Indian Independence Act 1947

Provisions

The Act followed directly from the Mountbatten Plan announced on 3 June 1947 by Viceroy Lord Mountbatten, which set out partition as the mechanism for the transfer of power after negotiations for a united, self-governing India failed. The bill was introduced in the House of Commons in early July 1947 and passed through both houses of Parliament within roughly two weeks, an unusually rapid passage reflecting the political consensus in London, by that point, that an early and orderly transfer of power was preferable to prolonging British rule while communal tensions worsened. Given royal assent on 18 July 1947, the Act created two new dominions, India and Pakistan, each with full legislative authority and dominion status within the Commonwealth, effective at midnight on 14–15 August 1947. Each dominion's existing Constituent Assembly was empowered to sit also as its dominion legislature until a permanent constitution was adopted. The Act ended British paramountcy over the princely states, which became legally free to accede to either dominion or, in principle, to remain outside both, with all existing treaties and agreements between the Crown and the states formally lapsing — a provision that shaped subsequent disputes over accession, most consequentially in Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Junagadh.

The Act discontinued the title "Emperor of India" held by the British monarch, while the monarch remained head of state of each dominion pending their own constitutions. It provided for a Governor-General in each dominion — Mountbatten continued as India's first Governor-General, while Jinnah took the post in Pakistan rather than the more customary role of prime minister. The territorial boundary between the two dominions in Punjab and Bengal was fixed by a Boundary Commission chaired by the British jurist Cyril Radcliffe, whose award was announced only after independence had already taken effect.

Consequences

The Act superseded the Government of India Act 1935 as the effective constitutional instrument for both dominions until each adopted a permanent constitution of its own — India in January 1950, Pakistan in 1956. It also required arrangements for dividing the armed forces, civil services, and financial assets of British India between the two new states, overseen by a Partition Council and subordinate expert committees that apportioned cash balances, stores, and personnel between the two governments in the weeks around independence. The transfer of power it enacted was accompanied by large-scale communal violence and mass population displacement across Punjab and Bengal, among the largest forced migrations of the twentieth century, the scale of which is not precisely established and remains a subject of ongoing historical estimation.

Boundary award

The Act itself did not fix the internal boundary between India and Pakistan in Punjab and Bengal; that task was assigned to two Boundary Commissions, both chaired by the British barrister Cyril Radcliffe, who had no prior experience of India and was given roughly five weeks to draw the lines. Radcliffe's award, based on district-level population data with some attention to other factors such as communications and irrigation networks, was completed by mid-August but not published until 17 August 1947, two days after independence had already taken effect, meaning the new dominions came into being without their common border yet being publicly known.