Breaking up: Dividing assets between

India and Pakistan in times of Partition

Anwesha Sengupta
Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
This article explores the process of dividing the government assets and liabilities between
India and Pakistan and the method of splitting the colonial administration, bureaucracy and
the army as a consequence of partition of British India in 1947. It closely studies the decisions
that were taken in the Partition Council, the debates and discussions behind them and the ways
of implementing them on the ground. Though we associate partition with chaos and conflict,
this article shows that the representatives of both sides tried to work in an orderly manner to
divide the assets and liabilities. However, what was Indian and what was Pakistani, which
institution should be divided and which one was too unique for partition, became points of
contestation. This article examines these debates and complicates the general understanding
of the transition from the colonial to the post-colonial as entirely chaotic and contentious. It
also shows how partition shaped post-colonial national imaginations in India and Pakistan.
Keywords: Partition, Partition/Separation Council, division, assets, bureaucracy

The two countries [should] thank their stars, for a vast area of potential
conflict and dissatisfaction was removed from the potential arena of disputes
and confrontations by discussion...to the satisfaction of both the countries.
H.M. Patel, Rites of Passage, p. 123
And so the fatal operation progressesa tragedy, a comedy and an inglorious
farce.
Free Press Journal, 15 July 1947
On 3 June 1947, at a meeting with the Indian leaders, Lord Mountbatten circulated copies of a paper entitled The Administrative Consequences of Partition.1
It highlighted the technicalities of dividing a country. The task was massive.
Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Tanika Sarkar for reading several drafts of this article. A version
of this essay was presented at Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group and I acknowledge the
suggestions that I received from the audience, especially from Ranabir Samaddar. I would also
like to thank Debarati Bagchi, Himadri Chatterji, Ishan Mukherjee, Uponita Mukherjee, Parnisha
Sarkar, Aviroop Sengupta and Kaustubh Mani Sengupta.
1
Minutes of the Meeting of the Viceroy with the Indian Leaders, Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer
of Power 194247, p. 75.

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Creating India and Pakistan as two sovereign nation-states involved a division of

governmental staff, properties, records of civil departments, armed forces, financial
settlements, marking out the separate jurisdiction of the high courts and federal
courts, charting out domicile policies and, of course, demarcation of boundaries. The Indian leaders, strangely enough, had not realised the magnitude of the
job before seeing the note. As Lord Mountbatten writes, The severe shock that
this gave to everyone present would have been amusing if it was not rather
tragic.2 These material implications of partition, except for the process of border
making,3 have largely escaped scholarly attention.4 This article is an attempt to
address this gap.
I
A Partition Committee, formed on 12 June with Lord Mountbatten as the chairman, was given the task of dividing British India. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and
Rajendra Prasad represented the Congress on the committee while the League was
represented by Liaquat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar. To administer the endless
nitty-gritty of the transfer process, 10 expert committees were formed, consisting
of high-ranked bureaucrats. These committees had an equal number of Muslim
and non-Muslim officers representing the interests of the two future governments.
The bridge between the expert committees and the Partition Committee was constituted by a steering committee, with two very senior bureaucratsH.M. Patel
and Muhammad Ali. Following the logic of partition, Muslim officers were chosen
to look after Pakistans interests and non-Muslim civil servants represented the
Indian side. These officers too conformed more or less to the politics of the time
and imagined India and Pakistan as exclusive custodians of Hindu and Muslim
interests respectively. As partition came closer, the Partition Committee was
replaced by a Partition Council where Muhammad Ali Jinnah took the place of
Nishtar.5 Nishtar and C. Rajagopalachari were to participate in the council meetings
if and when one of the two regular members representing Pakistan and India was
unable to attend them. An Arbitral Tribunal was also set up anticipating disputes
between the two sides. At the provincial level, similar mechanisms were put in
place. Departmental committees with equal numbers of representatives from both
sides were appointed under the supervision of the Separation Council to tabulate
Viceroys Personal Report No. 8, L/PO/6/123: ff. 11421, ibid., p. 163.
See Chatterji, The Fashioning of a Frontier; Roy, Chapter I, II, Partitioned Lives; Samaddar, The
Marginal Nation; Tan and Kudaisya, Partition and the Making of South Asian Boundaries, in The
Aftermath of Partition, pp. 78100; van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland.
4
Yasmin Khan has very briefly discussed this issue. See The Great Partition, pp. 11322; also
Nayanjot Lahiri has an excellent article that discusses the division of museums and archaeological
collections. Lahiri, Partitioning the Past, in Marshalling the Past, pp. 13762.
5
The Partition Council came into existence on 26 June 1947. See Mansergh, Transfer of Power,
p. xxxix.
2
3

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all the known assets and liabilities of their respective departments and to suggest
the most reasonable basis for their allocation.6 A main committee came between
these departmental committees and the Separation Council.7 It first considered the
recommendations of the departmental committees and then forwarded them to
the Separation Council with its own suggestions and modifications. The process
of dividing assets, then, produced a multifaceted bureaucratic apparatus which, in
turn, bred its own complications.
The real work of partitionthe division of assets and liabilitiesbegan in an
atmosphere marked by a heightened sense of religious nationalism and aggressive
communal sentiments. There wasas could be expectedwidespread public
apprehension: what should be the basis of this division, which assets should be
divided and what was too unique to split, how fair the entire process would be and
so on. All these became the points of unending discussions and heated exchanges.
The media reflected the public anxiety. If the Pakistan Times complained about
the mechanism of partition in Punjab where the partition commissioner and his
assistant were both non-Muslims,8 the Morning News reported on the same day:
curious and fantastically absurd things are happening in Bengal, where the
Muslim representation appears to be nil within the committee in charge of
dividing the assets and liabilities of the Bengal government.9 The Bengal correspondent of the Hindustan Times, on the other hand, made the reverse allegation
when he wrote: Muslim members on the Expert Committees are trying to get as
much as they can.10
The bureaucrats, however, were surprisingly restrained and cooperative towards
one another in their attempt to divide men and things. As H.M. Patel wrote in his
memoir, there was an absence of ill-will, if not good-will among them and that
made the task a little easy.11 There were good reasons for it. They were all senior
bureaucrats, who had been colleagues for a number of years. They knew each other
well and had generally been on friendly terms.12 They had been trained under
identical rules and regulations. Moreover, they knew that any lack of coordination
among them would complicate the already messy situation even further and that
would only increase their own workload. As H.M. Patel wrote, he and his colleague
in the Steering Committee were convinced that they had no alternative but to
succeed.13 Now that partition had, after all, become a reality, both sides must have
West Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings (WBLA), 1948, Volume 2, No. 1, p. 20.
Ibid.
8
News dated 15 June 1947. See F. No 15(106A) FI/47, Year 1947, Finance Department, Branch
Finance, National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
See, H.M. Patels Transcript, No. 90, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML),
New Delhi, p. 29.
12
H.M. Patel, Rites of Passage, p. 128.
13
Ibid., p. 185.
6
7

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also overcome much of their mutual bitterness and acrimony, which was more in
evidence when the fate of division was still uncertain.
Much praise was also bestowed on Lord Mountbatten for his role in the
partition council. H.M. Patel described him as a genuine neutral chairman.14 He
also appreciated Jinnah and Sardar Patel for being big men, men with vision.15
As a result, he argued, the Partition Council could decide almost on every matter
within the allotted time and very few items were eventually left unresolved. Even
those were ultimately settled by the Steering Committee without the intervention
of the Arbitral Tribunal.16 This was something like a miracle. However, as we
shall see in a while, though more often than not consensus was reached, they
were preceded by lengthy deliberations and heated arguments. Therefore, coming to a decision was not necessarily smooth. The entire process of partition was
determined by these two opposing sentimentsthat of suspicion, on one hand,
and cooperation, on the other.
II
Members of the Expert Committees had less than 70 days to partition the British
Indian state. Within this ridiculously short span, all departmental assets and
financial liabilities were to be divided. Moreover, departmental files and records
were to be separated, keeping in mind the possible future requirements of both
countries, and government employees were to be divided as well. Added to this,
the committee members had to ensure that the necessary infrastructure was instituted in both Karachi and Delhi, as well as in the provincial capitals, to run the
governments. Delhi was already the capital of undivided India and a system was
in place. Similarly, Calcutta too had the necessary set-up. However, the scene
was very different in Karachi or in Dhaka. Karachi had so far been the provincial
capital of Sindh. But the city was not equipped to become the capital of an entire
country all of a sudden. The Partition Council realised that various departments
under the Government of India would have to assist the Government of Pakistan
Ibid., p. 128.
Ibid.
16
H.M. Patels Transcript, p. 29; it has been argued in this interview that the environment of
cooperation and mutual trust was disrupted by the outburst of communal violence in Punjab after
partition. Also, while reading Patel one must remember his subject position. While he highlighted
the achievements of the bureaucrats and the leaders in dividing British India amicably, he was also
talking about his own efficiency and diplomatic skills. But the entire process might not have been as
amicable as it seems from Patels memoir. For instance, in the provincial level, there were cases that
were addressed to the Tribunalit was decided that the values of government buildings and lands in
East and West Bengal would be determined for the purpose of financial adjustment between the two
provinces. But the basis of valuation could not be agreed upon in the Separation Council and hence it
was referred to the Arbitral Tribunal. But then, one must also recognise that the general spirit was of
cooperation, otherwise dividing India would not have been possible in such a short span of time. For
the case of Bengal see WBLA, 1948, V-2, N-1, p. 20.
14
15

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to establish its headquarters at Karachi from the date of transfer of power which
is fast approaching.17 Assistance was required on several fronts. Karachi needed
new buildings to accommodate offices and residences and building material like
cement, steel, coal, sanitary and other fittings were required. Existing official and
military buildings had to be repaired, telephones installed and furniture purchased
for government offices and residences. Transport had to be arranged for the officers
travelling from India to Karachi and a reception office set up to receive and guide
the incoming officers and staff. Accommodation had to be made for the Constituent
Assembly members. An accounts office was required to deal with the disbursement of pay and allowances of the staff arriving there, and stationery had to be
provided in the offices.18 The scope of the job was impossibly vast and daunting.
Lists showing the required number of furniture, mechanical equipment and different stationery items for various government offices in Pakistan and in Delhi were
prepared. Existing government properties were divided, as far as possible, keeping
these requirements in mind. For example, the External Affairs and Commonwealth
Relations Department in undivided India had 203 typewriters. It was estimated that
after partition, the workload of the Delhi office would reduce and 182 typewriters
would be sufficient in the new situation.19 The rest could be sent to Pakistan. Similar
lists were also prepared by the representatives of the Pakistan side. For the office
of the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, it was estimated
that 31 pen stands, 125 paper cabinets, 16 easy chairs, 31 officers tables, 20 peon
benches, among many other things, were needed.20 Officers involved in partitioning
India thus had to take stock of everything: from a ceiling fan to a board pin, and
then determine what should go to which side.
III
Bizarre and absolutely unexpected problems cropped up in the process of division.
The Free Press Journal reported, somewhat mockingly, on 15 July 1947:
The Mayor of Karachi complains that the part of the Partition Council which
deals with Railways is seriously perturbed about a misplaced locomotive which
cannot be traced and without which no equitable distribution of rolling stock
could be carried out. From London came the news that the charwomen and
porters of the India House were seriously alarmed at the printed slips they had
received which asked whether they would prefer to go to Pakistan or remain in
the Indian Union. The Chief of a European Firm in Calcutta which was going
to be partitioned wrote to his head office in Delhi seeking advice on the division
F. No: 435AD/1947; 1947, Min of EA and CR, AD Branch, NAI.
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
17
18

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of stationery and office furniture. He wanted to know whether office pencils

should be divided into two equal halves or in a manner commensurate with
the size and population of the two new Commonwealths.21
Even more amusing was a report published in The Statesman of 3 August. It
talked of 60 ducks that had reached Calcutta from England in July, 1947. The
Agricultural Department under Suhrawardy government had ordered these birds
sometime in 1946 and they cost 250. Amidst the partition chaos, the Finance
Secretary refused to pay for the ducks, questioning whether such a transaction
should take place at a time when the Bengal Secretariat was trying to settle the
larger financial arrangements and other intricacies between the future governments of East and West Bengals. The ducks, in this context, were bound to create
controversies. Who would get the ducks: the Government of West Bengal or that
of East Bengal? Or, would the ducks be divided between the two and both would
pay for their respective portions? Apparently inconsequential, the issue triggered
off complex calculations. And the newspaper correspondent wrote, perhaps halfjokingly: While protracted Departmental inquiries continue, the neglected ducks
await the result in a city warehouse.22
Dividing objects and animals, though tedious, was the least difficult of duties.
It involved complicated calculations but it was also mechanical to a large extent.
Far more complex and controversial was the task of separating state records in
accordance with their potential relevance to India and Pakistan, as much was
dependent on individual judgment here. The policy was to classify all current
records of the civil departments into three categories: A files that were relevant
to Pakistan only, B that were exclusively of Indias interest, and C were of
common interest. Territory and religion were the major determinants in this classificatory process. However, it is impossible to understand the classificatory logic
in its entirety. For instance, it is beyond comprehension, why a file on the Supply
of United States watches and fountain pens to P.O. Sikkim was marked as B and
a file on the Supply of Umbrellas to Sikkim State was marked as C.23 People in
charge of dividing the records did so in the way they imagined decolonised India
and Pakistan. But not everyone imagined them in the same way, even if they were
on the same side of the table. Therefore, they proposed different schemes. While
14 files of the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations (Central
Asia branch) related to Kashmir and Gilgit were marked as A, by a department
staff member and was approved of by the Deputy Secretary of the External Affairs
branch of the department,24 at the last moment they were reclassified as C, as a
F. No. 15(106A) FI/47, 1947, Finance Department, BranchFinance- I, NAI.
Ibid.
23
F. No. 12(3)NEF/47, year 1947, Min of EA and CR, NEF Branch (Secret), NAI.
24
F. No. 693-CA/47, 1947, Min of EA and CR, CJK Branch, NAI.
21
22

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senior departmental officer wrote the following note: As Kashmir administration

have not yet decided as to which dominion they are finally to join, files referred
to A alone should be classified as Cin any case India should be interested in the
Gilgit Affairs as three frontiers (Afghanistan, Russia and China) meet there25
Officers who classified these files as A, perhaps assumed that being a Muslim
majority state, Kashmir would join Pakistan.
IV
The principle for dividing government properties and government staff could
not, however, be similar. Decision-makers had to provide a space for exercising individual choices when it came to human property, that is, the government
employees. It was decided in the Partition Council that employees would be given
the option to serve either the Government of India or the Government of Pakistan.
At the provincial level of Bengal and Punjab too, they were given the same choice.
The council recognised that many would find it rather difficult to make the final
decision immediately. They were given the right to change their options within
six months of partition, provided they had categorically mentioned in their option
forms that their decisions were only provisional. Moreover, it was decided that the
actual transfer of staff according to their options would be arranged over a period
of time and in the meanwhile a standstill agreement should be arranged so that
efficiency of the organisation may be preserved.26 Both sides gave priority to the
immediate governmental needs while dividing the employees. Thus, it was decided
that those among the staff of the Hajj Office in the Ministry of External Affairs had
opted for Pakistan, would be released only after February 1948. The Hajj season
was on. To avoid confusion, the current season of Hajj was to be administered
by the Government of India.27 They realised that without minimum coordination,
untangling India and Pakistan would be impossible.
Despite every attempt to divide government employees in an orderly manner,
problems were manifold. In Bengal, for instance, Hindus had a pre-dominant
presence in government jobs and they mostly opted to serve the new West Bengal
government. Consequently, the Government of West Bengal suddenly had a large
surplus of staff members who had previously been posted in different areas of the
eastern part of the undivided province and who had now opted for service under
the West Bengal government. Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, the first finance minister
of West Bengal, confessed: owing to a limited scope for employment available
at the present moment due to a substantial shrinkage of the administrative area of
the Province, it has not been possible to provide useful occupations for all these
Ibid., note dated 5 August 1947.
F. No. 435AD/1947; 1947, Min of EA and CR, Branch AD, NAI.
27
Ibid.
25
26

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persons.28 For the Government of East Pakistan, the problem was the reverse:
the number of vacancies exceeded the available staff members. To add to this,
someone or the other in almost every department wanted to change options after
the stipulated time. It was even more confusing when some people who had
previously marked their choices as final in the option forms wanted to change
decisions. Mohammad Yahia was one such undecided person. He worked as a
record sorter in the Imperial Record Room and had initially opted for Pakistan.
But his choice was provisional and soon afterwards he expressed his desire to
work for the Government of India. Within a month, however, he was convinced
that he had made a wrong decision. His son-in-law and his only daughter had
by then left for Pakistan and the communal situation in Delhi was fast deteriorating. He wrote to the authorities requesting for permission to change his option
one more time.29 The Government of Pakistan too received numerous similar
requests. Around June, 1949, a number of junior assistants and orderlies took out
a procession in Dhaka demanding the right to re-opt for service in West Bengal.30
Requests and protests like these were markers of tumultuous times when a decision made earlier as final looked like an untenable choice soon afterwards. Such
demands were hardly ever entertained, but they worsened the chaos.
There was, moreover, a lack of coordination among different departments of
the government, communication gaps among officers and all sorts of unintended
human errors. The lapses complicated the implementation process and made the
involved individuals suffer. Take the case of Gulam Kibria for example. Kibria was
an employee of the Publicity Department of the Bengal government who had opted
for Pakistan. He was given a posting in Khulna, now in East Pakistan. When he
reached Khulna, he was told that there was no vacancy there. Mehboob Hussain,
the operator from Murshidabad in the new West Bengal, had already joined the
post.31 Due to an error, both of them had been given the same posting. Kibria was
then sent to the Dhaka office where he was told that since he had been posted in
Khulna, he had to go back there. They assured him that Mehboob Hussain would
be shifted to Chittagong. Uncertainties did not end there. He went back to Khulna
only to learn that not Hussain, but he himself would join the Chittagong office,
which he did finally on 5 March 1948. As he was unable to join his duties, in the
meantime, he could not draw his salary for these six months.32 One can easily
imagine the anxieties and the financial difficulties he had to face during his initial
months in Pakistan.
Budget for 194849, WBLA, 1948, Volume 2, No. 1, pp. 2021.
F. No. 15-38/48-A3, Education, BranchA3, 1948, NAI.
30
F. No. 1E-34/49, Political, BranchRecords, List No. 83, Bundle No. 02, Archives and National
Library (ANL), Dhaka.
31
Letter from Gulam Kibria, dated 14/10/47; F. NoPub 11T/4/ 47, Home (Political), Branch
Publicity, List No. 42, Bundle No. 18, ANL.
32
Letter from Gulam Kibria, dated 8/3/48; Ibid.
28
29

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Interestingly, those who were in the Indian defence forces had far less scope for
exercising choice. The Partition Council decided:
That all personnel now serving in the Armed Forces would be entitled to elect
the dominion they wished to serve in subject to the condition that, a Muslim
from Pakistan serving in the Armed Forces would not have the option to join
the Armed Forces in the Indian Dominion and a non-Muslim from the rest
of the India now serving in the Armed Forces would not have the option to join
the Armed Forces of Pakistan.33
The decision overlooked several quite reasonable possibilities. What if there
was a Muslim army officer from Dhaka who had not supported partition and
thought of himself as an Indian? The Indian Army would no longer have a space
for him. Armed forces are directly responsible for protecting the physical
space of a nation-state. Potential lack of loyalty among the soldiers would be a
direct threat to national security and integrity and therefore some very tangible
proof of loyalty to the nation was required. This, they thought, could only come
from ones religious affiliation: such was the logic of partition. Men in charge of
dividing the country were ostensibly guided by a territorial notion of belonging.
So, in theory, a Hindu could opt for Pakistan and a Muslim for India. But when it
came to the personnel of armed forces, the liberal secular notion of belonging by
personal choice collapsed: in equal measure, for both states.
Curiously, when it came to prisoners, religion mattered the least. It was decided
between West Bengal and East Pakistan that prisoners will be transferred to their
respective places of conviction irrespective of religion.34 Exceptions could only
be made for someone if her family had already migrated to another dominion
from the one where she was convicted. Therefore, say a Hindu prisoner, who was
arrested in Dhaka before partition and was put inside the Alipore Jail in Calcutta,
would remain there only if her family was in West Bengal. Otherwise, after partition, she had to be shifted to East Pakistan, irrespective of her religion or her will.
Thus, she herself could not be an Indian or a Pakistaniher nationality was either
determined by state regulation or by the preferences of her immediate family. The
state authorities, therefore, had little concern about the national imaginations
of the prisoners, they were treated almost like inanimate objects, or may be like
children whose opinion did not count.
V
Separating India and Pakistan was as difficult as unscrambling scrambled
eggs, observed a columnist in the Eastern Economist:35 a nearly impossible task,
Patel, Rites of Passage, p. 235.
Amrita Bazar Patrika, 4 August 1949.
35
F. No. 15(106A) FI/47, 1947, Finance Department, BranchFinance-I, NAI.
33
34

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especially within such a short span of time. Trade and finance were one sector
where no drastic division was feasible. It was certain that in both countries there
would be a considerable number of people who would be earning their income
on one side but would have their families on the other side of the border. The
industries of Calcutta and Bombay are sure to draw on labour recruited from East
Bengal, the North West Frontier and Punjab, noted the Expert Committee.36 No
longer could they be allowed to send home money without limit, but nor was it
possible to impose much restrictions as that would mean unnecessary hardships
for these people. Keeping these issues in mind, one opinion was to continue with
the common currency system for both countries. Along with the same currency,
it was also suggested that both should have a joint administration of foreign
exchange assets, there should be no internal customs regulation and a unified
exportimport licensing system would be shared by them.37 This was perhaps a little
too much to expect from India and Pakistan. If they were willing to go for a joint
currency system, they might as well have accepted the Cabinet Mission Proposal
and let go of their demand for partition. Both demanded a clear break and no sphere
of mutual entanglements in any sphere. But, at the same time, both realised that it
was impossible to introduce separate coinage and currency immediately. The Expert
Committee decided to continue with the existing coinage and currency for both
India and Pakistan till 31 March 1948. The time between 1 April and 30 September
(1948) was to be considered as a transitional phase when new coins and notes
would be introduced in Pakistan, but the old Indian rupee and paisa would still
remain valid. However, during this transitional phase, the issue of Indian coins in
Pakistan territory would be very restricted and new Indian currency notes would
not be issued at all.38 The idea was to phase out the common currency. However,
one may note that even after the first five years of partition, Pakistani coins were
circulating freely in Calcutta39 and the Reserve Bank of India notes inscribed with
the words Government of Pakistan were circulating in Pakistan.40
Then there were some unique institutions like the Central Quinine Office in
Calcutta, which was meant for storing and issuing of quinine. Dividing its assets
would mean a division of specialised instruments and lifesaving medicines. The
highly sophisticated equipment was seldom found in duplicates. Therefore, dividing the properties of this institution was bound to interfere with efficiency. Also,
with only a portion of the assets, it would be impossible for Pakistan to build
a self-sufficient institute immediately. That would only hamper the research and
treatment of malaria in the entire region. From the very beginning, the Partition

F. No. 76(73) F1/47, Finance Department, Branch Finance-I, NAI.

Ibid.
38
Patel, Rites of Passage, p. 208.
39
Amrita Bazar Patrika, 20 June 1952.
40
Amrita Bazar Patrika, 19 November 1951.
36
37

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Committee recognised that in such cases division might be impracticable.41 In

a meeting of the Partition Council, Lord Mountbatten brought up this issue and
suggested that both India and Pakistan be given access to the facilities that such
institutions offer for a stipulated period of time.42 The Partition Council agreed
to this proposal. A list of such institutions was prepared and they were then
divided into four categories: (a) training and higher education institutions like
the Nursing College in Delhi; (b) research institutions like the Indian Forest
Research Institute; (c) institutions that manufacture specialised commodities like
the Central Research Institute at Kasauli where vaccines were manufactured; and
(d) institutions that provide essential services like the Imperial Serologist
Department where blood stains were tested. It was decided that both India and
Pakistan would have access to the facilities offered by these institutions for at least
three years which could be extended up to five years, provided their governments
agreed to it.
Though both sides readily agreed to the idea of unique institutions, they did not
fare well in the long run. We may look at the case of the Dow Hill Forest School
at Kurseong, West Bengal. This was recognised as a unique institution. For four
years, it was decided that the school would be open to the students of both East
and West Bengal as no similar institution existed in East Pakistan. Accordingly,
19 students from East Pakistan joined the institution in October, 1947. Problems
soon arose between the two governments about the disbursement of monthly
allowances to students from East Pakistan. Also, the discriminatory treatment of
the administration and the faculty towards them made their stay in the hostel very
difficult. In the first week of December, 1947, these students left the hostel and the
institute and went back to East Pakistan. Obviously, the attempt to maintain Dow
Hill as a unique institution had failed. The lack of cooperation between the two
governments and the attitude of the staff and the teachers were responsible for the
impasse. Quite naturally, the Government of East Pakistan demanded the physical
division of the assets after this fall out. Assets included library books, instruments
of the laboratory and botanical and entomological specimens which were in the
institutes possession.43 I do not know what finally happened to the institution and
its collections. But it is clear that while implementing the partition on the ground
there was much bad blood and lack of cooperation. Even though both sides realised
the problem with a clean break, the political context and communal bitterness
prevented them from acting on their realisation.
Executing the decisions of the Partition Council on the ground was often
obstructed by overzealous government employees, party workers and common men.
They always suspected the other side of getting more than its fair share. For instance,
Press Note, Dt. 17.6.1947, F. No. 435AD/1947; 1947, Min of EA and CR, AD Branch, NAI.
F. No. 315-AD/47, No. 1-68,1947, Min. of EA and CR, AD Branch, NAI.
43
F. No 3C1-4/51, Political, BranchCR, B Proceedings, List No. 119, Bundle No. 5, ANL.
41
42

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the movement of arms and ammunition from India to Pakistan as a consequence

of the division of military assets raised widespread suspicion. Public complaints
were lodged with the provincial governments about arms being smuggled to
Pakistan. Such complaints and the follow-up investigations slowed down the
process of transfer of assets considerably.44 More fascinating was the case of
Joymoni, an elephant, who belonged to the Forest Department of colonial Bengal.
In the process of asset division, the value of Joymoni was determined as equivalent
to that of a station wagon used by the director of Land Records and Surveys.45 West
Bengal got the vehicle and East Bengal got the animal. However, at the moment
of independence, Joymoni was in Malda town, which fell within West Bengal.
Therefore, the elephant had to be taken to the other side of the border. The
problem arose when the attendant and the mahout of Joymoni opted for India.46
Consequently, the conservator of forest in East Bengal decided to send a forest
guard, a mahout and an attendant to bring over the elephant. They came to Malda
in June 1948.47 But, the matter did not end there. A new dimension was added:
who would pay for the maintenance of Joymoni between 15 August 1947 and June
1948? The East Bengal government should arrange the money as Joymoni was
their property throughout this period, argued the Collector of Malda. A sum of
Rs 1900 was claimed from the Government of East Bengal and the Forest
Department employees sent by the conservator to escort the elephant were detained
in Malda. District authorities of Malda had used the elephant throughout this
period and therefore they should bear the expenditure, was the counter logic.
Official archives are silent about the ultimate fate of Joymoni.48 The dispute
moved to diplomatic circles and was probably resolved at the level of Chief
Secretaries.
Politicians and bureaucrats at the top rung, in their sanitised and controlled
environment, formulated policies. The general atmosphere affected them much
less than the men who were closer to the ground. Senior bureaucrats operated
from a somewhat external positionexternal to the larger social climate of
the subcontinent that was deeply affected by the partition.49 But the execution
phase involved numerous other individuals who had witnessed more closely the
44
Extract from West Bengal police Gazette Dt. 6.2.48, File No. 1085/1947, IB, West Bengal State
Archives, Kolkata.
45
F. No. 3c1-6/1949; Political, BranchConfidential Report (CR), B Proceedings, Bundle No. 2,
List No. 119, ANL.
46
The Government of East Bengal was informed by a memo dated 3 March 1948. Ibid.
47
According to the memo dated 23 June 1948; Ibid.
48
I must confess that it is possible that further information about this case is there in some file or
the other in Bangladesh National Archives but, if so, it has escaped my notice.
49
I am borrowing this notion of externality of the top rung of bureaucrats from the argument of
Sudipta Kaviraj. He describes them as Nehruvian elitewho were dispersed thinly but crucially
throughout the governmental and modern sectors. See Kaviraj, On State, Society, Discourse in
India, in James Manor, Rethinking Third World Politics, p. 85.

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unfolding of partition politics and who were moulded by it. The bitterness of the
times affected the government officials, especially those who were in the lower
rungs and did not participate in the planning process but were responsible for
executing the Partition/Separation Council decisions. Their vernacular everyday
discourses were shaped by the popular aggressive logic of right wing nationalism and the events that were taking place in various rural and urban centres of the
subcontinent, where they were located.50 Their own imagination and passionate
ideas about nations and nation-states, and their understanding of the meaning of
partition made it difficult to put into practice many of the decisions of the Partition
Council or the Separation Council.
VI
We must not, however, think that bureaucrats were unanimous at every stage of
decision-making. They often bargained hard. More often than not they agreed to
disagree and the particular case was then referred to the Expert Committee, and from
there to the Steering Committee and the Partition Council for a final decision. For
instance, D.M. Sen, Indian representative from the Department of Education, and
his departmental colleague K.M. Asadullah, representing Pakistan, had conflicting
opinions regarding the legal status of certain institutions like the Indian Museum in
Calcutta and The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. Sen argued that the museum was
governed by an autonomous board of trustees and the Asiatic Society was under an
autonomous society. Neither of them, therefore, was government property. These
institutions, therefore, should remain outside the partition process. Asadullah, on
the other hand, refused to buy this argument. His point was that the Indian Museum
had been financially maintained by the Imperial government51 and the [Asiatic]
Society itself in its letter dated the 19th April 1943 has admitted that the manuscripts
belong to the Government of India.52 He proposed a joint administration for the
Indian Museum. For the Asiatic Society Library, he suggested that the Government
of Pakistan should have property rights over the Arabic and Persian manuscripts
housed there and it would be open to the Pakistan Dominion to take them back if
and when necessary and ask for the loan of any of them either for their own use or
for that of any research worker belonging to the Dominion.53
The SenAsadullah dispute became even more acute when they fought passionately over the collection of the Imperial Library, known today as the National
Library of India. Sen argued that the library could not be categorised as an asset
for the purpose of division.54 According to the Government of India Notification
Ibid., p. 90.
Annexure No. III, F. No 15-48/48-A3, 1948, Department of Education, Branch A3, NAI.
52
Annexure No. VI, Ibid.
53
Ibid.
54
Annexure No. I, Ibid.
50
51

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No. 201/207 of 30 January 1903, the Imperial Library was a library of reference,
a working place for students, and a repository of material for the future historians
of India, in which, so far as possible, every work written about India at any time
could be seen and read.55 Sen argued that the purpose of the library would be
lost if the collection could not be retained intact for the use of the historians and
the research scholars. Since the collection was about India, it had to remain in
Indiathat was his argument. What he conveniently overlooked, however, was
that when the regulation had been formulated, India signified an undivided subcontinent. Partition changed this meaning. And the Imperial Library obviously had
books that were relevant for studying the territories that were to go to Pakistan after
partition. Therefore, Pakistan could also have a logical claim to it arguing that they
were necessary for understanding Pakistan. Moreover, the library certainly had
books on Islam and Islamic history which, in accordance to the logic of partition,
Pakistan could certainly claim. In other words, Asadullah could have argued that
the library belonged as much to the Pakistan nation-state as to India. In his note,
he rightly mentioned that Pakistan needed a well equipped and up-to-date library
as much as India did.
But Sen had the usual legal angle to his argument. The Metcalfe Hall, which
housed the Imperial Library till independence, had been purchased from two societies: the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India and the Calcutta Public
Library. The entire collection of the Calcutta Public Library, too, had been handed
over to the Imperial Library. Sen pointed out that the indenture of 20th December
1901 executed by the Calcutta Public Library in favour of Government confers
rights regarding the portion of the library taken over from that society...on the
Proprietors of the Society.56 Therefore, the Government of India had no rights to
transfer the collection from Calcutta. Moreover, according to an agreement dated
22 August 1904, a certain Bohar family had donated a collection of oriental books
and manuscripts to the library on condition that the collection would never be taken
out of Calcutta. These agreements would be violated in case of a division of the
collection, argued Sen. Asadullah, on the other hand, pointed out that ever since
the capital of British India had been shifted from Calcutta to Delhi, the Government of India had frequently considered the question of transferring the library
to the new capital city. Legally too, he pointed out, there was no difficulty in
shifting the collection or some part of it away from Calcutta. He showed that
according to the agreement with Calcutta Public Library, it was obligatory to
retain the library in Calcutta as long as any of the society members of the Calcutta
Public Library was alive and in Calcutta. However, It is unlikely that any of the
said members would be alive now, wrote Asadullah in his report.57 Therefore
Ibid.
Ibid.
57
Annexure II, Ibid.
55
56

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moving the library from Calcutta as a whole or in part should not be a problem.
Ultimately, however, Asadullahs demands were not satisfied and the Imperial
Library remained in Calcutta with its entire collection. So did the Asiatic Society
and the National Museum.
The non-current (that is, historical) records kept in the Imperial Records
Department (to be called the National Archives of India after independence), also
escaped the brunt of partition. It was decided that the records would remain in
Delhi, but microfilm copies may be supplied on demand to the Government of
Pakistan.58 Though this was the established international norm, given the bitterness that the communal riots had created in the sub-continent, no one would have
been surprised if the historical records were divided between the two dominions.
R.B Ramsbotham, one of the earliest members of the Indian Historical Records
Commission, therefore wrote: I congratulate the authorities of both of Pakistan
and of India on their wise and scholarly decision not to separate the archives: by
keeping them intact, in spite of severe temptation otherwise, they have set an
example to the whole civilised world.59
As India retained the colonial records, the Asiatic Society and the Imperial
Library collections, it remained the principal custodian of the subcontinents
colonial and pre-colonial past. In this light, 1947 was not a moment of birth of
two new nations for the Indian nationalist discourse: rather, it marked the transition
from a colonial phase to a post-colonial one when a part of the territory merely
broke away. The Pakistan movement and the subsequent creation of that country
was projected as secession from the unified state-space of India. Pakistani nationalist
scholars, on the other hand, have lamented that the lack of access to many Islamic
institutions, libraries, publishing houses and research centres have prevented them
in their task of writing national history.60
Partition, however, disrupted Indian nationalist claims over the pre-historic sites
of Indus Valley as all the major sites of this civilisation fell within the boundaries
of Pakistan. The remains of the Indus Valley Civilisation had been excavated in
Indian Historical Records Commission: A Retrospect 19191948, pp. 8889.
Ibid., p. 78.
60
Many of the major Islamic Institutions were in some of the provinces which were not partitioned.
Their possessions were not divided. Also, non-governmental institutes did not fall within the purview
of the Partition Council. As a consequence, Dar-ul-Ulm of Deoband, Khuda Baksh Oriental Library
in Bankipur (Bihar), Islamia College (Calcutta), Nawal Kishore Press (Lucknow) and Salar Jung
Museum in Hyderabad retained their collections in India. See Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali, A Rite of
Passage: The Partition of History and the Dawn of Pakistan, in Tan and Kudaisya (ed.), Partition and
Post-Colonial South Asia, p. 146. One may mention here that all the moveable properties of Calcutta
Madrasah, including the books and the manuscripts, however, were shifted to Dhaka in accordance to
the decision of the Separation Council. The Bengal Madrasah Education Board also shifted to Dhaka,
leaving behind a number of High Madrasahs and the Hooghly Islamic Intermediate College, without any
central organisation for their control and coordination. See Md. Maniruzzaman, kolkata Madrasah-er
205 Bachhor (no pagination) in Madrasah College: Bicentenary Celebration Souvenir.
58
59

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the early 1920s. Since then, Indias past had been traced back to the Indus Valley
Civilisation. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in the early 1940s:
I stood on a mound of Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valleyand all around me
lay the houses and streets of this ancient city that is said to have existed over
five thousand years ago; and even then it [India] was an old and well developed
civilisationAstonishing thought: that any culture or civilisation should have
this continuity for five or six thousand years or more.61
Partition troubled this grand imagination. The project of nationalist history
writing in India could not afford to let go of the Indus Valley Civilisation as the
originary moment of the countrys history. So, India fought tooth and nail and
managed to get half of the exhibits of the Lahore Museum that included certain
artefacts from Mohenjo-Daro and from the Buddhist site of Taxila. To ensure a
fair division, certain objects like two gold necklaces from Taxila, one carnelian
and copper girdle from Mohenjo-Daro and a necklace made up of jade beads,
gold discs and semi-precious stones from Mohenjo-Daro were deliberately fragmented. In the words of Nayanjot Lahiri, the integrity of these objects were
compromised in the name of equitable division.62 Postal stamps in the Indian
archaeological series that were issued in 1949 had the imprint of the legendary
Mohenjo-Daro bull. In the earlier archaeological series of stamps, there was an
imprint of the famous Konark Horse which was now replaced by the bull.63 The
Konark temple of Orissa was indisputably Indian, but appropriating Mohenjo-Daro
was far more important. Parallel to this, there was an organised attempt to discover
Indus Valley Civilisation sites on the Indian side of the border, immediately after
partition.64 The Archaeological Survey of India tried to compensate for the loss of
the original sites, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, to Pakistan, with new discoveries
within India. A 17-minute black-and-white film, A Century of Indian Archaeology
(1961), produced by the Film Division of India, for instance, tried to locate the
Indus Valley Civilisation within the territorial limits of post-colonial India. As
Sraman Mukherjee writes, The moving footage from excavations at Ropar and
Kalibangan fades into a post-1947 territorial map of India to narrate how the Indus
civilisation extended beyond the territorial limits of West Pakistan to the Gangetic
heartlandthe territorial core of the postcolonial nation.65 Similarly, there have
been constant efforts to argue that the Indus Valley Civilisation was a part of

Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 50.

Lahiri, Partitioning the Past, Marshalling the Past, p. 157.
63
Amrita Bazar Patrika, 10 July 1949.
64
Thapar, The History Debate in School Textbooks in India: A Personal Memoir.
65
Mukherjee, Being and Becoming Indian: The Nation in Archaeology, p. 224.
61
62

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Vedic culture.66 It will be interesting to study how historians and archaeologists

of India and Pakistan dealt with these anxieties and the new tropes of nationalist
histories that were devised after partition. However, that is a different project and
this article does not have the space or scope to address these concerns.
VII
Joya Chatterji, in a recent article, has argued that in the very months that the subcontinent was engulfed in religious and sectarian conflict, significant steps were
taken by both countries to produce a common statecraft.67 The bureaucrats
and the ministers of both India and Pakistan, or the agents of the state, more often
than not, put the interests of the state above the interests of their (religious) community and nation.68 Though Indo-Pakistan relation remained conflict-ridden,
there were very significant areas of agreement between the two sides.69 This
article, in a way, makes a similar point. In the most obvious level, it argues, that the
bureaucrats and the top rung leaders had a very pragmatic, rational and methodical
approach while they were dividing the country. Religious considerations remained
important in the entire process. But religion became almost a tool of governance
used dispassionately to classify the men and things. Thus it complicates our common
understanding of the partition process where we associate partition with communalism, mass migration, mob violence in the name of religion and a colonial state
seemingly indifferent to or complicit with violence: in brief, with complete chaos.
Undoubtedly, this article talks of a time when passions ran high. The bitterness
of the moment continues to linger on and shape much of the contemporary polity
of the subcontinent. But the times had the potential for a very different future as
well. The ideas of unique institutions and joint currencies held the promise of a
future of cooperation.
The division of assets in its planning and implementation was shaped by the
perceptions that the bureaucrats and the Partition/Separation Council members
had of India and Pakistan. Possible material requirements of both the nation-states
66
Going through the proceedings of Indian History Congress, one gets a glimpse of this anxiety regarding the loss of Indus Valley Civilisation. In the years following partition, there had been
sustained effort to connect this civilisation with Vedic Culture, claiming the inhabitants of the Indus
Valley were Aryans and worshipped Hindu gods and goddesses. Some other scholars have traced back
Jainism to Indus Civilisation. See, the papers of Swami Sankarananda presented in 1953, 1954 and 1957
(The Indus People Speak, p. 127, The Great Bath Mystery, p. 104, Phallic Emblems of the Indus Valley,
pp. 3235), Kamta Prasad Jain (1947) (Mohenjodaro antiquities and Jainism, pp. 11318), Ramprasad
Majumdar (Mohenjodaro and Vedic Culture) and Basanta Kumar Chattopadhyay (Mohenjo Daro
Civilization) (both in 1955). Similarly, in the proceedings of Pakistan History Congress, I found one
paper that claimed that the Indus peoples were originally from Arabia. See, Rashid, Fertile Crescent
and the Upper Indus Valley, pp. 7786.
67
Chatterji, Secularisations and Partition Emergencies, p. 42.
68
Ibid., p. 49.
69
Ibid.

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were kept in mind. The process was as much about division as about procurement
of assets. In other words, this article revisits the story of the making of two new
nation-states as much as it talks about the partition of an existing state-structure.
But building the future nation-state was not only about dividing chairs and tables,
putting up necessary infrastructure and financial stock taking. It was a larger ideological process. Therefore, the past became a site of contestation at this juncture.
What constituted Indias past and what was a part of Pakistans history gave rise
to controversies. At a moment of an unprecedented transition, people came up
with diverse ideas about the relevance of de-colonisation, partition and independence. Hence, their imaginations of the past too differed, even if they were on the
same side. As a consequence, debates and disputes arose like the one regarding
the division of the Imperial Library collection or that with the classification of
government files. Similarly, though government officials agreed to divide the
Mohenjo-Daro artefacts kept in the Lahore Museum equally between the two
countries, the discomfort and the anxieties of the Indian state and the nationalist
elite were very palpable. The state, as a result, never appears to be an abstract
monolithic category but seems more like a complex multi-layered mechanism
comprising men with diverse visions, opinions and biases.
The article also argues against the tendency of treating state and society as two
autonomous sites. There was never an enclosed, well defined site of state, where the
bureaucrats operated in a robotic manner making decisions and executing orders:
a site of effective governance. And, in sharp contrast, a realm of societythe site
of disorder and the multitude, which desperately needed state intervention to get
back on its feet. Societal forces often influenced, if not moulded, actions of the
individuals who were responsible for deciding on and implementing the division
on the ground.70 The failure of the unique institution or the case of Joymoni show
how these two sites overlapped and influenced each other. The larger society must
have had read the act of the collector of Malda or the instance of Dow Hill as the
position of the Indian nation-state. Incidents like these in a communally fraught
milieu formed their perceptions of the post-colonial state and partitioned times.71
Finally, the article underlines the contingent and ad hoc manner in which the
partition decision was made material. Once the decision to divide was made, the
70
Recent anthropological works on state confirm this point. For instance, C.J. Fuller and Veronique
Benei write in the introduction of their edited volume The Everyday State and Society in Modern India:
the state is not a discrete, monolithic entity acting impersonally over, above or outside society.
Rather the sarkarindifferently state and government in the commonest Indian vernacular term
for themappears on many levels and in many centres, and its lower echelons at least are always staffed
by people with whom some kind of social relationship can or could exist; the faceless bureaucrats
actually do have faces. The boundary between the state and society, therefore, is not only unclear; it is
also fluid and negotiable according to social context and position. See, Fuller and Benei, The Everyday
State and Society, p. 15.
71
Partitioned times is a phrase coined by Ranabir Samaddar in his article, The Last Hurrah that
Continues, in Deschaumes and Ivekovic, Divided Countries, Separated Cities.

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process of division began to develop its own logic. Or, rather, many logics, governed
by the nature of each sphere affected by partition. The logic overlapped, clashed
or met to form a consensus. They complicate our thinking about two well-formed
nation-states in binary opposition to each other. Research on territories has already
uncovered this. Work on division of assets adds weight to that perspective.
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