W.H. Auden’s poem on how British India was Partitioned in 1947
W.H. Auden. Courtesy picryl.com
In July 1947, Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer, was put in charge of the Boundary Commission, tasked with dividing British-ruled India into newly independent India and Pakistan. The commission consisted of four members each from the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, political parties representing India and Pakistan respectively.
But the Commission was given only seven weeks to draw the borders separating India and Pakistan since August 15, 1947 was already announced as the independence date. There was no agreement between the two political parties; Radcliffe set up the boundaries. The “lines he drew sparked a tragedy that still poisons ties between the two countries today,” as a BBC report noted in 2017. Following the partition, Hindus from Pakistan fled to India while Muslims from India fled to Pakistan. About a million people died in sectarian clashes and attacks during the migration.
This poem, written in 1966 by W.H. Auden, a British poet, aptly describes Radcliffe’s decision:
Partition
Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition.
“Time,” he was briefed in London, “is short. It’s too late
For compromises, concessions, rational debate;
There isn’t a chance of peace through negotiation:
The only hope now lies in regional segregation.
We cannot help. What with one thing and another,
The Viceroy feels you shouldn’t see much of each other.
Four judges, representing the parties interested,
Will advise, but in you alone is authority invested.”
Shut up in an ugly mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the garden to keep assassins away,
He got down to his job, to settling the political fate
Of millions. The available maps were all out of date,
The census returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to revise them, no time to inspect
Contested areas himself. It was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks he had carried out his orders,
Defined, for better or worse, their future borders.
The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot
The case as a lawyer must: return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his club, that he might be shot.
Wystan Hugh Auden’s first book, Poems, was published in 1930 with the help of T.S. Eliot. In 1939, just before World War II broke out, he emigrated to the United States becoming a citizen. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for The Age of Anxiety. “Much of his poetry is concerned with moral issues and evidences a strong political, social, and psychological context,” according to his biography published by the Poetry Foundation.
Auden grew up in Birmingham, England, the son of a prominent physician. He earned a scholarship to study science and engineering at Oxford University, where his fascination with poetry led him to change his field of study to English.
Map of British India Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
For access to stories each week, follow on: LINKEDIN or TWITTER or FACEBOOK
