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Unlock This CourseBy the start of 1947 British rule was running out of time. The interim government was split between Congress and the Muslim League, and the viceroy, Lord Wavell, was warning London that he could not keep order much longer. He suggested pulling the British out of India in stages, province by province. Attlee thought this sounded like a retreat and decided on a fresh start.
On 20 February 1947 Attlee told Parliament two things. First, Britain would hand over power in India by a date not later than June 1948. Second, Wavell would be replaced by Lord Louis Mountbatten. Attlee hoped a fixed deadline would shock the Indian parties into agreeing. Instead it started a race for control of the provinces. In the Punjab, the coalition government led by Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana resigned on 2 March 1947. Riots followed in Lahore, Amritsar and Rawalpindi, and many people were killed, including large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus in the villages around Rawalpindi.
Mountbatten was sworn in as viceroy on 24 March 1947. He was 46, a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, and had been the Allied commander in South-East Asia during the war. Attlee's instructions were to try first for a united India, and Mountbatten was given unusual freedom to make decisions on the spot.
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In his first weeks Mountbatten held well over a hundred private meetings with Indian leaders. He got on well with Nehru. He could not move Jinnah, who insisted that only Pakistan would do. By the middle of April Mountbatten had decided that a united India was impossible. Several pressures pushed Britain, and then Congress, the same way.
Britain no longer had the money or the soldiers to hold India by force. Communal violence was spreading from Bengal and Bihar to the Punjab, and British officials feared a civil war for which Britain would be blamed. Every attempt at a united India since 1945 had failed. Partition was the only plan the League would agree to, so it was the quickest way out.
Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel had found it impossible to work with League ministers in the interim government. They decided that a smaller India with a strong central government was better than a united India too weak to govern. On 8 March 1947 the Congress Working Committee itself called for the Punjab to be divided. Gandhi never agreed. In April he even suggested that Jinnah be asked to lead the government, but Congress leaders turned the idea down.
There was a price for Jinnah too. If India could be divided because of religion, so could the Punjab and Bengal. He would get a smaller Pakistan than the six full provinces the League had claimed.
Mountbatten's first plan would have let each province choose its own future. When he showed it to Nehru at Simla in May, Nehru rejected it angrily. He feared India would break into many pieces. A senior Indian official, V. P. Menon, quickly wrote a new plan. Power would go to two central governments, India and Pakistan, each with dominion status, so the handover could be fast. Mountbatten took it to London, and the British government approved it.
On 3 June 1947 the plan was announced. That evening Mountbatten, Nehru, Jinnah and the Sikh leader Baldev Singh each spoke on All India Radio to accept it. Its main terms were:
Bengal voted for partition on 20 June and the Punjab on 23 June. Sind chose Pakistan in June, and so did Sylhet and the North-West Frontier Province in referendums held in July. Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act, which became law on 18 July 1947. It created two independent dominions.
At a press conference on 4 June, Mountbatten announced that power would be handed over on 15 August 1947. This was about ten months earlier than Attlee's deadline and just over ten weeks away. He later said he picked the day because it was the second anniversary of Japan's surrender. His reasons for speed were practical. Violence was growing, the government machine was breaking down, and he believed that the sooner Indian leaders held real power, the sooner they could restore order. Critics then and since have argued that the rush left too little time to prepare.
The borders were given to a British lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe. He had never been to India, which was meant to make him neutral. He arrived on 8 July 1947 and chaired two Boundary Commissions, one for the Punjab and one for Bengal. Each had four Indian judges, two chosen by Congress and two by the League. They could not agree, so Radcliffe decided himself.
Radcliffe had about five weeks. He worked from maps and from the census of 1941, drawing the line mainly between Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority districts. He had no time to visit most of the places he was dividing. Lahore went to Pakistan, while Amritsar and Calcutta went to India. The Sikh homeland in the Punjab was cut in two.
Radcliffe's borders were ready before 15 August, but Mountbatten did not publish them until 17 August 1947, two days after independence. What followed is covered in Independence, Partition and Its Consequences.
Do not write that Mountbatten came to India to divide it. His instructions were to try for a united India, and he turned to partition only after his talks with the leaders. Do not mix up the two dates: Attlee's deadline was June 1948, and Mountbatten's date was 15 August 1947. And remember that Mountbatten did not draw the borders. That was Radcliffe's job.
Explain two effects of Mountbatten's actions as viceroy on the way British rule in India ended. [8 marks]
One effect of Mountbatten's actions was that British India was divided instead of being handed over as one country. After weeks of meetings with Indian leaders, he decided by April 1947 that Jinnah would accept nothing less than Pakistan, so a united India was impossible. His plan of 3 June 1947 therefore let the law-making bodies of the Punjab and Bengal vote on partition, which they did on 23 and 20 June. Because Mountbatten persuaded Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh to accept the plan in public, partition became the agreed solution, and the Indian Independence Act of July 1947 created two dominions.
A second effect was that British rule ended much sooner, and in a hurry. Attlee had set a deadline of June 1948, but on 4 June 1947 Mountbatten announced a handover on 15 August 1947, just over ten weeks later. This meant every task had to be rushed. Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had never been to India, had about five weeks to draw the borders of the Punjab and Bengal from maps and the 1941 census. As a result the borders were drawn without Radcliffe visiting most of the places he divided, and they were finished only days before independence.
What lifts it to the top level: each paragraph names an effect, supports it with exact dates and names, and uses linking words such as 'therefore' and 'this meant' to show how Mountbatten's actions led to it.
Write two separate paragraphs, one for each effect. One effect alone cannot score more than half marks, however well you explain it. Here, 'partition was agreed' and 'the handover was rushed' are two different effects, so keep them apart.