Punjab & Bengal were partitioned, being the states with almost equivalent Hindu-Muslim majority, while majority of the princely states either acceded to India or Pakistan with the exceptions of Kashmir, Junagarh, Hyderabad. Kashmir decided to be a free state expecting no intervention from Pakistan or India. It was Muslim majority state, ruled by a Hindu ruler, Hari Singh. Jinnah saw him as an eyesore between himself and a bigger country. Jinnah sent his army general to capture Kashmir. Hari Singh’s smaller forces were wrung by Pakistani troops. Hari Singh turned to India for help and Nehru offered to help on a condition to cede Kashmir to India.
Now comes the interesting part. India’s sole contact with Kashmir was Srinagar Airport. Indian Airforce’s capacity to haul in troops into Kashmir was severely limited due to inadequate infrastructure and incapability of flying in tanks. India urgently needed a road capable of handling heavy troops and machinery. The only highway road linking to Kashmir passed through Gurdaspur. Because Gurdaspur was now in Indian territory, National Highway 1 A was used by Indian Army to roll in troops, tanks and howitzers into Kashmir. Seeing the Indian troops with heavy machinery and tanks, Pakistanis quickly retreated into Pakistan and India had a decisive victory. Parts of Kashmir that Pakistan successfully occupied became the Pakistan occupied Kashmir and the other whole of J&K became a part of India. All this was possible all thank to Radcliffe’s decision, who did not give away Gurdaspur because it did not aesthetically please him.Sir Cyril Radcliffe was called to India in June of 1947 to draw the lines separating India and Pakistan. He was called on because he had never been to India before and was therefore unbiased on the lines separating the countries. He started his line from the south of Kashmir with an intention of terminating it in Rajasthan. The line arrived at a little district in Punjab called Gurdaspur. Now, Gurdaspur according to the statistics in his hands had a population of Muslim majority. Radcliffe was with strict orders that Muslim dominated areas were to be given to Pakistan and the Hindu dominated ones to India. Gurdaspur was given to India on the sole fact that giving Gurdaspur to Pakistan would create an awkward bulge into India and would not look good on maps aesthetically. -
CAclubindia
