Place

Radcliffe Line

1947 · 20th century

The Radcliffe Line is the boundary drawn in 1947 between India and Pakistan in Punjab and Bengal, named after the British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who chaired the two boundary commissions. Radcliffe had never been to India and had about five weeks for the task. The award was published on 17 August 1947, two days after independence, and the partition it fixed was accompanied by mass migration and communal violence.

Radcliffe Line
Image: Own work · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Radcliffe Line. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/radcliffe-line
MLA
“Radcliffe Line.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/radcliffe-line. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Radcliffe Line.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/radcliffe-line.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Radcliffe Line’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/radcliffe-line (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻