Much of the scholarship on Bangladesh’s founding places it within a narrative of repetition. It either repeats the partitions of 1905 or 1947 or the creation of India and Pakistan as postcolonial states. This paper argues instead for the novelty of Bangladesh’s creation against the postcolonial state, suggesting that it opened up a new history at the global level in which decolonisation was replaced by civil war as the founding narrative for new states.

This paper unearths an alternative paradigm through which to consider the discussions and debates between members of the Indian public, government bureaucrats and Congress Party politicians about the rights and interests of Indian citizens both before and immediately after India's Independence in 1947. It argues that much of the recent historical work on citizenship during this period has been preoccupied with issues of nationality and religious community as a result of the fallout from Partition.

This is a Partition-Independence that we have not always faced up to in our history-writing and our public presentations of that moment of 'liberation'. A focus on the Muslims of a disturbed and high-profile place such as Delhi in 1947-48 allows us to recover something of the suppressed memories of Partition and Independence, at the same time as we ask something about the way in which the history of these events has been written up.

This paper is a study of the Interim Government in British India, formed during the penultimate viceroyalty of Archibald Wavell, from September 1946 to March 1947. It tries to throw light on major and minor personalities and micro and macro processes at work in this improbable interlude and, thus, probes an overshadowed ministerial and bureaucratic set-up in the lead-up to Partition. This understudied set-up constituted yet another compelling ‘space before Partition’ which would continue to affect the Indian state after Partition.

The PBF was given the responsibility of disturbed areas comprising Sialkot, Gujranwala, Seikhupura, Lyallpur, Montgomery, Lahore, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Jullunder and Ferozepur districts.