UPSC Mains 2019 GS Paper 1 Q12: model answer

The 1940s saw several British proposals for a transfer of power. Their design and timing often complicated, rather than eased, the process.

Proposals that encouraged division

• August Offer (1940): assured minorities that no constitution would be adopted without their consent, giving the League a veto.
• Cripps Mission (1942): dominion status after the war and the right of provinces to stay out of the Union, a door to Partition.
• Simla Conference (1945) failed when Wavell accepted Jinnah's demand that the League alone nominate Muslim members.
• Cabinet Mission (1946): grouping of provinces, which created ambiguity and conflict; the League's Direct Action Day (August 1946) followed.

Divide and rule

• Britain used the League as a counterweight to the Congress throughout the war while imprisoning Congress leaders after Quit India.

Haste of the final phase

• Attlee's declaration (February 1947) set June 1948 as a deadline; Mountbatten advanced it to 15 August 1947.
• The Radcliffe boundary was drawn in about five weeks and announced after independence, contributing to violence and migration.

Other factors

• Communal politics, the Congress–League rivalry and the failure of the interim government also mattered.

The princely states problem

• The lapse of paramountcy under the Indian Independence Act, 1947 left over 560 states free to choose; Hyderabad, Junagadh and Kashmir became flashpoints.

Assessment

• Partition killed between several lakh and perhaps a million people and displaced about 1.5 crore, a cost the hasty timetable worsened.

British policy was not the only factor, but its concessions to separatism and its hasty withdrawal made the transfer of power more complicated and violent than it needed to be.