Punjab Partition Blog

How the lines were drawn

On June 3rd 1947, the British put forth a notional boundary to partition Punjab based on the 1941 census and as most of the districts or tehsils touching rivers Sutlej and Beas were Muslim majority districts, the approach of how to split Punjab with any semblance of logic became next to impossible. Here is the notional boundary as outlined in June, 1947. You can read the logic behind the boundary decision in Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed's article here " Wavell’s reasons for giving the three tahsils of Gurdaspur to India was to protect Amritsar from being surrounded on all sides except the east by Pakistani territory. This is easily understood by looking at the maps. The most interesting point to note i