NEW DELHI – Former British prime minister Clement Attlee told the USambassador to the UK in June 1947 that he believed Bengal would opt to bean independent state instead of joining either India or Pakistan, accordingto a media report on Friday.
Dawn said in a report from Washington that historical documents releasedrecently by the US State Department show that the US was the first countrythat Attlee briefed on his plans to divide India.
On June 2, 1947, the US Ambassador in the UK, Lewis Williams Douglas, sentan “urgent and top secret” telegram to Secretary of State George Marshall,stating that the same afternoon Attlee had called him to his office andshared with him “advance information” about the partition plan.
The next day, Viceroy Louis Mountbatten broadcast the plan to the Indianpeople while Attlee presented it to the British parliament.Attlee toldAmbassador Douglas he wanted elected representatives from Punjab and Bengalto decide which of the two major dominions these provinces would join.
If they failed to do so, those two provinces would be partitioned betweenIndia and Pakistan. Attlee said he thought a division of Punjab is likely ,but added that there was a distinct possibility Bengal might decide againstpartition and against joining either Hindustan or Pakistan .
In that event Bengal might form a separate dominion , an alternative alsoopen to Punjab, but which he thought it improbable that it would elect todo, Attlee told Ambassador Douglas.
The envoy noted that the British prime minister was in sober mood, at timestinged with sorrow while discussing the partition plan with him.
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In his own words he has been working on the Indian problem for 21 years andthat the viceroy would make one last attempt to secure acceptance of theCabinet mission’s plan .
Failing such acceptance, which Attlee believed most unlikely , the viceroywould lay before Indian leaders a procedure for the partition of India intoa Hindustan dominion and a Pakistan dominion .
Attlee told the US ambassador that power might be transferred to Hindustansometime in August.
Pakistan, being without administrative machinery, power transfer to itmight be delayed until this was available, the prime minister said.
