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print versionPublished on H-Asia (October, 2010)
Lucy P. Chester. Borders and Conflicts in South Asia: The Radcliffe
Boundary Commission and the Partition of Punjab. Manchester
Manchester University Press, 2009. xv + 222 pp. $89.95 (cloth),
ISBN 978-0-7190-7899-6.
Reviewed by Bernardo Michael (Messiah College)
The Partition of Punjab in 1947
The British poet W. H. Auden captured some of the drama surrounding
boundary commissioner Cyril Radcliffe’s demarcation of the boundaries
of India and Pakistan in 1947 when he wrote:
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided. [1]
Lucy Chester’s book on the Radcliffe Boundary Commission seeks to
understand both Radcliffe the man and the context within which he
operated to execute the partition in the Punjab. She examines the
interests of the colonial state, the preoccupations of Pakistani and
Indian nationalists, the pressures of international politics,
Radcliffe’s unique role, and the impact of the partition on the
everyday life of ordinary citizens. The book is divided into two
parts. The first half focuses on the "high politics of British
withdrawal and of Indian and Pakistani independence. The second half
deals with the impact of the partition process on the ground, in the
everyday lives of inhabitants on both sides of the new boundary. The
process of partition on the face of it witnessed the delineation of
2,500 miles of boundary in about six weeks by a British lawyer with
no experience in boundary making and who had never lived in South
Asia. Chester’s book clearly lays out the poor organization, haste,
and lack of coordination that marked the process of partition. The
colonial state’s claim that partition was an objective, ordered,
balanced, and planned affair with active South Asian participation
was mostly a pretense driven by the need to placate international
criticism and avoid any responsibility for the subsequent fallout.
Involving Pakistani and Indian nationalists allowed the British to
occupy the high moral ground that partition was an indigenous affair
for which South Asians would ultimately have to bear responsibility
(see chapter 2). The neutrality of the British government in this
process cannot be determined with certainty, as the government and
especially Viceroy Mountbatten were not disinterested observers.
The real strength of Chester’s work is her careful study of the
Radcliffe Commission itself. Made up entirely of eight South Asian
judges and headed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a widely respected lawyer
and loyal servant of the British government, the commission was given
six weeks ( June - August 1947) to decide the boundaries of India and
Pakistan (both in Punjab and Bengal). Chester’s work convincingly
reveals that given this timeframe, the boundary commission’s work
turned out to be a hasty affair. There was little preliminary study,
no reliable data to support its work, and a general sense of
confusion about how to execute the boundary award. The burden to
delineate the boundaries of Pakistan and India then fell on the
shoulders of Radcliffe. While careful not to compromise the interests
of the British government, Radcliffe’s line tried to balance the
division of Punjab’s religious minorities with the water resources
(especially the canal networks) of the region. In the end 64 percent
of Punjab was given to Pakistan along with about 60 percent of the
population. In the final analysis, Chester concludes that Radcliffe’s
boundary decision was perhaps the best that could have been made
under the circumstances; at least it was better than other boundaries
being suggested by various parties involved in the process (see
chapter 7). In the latter half of the book (chapters 6-9) Chester
maps the fallout of the Radcliffe Award in terms of the violence,
death, and destruction that followed, tearing apart the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people. While succeeding decades witnessed a
reduction in the levels of cross-border raids and skirmishes, the
Indo-Pakistan boundary became increasingly militarized with an array
of paramilitary forces, fences, and electronic surveillance.
The story of partition cannot be understood within the narrow context
of the Radcliffe Commission. Chester’s book could have provided some
background information on the wider forces at work leading up to
partition—such as the rise of religious nationalisms in South Asia
with all their inherent contradictions and poignant legacies. This
would have helped readers situate the Radcliffe Commission against a
wider tapestry of historical forces. Wider contextual factors that
informed this process such as the emergence of communal identities
and their linkages with nationalism within the subcontinent
especially need to be given more attention.[2] The focus on
borderlands (chapter 8) could have been more ambitious in terms of
connecting her study with emerging work on borderlands from across
the world.[3] Readers interested in the history of cartography might
express similar sentiments, calling for further comment on how her
work informs this emerging field of inquiry. For instance, while
imperial cartography drew lines on maps to simplify and make
territory legible, it ignored the complexity of these spaces, defined
as they were by multiple networks of social and economic association.
Such state projects have conceived of tragedies around the world.[4].
Lucy Chester’s book is a welcome addition to the growing literature
on the partition of India and Pakistan. The book, through it focus on
Radcliffe, tries to connect the realms of high politics and everyday
life on the ground. Her treatment of Radcliffe is nuanced and tries
to understand him in terms of his family, childhood, and early life
experiences. Chester could have done more in exploring the
connections, if any, between his wartime work on press censorship and
the manner in which he conducted the boundary proceedings. We know
far too little about his motivations or the life experiences that
might have informed his decisions while determining the Indo-Pakistan
boundary. Finally, while not the explicit thrust of her book, a brief
account of how the Radcliffe line progressed in Bengal would have
been most useful for readers curious about the emergence of East
Pakistan. However, in the end, Radcliffe will always remain an
enigmatic character, perhaps largely due to his penchant of
systematically destroying his papers. A stalwart for empire, he was
unwittingly drawn into a growing maelstrom that came to be called
partition, to which he was appointed to give it its cartographic
epitaph.
Notes
[1]. This fragment of Auden’s poem on the partition is cited in
Willem van Schendel, _The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation
in South Asia_ (London: Anthem Press, 2005), 74, n. 8.
[2]. See for instance, Masood Ashraf Raja, _Constructing Pakistan:
Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National Identity, 1857-
1947_ (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Vazira
Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, _The Long Partition and the Making of
Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories_ (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007).
[3]. Eric Tagliacozzo, _Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and
States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915_ (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005).
[4]. A recent work that tries to explore such themes is James C.
Scott, _Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
Citation: Bernardo Michael. Review of Chester, Lucy P., _Borders and
Conflicts in South Asia: The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the
Partition of Punjab_. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. October , 2010.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31405
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
