Towards independence and partition

Independence arrived in 1947 through a sequence of wartime crisis, negotiation and mass pressure, but it came with the partition of India and Pakistan and immense human suffering. The Cabinet Mission Plan, the interim government, Direct Action Day and the Mountbatten Plan mark the rapid final steps from a united constitutional settlement to division. A concrete example is the Radcliffe boundary award, drawn in weeks, which cut through villages, districts and cities such as Lahore and left millions on the wrong side of a new border. This chapter explains why unity failed and what partition cost.