LONDON: The final shape of Hindustan and Pakistan should be clear 12 weeks hence and the constitutions of the two future Indian nations completed before Britain’s departure by June next year if the procedure plan which the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten is to present to the Indian leaders at Delhi on June 2 finds quick favour, informed London quarters declare, cables Fraser Wighton, Reuter’s Political Correspondent. The responsibility for decision on India’s future will be placed equally upon her top leaders and her elected provincial representatives… . India’s elected representatives, drawn from the present Constituent Assembly and a fresh Assembly to represent the Muslim League, will be largely responsible for the pattern of partition, if partition is inevitable.

…As a starting point … India’s Muslim majority areas will have to be defined and freedom given them to indicate the kind of constitutional future they want. The British Government, doubtless, has considered all the special difficulties in obtaining an agreed definition — the possibility that a plebiscite might by required to settle the case of the North-West Frontier Province, the demands for and against the partitioning of the Punjab and Bengal; the relatively simple propositions of Sind and Baluchistan… .

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2022