1947: Key Events

• Lord Mountbatten becomes the last Viceroy and Governor General of India; he presents his plan for Partition (3 June), and announces the schedule for the transfer of power (14-15 August). The Indian Independence Bill is passed 15-16 July.

• Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly meets (11 August) and elects Jinnah as its first President.

• Nehru becomes India’s first Prime Minister (15 August), making his famous speech, ‘A Tryst with Destiny’, to the Constituent Assembly.

• In Punjab, the fall of Khizar Hayat Khan’s Congress- and Sikh- supported ministry is followed by massive rioting in Lahore, Amritsar, Multan, Attock and Rawalpindi. Nearly 200,000 people are killed as six million Muslims from the East and over four million Hindus and Sikhs from the West become refugees in an exchange of populations.

• Communal attitudes merge with attitudes to sexual conquest and to property in a virtual war of extermination, as refugee trains carry more corpses than living people.

• The nizam of Hyderabad refuses to accede to the Indian Union and encourages the razakars, members of the Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, to terrorise the peasantry.

• Pakistan attacks Kashmir; India signs a treaty of accession with Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir.

• ​Udaya Studios, the first film studio in Kerala.

• The AVM Film Co. starts, adapting S. V. Sahasranamam’s stage hit, Nam Iruvar;

• Master Bhagwan’s Jagriti Studios is established near Bombay.

• Paul Zils and Fali Bilimoria start the Documentary Unit - India.

• Satyajit Ray, Chidananda Das Gupta and others start the ​Calcutta Film Society.

• Foundation of the Bengali film weekly Rupanjali, edited by Sudhangshu Basu.