Radcliffe Line : The Watermarks of the Partition Wounds Between India and Pakistan

The partition of India is one among the top ten tragedies in the homo-sapien history. Partition of India wobbled from communal to economic edges, translated itself into geographical boundaries from geographical distances, moved from sensitive to the strategic factors. It divided not only the Hindus and Muslims living together for ages, not only struck the cultures and caused the greatest migration ever, but this ‘divide and relinquish’ policy led to the endless boundary disputes. The Radcliffe Line devised by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, which equitably divided 175,000 sq miles of territory among 88 million people, became the border between India and Pakistan. It managed to provide international entity to the two countries - India and Pakistan, but it failed to draw a geo-politically sound line, though it made a perfect line as a political cover, it had long lasting repercussions with regard to mass violence and frequent conflicts. Apart from the tremendous dislocation of inhabitants of the two nations, there is a watermark of dispute in the partition history. Since the boundaries were made without any understanding of impact of resource partition, this led to the fact that water issue has stoked tensions between the two nations. The watermarks of partition are too deep and intense to remove the conflict between the two nations and so it is essential to understand all linkages with water. The paper aims at understanding the footprints of the past and suggesting the strategies for future