Administrative change
Partition of British India, 1947
British India was partitioned along religious lines into India and Pakistan, accompanied by a boundary drawn by the Radcliffe Line commission and mass displacement and communal violence whose scale is estimated only within a wide range.
What happened
British India was partitioned along religious lines into the new dominions of India and Pakistan (the latter comprising West and East wings) at independence in August 1947, with the boundary drawn by a commission chaired by Cyril Radcliffe. Estimates of the resulting displacement and violence vary substantially across studies: population movement is commonly estimated at between roughly 10 and 20 million people, and communal violence deaths are variously estimated from approximately 200,000 to 2 million.[1] The Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir signed an Instrument of Accession to India, rather than Pakistan, on 26 October 1947, amid fighting in the region; the accession's validity and the broader status of Kashmir remain an active, unresolved dispute between India and Pakistan.[2]
Sources for this page
Each number marks a specific claim. Notes give the source, its locator and how it relates to the claim.
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1.
Claim: British India was partitioned along religious lines into India and Pakistan at independence in August 1947, with the boundary drawn by a commission chaired by Cyril Radcliffe. Estimates vary substantially by source: population displacement is commonly estimated at between roughly 10 and 20 million people, and communal violence deaths are variously estimated from approximately 200,000 to 2 million.
- Partition of India (Wikipedia) link, article text. Source record Consulted via a general-reference encyclopedia article summarising multiple scholarly estimates, not a single primary demographic study.
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2.
Claim: The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, signed an Instrument of Accession to India, rather than Pakistan, on 26 October 1947, amid the outbreak of fighting between Indian and Pakistani-backed forces in the region; the accession's validity and the broader status of Kashmir remain disputed between India and Pakistan.
- Instrument of Accession (Jammu and Kashmir) (Wikipedia) link, article text. Source record Consulted via a general-reference encyclopedia article, not the Instrument of Accession's original text or primary diplomatic records; this bundle does not adjudicate the ongoing Kashmir dispute.