the execution of the Sir Cyril Radcliffe Reconstruction of Post-colonial India Pakistan (which became Bangladesh in December ) was constituted by putting together the eastern part of divided Bengal, Sylhet district of Assam, the district of Khulna in the region and also the Chittagong Hill tracts. Such districts of Bengal as Murshidabad, Malda and Nadia which had a substantially large Muslim population were left to remain in India. The exercise was one without a method. The re-drawn map of India was left with the two independent governments by the colonial rulers.
It was left to the independent governments of India and Pakistan to fix the exact boundaries. However, the understanding was that the religious minorities in both the nations – the Hindus in West and East Pakistan and the Muslims in India, in East Punjab and West Bengal as well as in United Provinces and elsewhere – would continue to live as minorities but as citizens in their nations. After the partition, there were as many as million Muslims in India and million non-Muslims (Hindus, Sindhis and Sikhs) in Pakistan. The vivisection of India, taking place as it did in the middle of heightened Hindu-Muslim violence, had rendered a smooth transition impossible.
Despite the conspicuous exhibition of Hindu–Muslim unity during the RIN mutiny and the INA trials (see previous lesson), the polity now resembled a volcano. Communal riots had become normal in many parts of India, and were most pronounced in the Punjab and Bengal. Minorities on both sides of the divide lived in fear and insecurity even as the two nations were born. That Gandhi, who led the struggle for freedom from the front and whom the colonial rulers found impossible to ignore, stayed far away from New Delhi and observed a fast on August , , was symbolic.
The partition brought about a system in place where the minorities on either side were beginning to think of relocating to the other side due to fear and insecurity. As violence spread, police remained mute