Cyril Radcliffe, a barrister who had never been to India, arrived on 8 July 1947 and was given about five weeks to draw the boundaries of two provinces holding some eighty-eight million people. He worked from census returns and maps.
The Punjab Boundary Commission had four Indian judges, two nominated by Congress and two by the Muslim League, who split evenly on every question. Radcliffe decided alone.
The award was signed on 12 August and not published until 17 August, two days after independence. Both governments had taken power without knowing where their borders were. Communities on both sides had already begun to move or to be moved on rumour.
The line cut the province in two. Fourteen of the twenty-nine districts went to India. Lahore, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Multan, Rawalpindi and the canal colonies went to Pakistan. Amritsar and Gurdaspur went to India, and Gurdaspur gave India its road to Kashmir.
The canal system was cut across. Headworks at Ferozepur and Madhopur were in India and the canals they fed ran into Pakistan. The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 was needed to settle what that meant.
Radcliffe destroyed his working papers and refused his fee. He never returned.
He was chosen precisely because he knew nothing about the country, on the argument that ignorance was a form of impartiality. Both the Congress and the League accepted him on that basis.
The award was published on 17 August, two days after independence, which meant that people did not know which country they were in while the movement was already under way.
He burned his papers. The boundary commission's records exist in London and the reasoning behind the specific decisions on Gurdaspur and Ferozepur has never been fully established.