Editing Radcliffe Line (section)

====Assessments on the 'Controversial Award of Gurdaspur to India and the Kashmir Dispute'====
[[Stanley Wolpert]] writes that Radcliffe in his initial maps awarded Gurdaspur district to Pakistan but one of Nehru's and Mountbatten's greatest concerns over the new Punjab border was to make sure that Gurdaspur would not go to Pakistan, since that would have deprived India of direct road access to Kashmir.<ref>{{citation|last=Wolpert|first=Stanley|title=Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zuoMsBWCTBUC&pg=PA167|year=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|page=167|access-date=18 September 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140925092249/http://books.google.com/books?id=zuoMsBWCTBUC|archive-date=25 September 2014|url-status=live|isbn=9780195393941}}</ref> As per "The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture", a part of [[UNESCO]]'s Histories flagship project, recently disclosed documents of the history of the partition reveal British complicity with the top Indian leadership to wrest Kashmir from Pakistan. Alastair Lamb, based on the study of recently declassified documents, has convincingly{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} proven that Mountbatten, in league with Nehru, was instrumental in pressurizing Radcliffe to award the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur in East Punjab to India which could provide India with the only possible access to Kashmir.<ref>{{citation |title=The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture |url=http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002449/244974e.pdf |date=2016 |page=355 |access-date=9 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170811222452/http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002449/244974e.pdf |archive-date=11 August 2017 |url-status=live  }}</ref> [[Andrew Roberts (historian)|Andrew Roberts]] believes that Mountbatten cheated over India-Pak frontier<ref>{{citation |title=Author's Review, Eminent Churchillians | url=http://www.andrew-roberts.net/books/eminent-churchillians/}}</ref> and states that if gerrymandering took place in the case of Firozepur, it is not too hard to believe that Mountbatten also pressurized Radcliffe to ensure that Gurdaspur wound up in India to give India road access to Kashmir.<ref name="Roberts2010">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fvLlDfbyrzoC&pg=PT128 |title=Eminent Churchillians |author=Andrew Roberts |date= 2010 |publisher=Orion |isbn=978-0-297-86527-8 |pages=128– |access-date=18 September 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180730140644/https://books.google.com/books?id=fvLlDfbyrzoC&pg=PT128 |archive-date=30 July 2018 |url-status=live  }}</ref><ref>{{citation |last=Robert |first=Andrew |title=Eminent Chruchillians |url=https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.indian/hgJ_1X5nQoQ |year=1994 |access-date=16 May 2007 |archive-url=http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20110122130054/https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.indian/hgJ_1X5nQoQ |archive-date=22 January 2011 |url-status=live  }}</ref><ref>Sher Muhammad Garewal, "Mountbatten and Kashmir Issue", ''Journal of Research Society of Pakistan'', XXXIV (April 1997), pp. 9–10</ref>

[[Perry Anderson]] states that Mountbatten, who was officially supposed to neither exercise any influence on Radcliffe nor to have any knowledge of his findings, intervened behind the scenes – probably at Nehru's behest – to alter the award. He had little difficulty in getting Radcliffe to change his boundaries to allot the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur to India instead of Pakistan, thus giving India the only road access from Delhi to Kashmir.<ref>{{citation |last=Anderson |first=Perry |title=Why Partition? |journal=London Review of Books |date=19 July 2012 |volume=34 |issue=14 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n14/perry-anderson/why-partition |access-date=20 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170721172022/https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n14/perry-anderson/why-partition |archive-date=21 July 2017 |url-status=live  }}</ref>

However, some British works suggest that the 'Kashmir State was not in anybody's mind'<ref>{{citation |last=Hodson |first=H. V. |title=The Great Divide: Britain, India, Pakistan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MC2UoAEACAAJ |year=1969 |publisher=Hutchinson |location=London |page=355|isbn=9780090971503 }}</ref> when the Award was being drawn and that even the Pakistanis themselves had not realized the importance of Gurdaspur to Kashmir until the Indian forces actually entered Kashmir.<ref>{{citation |last=Tinker |first=Hugh |date=August 1977 |title=Pressure, Persuasion, Decision: Factors in the Partition of the Punjab, August 1947 |journal=Journal of Asian Studies |volume=XXXVI |issue=4 |page=701 |doi=10.2307/2054436 |jstor=2054436 |s2cid=162322698 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Both Mountbatten and Radcliffe, of course, have strongly denied those charges. It is impossible to accurately quantify the personal responsibility for the tragedy of Kashmir as the Mountbatten papers relating to the issue at the India Office Library and records are closed to scholars for an indefinite period.<ref>{{citation |last=Robert |first=Andrew |title=Eminent Churchillians |url=https://www.abebooks.com/9781857992137/Eminent-Churchillians-Andrew-Roberts-185799213X/plp |year=1994 |page=105}}</ref>