how redcliff award was unfair?
Answers
Answer:
The Radcliffe Line was the boundary demarcation line between the Indian and Pakistani portions of the Punjab and Bengal provinces of British India. It was named after its architect, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who, as the joint chairman of the two boundary commissions for the two provinces, received the responsibility to equitably divide 175,000 square miles (450,000 km2) of territory with 88 million people.[1]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Radcliffe Award
The demarcation line was published on 17 August 1947 upon the Partition of India. Today its western side still serves as the Indo-Pakistan border and the eastern side serves as the India-Bangladesh border. It is 3,323 km long.
Events leading up to the Radcliffe Boundary Commissions
On 18 July 1947, the Indian Independence Act 1947 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom stipulated that British rule in India would come to an end just one month later, on 15 August 1947. The Act also stipulated the partition of the Presidencies and provinces of British India into two new sovereign dominions: India and Pakistan.
Pakistan was intended as a Muslim homeland, while India remained secular. Muslim-majority British provinces in the north were to become the foundation of Pakistan. The provinces of Baluchistan (91.8% Muslim before partition) and Sindh (72.7%) and North-West Frontier Province were granted entirely to Pakistan. However, two provinces did not have an overwhelming majority— Punjab in the northwest (55.7% Muslim) and Bengal in the northeast (54.4% Muslim).[2] After elaborate discussions, these two provinces ended up being partitioned between India and Pakistan.
Punjab's population distribution was such that there was no line that could neatly divide Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. Likewise, no line could appease both the Muslim League, headed by Jinnah and the Congress-led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel. Moreover, any division based on religious communities was sure to entail "cutting through road and rail communications, irrigation schemes, electric power systems and even individual landholdings."[3] However, a well-drawn line could minimize the separation of farmers from their fields, and also minimize the numbers of people who might feel forced to relocate.
As a result of these partitions, "some 14 million people left their homes and set out by every means possible—by air, train, and road, in cars and lorries, in buses and bullock carts, but most of all on foot—to seek refuge with their own kind."[4] Many of them were slaughtered by an opposing side, some starved or died of exhaustion, while others were afflicted with "cholera, dysentery, and all those other diseases that afflict undernourished refugees everywhere".[5] Estimates of the number of people who died range between 200,000 (official British estimate at the time) and two million, with the consensus being around one million dead.
Explanation:
The regions affected by the extended Partition of India: green regions were all part of Pakistan by 1948, and orange part of India. The darker-shaded regions represent the Punjab and Bengal provinces partitioned by the Radcliffe Line. The grey areas represent some of the key princely states that were eventually integrated into India or Pakistan, but others which initially became independent are not shown.