Overview

• British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe had just 36 days and incomplete maps to draw the 1947 boundary dividing India and Pakistan despite never having set foot in the subcontinent.
• His Radcliffe Line bisected provinces and major cities overnight, severing families and communities in places such as Lahore and Amritsar.
• The hastily drawn border triggered one of history’s largest forced migrations, displacing an estimated 10–14 million people with widespread communal violence.
• Radcliffe deliberately left the status of Kashmir unresolved, a decision that sparked three wars and remains at the heart of ongoing border disputes.
• Haunted by the human cost, Radcliffe refused his fee, destroyed his records and never returned to India, later calling the five-week deadline “insufficient.”