Partition of India potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs, agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines in stark opposition to Gandhi's views. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new
Artistic depictions of the partition of India covers several crucial periods in the history of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. It explored the themes of violence, memory, loss, and of the 'grand narratives' propagated by those in power, as opposed to the more individual and personal 'little narratives' seen through its central characters, Thamma, Tridib, and the unnamed narrator. Directed by M. S. Sathyu, "Garam Hawa" (1973) was Balraj Sahni's last major role. Directed by Ritwik Ghatak, "Meghe Dhaka Tara" (1960), never explicitly mentions the Partition, but takes place in a refugee camp in the outskirts of Calcutta, and concerns an impoverished genteel Hindu bhadralok family and the