1On June 3rd, 947, the British colonial authorities announced the mountbatten Plan to divide India. The next urgent task is how to delimit the border between the two countries. At first, the British and Indian colonial authorities made a request to the newly established United Nations, hoping that an international organization like the United Nations could demarcate the border between the two countries, but it was rejected. At this time, there are only a few days before the prescribed independence day, and someone has to draw the line. The anxious British government finally chose Cyril Radcliffe, with little room for manoeuvre. Radcliffe, a lawyer, is 45 years old and used to be the director of British intelligence. It is said that Radcliffe was chosen to shoulder the heavy responsibility of deciding the fate of hundreds of millions of people for two reasons. First, he is very famous. Both Nehru and Jinnah who studied in Britain know his name. The second reason is that Radcliffe knows nothing about India, which is regarded as a rare advantage by the British government on the grounds that Radcliffe will never take sides. However, more than half a century has passed, and it seems that Radcliffe's superiority has changed the territory of the South Asian subcontinent, changed the fate of hundreds of millions of people, and laid a curse for the long-term hostility between India and Pakistan in the following decades.

Although Radcliffe works well as a lawyer, he is not an expert on India. In the words of Christopher Beaumont, his former secretary, he "has never been to the east of Gibraltar in his life". It seems ridiculous to ask him to "split" the South Asian subcontinent within six weeks. However, the British government insists that it is because he has never been to India that he can appear fair. Beaumont said, "He is really capable and impartial. It was not easy to find an impartial person at that time. " It is said that India's first Prime Minister Nehru and Pakistan's founder Jinnah also welcomed Radcliffe for this reason, because they also believed in his impartiality.

However, for Radcliffe, he was tempted to go to India at that time, that is, he was told that his mission to India was only to mediate in the border dispute between Punjab and Bangladesh. Such an easy job certainly won't make him frown. It was not until he arrived in India and was settled in the VIP room by Governor mountbatten that he realized that what he wanted to accomplish was a task that was actually difficult to accomplish: Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who had been mixed together in disorder for nearly a thousand years were separated. Not counting this, the time to demarcate the border between the two countries is not the original six months, but only 36 days. In addition to a lot of messy documents, he also has an outdated population statistics table 1943. With such a little information, Radcliffe had to separate the two wings of the South Asian subcontinent-East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan from India in such a hasty time.

Radcliffe hastily set up a stall in the stuffy VIP room in New Delhi. He is fully aware that in such a short time, he will certainly not be able to go to Bangladesh and Punjab for field trips, nor will he have time to visit those whose fate will be changed by him. The fact is obvious: everything is on paper. "He worked day and night and sweated day and night," Beyumont recalled. The temperature in New Delhi is as high as 44 degrees Celsius, but he still wears a suit and tie like an English gentleman who spends the summer in Britain. "Radcliffe draws a 45-kilometer boundary line on the map every day. He is prone on the table all day without even looking up. Vast tracts of desert land, rivers, lakes, seas, villages and towns, mountains and rivers are all divided in his works, although the two sides may live with the elders of the same family and be neighbors from generation to generation. In order to assist him in his work, the British colonial authorities sent him eight assistants, half Indian and half Muslim. But Radcliffe soon discovered that although these people are native Indians, they are familiar with the direction of every river and mountain range and understand the ethnic composition of every place, but their views are based on beliefs rather than facts. " Those eight people are useless at all, "said Beyumont, who did it alone. "It is said that in order to show justice, Radcliffe's work progress can't even be known to mountbatten, because once the outside world knows that the partition of the two countries is completely manipulated by the British colonial authorities, then the peaceful partition may be aborted. Mountbatten, who knew the progress of demarcation like the back of his hand, pressured him several times and ordered Radcliffe to redraw some areas, which was obviously beneficial to the Indian border, because between Nehru and Jinnah, mountbatten preferred the former. For example, an area on the Satlej River in Punjab Province was originally allocated to Pakistan. However, on August 1 1, mountbatten sent his cronies Meinong to Radcliffe to ask him to redraw this area, but the result was rejected. So, at noon the next day, Radcliffe was invited to the governor's office for dinner, and finally this area became the territory of India.

Radcliffe completed the demarcation of India's partition. However, mountbatten did not tell Nehru and Jinnah about the demarcation plan until the third day after independence, when Britain formally withdrew its troops from India, for fear that the people of India and Pakistan would be outraged by the wanton division of the British colonial authorities and lead to disaster.