Dividing a Province

By August 1947, the border dividing Punjab was announced, and many refugees had already begun crossing it. However, the state f Punjab did not have two seperate administrative systems to govern each side. Essentially, it was one province whose institutions, employees, and infrastructure had been divided between two larger governments.

The Radcliffe Line determined whether a town, village, or city belonged to east or west Punjab, but it did not explain the administrative division of railways, canals, civil disputes, or private holdings that were also divided. Physical buildings and land could often be assigned according to where they stood, but services that depended on networks, records, or administrative equipment were harder to allocate.

This was the practical side of Partition: dividing not only Punjab’s territory, but everything that had allowed Punjab to function as one province.

Preparing for a Division Without a Border

The administrative division had to be organised before the border was announced to the people.

The Punjab Partition Committee was established in June 1947. Under the Governor, Evan Jenkins, the committee brought together representatives from the political groups that would form the governments of East and West Punjab. Beneath it, officials, specialists, and expert committees worked through questions concerning departments, employees, institutions, assets and liabilities.

Their work was largely administrative, but it was not completely detached from the civil crisis in Punjab. The officials often had to prepare lists regarding the allocation of properties and employees, while simultaneously questioning the political crisis and how it would affect themselves. Many had families or lived in districts with an uncertain future, others were witnessing the civil breakdowns within their own departments. Additional to the civil crisis, the administrative division was also constrained by time. Preparations were initially based off a temporary or notional boundary that estimated where the Radcliffe Award would lie - the notional boundary itself as based upon the dominant religion of each district.

The Radcliffe Award was published on the 17th of August, 1947, and until then many officials prepared for the division of Punjab without any final or definitive knowledge of the borderline.

Dividing the Government

Before Partition, Punjab had one provincial government headquartered in Lahore. Its departments administered revenue, agriculture, irrigation, education, health, policing, public works and local governments across the province.

Now every department had to become two.

Government offices located clearly within one side were generally inherited territorially. A building in West Punjab became the property of West Punjab; one in East Punjab came under the eastern government.
Movable property was more complicated. Furniture, vehicles, machinery, laboratory equipment, departmental funds and stores had to be listed and apportioned. The division was not always a matter of physically cutting every collection in half. Some assets were needed where they already operated, while compensation or equivalent allocations could be arranged elsewhere.

Government employees also had to be allocated. Officials were asked where they wished, or were able, to serve, although personal preference could not resolve every shortage. Religious identity, residence and domicile, departmental need and the future location of an office all influenced where employees ultimately went.

Many Muslim officials moved west, while Hindu and Sikh officials moved east. Yet the process was neither immediate nor orderly. Some continued temporarily in their existing positions. Others departed before replacements arrived. Some became stranded by violence or the closure of transport routes.

Both governments consequently inherited departments with missing personnel. A district might retain its government offices but lose experienced clerks, engineers or police officers. Another might receive officials but have no permanent building in which to place them.

The division of a department on paper was therefore the beginning of a lengthy process. Each government still had to reconstruct the working relationships that had once connected its employees, records and offices.

Government Records

Punjab’s government depended upon an enormous paper archive.

Land ownership, irrigation rights, taxation, court proceedings, criminal cases, pensions, government employment and local administration were all documented through files and registers. These records could determine who owned a field, who owed revenue, whether an employee was entitled to a pension or how an unresolved case should proceed.

Some records belonged clearly to districts that fell entirely within one side of the divided province. Others concerned departments, projects or institutions whose work concerned both. Files held in Lahore might relate to land or officials now situated in East Punjab. Records in an eastern district could contain information required by the government of West Punjab.

Relevant files had to be identified, transferred, duplicated or reconstructed, and the already cumbersome task had to be completed while offices relocated, clerks migrated, and roads/ railway lines became unsafe.
The consequences reached far beyond government administration. A missing file could leave a refugee unable to prove a qualification, claim a pension or establish the value of abandoned property. Governments attempting to allot land and compensate displaced people needed records produced by offices that might now be across an international border.

The Railways

Punjab’s railway network had been built to connect the province.

Lines linked agricultural districts with major cities. Junctions directed passengers and freight across regions that now belonged to separate countries. The North Western Railway extended far beyond Punjab, but Lahore was one of the great centres of its administration and workshops.

Railway buildings and tracks could be transferred according to territory. Locomotives, carriages, wagons, stores and employees could not be allocated the same way.
A locomotive assigned to one side might be standing on the other when Partition arrived. Equipment had to be apportioned using calculations based upon multiple factors including route mileage and traffic. Employees also had to be reorganised between the two sides of the railway system.

Most of the old North Western Railway fell within Pakistan and became the foundation of its western railway network. The lines inherited by India in this region were reorganised into the East Punjab Railway before later becoming part of the wider Indian system.

The railway network also had to be reoriented. Routes that had once carried ordinary domestic traffic now approached an international frontier. Timetables, ticketing, freight arrangements, customs procedures and railway security all required new systems.

The railway was also being divided while carrying the human consequences of that division. Trains became one of the principal means of evacuating refugees, transporting military units and moving food and relief supplies. Railway employees were expected to keep services operating while stations overflowed with displaced people and attacks made some routes extraordinarily dangerous.

A system essential to managing Partition was therefore being dismantled and reconstructed at the same time.

Post, Telegraph and Communications

Postal and telegraph services faced the same contradiction.

Before Partition, a letter travelling from Amritsar to Lahore remained within the same provincial and imperial system. Afterward, it crossed from one country into another. Routes had to be redirected, postal districts reorganised and new stamps, accounts and administrative procedures introduced.

Post offices generally remained with the territory in which they stood, while stores, equipment and employees had to be distributed between the new administrations. Telephone exchanges and telegraph stations depended upon lines that did not necessarily stop at the border. Some connections had to be maintained temporarily so that the two governments could communicate; others were interrupted by violence, damaged infrastructure or the departure of technical staff.

This mattered greatly in the first weeks of independence. District officials needed to report disturbances, request troops, organise refugee movements and communicate with provincial headquarters. When telephone or telegraph links failed, information travelled slowly or not at all.

For ordinary Punjabis, the collapse of communication had a different meaning. Families separated during migration could not easily discover who had survived, where relatives had gone or whether it was safe to return.

Canals and Water

The canal irrigation projects of the former Colonial administration had transformed Punjab’s agriculture. Rivers, headworks, main canals and smaller distributaries formed interconnected systems extending across districts. The location of a headworks did not necessarily correspond with the location of the land it irrigated.

The borderline meant that the headworks and canals supplied by them were not on the same side. Water could begin its journey on one side of the border and irrigate fields on the other side.

This created an immediate question: did control of a headworks give one province ownership of the water passing through it, or did the downstream province retain a right to supplies upon which its farms had long depended?

For the first months after partition, temporary arrangements allowed existing supplies to continue. But these agreements did not settle the underlying questions of ownership, payment and future development. The governments reached another provisional agreement in May 1948, but the larger dispute over the rivers would continue for years before the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960.

The canal division revealed the limits of territorial sovereignty. A government could inherit the structure controlling the water, while farmers across the border inherited the fields that required it. East and West Punjab were politically separate, but their geography remained connected.

Police and Public Order

Punjab’s police force was already weakening before it was formally divided.

Police officers served populations that were becoming increasingly suspicious of the both the political situtaion, and of one another. As violence spread, accusations of communal partiality were directed at officers from every community. Some abandoned their posts to protect or move their own families. Others no longer trusted the colleagues beside them. And communities lost trust in officers that did not hold similar beliefs.

The police service had to be separated between East and West Punjab. Stations, vehicles, weapons, files and detention facilities generally remained with the territory in which they were located, but officers and specialist personnel had to be transferred. Muslim policemen serving in eastern districts increasingly moved west, while Hindu and Sikh policemen travelled in the opposite direction.

This led to service shortages when Punjab required a stronger police presence than ever before. New officers sometimes arrived without knowledge of the district, its villages or its local relationships. Some stations lost experienced personnel and received replacements who had themselves recently been displaced.

The division of the police was not the sole cause of the collapse of order. Political uncertainty, communal mobilisation, armed groups, mass migration and the speed of the colonial withdrawal all contributed. But the state was attempting to suppress violence through a force that was itself being separated under the same violent conditions.

The people who protected Punjab were also being pulled apart by Partition.

Courts and the Law

The Lahore High Court had exercised jurisdiction across undivided Punjab and Delhi. After Lahore became part of Pakistan, it remained the principal High Court of West Punjab. A separate High Court of East Punjab was legally established from 15 August 1947 and initially sat in Shimla.

Judges, lawyers, court employees, libraries and pending proceedings had to be assigned. In some cases the courts attempted to preserve continuity by transferring any appellate proceeds to the location where the case had started. This prevented every case from having to begin again, but it did not remove the practical difficulties. Lawyers and litigants had migrated. Witnesses might now live across the border. Files could be inaccessible, and property under dispute might lie in a country different from the one in which one of the parties now lived.

Both new provinces initially retained much of the existing legal framework. The law was adapted and continued until the new governments altered it. Despite this, courts could function only if they had judges, records, staff and safe access for the public.

The Army

The division of the army was larger than the division of Punjab itself.

The British Indian Army belonged to the central government of British India, not to the provincial government of Punjab. Its separation was part of the wider creation of India and Pakistan as seperate nations.
Punjabis formed a substantial part of the army, and many regiments recruited heavily from the province. Units, training establishments, stores, weapons, vehicles and officers had to be distributed between India and Pakistan. Personnel were transferred and units reorganised according to the requirements of the two nations.
At the same time, troops were urgently needed in Punjab to reinforce civil authorities, guard refugee movements and suppress attacks.

A temporary Punjab Boundary Force was created in July 1947 and deployed across the most disturbed central districts. Its troops were spread over thousands of villages while violence expanded beyond the areas they had been assigned to protect. The force was dissolved at the end of August, after which India and Pakistan assumed separate military responsibility on their respective sides.

The army was therefore expected to hold Punjab together during the final weeks in which the army itself was being divided.

Hospitals, Public Health, and Education

Hospitals and dispensaries were transferred according to their location, but healthcare depended upon doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory staff, medicines, ambulances and medical records which were unevenly distributed across Punjab. Staff migration left shortages in some hospitals while displaced medical workers arrived elsewhere without permanent positions or equipment.

Lahore possessed major hospitals, medical colleges and other educational institutions, giving West Punjab an important concentration of established facilities. Yet those institutions also lost experienced Hindu and Sikh personnel. East Punjab inherited hospitals in its own cities and districts but had to replace specialists and institutional resources previously concentrated in Lahore.

This division occurred during a public-health emergency. Refugees arrived exhausted, injured and vulnerable to disease - specifically those that had spread through unhygienic conditions and undrinkable water. Camps required sanitation, vaccinations, maternity services, medicines and trained staff. Hospitals intended to serve settled district populations were suddenly treating people moving through the province in enormous numbers.

Education faced the same divide - students, teachers, and administrative staff migrated in a rush, often without or before the completion of a formal transfer process. The institutions themselves were divided between east and west Punjab based on location, but the people did not follow the same uniformity.

A Province Without Its Centre

The division was not symmetrical.

Both Punjabs experienced institutional loss, although not in identical ways.

The Radcliffe Award divided Punjab geographically. The administrative division lasted much longer.

Railway carriages continued to move across the border. Canal water continued to flow from one province into the other. Court cases outlived the jurisdiction under which they had begun. University students waited for new institutions to recognise their studies. Government employees carried their experience into unfamiliar offices while records, equipment and colleagues remained behind.

East and West Punjab were separated by a borderline. Making them function required the reconstruction of the state itself.