It was the unenviable task of the English lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, to carve out the new frontiers of India and Pakistan. In a matter of weeks, he got to decide, with a few strokes of his pen, the destiny of some 400m people: his work casts a long shadow to this day. Deed done, Radcliffe burnt his papers and departed, never to return. WH Auden, in his poem, “Partition”, is scornful: “The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget/The case, as a good lawyer must.”
The provinces of Punjab and Bengal were torn in two, making deadly enemies of people who spoke the same language. The choice of where to call home came down to religion alone. The British withdrew hastily: a “shameful flight” is how Winston Churchill, no friend of Indian independence, described it.
No help was at hand — at that point, the UN was still some years away from defining what constituted refugee status. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, who had lived side by side for years, slaughtered each other. Partition is estimated to have cost up to a million lives; the tragedy created at least 11m refugees.