Breaking up: Dividing assets between India and Pakistan in times of Partition

Abstract

This article explores the process of dividing the government assets and liabilities between India and Pakistan and the method of splitting the colonial administration, bureaucracy and the army as a consequence of partition of British India in 1947. It closely studies the decisions that were taken in the Partition Council, the debates and discussions behind them and the ways of implementing them on the ground. Though we associate partition with chaos and conflict, this article shows that the representatives of both sides tried to work in an orderly manner to divide the assets and liabilities. However, what was ‘Indian’ and what was ‘Pakistani’, which institution should be divided and which one was too ‘unique’ for partition, became points of contestation. This article examines these debates and complicates the general understanding of the transition from the colonial to the post-colonial as entirely chaotic and contentious. It also shows how partition shaped post-colonial national imaginations in India and Pakistan.