Towards Freedom ─ Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1947

The Towards Freedom series is an endeavour to document the years leading to Independence. It goes beyond the overtly political activities of the time and the notion of Independence as 'transfer of power'. The volumes of this series underscore the fact that the struggle for Independence was not just about attaining freedom from a colonial power-it also comprised efforts to seek social justice, economic empowerment, and cultural autonomy. With meticulously selected historical material from 1937 to 1947, the volumes bring to the fore the activities, attitudes, and ideas of diverse sections of Indian society.

The 1947 volume, published in three parts, covers the major socio-political processes of that fateful year. The first part highlights the main political events that took place in the three-way conflict between imperialist, nationalist, and communal forces. The story continues in the second part, which takes up the partition award and the actual process of partition, the settlement of boundaries, the rehabilitation of refugees, and the developments in the princely states. The third part brings to the fore themes such as the future of the Congress, peasants' and workers' struggles, caste, minorities, language and literature, the position of women, the economic consequences of partition, foreign relations, and the celebrations of 15th August.

In this part, the second in the 1947 volume, the story of India's independence and partition unfurls through documents ranging from newspapers, private papers, and letters, to speeches, maps, cartoons, and colonial archives. The documents relate to the Constituent Assembly, the partition award, partition in Bengal and Punjab, the referendum in the Northwest Frontier Provinces and Sylhet, and the princely states, as also those on the Interim Government and the India Independence Bill. This part also highlights the problem of communalism which became so pronounced in several regions of India during this period that even the parties which stood for unity, such as the Congress, had little option but to accept partition.

Sucheta Mahajan is Professor of History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was Gillespie Visiting Professor at the College of Wooster, Ohio, Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy. She was an editor of Studies in History, the journal of the centre where she teaches. Her book Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India (2000) is an authoritative account of the period.

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is former Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi. He was earlier Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, and Professor of History at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.