Partition of India in the United Provinces (where Muslims were attacked by Hindus), and on to Rawalpindi in March 1947 in which Hindus were attacked or driven out by Muslims. The British Prime Minister Attlee appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten as India's last viceroy, who was given the task to oversee British India's independence by June 1948, with the instruction to "avoid" partition and "preserve" a United India, but with adaptational authority to ensure a British withdrawal with minimal setbacks. Mountbatten hoped to revive the Cabinet Mission scheme for a federal arrangement for India. But despite his initial keenness for preserving the center the
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