On 18 July 1947, the Indian Independence Act received Royal Assent. It provided for British India to be divided into the independent dominions of India and Pakistan in August.

The legislation passed through Parliament under a compressed timetable. Prime Minister Clement Attlee had announced in February that British rule would end no later than June 1948. Lord Mountbatten, the final Viceroy of India, brought the transfer forward by ten months.

Pakistan was to become independent on 14 August, followed by India on 15 August. This left less than four weeks between Royal Assent and the transfer of power.

The Act ended the British Parliament’s authority to legislate for the new dominions. Their constituent assemblies received legislative powers, while the office of Viceroy was abolished. Each dominion would initially have a governor-general representing the King.

British paramountcy over the princely states also ended. These territories were ruled by their own princes under agreements with the Crown. As those agreements expired, their rulers had to decide whether to join India or Pakistan.

The largest immediate problem was partition. Punjab and Bengal contained large Hindu, Muslim and Sikh populations and were to be divided between the two dominions. Boundary commissions were established under the chairmanship of the British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe.

Radcliffe had arrived in India only days before the Act received Royal Assent. He had no previous experience of the country. He was expected to draw borders through densely populated provinces within a few weeks.

The final boundaries were not published before independence. India and Pakistan began their existence without people in Punjab and Bengal knowing for certain which country many towns and villages had been placed in.

Government departments, railways, military units, financial reserves, records and equipment also had to be divided. Officials worked to separate institutions that had been administered as parts of one colonial government.

Population movement had already begun as communities feared becoming minorities on the wrong side of the border. Partition was followed by communal violence and the movement of millions of people between India and Pakistan.

The Act established the legal transfer of authority. It did not provide the time or administrative control needed to make the division orderly.