On 30 May 1947 Sir Evan Meredith Jenkins, the governor of the Punjab from April 1946 to August 1947, sent this telegram to Sir John Colville, the governor of Bombay from March 1943 to January 1948. At the time, Colville was serving as the acting Viceroy of India while Lord Louis Mountbatten visited England. Jenkins writes of worsening communal violence in the Punjab, describing the tensions as ‘hysteria’. In the months leading up to the Partition of India in August 1947, violence between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims intensified. After much discussion, British officials and Indian political leaders agreed that partitioning the country was the only way to stop this violence and avoid a full-scale civil war; neither side anticipated the brutality that the process would provoke.

About the India Office Records

The India Office Records is a vast collection of archives relating to the administration of the East India Company (1600–1858) and its successor the India Office (1858–1947). The collection includes hundreds of official publications and records, manuscripts, photographs, maps and private papers. These archives document the complex story of British trade with the East, politics, the development of the British Empire and the road to Indian independence.