Clement Attlee

Clement Attlee led the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955 and was Prime Minister from 26 July 1945 to 25 October 1951. His government oversaw Indian independence. For the Panth his name sits at the head of the chain of decisions that ended in the division of the Punjab in August 1947.

Key moments

• 16 May 1946: the Cabinet Mission sent by his government published its plan. Its statement, read in the House of Lords, said that any division of the Punjab would divide the Sikhs, leaving substantial bodies of Sikhs on both sides of the boundary.
• 20 February 1947: his government fixed a date for the transfer of power, “not later than June 1948”. A US State Department record of that morning says Attlee was to announce that Lord Wavell was being recalled and that Lord Mountbatten would replace him as Viceroy. Mountbatten was told to seek a united India but to report by 1 October if that proved impossible.
• 3 June 1947: Attlee told the Commons that, because the Muslim League had boycotted the existing Constituent Assembly, the government would try a new method, and that it proposed to anticipate the June 1948 date and legislate for the transfer “this year”. The Punjab and Bengal assemblies would each meet in two parts, one for the Muslim-majority districts and one for the rest, and a simple majority in either part would divide the province. A Boundary Commission would then mark the line.
• 18 July 1947: the Indian Independence Act became law. From 15 August 1947 it set up the two dominions of India and Pakistan and replaced the Punjab with West Punjab and East Punjab.

What followed in the Punjab: The Boundary Commissions reported on 13 August 1947, two days before the transfer, and the final awards were Sir Cyril Radcliffe’s alone. Penderel Moon, writing in the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, puts the dead at between 200,000 and 1,000,000, thinking the lower figure nearest the truth, and says about 3.5 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from West Punjab to India. Within three months West Punjab was emptied of its Hindus and Sikhs.

The Sikh position: Master Tara Singh told the Cabinet Mission he stood for a united India but, if Pakistan were conceded, for a separate Sikh state free to federate with either side. By June 1947, after the attacks on Sikhs at Rawalpindi and Attock, the Sikh leadership, with Baldev Singh consenting for them, accepted the 3 June plan, fearing that otherwise the whole community would be absorbed into Pakistan.

What he is remembered for: In Britain, the National Health Service and the nationalisation of coal, electricity and the railways, and Indian independence. In the Punjab, the timetable.