In a quiet village in the northern English county of Yorkshire, Robert Beaumont rifles through his father’s archives.
The various and somewhat tatty pieces of paper he unearths are no ordinary collection of paternal memoirs.
They are the thoughts and reflections of his father, Christopher Beaumont, who played a central role in the partition of India in 1947, which resulted in arguably the largest mass migration of peoples the world has ever seen. After the death in 1989 of Mountbatten’s Private Secretary, Sir George Abell, Beaumont was probably not exaggerating when he claimed to be the only person left who “knew the truth about partition”.
In 1947, Beaumont was private secretary to the senior British judge, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who was chairman of the Indo-Pakistan Boundary Commission.
Radcliffe was responsible for dividing the vast territories of British India into India and Pakistan, separating 400 million people along religious lines.
The family documents show that Beaumont had a stark assessment of the role played by Britain in the last days of the Raj.
“The viceroy, Mountbatten, must take the blame - though not the sole blame - for the massacres in the Punjab in which between 500,000 to a million men, women and children perished,” he writes.
“The handover of power was done too quickly.”
The central theme ever present in Beaumont’s historic paperwork is that Mountbatten not only bent the rules when it came to partition - he also bent the border in India’s favour.
**The documents repeatedly allege that Mountbatten put pressure on Radcliffe to alter the boundary in India’s favour. ** On one occasion, he complains that he was “deftly excluded” from a lunch between the pair in which a substantial tract of Muslim-majority territory - which should have gone to Pakistan - was instead ceded to India. Beaumont’s papers say that the incident brought “grave discredit on both men”.
moutbatten was an idiot of the highest degree. this is just further proof. maybe mrs mountbatten convinced him to favour india, cuz well she had her own reasons
[quote]
*"The Punjab partition was a disaster," he writes.
"Geography, canals, railways and roads all argued against dismemberment.
"The trouble was that Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were an integrated population so that it was impossible to make a frontier without widespread dislocation. *
[/quote]
and the tragedy people see is how land was divided? bania blood runneth deep in pak.
Excellent thread, Icono bhai. Infact, if you go and talk to Punjabis who survived Hindu-Sikh massacres of 1947, they'll tell you that Britishers had promised to give entire Punjab and entire Bengal/Assam to Pakistan- that way both Amritsar and Calcutta would have been in Pakistan now. Congress, Muslim League and Britishers had decided to shift non-muslim population of Punjab and Bengal to somewhere in India like UP/MP etc and award two provinces completely to the muslims- sad it did not happen and what was left with the muslims was truncated Pakistan and remorse in every Pakistani's heart.
I think Jinnah wanted Assam but I don’t know if it was a complete muslim majority province? Wouldn’t whole of punjab mean that delhi would be in Pakistan? Now if that had happened and kashmir, by default, would be in Pakistan then how would the western arms industry further grow and thrive?
Excellent thread, Icono bhai. Infact, if you go and talk to Punjabis who survived Hindu-Sikh massacres of 1947, they'll tell you that Britishers had promised to give entire Punjab and entire Bengal/Assam to Pakistan- that way both Amritsar and Calcutta would have been in Pakistan now. Congress, Muslim League and Britishers had decided to shift non-muslim population of Punjab and Bengal to somewhere in India like UP/MP etc and award two provinces completely to the muslims- sad it did not happen and what was left with the muslims was truncated Pakistan and remorse in every Pakistani's heart.
Excellent thread, Icono bhai. Infact, if you go and talk to Punjabis who survived Hindu-Sikh massacres of 1947, they'll tell you that Britishers had promised to give entire Punjab and entire Bengal/Assam to Pakistan*-* that way both Amritsar and Calcutta would have been in Pakistan now. Congress, Muslim League and Britishers had decided to shift non-muslim population of Punjab and Bengal to somewhere in India like UP/MP etc and award two provinces completely to the muslims- sad it did not happen and what was left with the muslims was truncated Pakistan and remorse in every Pakistani's heart.
With how many Punjabis did you had a word with, i bet non.
Did you know Amritsar, Jallandar and other cities had huge muslim population prior to partition? Punjabi muslims suffered heavliy due to partition- there were trains full of dead bodies reaching Lahore from across the border almost everyday- full of mutilated dead bodies. How can one be so cruel? I still fail to understand why muslim punjabis were targeted in entire punjab by Sikhs and Hindus in 1947 when no one harmed them?
Now if that had happened and kashmir, by default, would be in Pakistan then how would the western arms industry further grow and thrive? 