannot be so. Under Dommion Status no British troops could be stationed or used in this country for any purpose except to reinforce Indian troops against a foreign foe. The issue between Congress and the Moslems would have to be settled by themselves. Parliament would never consent to the employment of British troops to preserve internal order after divesting itself of all responsibility for internal government.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, March 25, 1940)

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Not a Failure

SIR Stafford Cripps has not yet succeeded, but what he has set out to do will nevertheless happen. In his announcement of seeming failure, uttered in the admirable temper of a gifted man seeking solely to serve the right, he says with considerable understatement that we revert "not quite perhaps" to the position as it was before he came out, and that the discussions will influence the future. They are indeed today's history, product of the past and parent of a near future. For the relentless pressure of a deadly and powerful enemy increases. The military news is worse, not better.

It would be easy to blame the Congress and the other parties for the failure to reach a working agreement on the basis of the War Cabinet's proposals. At a time when every day is important the Congress seemed incapable of quick decisions and led many to think that its long association with pacifism had made it doubtful of its capacity to produce the necessary enthusiasm for defence and deliver the goods in war. But the only blame really worth apportioning is where it can be remedied and where lies the root of the present temporary failure. The blame lies with the India Office and the official section of the Government of'India.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, April 12, 1942)

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_____1942 Quit India Movement_________________________

_____1945 Simla Conference ___________________________

Freedom

No armies were marching, no fleets deploying, no bombs falling when the world's richest colony received its offer of freedom. It was 8 o'clock in the evening of May 16. At that moment, in Room 63 of the circular Council House of New Delhi, the British rulers of India voluntarily went on record before their subjects and the world with a plan—not a weasel-worded promise nor a string-tied offer, but a concrete plan—for the government of an independent, unified India.

The Indian factions facing each other across the table at Simla had not been able to agree on the independence they all demanded. The predominantly Hindu All-India National Congress insisted on a strong central government for all of India. Mohamed Ali Jinnah's Moslem League insisted that the Moslems should have an independent state of Pakistan, separate from Hindu India. At Simla both advanced from these extreme positions, but they never reached common ground.

Off India's Back. They left it to the British Raj to build a "sturdy central pier" (as the London Times called the May 16 White Paper) "requiring only a comparatively short span from either side" to bridge the gulf between Moslem and Hindu. Pakistan was rejected. Instead, the plan set up a union of all India with a central government to control defense, foreign affairs and communications; it could raise revenues for those functions. To please the Moslems the White Paper offered the possibility of strong regional governments which could plan their own economic and social development. Two would be in the areas demanded for Pakistan, one in the predominantly Hindu group. Any measure involving a major "communal" issue must be approved by the majority of both religious groups in the union legislature.

The British proposed two intermediate steps leading to a final transfer of power: 1) the Viceroy will set up an interim all-Indian cabinet; 2) the provincial assemblies and the princes' states will send delegates to a constituent assembly to frame a permanent constitution for India.

Through Mohandas Gandhi the Congress Party indicated that it will support the British plan. He said: "The mission and the Viceroy are as God-fearing as we ourselves claim to be. Whatever the wrong done to India by British rule, if the statement of the mission is genuine, as I believe it is, it is in discharge of an obligation they have declared the British owed toward India, namely, to get off India's back."

Note of Regret. Winston Churchill, who called the White Paper an "able but melancholy document," realized with a note of regret that the Empire was, indeed, in liquidation. "No one will doubt," he said, "the sincerity and earnestness with which the Cabinet ministers and the Viceroy have labored to bring about a solution of the Indian difficulty . . . with a zeal which would be natural were it to gain an empire, not to cast it away."

The Britons whose statesmanship had produced the plan for India—Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps, A. V. Alexander, Lord Wavell—were determined to push through a solution. Their able spokesman, aging Pethick-Lawrence (74), told correspondents: "What will happen if one person ... or groups of people in some way tried to put spanners [monkey wrenches] in the wheels, I am not prepared at this stage precisely to say; but the intention is to get on with the job."

The spanner thrower they had in mind was Jinnah. If he refuses to cooperate, the Congress will likely go ahead and form an interim government. Jinnah would then have a clear choice between cooperation and civil war.

Nearby, strategic Ceylon also moved closer to independence last week. London announced a new constitution which will bring Ceylon to the "threshold of Dominion status," with self-government, except in defense and foreign affairs. But across the Bay of Bengal the British would promise Burma nothing more than a new election and broader popular government before June 1947, "if all goes well."

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, May. 27, 1946)

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_____1946 Cabinet Mission______________________________

The Cabinet Mission

THE British Government's decision to send a special Cabinet Mission to India shows imagination, resolve and timing, qualities not always present in dealings with India, It has precedents in the missions of Mr Edwin Montagu and Sir Stafford, Cripps, but even the second was not quite so far-reaching. For practical purposes, the presence of the Ministers will mean that a Cabinet Committee is constantly in session on Indian soil, ready to take whatever decisions are necessary, in full knowledge that they are unlikely to be overruled either by the Cabinet as a whole or by Parliament. It is a wise and courageous step which we welcome without qualification.

Yet it would be absurd to suppose that the British Government's admirable plan has found or even begun to find the answer to the political riddle. It would lie unfair too to those, distinguished men who are coming out to help in finding a reply to questions which the Sphinx could not have devised nor Oedipus answered. Among them is Sir Stafford Cripps, taken away from his important position in the export drive so necessary to Britain, to seek, despite the disillusion of 1942, another solution which may be accepted as final in conditions which are vastly more complicated than four years ago. But hopes of success cannot be pinned on a "Cripps offer, or a Pethick-Lawrence; or an Alexander offer. Without agreement between Indians, failure is inevitable. Some would welcome an imposed solution, provided It were in the interests they represent. We regard it as out of the question. ''

All the Cabinet Mission can do is to help Hindus and Muslims to adjust their demands. The ultimate responsibility is Hindu and Muslim, Congress and League. Beside these giant communities and parties others have ceased to count; even the British Government counts for little except to confirm what is decided.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, February 21, 1946)

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No Alternative

FOR India these are days of destiny. Probably before the end of May, even perhaps in less than a week, will be decided the great question whereon now hangs the future well-being of her people ; whether the plan propounded on Thursday by the British Cabinet Mission will be worked by her two main parties. Comment from Indian spokesmen generally was at the-outset commendably restrained—more so indeed than from Mr Churchill, one passage at least of whose rather long statement in Parliament bore, we think, signs of misconception through haste.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, May 18, 1946)

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_____1946 Constituent Assembly_______________________

Mr Nehru's Lead

THROUGH the cloud of comment on the British Government's latest statement, comment apprehensive, cautious, churlish, jubilant, negative and customarily suspicious in various proportions, breaks generous warmth. Pandit 'Nehru's own statement begins carefully as is the party man's wont; then his real personality takes charge. Courageous and sincere himself, chivalrous in a good cause, he recognizes courage and sincerity in others.

The Constituent Assembly, which has already gone fast and far, must, Mr Nehru says, work still faster, it "can only proceed with its work on a voluntary basis. There can be no compulsion except the compulsion of events, which none can ignore.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, February 23, 1947)

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Reluctant Nagas

LEGAL arguments lately used in the Constituent Assembly are hardly likely to affect the Nagas one way or the other about proclaiming independence—as some of them plan to do for August 15. These remote hill people are uninterested in the intricacies of constitutional procedure; their ideas are simple and direct. They say—rather like their fellow hillmen of the NW frontier—that they did not know foreign influence until the British came; therefore when the British go they expect nobody to take the British place. Most Nagas have no interests beyond their terraced rice-fields, and foresee no administrative problems, following the foreigners' departure.

For others, however, the war has much expanded horizons—and ambition. They believe they largely stopped the Japanese from getting into India in 1944, and 14th Army commanders have applauded their prowess. The cry of Naga freedom rang through the hills then, its echoes have not died yet in Naga hearts and present legalities will not hush it. Nagas—even those whose own fathers were headhunters—say "Better poverty than bondage", and it would be a mistake to consider this parrot-repetition of a mere phrase.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, August 4, 1947)

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_____September 1946 The Interim Government________

Interim

FORMATION of a Government at the Centre by the Congress is announced. The event is a great one in India's history, perhaps the most crucial in her political development during the entire two centuries of the Indo-British connexion. All who have at heart the welfare of this huge land's inhabitants and particularly of the simple non-political multitudes whose prime need is bur peace and fair livelihood, must wish it good fortune.

Within it will be some men of first-class ability, recognized and revered representatives of this country's biggest political body, who, in the confidence of reflecting iis sentiments, should be able to formulate progressive policies of a sort long beyond the capacity of quasi-bureaucratic Executive Council. Its first weeks of office will be watched with anxious, sympathetic interest by folk of liberal opinions in India, Britain and abroad. It is assured of a large available fund of initial goodwill upon which to draw.^:

We confess, however, to disappointment and misgiving in one particular. The catastrophe of the Great Calcutta Killing, a tragedy unparalleled in India's tragic communal history, was we think amply large enough to call for such a special gesture from the Congress—as it also is to Justify early reversal by the (Muslim) League of its demonstrated disastrous July 29 policies. Instead, several of these seats are to be filled by "nationalist" Muslims, men who as last winter's elections clearly showed, have miserably scant support from India's Muslim population.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, August 25, 1946)

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_____Declaration of 20th February, 1947_____________

_____Round Table Conference_________________________

_____ July 1947 Indian Independence Act______________

INDIAN INDEPENDENCE ACT, 1947

10&11.GE0.6.CH.30

ARRANGEMENT OF SECTIONS

SECTION

1. The new Dominions.

2. Territories of the new Dominions.

3. Bengal and Assam.

4. The Punjab.

5. The Governor-General of the new Dominions.

6. Legislation for the new Dominions.

7. Consequences of the setting up of the new Dominions.

8. Temporary provision as to government of each of the new Dominions.

9. Orders for bringing this Act into force.

10. Secretary of State's Services, &c.

11. Indian armed forces,

12. British forces in India,

13. Naval forces.

14. Provisions as to the Secretary of State and the Auditor of Indian Home Accounts.

15. Legal proceedings by and against the Secretary of State.

16. Aden.

17. Divorce jurisdiction.

18. Provisions as to existing laws, &c.

19. Interpretation, &c.

20. Short title.

SCHEDULES

First Schedule - Bengal Districts provisionally included in the new Province of East Bengal, Second Schedule - Districts provisionally included in the new Province of West Punjab, Third Schedule - Modifications of Army Act and Air Force Act in relation to British forces.

CHAPTER 30

An Act to make provision for the setting up in India of two independent Dominions, to substitute other provisions for certain provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935, which apply outside those Dominions, and to provide for other matters consequential on or connected with the setting up of those Dominions.

(18thJulyl947)

BE it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

The new Dominions

1. (1) As from the fifteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, two independent Dominions shall be set up in India, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan.

(2) The said Dominions arc here after in this Act referred to as "the new Dominions", and the said fifteenth day of August is hereafter in this Act referred to as "the appointed day".

Territories of the new Dominions

2. (1) Subject to the provisions of subsections (3) and (4) of this section, the territories of India shall he the territories under the sovereignty of His Majesty which, immediately before the appointed day. were included in British India except the territories which, under subsection (2) of this section, arc to be the territories of Pakistan,

(2) Subject to the provisions of subsections (3) and (4) of this section, the territories of Pakistan shall be—

(a) the territories which, on the appointed day, are included in the Provinces of East Bengal and West Punjab, as constituted under the two following sections;

(b) the territories which, at the date of the passing of this Act, are included in the Province of Sind and the Chief Commissioner's Province of British Baluchistan; and

(c) if, whether before or after the passing of this Act but before the appointed day, the Governor-General declares that the majority of the valid votes cast in the referendum which, at the date of the passing of this Act, is being or has recently been held in that behalf under his authority in the North West Frontier Province are in favour of representatives of that Province taking part in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, the territories which, at the date of the passing of this Act, are included in that Province.

(3) Nothing in this section shall prevent any area being at any time included in or excluded from either of the new Dominions, so, however, that—

(a) no area not forming part of the territories specified in subsection (1) or, as the case maybe, subsection (2), of this section shall be included in either Dominion without the consent of that Dominion; and

(b) no area which forms part of the territories specified in the said subsection (1) or, as the case maybe, the said subsection (2), or which has after the appointed day been included in either Dominion, shall be excluded from that Dominion without the consent of that Dominion.

(4) Without prejudice to the generality of the provisions of subsection (3) of this section, nothing in this section shall be construed as preventing the accession of Indian Slates 10 either of the new Dominions.

Bengal and Assam

3. (1) As from the appointed day—

(a) the Province of Bengal, as constituted under the Government of India Act, 1935 [26 Geo.5 & 1 Edw.S c.2.], shall cease to exist; and

(b) there shall be constituted in lieu thereof two new Provinces, to be known respectively as East Bengal and West Bengal.

(2) If, whether before or after the passing of this Act, but before the appointed day, the Governor-General declares that the majority of the valid votes cast in the referendum which, at the date of the passing of this Act, is being or has recently been held in [hat behaif under his authority in the District of Sylhet are in favour of" that District forming part of the new Province of East Bengal, then, as from that day, a part of the Province of Assam shall, in accordance with the provisions of subsection (3) of this section, form part of the new Province of East Bengal.

(3) The boundaries of the new Provinces aforesaid and, in the event mentioned in subsection (2) of this section, the boundaries after the appointed day of the Province of Assam, shall be such as may be determined, whether before or after the appointed day, by the award of a boundary commission appointed or to be appointed by the Governor-General in that behalf, but until the boundaries are so determined—

(a) the Bengal Districts specified in the First Schedule to this Act, together with in the event mentioned in subsection (2) of this section the Assam District of Sylhet, shall be treated as the territories which are to be comprised in the new Province of East Bengal;

(b) the remainder of the territories comprised at the date of the passing of this Ac! in the Province of Bengal shall be treated as the territories which arc to be comprised in the new Province of West Bengal; and

(c) in the event mentioned in subsection (2) of this section, the District of Sylhet shall he excluded from the Province of Assam.

(4) In this section, the expression "award" means, in relation to a boundary commission, the decisions of the chairman of that commission contained in his report to the Governor-General at the conclusion of the commission's proceedings.

The Punjab

4. (l)As from the appointed day—

(a) the Province of the Punjab, as constituted under the Government of India Act, 1935, shall cease to exist; and

(b) there shall be constituted two new Provinces, to be known respectively as West Punjab and East Punjab,

(2) The boundaries of the said new Provinces shall be such as may be determined, whether before or after the appointed day, by the award of a boundary commission appointed or [o he appointed by the Governor-General in that behalf, but until the boundaries are so determined—

(a) the Districts specified in the Second Schedule to this Act shall be treated as the territories to be comprised in the new Province of West Punjab, and

(b) the remainder of the territories comprised at the date of the passing of this Act in the Province of the Punjab shall be treated as the territories which are to be comprised in the new Province of East Punjab.

(3) In this section, the expression "award", means, in relation to a boundary commission, the decisions of the chairman of that commission contained in his report to the Governor-General at the conclusion of the commission's proceedings.

The Governor-General of the new Dominions

5. For each of the new Dominions, there shall be a Governor-General who shall be appointed by His Majesty and shall represent His Majesty for the purposes of the government of the Dominion:

Provided that, unless and until provision to (he contrary is made by a law of the Legislature of either of the new Dominions, the same person may be Governor-General of both the new Dominions.

Legislation for the new Dominions

6. (1) The Legislature of each of the new Dominions shall have full power to make laws for that Dominion, including laws having extra-territorial operation.

(2) No law and no provision of any law made by the Legislature of either of the new Dominions shall be void or inoperative on the ground that it is repugnant to the law of England, or to the provisions of this or any existing or future Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, or to any order, rule or regulation made under any such Act, and the powers of the Legislature of each Dominion include the power to repeal or amend any such Act, order, rule or regulation in so far as it is part of the law of the Dominion,

(3) The Governor-General of each of the new Dominions shall have full power to assent In His Majesty's name to any law of me Legislature of that Dominion and so much of any Act as relates to the disallowance of laws by His Majesty or the reservation of laws for the signification of His Majesty's pleasure Thereon or the suspension of the operation of laws until the signification of His Majesty's pleasure thereon shall not apply to laws of the Legislature of either of me new Dominions.

(4) No Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on or after the appointed day shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to either of the new Dominion; as part of the law of that Dominion unless it is extended thereto by a law of the Legislature of the Dominion.

(5) No Order in Council made on or after the appointed day under any Act passed before the appointed day, and no order, rule or other instrument made on or after the appointed day under any such Act by any United Kingdom Minister or other authority, shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to either of the new Dominions as part of the law of that Dominion.

(6) The power referred to a subsection (1) of this section extends to the making of laws limiting for the future the powers of the Legislature of the Dominion,

Consequences of the setting up of the new Dominions

7. (1) As from the appointed day—

(a) His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom have no responsibility as respects the government of any of the territories which, immediately before that day, were included in British India;

(b) the suzerainty of His -Majesty over the Indian States lapses, and with it, all treaties and agreements in force at the date of the passing of this Act between His Majesty and the rulers of Indian Stales, all functions exercisable by His Majesty at that date with respect to Indian State's, all obligations of His Majesty existing at that date towards Indian States or the rulers thereof, and all powers, rights, authority or jurisdiction exercisable by His Majesty at that date in or in relation to Indian States by treaty, grant, usage, sufferance or otherwise; and

(c) there lapse also any treaties or agreements in force at the date of the passing of this Act between His Majesty and any persons having authority in the tribal areas, any obligations of His Majesty existing at that date and all powers, rights, authority or jurisdiction exercisable at that date by His Majesty in or in relation to the tribal areas by treaty, grant, usage, sufferance or otherwise:

Provided that, notwithstanding anything in paragraph (b) or paragraph (c) of this subsection, effect shall, as nearly as may be continue to be given to the provisions of any such agreement as is therein referred to which relate to customs, transit and communications, posts and telegraphs, or other like matters, until the provisions in question are denounced by the Ruler of the Indian State or person having authority in the tribal areas on the one hand, or by the Dominion or Province or other part thereof concerned on the other hand or are superseded by subsequent agreements.'

(2) The assent of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is hereby given to the omission from the Royal Style and Titles of the words "Indiae Imperator" and the words "Emperor of India" and to the issue by His Majesty for that purpose of His Royal Proclamation under the Great Seal of the Realm.

Temporary provisions to government of each of the new Dominions

8. (1) In the case of each of the new Dominions, the powers of the Legislature of the Dominion shall, for the purpose of making provisions as to the Constitution of the Dominion, be exercisable in the first instance by the Constituent Assembly of that Dominion, and references in this Act to the Legislature of the Dominion shall be construed accordingly.

(2) Except in so far as other provision is made by or in accordance with a law made by the Constituent Assembly of the Dominion under subsection (1) of this section, each of the new Dominions and a!l Provinces and other parts thereof shall be governed as nearly as may be in accordance with the Government of India Act. 1935; and the provisions of that Act. and of the Orders in Council, rules and other instruments made thereunder, shall, so far as applicable, and subject to any express provisions of this Act, and with such omissions, additions, adaptations and modifications as may be specified in orders of the Governor-General under the next succeeding section, have effect accordingly: Provided that—

(a) the said provisions shall apply separately in relation to each of the new Dominions and nothing in this sub-section shall be construed as continuing on or after the appointed day any Central Government or Legislature common to both the new Dominions;

(b) nothing in this subsection shall be construed as continuing in force on or after the appointed day any form of control by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom over the affairs of the new Dominions or of any Province or other part thereof:

(c) so much of the said provisions as requires the Governor-General or any Governor to act in his discretion or exercise his individual judgement as respects any matter shall cease to have effect as from the appointed day;

(d) as from the appointed day, no Provincial Bill shall be reserved under the Government of India Act, 1935, for the signification of His Majesty's pleasure, and no Provincial Act shall be disallowed by His -Majesty thereunder; and

(e) the powers of the Federal Legislature or Indian Legislature under that Act, as in force in relation To each Dominion, shall, in the first instance, be exercisable by the Constituent Assembly of the Dominion in addition to the powers exercisable by that Assembly under subsection (1) of this section.

(3) Any provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935. which, as applied to either of the new Dominions by subsection (2) of this section and the orders therein referred to, operates to limit the power of the legislature of that Dominion shall, unless and until other provision is made by or in accordance with a law made by the Constituent Assembly of the Dominion in accordance with the provisions of subsection (1) of this section, have the like effect as a law of the Legislature of the Dominion limiting for the future the powers of that Legislature.

Orders for bringing this Act into force

9. (1) The Governor-General shall by order make such provision as appears to him to be necessary or expedient—

(a) for bringing the provisions of this Act into effective operation;

(b) for dividing between the new Dominions, and between the new Provinces to be constituted under this Act, the powers, rights, property, duties and liabilities of the Governor-General in Council or, as the case may be, of the relevant Provinces which, under this Act, are to cease to exist;

(c) for making omissions from, additions to. and adaptations and modifications of, the Government of India Act, 1935, and the Orders in Council, rules and other instruments made thereunder, in their application to the separate new Dominions;

(d) for removing difficulties arising hi connection with the transition to the provisions of this Act;

(e) for authorising the carrying on of the business of the Governor-General in Council between the passing of this Act and the appointed day otherwise than in accordance with the provisions in that behalf of the Ninth Schedule of the Government of India Act. 1935;

(f) for enabling agreements to be entered into and other acts done, on behalf of either of the new Dominions before the appointed day;

(g) for authorising the continued carrying on for the rime being on behalf of the new Dominions, or on behalf of any two or more of the said new Provinces, of services and activities previously carried on on behalf of British India as a whole or on behalf of the former Provinces which those new Provinces represent;

(h) for regulating the monetary system and any matters pertaining to the Reserve Bank of India; and

(i) so far as it appears necessary or expedient in connection with any oflhe matters aforesaid, for varying the constitution, powers or jurisdiction of any legislature, court or other authority in the new Dominions and creating new legislatures, courts or other authorities therein.

(2) The powers conferred by this section on the Governor-General shall in relation to their respective Provinces, be exercisable also by the Governors of the Provinces which, under this Act, are to cease to exist; and those powers shall, for the purposes of the Government of India Act, 1935, be deemed to be mailers as respects which the Governors are, under that Act, to exercise their individual judgment.

(3) This section shall be deemed to have had effect as from the third day of June, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, and any order of the Governor-General or any Governor made on or after that date as to any matter shall have effect accordingly, and any order made under this section may be made so as to be retrospective to any date not earlier than the said third day of June:

Provided that no person shall be deemed to be guilty of an offence by reason of so much of any such order as makes any provision thereof retrospective to any date before the making thereof.

(4) Any orders made under this section, whether before or after the appointed day, shall have effect—

(a) up to the appointed day, in British India;

(b) on and after the appointed day, in the new Dominion or Dominions concerned; and

(c) outside British India, or, as the case may be, outside the new Dominion or Dominions concerned, to such extent, whether before, on or after the appointed day, as a law of the Legislature of the Dominion or Dominions concerned would have on or after the appointed day but shall, in the case of each of the Dominions, be subject to the same powers of repeal and amendment as laws of the Legislature of that Dominion.

(5) No order shall be made under this section, by the Governor of any Province, after the appointed day, or, by the Governor-General, after the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and forty-eight, or such earlier date as may be determined, in ihe case of cither Dominion, by any law of the Legislature of that Dominion.

(6) If it appears that a pail of the Province of Assam is, on the appointed day, to become part of the new Province of Fast Bengal, the preceding provisions of this section shall have effect as if, under this Act, the Province of Assam was to cease to exist on the appointed day and be reconstituted on that day as a new Province.

Secretary of State & services, etc.

10. (1) The provisions of this Act keeping in force provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935, shall not continue in force the provisions of that Act relating to appointments to the civil services of, and civil posts under, the Crown in India by the Secretary of State, or the provisions of that Act relating to the reservation of posts.

(2) Every person who—

(a) having been appointed by the Secretary of State, or Secretary of State in Council, to a civil service of the Crown in India continues on and after the appointed day to serve under the Government of either of the new Dominions or of any Province or part thereof; or

(b) having been appointed by His Majesty before the appointed day to be a judge of the Federal Court or of any court which is a High Court within the meaning of the Government of India Act, 1935, continue, on and after the appointed day to serve as a Judge in either of the new Dominions,

shall be entitled to receive from the Governments of the Dominions and Provinces or parts which he is from time to time serving or, as the case may be, which are served by the courts in which he is from time to time a judge, the same conditions of service as respects renumeration, leave and pension, and the same rights as respects disciplinary matters or, as the case may be, as respects the tenure of his office, or rights as similar thereto as changed circumstances may permit, as that person was entitled to immediately before the appointed day.

(3) Nothing in this Act shall be construed as enabling the rights and liabilities of any person with respect to the family pension funds vested in Commissioners under section two hundred and seventy-three of the Government of India Act, 1935, to be governed otherwise than by Orders in Council made (whether before or after the passing of this Act or the appointed day) by His Majesty in Council and rules made (whether before or after the passing of this Act or the appointed day) by a Secretary of State or such other -Minister of the Crown as may be designated in that behalf by Order in Council under the Ministers of the Crown (Transfer of Functions) Act, 1946. [9&10Geo.6 c.31.]

Indian Armed forces

11. (1) The orders to be made by the Governor-General under the preceding provisions of this Act shall make provision for the division of the Indian armed forces of His Majesty between the new Dominions, and for the command and governance of those forces until the division is completed.

(2) As from the appointed day, while any member of His Majesty's forces, other than His Majesty's Indian forces, is attached to or serving with any of His -Majesty's Indian forces—

(a) he shall, subject to any provision to the contrary made by a law of the Legislature of the Dominion or Dominions concerned or by any order of this Act, have, in relation to the Indian forces in question, the powers of command and punishment appropriate to his rank and functions; but

(h) nothing in any enactment in force at the date of the passing of this Act shall render him subject in any way to the law governing the Indian forces in question.

British forces in India

12. (1) Nothing in this Act affects the jurisdiction or authority of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, or of me Admiralty, the Army Council, or the Air Council or of any other United Kingdom authority, in relation to any of His Majesty's forces which may, on or after the appointed day, be in either of the new Dominions or elsewhere in the territories which, before the appointed day, were included in India, not being Indian forces,

(2) in its application in relation to His Majesty's military forces, other than Indian forces, the Army Act shall have effect on or after the appointed day—

(a) as if His Majesty's Indian forces were not included in the expressions 'the forces', 'His Majesty's forces' and 'the regular forces'; and

(b) subject to the further modifications specified in Pans I and II of the Third Schedule to this Act.

(3) Subject to the provisions of subsection (2) of this section, and to any law of the legislature of the Dominion concerned, all civil authorities in the new Dominions, and. subject as aforesaid and subject aiso to the provisions of the last preceding section, all service authorities in the new Dominions, shall, in those Dominions and in the other territories which were included in India before the appointed day, perform in relation to His Majesty's military forces, not being Indian forces, the same functions as were. before the appointed day, performed by them, or by the authorities corresponding to them. whether by virtue of the Army Act or otherwise, and the matters for winch provision is to be made by orders of the Governor-General under the preceding provisions of this Act shall include the facilities of the withdrawal from the new Dominions and other territories aforesaid of His Majesty's military forces, not being Indian forces.

(4) The provisions of subsections (2) and (3) of this section shall apply in relation to the air forces of His Majesty, not being Indian air forces, as they apply in relation to His Majesty's military forces, subject, however, to the necessary adaptations, and, in particular, as if—

(a) for the references to the Army Act there were substituted references to the Air Force Act; and

(b) for the reference to Part II of the Third Schedule to this Act there were substituted a reference to Part III of that Schedule.

Naval forces

13. (1) in the application of the Naval Discipline Act to His Majesty's naval forces, references to His Majesty's navy and His Majesty's ships shall not, as from The appointed day, include references to His Majesty's Indian navy or the ships thereof.

(2) In the application of the Naval Discipline Act by virtue of any law made in India before the appointed day to Indian naval forces, references to His Majesty's navy and His Majesty's ships shall, as from the appointed day, be deemed to be, and to be only, references to His Majesty's Indian navy and the ships thereof.

(3) in section ninety B of the Naval Discipline Act (which, in certain cases, subjects officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines to the law and customs of the ships and naval forces of other parts of His Majesty's dominions the words "or of India" shall be repealed as from the appointed day, wherever those words occur.

Provisions, as to the Secretary of State and the Auditor of Indian Home Accounts.

14. (1) A Secretary of State, or such other Minister of the Crown as may be designated in that behalf by Order in Council under the Ministers of the Crown (Transfer of Functions) Act, 1946, is hereby authorized to continue for the time being the performance, on behalf of whatever government or governments may be concerned, of functions as to the making of payments and other matters similar to the functions which, up to the appointed day, the Secretary of Stale was performing on behalf of governments constituted or continued under the Government of India Act, 1935.

(2) The functions referred to in subsection (1) of this section include functions as respects the management of, and the making of payments in respect of, government debt, and any enactments relating to such debt shall have effect accordingly:

Provided that nothing in this subsection shall be construed as continuing in force so much of any enactment as empowers the Secretary of State to contract sterling loans on behalf of any such Government as aforesaid or as applying to the Government of either of the new Dominions the prohibition imposed on the Governor-General in Council by section three hundred and fifteen of the Government of India Act, 1935, as respects the contracting of sterling loans.

(3) As from the appointed day, there shall not be any such advisers of the Secretary of State as are provided for by section two hundred and seventy-eight of me Government of India Act. 193 5, and that section, and any provisions of that Act which require the Secretary of State to obtain the concurrence of it’s advisers, are hereby repealed as from that day.

(4) The Auditor of Indian Home Accounts is hereby authorised to continue for the time being to exercise his functions ah respects the accounts of the Secretary of State or any such other Minister of the Crown as is mentioned in subsection (1) of this section, both in respect of activities before, and in respect of activities alter, the appointed day, in the same manner, as nearly as may be as he would have done if this Act had not passed.

Legal proceedings by and against the Secretary of Slate

15. (1) Notwithstanding anything in this Act. and, in particular, not-withstanding any of the provisions of the last preceding section, any provision of any enactment which, hut for the passing of this Act, would authorise legal proceedings to be taken, in India or elsewhere, by or against the Secretary of State in respect of any right or liability of India or any part of India shall cease to have effect on the appointed day, and any legal proceedings pending by virtue of any such provision on the appointed day shall, by virtue of this Act, abate on the appointed day, so far as the Secretary of State is concerned.

(2) Subject to the provisions of this subsection, any legal proceedings which, but for the passing of this Act, could have been brought by or against the Secretary of State in respect of any right or liability of India, or any part of India, shall instead be brought—

(a} in the case of proceedings in the United Kingdom, by or against the High Commissioner:

(b) in the case of other proceedings, by or against such person as may be designated by order of the Governor-General under the preceding provisions of this Act or otherwise by the law of the new Dominion concerned,

and any legal proceedings by or against the Secretary of State in respect of any such right or liability as aforesaid which are pending immediately before the appointed day shall be continued by or against the High Commissioner or, as the case may be, the person designated as aforesaid:

Provided that, at any time after the appointed day, the right conferred by this subsection to bring or continue proceedings may, whether the proceedings are by, or are against, the High Commissioner or person designated as aforesaid, be withdrawn by a law of the Legislature of either of the new Dominions so far as that Dominion is concerned, and any such law may operate as respects proceedings pending al the date of the passing of the law.

(3) In this section, the expression "the High Commissioner" means, in relation to each of the new Dominions, any such officer as may for the time being be authorised to perform in the United Kingdom, in relation to that Dominion, functions similar to those performed before the appointed day, in relation to the Governor-General in Council, by the High Commissioner referred to in section three hundred and two of the Government of India Act, 1922. and any legal proceedings which, immediately before the appointed day, are the subject of an appeal to His Majesty in Council, or of a petition for special leave to appeal to His Majesty in Council, shall be treated for the purposes of this section as legal proceedings pending in the United Kingdom.

Aden

16. (1) Subsections (2) to (4) of section two hundred and eighty-eight of the Government of India Act. 1935 (which confer on His Majesty power to make by Order in Council provision for the government of Aden) shall cease to have effect and the British Settlements Acts, 1887 and 1945, (which authorise His Majesty to make laws and establish institutions for British Settlements as defined in those Ads) shall apply in relation to Aden as if it were a British Settlement as so defined.

(2) Notwithstanding the repeal of the said subsections (2) to (4), the Orders in Council in force thereunder al the date of the passing of this Act shall continue in force, but the said Orders in Council, any other Orders in Council made under the Government of India Act, 1935, in so far as they apply to Aden, and any enactments applied to Aden or amended in relation to Aden by any such Orders in Council as aforesaid, may be repealed, revoked or amended under the powers of the British Settlements Acts, 1857 and 1945.

(3) Unless and until provision to the contrary is made as respects Aden under the powers of the British Settlements Acts, 1857 and 1945, or, as re-peals the new Dominion in question, by a law of the legislature of that Dominion the provisions of the said Orders in Council and enactments relating to appeals from any courts in Aden to any courts which wilt, after the appointed day. be m either of the new Dominions, shall continue in force in their application both to Aden and to the Dominion in question, and the last mentioned courts shall exercise their jurisdiction accordingly.

Divorce jurisdiction

17. (i) No court in either of the new Dominions shall, by virtue of the Indian and Colomal Divorce Jurisdiction Acts, 1926 and 1940, have jurisdiction in or in relation to any proceedings for a decree for the dissolution of a marriage unless those proceedings were instituted before the appointed day, but, save as aforesaid and subject to any provision to the contrary which may hereafter be made by any Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom or by any law of the Legislature of the new Dominion concerned, ail courts in the new Dominions shall have the same jurisdiction under the said Acts as they would have had if this Act had not been passed.

(2) Any rules made on or after the appointed day under subsection (4) of section one of the Indian and Colonial Divorce Jurisdiction Act, 1926 [16&17 Geo.? c,40} for a court in either of the new Dominions shall, instead of being made by the Secretary of State with the concurrence of the Lord Chancellor, be made by such authority as may he determined by the law of the Dominion concerned, and so much of the said subsection and of any rules m force thereunder immediately before the appointed day as require the approval of the Lord Chancellor to the nomination for any purpose of any judges of any such court shall cease to have ellect.

(3) The reference in subsection (1) of this section to proceedings for a decree for the dissolution of a marriage include references to proceedings for such a decree of presumption of death and dissolution of a marriage as is authorised hy section eight of the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937. [1 Edw.8& 1 Geo.6c.57.]

(4) Nothing m this section affects any court outside the new Dominions, and the power conferred by section nine of the Indian and Colonial Divorce Jurisdiction Act. 1926, to apply certain provisions of that Act to other parts of His Majesty's dominions as they apply to India shall be deemed to be power to apply those provisions as they would have applied to India if this Act had not passed.

Provisions as to existing laws. etc.

18. (1) In so far as any Act of Parliament, Order in Council, order, rule, regulation or other instrument passed or made before the appointed day Operates otherwise than as pan of the law of British India or the new Dominions references therein to India or British India, however worded and whether by name or not, shall, in so far as the context permits and except so far as Parliament may hereafter otherwise provide, be construed as, or as including, references to the new Dominions, taken together, or taken separately, according as the circumstances and subject matter may require:

Provided that nothing in this subsection shall he construed as continuing in operation any provision in so far as the continuance thereof as adapted by this subsection is inconsistent with any of the provisions of this Act other than this section.

(2) Subject to the provisions of subsection (1) of this section and to any other express provision of this Act. the Orders in Council made under sub-section(5) of section three hundred and eleven of the Government of India Act, 1935, for adapting and modifying Acts of Parliament shall, except so far as Parliament may hereafter otherwise provide, continue in force m relation to all Acts in so far as they operate otherwise than as part of the law of British India or the new Dominions.

(3) Save as otherwise expressly provided in this Act. the law of British India and of the several parts thereof existing immediately before the appointed day shall, so far as applicable and with the necessary adaptations, continue as the law of each of the new Dominions and the several parts thereof under other provision is made by laws of the Legislature of the Dominion in question or by any other Legislature or other authority having power in that behalf.

(4) It is hereby declared that the Instruments of Instructions issued before the passing of this Act by His Majesty to the Governor-General and the Governors of Provinces lapse as from the appointed day, and nothing in this Act shall be construed as continuing in force any provision of the Government of India Act, 1935, relating to such Instruments of Instructions.

(5) As from the appointed day, so much of any enactment as requires the approval of His Majesty in Council to any rules of court shall not apply to any court in either of the new Dominions.

Interpretation, etc.

19. (1) References in this Act to the Governor-General shall, in relation to any order to be made or other act done on or after the appointed day, be construed-

(a) where the order or other act concerns one only of the new Dominions as references to the Governor-General of that Dominion;

(b) where the order or other act concerns both of the new Dominions and the same person is the Governor-General of both those Dominions, as references to that person; and

(c) in any other case. as references to the Governors-General of the new Dominions, acting jointly,

(2) References in this Act to the Governor-General shall, in relation to any order to be made or other act done before the appointed day, be construed as references to the Governor-General of India within the meaning of the Government of India Act, 1935, and so much of that or any other Act as requires references to the Governor-General to be construed as references to the Governor-General in Council shall not apply to references to the Governor-General in this Act.

(3) References in this Act to the Constituent Assembly of a Dominion shall be construed as references—

(a) in relation to India, to the Constituent Assembly, the first sitting whereof was held on the ninth day of December, nineteen hundred and forty-six, modified—

(i) by the exclusion of the members representing Bengal, the Punjab, Sind and British Baluchistan; and

(ii) should it appear that the North West Frontier Province will form part of Pakistan, by the exclusion of the members representing that Province, and

(iii) by the inclusion of members representing West Bengal and East Punjab; and

(iv) should it appear that, on the appointed day a part of the Province of Assam is to form part of the new Province of East Bengal, by the exclusion of the members theretofore representing the Province of Assam and tile inclusion of members chosen to represent the remainder of that Province;

(b) in relation to Pakistan, to the Assembly set up or about to be set up at the date of the passing of this Act under the authority of the Governor-General as the Constituent Assembly for Pakistan:

Provided that nothing in this subsection shall be construed as affecting the extent to which representatives of the Indian States take pan in either of the said Assemblies, or as preventing the filling of casual vacancies in the said Assemblies, or as preventing the participation in either of the said Assemblies, in accordance with such arrangements as may be made in ihat behalf, of representatives of the tribal areas on the borders of the Dominion for which that Assembly sits, and the powers of the said Assemblies shall extend and be deemed always to have extended to the making of provision for the matters specified in this proviso.

(4) In this Act, except so far as the context otherwise requires—

references to the Government of India Act, 1935, include references to any enactments amending or supplementing that Act, and, in particular, references to the India (Central Government and Legislature) Act, 1946 [9&10 Geo.6c.39.];

"India", where the reference is to a state of affairs existing before the appointed day or which would have existed but for the passing of this Act, has the meaning assigned to it by section three hundred and eleven of the Government of India Act, 1935;

"Indian forces" includes all His Majesty's Indian forces existing before the appointed day and also any forces of either of the new Dominions;

"pension" means, in relation to any person, a pension whether contributory or not, of any kind whatsoever payable to or in respect of that person, and includes retired pay so payable, a gratuity so payable and any sum or sums so payable by way of the return, with or without interest thereon or other additions thereto, of subscriptions to a provident fund;

"Province" means a Governor's Province;

"remuneration" includes leave pay, allowances and the cost of any privileges or facilities provided in kind,

(5) Any power conferred by this Act to make any order includes power to revoke or vary any order previously made in the exercise of that power.

Short title

20. This Act may be cited as the Indian Independence Act, 1947.

SCHEDULES

FIRST SCHEDULE [Refering to Section 3 of the Act]

Bengal Districts provisionally included in the New Province of East Bengal

In the Chittagong Division, the districts of Chittagong, Noakhali and Tippera.

In the Dacca Division, the districts of Bakarganj, Dacca, Faridpur and Mymensingh,

In the Presidency Division, the districts of Jessore, Murshidabad and, Nadia.

In the Rajshahi Division, the districts of Bogra, Dinajpur, Malda, Pabna, Rajshahi and Rangpur.

SECOND SCHEDULE [Referring to Section 4 of the Act]

Districts provisionally included in the New Province of West Punjab

In the Lahore Division, the districts of Gujranwala, Gurdaspur, Lahore, Sheikhapura and Sialkot.

In the Rawalpindi Division, ihe districts of Attock, Gujrat, Jhelum, Mianwali, Rawalpindi and Shahpur.

In the Multan Division, ihe districts ofDera Ghazi Khan, Jhang, Jyallpui, Montgomery, Multan and Muzaffargarh.

THIRD SCHEDULE [Referring to Section 12 of the Act]

Modifications of Army Act and Air Force Act in Relation to British Forces

PART I

Modifications of Army Act applicable also to Air Force Act

1, The proviso to section forty-one (which limits the jurisdiction of courts martial) shall not apply to offences committed in either of the new Dominions or in any of the other territories which were included in India before the appointed day.

2. In section forty-three (which relates to complaints), the words "with the approval of the Governor-General of India in Council" shall be omitted.

3. In sub-sections (8) and (9) of section fifty-four (which, amongst other things, require certain sentences to be confirmed by the Governor-General in Council), the words "India or", the words "by the Governor-General, or, as the case may be" and the words "in India, by the Governor-General, or if he has been tried" shall be omitted.

4. In sub-section (3) of section seventy-three (which provides for the nomination of officers with power to dispense with courts martial for desertion and fraudulent enlistment) the words "with the approval of the Governor-General" shall be omitted.

5. The powers conferred by sub-section (5) of section one hundred and thirty (which provides for the removal of insane persons) shall not be exercised except with the consent of the officer commanding the forces in the new Dominions.

6. In sub-section (2) of section one hundred and thirty-two (which relates to rules regulating service prisons and detention barracks) the words "and m India for the Governor-General" and the words "the Governor-General" shall be omitted except as respects rules made before the appointed day.

7. In the cases specified in subsection (1) of section one hundred and thirty-four, inquests shall be held in all cases in accordance with the provisions of sub-section (3) of that section.

8. In section one hundred and thirty-six (which relates to deductions from pay), in sub-section (1) the words "India or" and the words "being in the case of India a law of the Indian legislature", and the whole of subsection (2), shall be omitted.

9. In paragraph (4) of section one hundred and thirty-seven (which relates to penal stoppages from the ordinary pay of officers), the words "or” in the case of officers serving in India, the Governor-General" the words "India or" and the words "for India or, as the case may be" shall be omitted.

10. In paragraph (12) of section one hundred and seventy-five and paragraph (11) of section one hundred and seventy-six (which apply the Act to certain members of His Majesty's Indian Forces and to certain other persons) the word "India" shall be omitted wherever it occurs.

11. In sub-section (1) of section one hundred and eighty (which provides for the punishment of misconduct by civilians in relation to courts-martial) the words "India or" shall be omitted wherever they occur.

12. In the provisions of section one hundred and eighty-three relating to the reduction in rank of non-commissioned officers, the words "with the approval of the Governor-General" shall be omitted in both places where they occur.

PART II

Modifications of Army Act

Section 184B (which regulates relations with the Indian Air Force) shall be omitted.

PART III

Modifications of Air Force Act

1 - In section 179D (which relates to the attachment of officers and airmen to Indian and Burma Air Forces), the words "by the Air Council and the Governor-General of India or, as the case maybe", and the words " India or", wherever those words occur, shall be omitted.

2. In section 184B (which regulates relations with Indian and Burma Air Forces) the words "India or" and the words "by the Air Council and the Governor-General of India or, as the case may be", shall be omitted.

3. Sub-paragraph (e) of paragraph (4) of section one hundred and ninety (which provides that officers of His Majesty's Indian Air Force are to be officers within the meaning of the Act) shall be omitted.

Houses of Parliament. London, 1947

(source: pages 356 ff. of Lionel Carter (ed.): Mountbatten’s Report on the last Viceroyalty. New Delhi: Manohar, 2003)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the Crown)

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The Weeks and Days leading to Independence

_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta_________________________

The Throne stood empty

Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart, I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service) District Magistrate 24 Parganas, Calcutta, 1947

(source: personal scrapbook kept by Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart O.B.E., I.C.S. seen on 20-Dec-2005 / Reproduced by courtesy of Mrs. Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart)

_____Contemporary Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___

First Ambassador

AS eports from New York forecast, India's new Central Government has lost little time in starting on the policy, fore shadowed in September by Pandit Nehru, of building up its own Diplomatic Service. First of India's Ambassadors, it is confirmed, will be Mr Asaf Ali, selected for Washington, now Member for Railways and long a prominent figure in the Congress Working Committee and Congress Party in the Central Legislature. With the United States India hopes for close relations now that she is on the threshold of independence.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, December 7, 1946)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

BROADCAST ON 3RD JUNE

BROADCAST BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE VICEROY AND GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA AT 7 P.M. (I.S.T) ON THE 3RD JUNE, 1947

A statement will be read to you to-night giving the final decision of His Majesty's Government as to the method by which power will be transferred from British to Indian hands. But before this happens. I want to give a personal message to the people of India, as well as a short account of the discussions which I have held with me Leaders of the political parties and which have led up io the advice I tendered to His Majesty's Government during my recent visit to London.

Since my arrival in India at the end of March I have spent almost every day in consultation with as many of the leaders and representatives of as many communities and interests as possible. I wish to say how grateful I am for all the information and helpful advice they have given me.

Nothing I have seen or heard in the past few weeks has shaken my firm opinion that with a reasonable measure of goodwill between the communities a unified India would be by far the best solution of the problem.

For more than a hundred years 400 million of you have lived together and this country has been administered as a single entity. This has resulted in unified communications, defence, postal services and currency: an absence of tariffs and customs barriers, and the basis for an integrated political economy. My great hope was that communal differences would not destroy all this.

My first course, in all my discussions, was therefore to urge the political leaders to accept unreservedly the Cabinet Mission plan of 16th May 1946. In my opinion, that plan provides the best arrangement that can be devised to heed the interests of all the communities of India. To my great regret it has been impossible to obtain agreement either on the Cabinet Mission plan, or on any other plan that would preserve the unity of India. But there can be no question of coercing any large areas in which one community has a majority, to live against their will under a Government in which another community has a majority. And the only alternative to coercion is partition.

But when the Muslim League demanded the partition of India, Congress used the same arguments for demanding in that event the partition of certain Provinces, To my mind this argument is unassailable. In fact neither side proved willing to leave a substantial area in which their community have a majority under the Government of the other. I am, of course, just as much oppesed to the partition of Provinces as I am to the partition of India herself and for the same basic reasons.

For just as I feel there is an Indian consciousness which should transcend communal differences so I feel there is a Punjabi and Bengali consciousness which has evoked a loyalty to their Province.

And so I felt it was essential that the people of India themselves should decide this question of partition.

The procedure for enabling them to decide for themselves whether they want the British to hand over power to one or two Governments is set out in the statement which will be read to you. But there are one or two points on which I should like to add a note of explanation.

It was necessary in order to ascertain the will of the people of the Punjab, Bengal and part of Assam to lay down boundaries between the Muslim majority areas and the remaining areas, but I want to make it clear that the ultimate boundaries will be settled by a Boundary Commission and will almost certainly not be identical with those which have been provisionally adopted.

We have given careful consideration to the position of the Sikhs, This valiant community forms about an eighth of the population of the Punjab, but they are so distributed that any partition of this Province will inevitably divide them. All of us, who have the good of the Sikh community at heart are very sorry to think that the partition of the Punjab, which they themselves desire, cannot avoid splitting them to a greater or lesser extent. The exact degree of the split will be left to the Boundary Commission on which they will of course be represented.

The whole plan may not be perfect; but like all plans, its success will depend on the spirit of goodwill with which it is carried out. I have always felt that once it was decided in what way to transfer power the transfer should take place at the earliest possible moment, but the dilemma was that if we waited until a constitutional set-up for ail India was agreed, we should have to wait a long time, particularly if partition were decided on. Whereas if we handed over power before the Constituent Assemblies had finished their work we should leave the country without a Constitution.

The solution to this dilemma which I put forward, is that His Majesty's Government should transfer power now to one or two Governments of British India each having Dominion Status as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made. This I hope will be within the next few months. I am glad to announce that His Majesty's Government have accepted this proposal and are already having legislation prepared for introduction in Parliament this session. As a result of these decisions the special function of the India Office will no longer have to be carried out, and some other machinery will be set up to conduct future relations between His Majesty's Government and India.

I wish to emphasise that this legislation will not impose any restriction on the power of India as a whole, or of the two Stales if there is partition, to decide in the future their relationship to each other and to other member Stales of the British Commonwealth.

Thus the way is now open to an arrangement by which power can be transferred many months earlier than the most optimistic of us thought possible, and at the same time leave it to the people of British India to decide for themselves on their future, which is the declared policy of His Majesty's Government.

I have made no mention of the Indian States, since the new decisions of His Majesty's Government are concerned with the transfer of power in British India.

If the transfer of power is to be effected m a peaceful and orderly manner, every single one of us must bend all his efforts to the task. This is no time for bickering, much less for the continuation m any shape or form of the disorders and lawlessness of the past few months. Do not forget what a narrow margin of food we are all working on. We cannot afford any toleration of violence. All of us are agreed on that.

Whichever way the decision of the Indian people may go, I feel sure any British officials or officers who may be asked to remain for a while will do everything in their power to help implement that decision. His Majesty as well as his Government have asked me to convey to all of you in India their sincere good wishes for your future and the assurance of their continued goodwill.

I have faith in the future of India and am proud to be with you all at this momentous time. May your decisions be wisely guided and may they be carried out in the peaceful and friendly spirit of the Gandhi-Jinnah appeal.

Lord Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India. New Delhi, 3rd June 1947

(source: pages 332-334 of Lionel Carter (ed.): Mountbatten’s Report on the last Viceroyalty. New Delhi: Manohar, 2003)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the Crown)

The Legatees

On U.S. Independence Day, Britain's Prime Minister Clement Attlee presented to the House of Commons an Indian independence bill. It was, said the bespectacled, scholarly Earl of Listowel, last Secretary of State for India, a "nice, neat, tidy little bill." The bill was certainly neater than the mess Indians will try to clear up before the British leave on August 15.

Last week the Indians were tussling with the complexities brought by the partition of India. They agreed on one major problem: partition of the Indian Army. In the first stage it will be split on the basis of religious communities, with Moslem-majority units going into the Pakistan forces, non-Moslem majority units into the Indian Army. Next April, each soldier will be allowed to transfer to the army of the state where his religion is predominant.

In effect, two new armies will be built up from scratch. Last week the British-owned Calcutta Statesman lamented: "Within nine months, therefore, unless plans have meanwhile to be altered under pressure of events, the best army in Asia (with the possible exception of that which Russia keeps in Siberia) will, we reckon, be reduced to about a sixth of its present military value—perhaps less."

Typewriters & Inkpots. Meanwhile, Moslems and Hindus were wrangling over their shares of the inheritance from the British Raj. Fifty committees set up to divide the Government's assets proceeded along 50 different lines. The Moslem League wanted one-fourth of India's assets, but was not willing to pay one-fourth of the $6 billion national debt. Railway rolling stock will probably remain on that side of the border where it stands on independence day. (The Moslem League accused the Hindu-controlled Government of switching brand-new American locomotives from Pakistan areas to Delhi, substituting old, burnt-out engines.) The 40,000 staff members of New Delhi's vast imperial Secretariat were busy last week counting typewriters and almirahs (cabinets), carpets and inkpots. Typists worked four hours a day overtime copying files, so that each of the two new Governments would have a set. Moslems and Hindus accused each other of stealing files that both wanted.

Hindus accused the Minister of Communications, Moslem Leaguer Abdur Rab Nishtar, of carting off to Karachi (temporary capital of Pakistan) every piece of telephone and telegraph equipment he could lay hands on. Calcutta's Hindu press said that Bengal's Prime Minister Huseyn Shabad Suhrawardy, a Moslem, was stripping western Bengal (which will be part of Hindu India) of food, clothing, machinery and hospital equipment.

Moslems claimed for Pakistan the famed Moslem-built Taj Mahal at Agra, deep in Hindu India, only 100 miles from New Delhi. Extremist Hindus retaliated by claiming the river Indus (deep in Pakistan), on the ground that the sacred Hindu Vedas had been written on its banks some 25 centuries ago.

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, Jul. 14, 1947)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)

_____Memories of 1940s Calcutta_________________________

his father and grandfather had always worked for the military “sahibs”

I recall the reaction of Abdul, my bearer, when I told him I was leaving shortly for the UK. He broke down saying he didn’t know what his future would be a she and his father and grandfather had always worked for the military “sahibs” and now we were all leaving India. I pointed out that Indian politicians were visiting India for the Indians, which came about a year later in 1947 under Lord Mountbatten the Last Viceroy of India. And that he would probably get a job with an Indian contractor but he replied that the British Raj had always treated him well, far better than treatments meted out by these contractors some of whom exploited the Bengal famine in 1942/3 and horded rice, the staple diet of the land whilst thousands were dying of starvation. I did not see the worst of this but recall my first visit to Calcutta seeing the death cart going round the streets picking up those who had died during the night.

Eric Forsdike, Royal Air Force, Calcutta, 1946

(source: A6165678 353 squadron at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)

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15 August 1947 - Independence Day

_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta_________________________

Farewell to India

Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart, I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service) District Magistrate 24 Parganas, Calcutta, 1947

(source: personal scrapbook kept by Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart O.B.E., I.C.S. seen on 20-Dec-2005 / Reproduced by courtesy of Mrs. Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart)

_____Contemporary Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___

Speech On the Granting of Indian Independence, August 14, 1947

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long supressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of Inida and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good [or] ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

JAI HIND.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India. New Delhi, August 14, 1947

(Source: pp. 234-237. by Prof. Arkenberg in Brian McArthur, Penguin Book of Twentieth Century. London: Penguin Viking, 1992)

The Indian National Anthem

Jana-gana-mana-adhinayaka, jaya he

Bharata-bhagya-vidhata

Punjab-Sindhu-Gujarata-Maratha-Dravida-Utkala-Banga

Vindhya-Himachala-Yamuna-Ganga Ujwala-Jaladhi-taranga

Tava shubha name jage Tava shubha ashish maage

Gaye tava jaya-gatha

Jana-gana-mangala-dayaka jaya he

Bharata-bhagya-vidhata

Jaya he, jaya he, jaya he,Jaya jaya jaya, jaya he !

English Translation

Thou art the rulers of the minds of all people,

dispenser of India's destiny.

Thy name resides the hearts of Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Orissa and Bengal;

Reverberates in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,

mingles in the music of the waves of Yamuna and Ganga;

They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.

The well being of all people rests in thy hand, Thou dispenser of India's destiny,

Victory, victory, victory to thee.

Independence Day

britain's sincerity, Lord Mountbatten's speed and skill, and the ideals, statesmanship and eventual practical capacity for compromise of this country's leaders have made August 15, 1947, the greatest day in modern Indian history. That it should fall in August is doubly fitting. Two years ago ended World War II, the biggest and most terrible in humanity's experience, a war successfully, sincerely and with appalling loss fought by the British people for freedom—not theirs only; and the man who led the Allied Forces to victory in this war theatre is he who, a cousin of the King, in logical fulfilment of the progressive purposes which the war was waged for, now ceases to be Viceroy of India—becoming instead first constitutional Governor-General of the new Indian Union.

The speed with which, during this final brilliant Viceroyalty, less than five months in duration, the transfer of power has been achieved is almost stupefying. Any prophecy of its possibility a year ago, or on February 20 of this year, or even at the beginning of June would have been derided. Nothing of comparable magnitude or such spontaneous generosity has been effected in the annals of mankind. Many minds, understandably, have not managed to keep pace with its full implications, and now lag awkwardly behind events.

Beneath the chorus of praise which the great occasion merits are audible, as undertone, dirges of sorrow. This country, throughout the last year, has been virtually in civil war. Appalling deeds have been done, appalling suffering endured; and the independence which Indians get, and the British people give, is bisected. A land designed by geography for unity, which for a century has been administered as one by an outside power now, on gaining freedom, splits in twain. Nor are even its parts in easy contiguity. Hundreds of miles of land and seas under the two segments of Pakistan; and the link between Assam and the rest of the Indian Union is thin. To the last moment on. June 3 we pleaded, with many others, against this tragic fragmentation.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, August 15, 1947)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

Appointment with Freedom

By Arthur Moore

NOW is the appointed day. Now is the day of salvation. If we start right we can continue right. On every one of us who lives in India, be it in the Indian Union or Pakistan, there is a personal responsibility to start this day with our thoughts right. For it is out of our collective thinking that will spring the actions and attitudes of ministers and legislatures, masters and men, communities and trades unions and chambers of commerce.

Long have I lived and hoped for the day when Greater India, an India that includes what was British India and the Indian States, should take its place in the equal councils of a world conscious of essential unity in its admired diversity, conscious of the truth that we are members one of another though every member has his own function and none is in all respects like any other. To me such a day was to be the fitting climax of the intertwined story of Britain and India, the fulfilment of Britain's mission, a mission carried out, under God, with many failures to sense its greatness, with some inevitable personal yieldings to the lure of pomp and circumstance, of the pride and glory of this world and the love of money; but for all that a mission writ in the stars of east and west, and discharged from the British Throne and the High Court of Parliament downwards with a large and steady faithfulness, through ever rarer good report and ever increasing ill report.

Now the day has come, and what was British India is resolved into two States. Let us waste no tears on that. The essential thing is to preserve and foster the unity of systems and of outlook that exists. Let us abhor the awful example of Europe which is a recurring cockpit because it lacks good Europeans, and has only good Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, Russians and the rest.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, August 15, 1947)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

“Oh Lovely Dawn”

As the great day approached, Indians thanked their varied gods and rejoiced with special prayers, poems and songs. Poetess Sarojini Naidu set the theme in a radio message: "Oh lovely dawn of freedom that breaks in gold and purple over the ancient capital o . .!"

Blessing with Ashes. Even such an agnostic as Jawaharlal Nehru, on the eve of becoming India's first Prime Minister, fell into the religious spirit. From Tanjore in south India came two emissaries of Sri Amblavana Desigar, head of a sannyasi order of Hindu ascetics. Sri Amblavana thought that Nehru, as first Indian head of a really Indian Government ought, like ancient Hindu kings, to receive the symbol of power and authority from Hindu holy men.

With the emissaries came south India's most famous player of the nagasaram, a special kind of Indian flute. Like other sannyasis, who abstain from hair-cutting and hair-combing, the two emissaries wore their long hair properly matted and wound round their heads. Their naked chests and foreheads were streaked with sacred ash, blessed by Sri Amblavana. In an ancient Ford, the evening of Aug. 14, they began their slow, solemn progress to Nehru's house. Ahead walked the flutist, stopping every 100 yards or so to sit on the road and play his flute for about 15 minutes. Another escort bore a large silver platter. On it was the pithambaram (cloth of God), a costly silk fabric with patterns of golden thread.

When at last they reached Nehru's house, the flutist played while the sannyasis awaited an invitation from Nehru.

Then they entered the house in dignity, fanned by two boys with special fans of deer hair. One sannyasi carried a scepter of gold, five feet long, two inches thick. He sprinkled Nehru with holy water from Tanjore and drew a streak in sacred ash across Nehru's forehead. Then he wrapped Nehru in the pithambaram and handed him the golden scepter. He also gave Nehru some cooked rice which had been offered that very morning to the dancing god Nataraja in south India, then flown by plane to Delhi.

Later that evening Nehru, and other men who would be India's new rulers on the morrow, went to the home of Rajendra Prasad, president of the Constituent Assembly. On his back lawn four plantain trees served as pillars for a temporary miniature temple. A roof of fresh green leaves sheltered a holy fire attended by a Brahman priest. There, while several thousand women chanted hymns, the ministers-to-be and constitution-makers passed in front of the priest, who sprinkled holy water on them. The oldest woman placed dots of red powder (for luck) on each man's forehead.

Tryst with Destiny. Thus dedicated, India's rulers turned to the secular business of the evening. At 11 o'clock they gathered in the Constituent Assembly Hall, ablaze with the colors of India's new tricolor flag—orange, white and green. Nehru made an inspired speech: "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge. . . .At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom."

And as the twelfth chime of midnight died out, a conch shell, traditional herald of the dawn, sounded raucously through the chamber. Members of the Constituent Assembly rose. Together they pledged themselves "at this solemn moment . . . to the service of India and her people. . . ." Nehru and Prasad struggled through the thousands of rejoicing Indians who had gathered outside to the Viceroy's House (now called the Governor General's House) where Viscount Mountbatten, who that day learned he would become an earl, awaited them. There, 32 minutes after Mountbatten had ceased to be a Viceroy,* Nehru and Prasad rather timidly, almost bashfully, told Mountbatten that India's Constituent Assembly had assumed power and would like him to be Governor General.

The People's Day. Delhi's thousands rejoiced. The town was gay, with orange, white and green. Bullocks' horns and horses' legs were painted in the new national colors, and silk merchants sold tri-colored saris. Triumphant light blazed everywhere. Even in the humble Bhangi (Untouchable) quarters, candles and oil' lamps flickered brightly in houses that had never before seen artificial light. The government wanted no one to be unhappy on India's Independence Day. Political prisoners, including Communists, were freed. All death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The Government, closing all slaughterhouses, ordered that no animals be killed.

The people made it their day. After dawn half a million thronged the green expanse of the Grand Vista and parkways near the Government buildings of New Delhi. Wherever Lord and Lady Mountbatten went that day, their open carriage, drawn by six bay horses, was beset by happy, cheering Indians who swept aside police lines. A Briton received a popular ovation rarely given even to an Indian leader. "Mountbattenji ki jai [Victory to Mountbatten]," they roared, adding the affectionate and respectful suffix "ji" usually reserved for popular Indian leaders.

Now & then Nehru (who sometimes shows the instincts of a traffic policeman) harangued the crowd to be more orderly. Once he espied a European girl caught up in the swirl. She was Pamela Mountbatten, the Governor General's 18-year-old daughter. Nehru literally slugged his way through the crowd to rescue her, brought her to the platform.

In the Council House the Constituent Assembly heard Mountbatten take the oath as Governor General.†"Regard me as one of yourselves," he told them, "devoted wholly to the furtherance of India's interests." Then he swore in the new Indian Government. Messages of congratulation from over the world were read. The most original was a greeting in verse from Chinese Ambassador Lo Chia-luen. It read:

India be free!

Won't that be

A Himalayan dream?

How fantastic,

How absurd an idea,

That never occurred to me!

Freedom's Architect. Mountbattenji drew the biggest applause of the day when he said: "At this historic moment let us not forget all that India owes to Mahatma Gandhi—the architect of her freedom through nonviolence. We miss his presence here today and would have him know how he is in our thoughts."

The Mahatma, who more than any other one man had brought independence to India, was not in New Delhi on the day of days. He was in troubled Calcutta, mourning because India was still racked by communal hatred. (In the Punjab last week, even more than in Calcutta, communal warfare blazed. Nearly 300 were killed.)

Gandhiji had moved into a Moslem house in Calcutta's Moslem quarter, which had been assailed by his fellow Hindus. He appealed to Hindus to keep peace. Angry young Hindu fanatics broke up a prayer meeting at his house. For the first time, Indians stoned Gandhi's house. Gandhi spoke sadly to the crowd: "If you still prefer to use violence, remove me. It is —not me but my corpse that will be taken away from here."

But on Independence Day even Calcutta's violence turned to rejoicing. Moslems and Hindus danced together in the streets, were admitted to each others' mosques and temples. Moslems crowded round Gandhi's car to shake his hand, and sprinkled him with rosewater. For the disillusioned father of Indian independence, there might be some consolation in the rare cry he heard from Moslem lips: "Mahatma Gandhi Zindabad" (Long Live Gandhi).

^{*Inl London, the King-Emperor became plain George VI, King of Pakistan and of India (just as he is King of Canada and other dominions beyond the seas). Workmen took down the bronze plate in Whitehall, reading "India Office," replaced it with a painted wooden sign reading "Commonwealth Relations Office."}

^{† Another colonial power, France, announced that the 203 square miles on India's east coast which she still rules will be organized as the five free cities of Pondichery, Karikal, Chander-nagore, Mahe and Yanaon, with locally elected governments, within the French union.}

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, Aug. 25, 1947)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)

The Back of the Dinner Jacket

In 40 centuries of Indian history empire after empire had risen in a glorious blaze of peacock plumes and glinting spears only to founder in dark blood and ignominy. Last week British rule in India was ending; surprised applause followed its dinner jacket out the door.

The Recessional. As 400 million Indians (one-fifth of mankind) became self-governing, the British recessional was well begun. From lonely outposts in Kashmir, looking nervously north to the Russian border, from lush Assam where tea bushes grow in the spectral sau trees' shade, from residences deep in central India's jungles, from gay and airy Bangalore, more than 60,000 Britons had served notice that they were leaving the land which had been Britain's treasure and shame, her pride and her increasing care.

The Bombay Royal Yacht Club, where no Indian could tread even as a member's guest, was about to close; the Government had refused to renew its lease. No more would the pink pukka sahibs and their leathery memsahibs stare glassily over the glassy bay. Gone from most of the smart hotels were the signs "Europeans only." In cool Simla, Indians now jostled along the Mall where 20 years ago no person in Indian dress would have been allowed.

At many a plush hotel where the British dinner jacket once gave the evening scene the aspect of a penguins' conclave, the dhoti (loin cloth), sherwani (tunic), jibba (smock) and achkan (long coat) now held pride of place. Rohini Kumar Chowdhry, Assam's long-haired, wild-eyed member of the Constituent Assembly, demanded a special clause in the new Constitution's bill of rights to forbid any hotel displaying "Evening Clothes Only."

Indians were erasing the memory of British rule from the very place names. Calcutta's Clive Street (India's Wall Street) had been renamed Netaji Subhas Road to honor the late Bengal leader, Subhas Chandra Bose. He was a traitor in British eyes for helping the Japs; but to Indians Bose was a patriot. The holy Ganges would revert to the Sanskrit form, Ganga. Madras would become Chennapatnam. The city of Rajahmundry would become Rajamahendravaram, which would be harder to spell, but since 87% of Indians could not write that would not matter so much.

The Residue. History, sloppy as usual, had decreed a fade-out rather than a blackout of the British Raj. No longer Viceroy, Mountbatten would become Governor General of Hindu India and chairman of the commission to split the nation's assets between Moslem Pakistan and Hindu India. Sir Patrick Spens, * India's Chief Justice, had been assigned the unenviable job of arbitrating all constitutional issues between the two stormy new nations. For a while, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck would be Supreme Commander of both Pakistan and Indian armies.

Virtually the entire British commercial community was staying. With a capital stake estimated at four to six billion dollars, British tea planters in Assam, jute mill owners in Calcutta, heads of shipping and insurance companies in Bombay preferred the dozens of servants and the abundant food to the prospect of doing business in the deepening drabness of postwar Britain.

Quite suddenly, Britons were more popular than they had ever been in India. In Calcutta, Hindus dragged eleven Moslems from a train, hacked them to death. At Amritsar 120 were killed, hundreds injured in rioting between Sikhs and Moslems. But none attacked the once-hated British, who could thank two men for the heightened prestige of their graceful exit.

Prime Minister Attlee had cut through India Office red tape and personally conducted most of the crucial discussions which finally led to a settlement with Indian leaders. With little enough to boast about at home, Attlee might get a salute from history for his handling of the Indian problem. Viscount Mountbatten's tact and informality had brought agreement where none seemed possible.

The Balance Sheet. What after two centuries could be said of British rule in India? Credits & debits were both enormous. About as much land is irrigated in India today as in all the rest of the world. The Empire's biggest iron and steel plant is at Jamshedpur. The British had built up in India an incorruptible judicial system, a good police force, a vast (if substandard) network of roads, and the world's fourth largest railway system.

Yet Indians were still among the world's poorest people. Seventy-five percent hovered perpetually between gnawing hunger and outright starvation. Malaria, bubonic plague and a host of other diseases made an Indian's life expectancy at birth the world's lowest — 27 years.

On the whole British despotism had been benevolent. Amid this week's flag-waving celebrations of their independence, thoughtful Indians wondered what new conquerors might be coming over the hill, and whether they would be as helpful.

^{-"Gude Sir Patrick Spens" in the old Scottish ballad was "the best when sailor that ever sail'd the sea." Nevertheless, when the King assigned him to command a bad-weather cruise to Norway, gude Sir Patrick asked a question his namesake may have cause to repeat: "O wha is this has done this deed and tauld the king o' me?"}

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, Aug. 18, 1947)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)

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Ron fond it impossible in his heart to strike the Union Jack

On 15 August 1947, the day of Indian Independence, Ron was instructed by the head office to organise a ceremony involving the striking of the Union Jack and the hoisting of the flag of India. Ron fond it impossible in his heart to do so and relegated the honour to the burra babu (head clerk). Crowds had collected. There was general rejoicing and no trouble. At the conclusion of the ceremony Ron said a few words expressing the hope of continuing friendship between Britain and the new India. There was an enthusiastic response and the crowd gradually dispersed.

Eugenie Fraser, wife of a jute mill manager, Titaghur, Holi 15 Aug 1947

(source:page 147 of Eugenie Fraser: “A home by the Hooghly. A jute Wallahs Wife” .Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing 1989)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Eugenie Fraser)

…its future could be mighty bleak

You ask: "What were your and/or (American soldiers' in general) view of the rights and/or the future of British colonial rule in India?

First, my -- and most of the fellows I knew -- had the feeling that the Indians really resented British colonial rule, but we felt that should the British ever pull out of India, its future could be mighty bleak. I don't think we had confidence in the Indians "running the show" on their own. We felt the colonial rule had allowed the land to progress as much as it had.

After reading the books I told you about, I more or less changed my idea. I learned more of the history than I knew back when I spent time in India. The books, however, gave me a bit of concern in that so many of the improvements (sewer, water, power and the like) which are so badly needed, "were being planned," had not actually taken place. And now, with the influx of destitute refugees from the east, I really doubt that any improvement will take place. Where will the money come from?

Yes, personally, while in India, and for many years after, I tended to think, "Well, since the British pulled out, India has had its difficulties."

At the time we were in Calcutta and then in Burma, it was our general feeling that should the colonial period ever end, India could have great difficulties such as civil unrest, maintaining the level of infrastructure that existed when we knew the place. But, maybe we were wrong. Time (there's been 50 years of it already) will tell.

I think that the fact a person can look at images made 50 years ago and compare them with the same scenes today, finding little that's different tells a story.

Glenn Hensley, Photography Technician with US Army Airforce, Summer 1944

(source: a series of E-Mail interviews with Glenn Hensley between 12^th June 2001 and 28^th August 2001)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced by permission of Glenn Hensley)

Independence day in Barisa

All this was a grim prelude to the launching of Independence; but on Independence Day itself, 15 August 1947, all animosity was forgotten. The village headmen, invited to hold the ceremony of hoisting the new Indian flag in the Christian compound, insisted that nobody must do the hoisting but their village Holy Man, and it was, very appropriately, an Englishman who raised the flag of Independent India. Here is Mother Edith's account of the day's ceremony. “In a most surprising way all hostility ceased, between the communities, and they greeted one another with ek ho! (unite). Raising the national flag was the ceremony to be observed on all public buildings and institutions, and Father D. had had a tall bamboo put up in the football ground, and sent an invitation to the headmen of Barisa (the village in which the Behala compound is) to come and hoist the flag there. The invitation apparently gave great pleasure, and a most polite response came that the whole procession arranged for the hoisting of the flag in the village would come on here. All was very well ordered; first, scouts on bicycles as outriders, then a band, then a chorus of maidens to sing, all dressed alike in white saris with red borders, and then the speechifiers and a long crowd of over a thousand.. Our women were inside the' church fence, but were invited to join some Indian ladies nearer the centre. The drums beat, the maidens sang, the speeches were made, and the flag hoisted.”

Friends of Father Douglass, Missionaries and Charity workers in Behala, Calcutta, 1947.

(Source: Father Douglas of Behala. London, 1952 / Reproduced by courtesy of Oxford University Press)

Long live a united India!

It was, with great delight, I at last saw that India had been given its freedom from foreign domination. However, it was likewise, with sorrow in my heart, I saw the dividing of that great and kindly land into two, separate countries: Hindustan and Pakistan. If England could run it as a whole for centuries, why couldn't it remain so under its own regime?

Mahatma Gandhi reluctantly agreed to the division, much against his true nature. Had he been allowed to live his full span of life, I feel convinced he would have been able to set aside the partition in time, because he was as loved by the Muslims as by the Hindus. Had he outlived Mr Jinnah, I feel convinced that he would have gained his point. In fact, at his untimely assassination, I firmly believed it would have given the impetus to unify all of India.

It failed, however. Mr Jinnah had too much love of his own self-importance to see clearly that a divided India would not be the same world force as a united India! Therefore, to maintain his own prestige, he kept whipping up the Muslims against the Hindus. As it was, even a divided India, with its 400 million [in 1946], was a force to reckon with. But what a different force it would have been if united and, after a few years of organisation, it would have been a prime mover in all Eastern politics! Long live a united India!

August Peter Hansen, Customs Inspector, 1947

(source: page 217 of August Peter Hansen: “Memoirs of an Adventurous Dane in India : 1904-1947” London: BACSA, 1999)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with 1999 Margaret [Olsen] Brossman)

‘…but it was all thrown away.'

[excited crowds swept through the Governor's official residence, ransacking it and destroying or disfiguring the effigies of British rule. It was an undignified end to British rule with Burrowes and his wife having to take to the river to escape by motorboat.]

The pictures were broken to bits and all the lovely furniture. It was a small calamity in comparison to the dreadful things that were happening elsewhere, but it was all thrown away.

Sheila Coldwell, wife of a management agency employee, Calcutta, August 1947

(source: page 175 of Trevor Royle: “The Last Days of the Raj” London: Michael Joseph, 1989)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Trevor Royle 1989)

‘I hated the whole idea’

We went to various parties to which I didn't want to go because I hated the whole idea. The Union Jack was pulled down and the Indian flag was put up; we had drinks all round. It went completely against the grain with me because I didn't think it was right. I hated it all and loathed every minute of it.

Sheila Coldwell, wife of a management agency employee, Calcutta, August 1947

(source: page 175 of Trevor Royle: “The Last Days of the Raj” London: Michael Joseph, 1989)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Trevor Royle 1989)

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C.R Rajagopalcharya becomes first Indian Governor of West-Bengal

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Unrest after Independence

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The sound of shots in the distance

Early one evening when Ron and I were sitting in the lounge, with Glen at our feet, we heard the sound of shots in the distance and wondered idly what was happening. The following morning we learned the full details of what had occurred the day before. We lived in the vicinity of DUM-DUM airport and on the Cossipore Road leading to the airport was situated the Gun Factory and also the Jessop’s Engineering Works. A gang of communist terrorists unsuccessfully attacked the Gun Factory, but broke into the engineering works where they brutally killed two of the Europeans by throwing them into the boilers. The other members of the staff were saved by the efforts of the workers who succeeded in hiding them until the murderers took off to create further havoc in the airport prior to escaping over the border to Pakistan. This horrifying account shook everybody – Europeans and Indians alike – but the perpetrators of this loathsome crime were never brought to justice. .

Eugenie Fraser, wife of a jute mill manager, Dum Dum, 26/27 February 1949

(source:page 181 of Eugenie Fraser: “A home by the Hooghly. A jute Wallahs Wife” .Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing 1989)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Eugenie Fraser)

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Worldwide Independence Movement

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Sri Lanka

PERSIA has become Iran, Siam has become Thailand and Ceylon may soon become Sri Lanka.' A private member's motion urging that change was carried in Ceylon's State Council, in the first week of this month, whether unanimously, or by a- majority vote we do not know. The House has referred it to a Committee which is to report soon. In the meanwhile Ceylon's public will have an opportunity of discussing it and forming a considered view. Unless serious opposition develops the Island will discard the name by which it has been formally known for centuries and go back to its older name in the Ramayana, which name in informed talk has always been used by Indians in their own language.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, December 11, 1940)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

Latest Dominion

WITH due ceremony Ceylon's status within the British Commonwealth of Nations has now been raised to that of a self-governing Dominion. A result not envisaged at so early a date by the Government which appointed the Soulbury Commission has been achieved thanks to a combination of factors ; the spirit of the times, the example of India, and Pakistan and the partial parallel of Burma, the reforming .zeal of Britain's present Government and not least the persuasive diplomacy of Ceylon's Premier, Mr Senanayake, assisted by his country's good record during the short period of probation.

The event is almost as important for Ceylon's neighbours as for Ceylon. It marks yet one more step in Asia's astonishingly rapid advance to control of her own destinies. It means that future relations will be conducted between free equals, with all the advantages of mutual respect and candour such a relationship impels. It should—as Burma's freedom seems also likely to do—result in a clarification of the knotty problems of citizenship and immigration which have hitherto on occasion marred Asian fellowship. It will furnish the support on international bodies of yet another free Asian Government to causes of common Asian concern.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, February 5. 1948)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

A New Nation

WHEN historians look back upon the year 1949, provided that their eyes are not dazzled to all else save the collapse of Kuomintang China, they can hardly fail to note a positive achievement fit to be ranked with the great changes of 1947. Then, in travail but also in triumphant hope, two great Asian nations augmented the number of independent States, to be followed not much later by a small neighbour, Ceylon, and a big one, Burma. The United States of Indonesia now joins their company.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, December 26, 1949)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

Bhutan

THE accession of Bhutan's new Maharaja has more significance than is usually associated with such happy occasions ; it represents continuity in a region which, not half a century ago, was considered forbidding and remote but is now of greater interest because of events in its northern neighbour, Tibet. Set amid the peaks and ranges of the Himalayas, Bhutan has for 90 years peacefully devoted itself to its own affairs, the hardy and vigorous people trading freely with adjoining Indian districts.

Relations with India are governed by the treaty of perpetual peace and friendship signed in Darjeeling some years ago. By it India undertook not to interfere in Bhutan's internal administration, to pay the annual sum of Rs. 5 lakhs and as a gesture to Bhutanese sentiment, to return the 34-square mile Dewangiri area, north of Kamrup. Assam. Bhutan in turn abandoned territorial claims and consented to be guided by the advice of the Indian Government in regard to foreign relations.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, October 27, 1952)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

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26 January 1950 – The Indian constitution comes into force

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Task Completed

INDIA'S Constituent Assembly has now completed its task of laying down the fundamental law of the land. Modifications on third reading were not expected to be, and have not proved substantial. Arguments propounded in the general discussion may have contributed little unsaid, before. Nevertheless, the final review was helpful, indicating, as it did, reasonable satisfaction with most of the detailed work done, while reiterating the two main lines of criticism on points of principle.

These were, first, that the Indian Union will be over-centralized, secondly that undue restraints have been imposed on civil rights. With the first proposition we on the whole disagree; certainly the Union will have more authority than the Federal Government in the USA, for example; but the effects there of great local autonomy have not been uniformly happy, while a constitution primarily devised for an agrarian economy has had of late to be painfully adapted to the needs of a modem industrial community. With the second objection we have greater sympathy, and apprehensions on this score may perhaps be enhanced by the degree of centralization adopted.

Much will clearly depend on interpretation of the Constitution by the courts. At least according to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the Judiciary has an essential part to play in construing any written document.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, November 26, 1949)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

The Republican Idea

INDIA today becomes a republic, and will henceforward be governed under a new constitution, the outcome of three years labour. The country's warm congratulations go to Dr Rajendra Prasad, unanimously chosen as first President, who presided earlier over the Constituent Assembly and has been three times President of the Indian National Congress. A convinced Gandhian and a hard and selfless worker in the national cause, representing the solid core of the Congress tradition, he is a popular choice for the highest office that India can bestow. The country's thanks also go to Dr Ambedkar, Chairman of the drafting committee, Sir Narsing Rao and others who have taken part in the exacting task of shaping a constitution to the national needs. How it works, time will show, but its author's diligence has provided, so far as humanely possible, against contingencies.

It is, however, not upon the details of her future government but upon the change in her status, that India's attention focusses today. At the conclusion of the debate on the Constitution two months ago, Dr Prasad said that, though India knew republics of old, those were small. "We never had anything like the republic which we are going to have now." The republican idea is itself a novelty. Introducing the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly in Dec. 1946, Pandit Nehru said, "We have not mentioned the word republic till now; but you will well understand that a free India can be nothing but a republic", in other words, a republic is the logical outcome of the struggle for puma swaraj, full independence, and implies freedom from foreign domination. It is not, as some might suppose, primarily anti-monarchist.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, January 26, 1950)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

Republic Day

A sovereign democratic republic, in the Hindi language, is Sampoorna Prabhutva Sampanna Lokatantratmaka Ganarajya. Last week, that is what India became.After weeks of work, laborers with chisels and paintbrushes had managed to remove hundreds of crowns from furniture, doorways and walls of New Delhi's great sandstone Government House. The words "Royal" and "His Majesty's" had been taken off mailboxes, trucks and ships. India was breaking her last symbolic bonds to Britain. Declaring Jan. 26 Republic Day,* the government gathered in New Delhi's Durbar Hall to inaugurate its new constitution and install its first President, 65-year-old Rajendra Prasad.

And Three Cows. A huge crystal chandelier glittered above the pearl-grey top hats of diplomats, the snow-white Gandhi caps of Congressmen, and the flaming turbans and fezzes of princes in the marble rotunda. On the great throne where viceroys once sat, perched birdlike Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, retiring Governor General of the Dominion. Beside him on a smaller throne was the President-elect, in black achkan (coat) and tight white churidar (trousers). Prasad's timid wife Rajbanshi sat near by, looking bewildered and frightened.

Against the walls, Lancers in scarlet coats and blue-and-gold turbans stood like statues' through the blaze of trumpets and the solemn, brief ceremony that followed. Chakravarti Rajagopalachari proclaimed "India, that is Bharat"* a republic, and swore in Prasad. Next, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as Prime Minister.

For Rajendra Prasad, who, like Gandhi, gave up a law practice to devote his life to Indian freedom, the presidency was a reward for years of faithful service to the Congress party. One friend said of pacifist, Puritan Prasad: "He detests controversy as much as he loathes liquor." Prasad is a strong upholder of tradition; he still opposes tractors' and factories for India.

An asthma victim, Prasad leads a Spartan life. His day begins at 3 a.m. with yoga exercises, the reading of the Ramayana, and the symbolic spinning that characterizes a devout follower of Gandhi.

When he moves into the 300-room red sandstone Government House ("in the labyrinths of which I may lose myself"), Prasad will take with him his wife, a sister, two sons, 17 granddaughters, two grandsons, and three cows.

A Million Thresholds. In the afternoon, President Prasad drove five miles through New Delhi's cheering streets. The magnificent viceregal coach (with crowns removed) was drawn by six horses, and escorted by the mounted viceregal bodyguard, in scarlet tunics and flowing rainbow turbans. In Irwin Stadium, 3,600 picked soldiers, sailors and airmen paraded for Prasad, who unexpectedly saluted as they passed. Said an observer: "This show is more British than the British would ever dare be."

Not all of India, however, rejoiced on Republic Day. In Calcutta, three people were killed when police fired on a Communist demonstration. In Bombay, scores were injured during a Red-provoked riot. In Hyderabad, the Nizam barely escaped injury when a hand grenade thrown at his car failed to explode. And in Madras, a government spokesman announced that the specter of famine "is already sitting on a million thresholds."

*This date was picked to commemorate Jan. 26, 1930, the day voted by the National Congress party in Lahore as the start of its campaign for Puma Swaraj (complete independence). *By act of its Constituent Assembly, India now has two official names: in Hindi, Hindustan; in old Sanskrit, Bharat. The name India is recognized as an English translation of Hindustan.

(source: TIME Magazine, New York, Feb. 6, 1950)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)

The New Parliament

THE inauguration of India's new Parliament marks a fresh and uniquely important stage in the nation's political history. After the momentous events of 1947, the Constituent Assembly; functioning also in its second capacity, as first interim Parliament, laid the foundations of Republican democracy. However, this was still in one respect a period of transition, for the fathers of the Constitution emerged indirectly, through the agency of the provincial Legislatures, from the votes of a restricted electorate, that of the 1935 Act. Since then India has seen the experiment, viewed with apprehension by some but magnificently justified in the result, of universal adult suffrage. Now a Parliament beyond cavil representative meets to take up the burden, where the former trustees of independence laid it down.

In one other important regard this Parliament will differ from the last. The elections of 1946, and the Constituent Assembly which emerged from them, were dominated by one particular party. In the Constituent Assembly such opposition as emerged, was somewhat restricted. Today there is one obvious contrast. The present opposition, though still small relative to the strength, of Congress, is organized and energetic, comprising men who may well make a good showing in debate. It would have been undesirable, at this stage, if there had been no firm governing majority. Equally, however, it is a matter for congratulation that there should be critics able and ready to enliven proceedings, and above all to requite from Ministers details of their stewardship.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, May 13, 1952)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

The Hindu Code

MINISTERIAL intentions regarding the Hindu Code remain, for the most part, undefined. The original Bill of 1947 (not by any means the first of its kind, but the first radical and comprehensive measure to be officially sponsored) was in many respects badly drafted. A revised draft by the Ministry of Law was referred to a Select Committee and further amended. The Committee's report, however, contained lengthy minutes of dissent, and considerable outside opposition developed, particularly in the provisions on divorce and women's property rights. The Government which had initially adopted a strongly reformist line and announced the intention of treating the measure as one of confidence, could not pursue this attitude to the extent of forcing it through during the life of the interim Parliament. Instead a change of method was adopted, to split the Bill into stages (though none was, in fact, carried into Law) and this intention was reiterated in the President's address to the new Parliament.

Impressed possibly by objection, the reformist legislation for a single community in a secular State, the Government is reported to be considering a new marriage and divorce law applicable to all. Any assessment of the general merits of such a law will obviously have to await publication. If, however, it is to be optional in its effect, the degree to which it would satisfy supporters of the Hindu Code Bill becomes questionable. Optional Hindu monogamous marriage is already available under the Special Marriage Act, 1872; divorce is permissible, and monogamy compulsory, in Madras and Bombay, and the intention may be to extend these provisions. However, an object of the Hindu Code Bill was to make all Hindu marriage, whether civil or sacramental, compulsorily monogamous and to provide in all cases definite, even though limited, grounds for its dissolution.

Over the property clauses of the Code controversy had been, at the very least, no less intense than over the matrimonial; indeed, suggestions have been heard that, if differences proved otherwise irreconcilable, a compromise might conceivably be effected whereby women obtained the right to divorce at the cost of a prospective share in the joint-family succession. The Government is in a most difficult position, poised between traditionalists and reformers, its own past promises and the strength of opposition.

(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, June 25, 1952)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)

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We had to surrender our British passports or ‘move on’

1949. We had to surrender our British passports or ‘move on’ so my Father said we were going to England. We had to pay our passage to Tilbury. My father brought a flat in London. It was hard for my Mother with no servants and no idea how to cook, run a home, look after us all, cope with money or rationing and come to terms with life in England and London. I went to secretarial college, one brother to college and another became a naval cadet. Dad then got a house in Archway, and all our crated possessions arrived by sea from Calcutta

Dad worked in administration for telecommunications. He was 50 when we got to England and worked for about 15 years in the City

My boyfriend came over to England to finish his education in Dunbarton, to become a Marine Engineer. We married in Highgate, and moved to St Albans where my youngest son was born and have lived on Anglesey, before moving to Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

Thelma Jolly, Schoolgirl , Calcutta, 1949

(source: A5230450 A Childhood in Burma at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)

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