Mountbatten announces the 3 June Plan to partition Punjab and Bengal

Who: Viceroy Lord Mountbatten and Prime Minister Attlee announced it. Nehru for the Congress, Jinnah for the Muslim League and Sardar Baldev Singh for the Sikhs consented. Master Tara Singh and the Akali Dal had opposed partition but, with the Sikhs fearing the whole community would be engulfed in Pakistan, agreed to it.

What: On 3 June 1947 Attlee read the plan to the Commons while the Viceroy announced it in New Delhi. Attlee said all three parties at the Viceroy's conferences had received it favourably. With the Cabinet Mission's plan having failed to win agreement, power would pass on a dominion basis to one or two successor authorities, earlier than June 1948. The Punjab and Bengal assemblies would each meet in two parts, one for the Muslim-majority districts (by the 1941 census) and one for the rest, and a simple majority in either part for partition would divide the province. A Boundary Commission would mark the line by contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims, taking other factors into account. The next day Mountbatten told a press conference that power would pass by 15 August.

In the Punjab Assembly, the eastern part, with its non-Muslim majority, voted by 50 to 22 for partition and for joining India. The Boundary Commission was four High Court judges, two nominated by the Congress and two by the League, under the English barrister Sir Cyril Radcliffe. The words about other factors were inserted to satisfy the Sikhs, who had been led to expect that population would not be the only test. The judges were so divided that the awards were Radcliffe's alone. The line was published on 17 August, two days after independence.

Where: Announced in New Delhi and London, and applied above all to Punjab and Bengal.

Why it mattered: The Cabinet Mission had warned in 1946 that dividing Punjab would divide the Sikhs. Now the Sikh leadership accepted it as the lesser evil, knowing that about two million Sikhs would be left on the Pakistan side. They had been shaken by the March 1947 attacks on Sikhs in Rawalpindi and Attock. After independence came mass killing and migration. Penderel Moon gives estimates of the dead from 200,000 to 1,000,000, thinking the lower figure nearest the truth, and says roughly three and a half million Hindus and Sikhs moved from West Punjab to India. Within three months West Punjab was emptied of its Hindus and Sikhs.