The Untold Secrets of India’s Independence - 15th August - Future IQ

7,785 views Wait, is this logic right? • Aug 15, 2025

Slog Reference: Indian Independence Day

Description

Everyone knows India became independent on 15th August 1947… or do we? In this episode of Future IQ, we dig into the chaos, quirks, and downright bizarre twists that made our freedom day far from straightforward. Why was 15th August picked in the first place? Why did Pakistan originally share the same date — and then suddenly change it? How did we celebrate Independence without even knowing where our borders were? And why do some people in West Bengal still raise the flag on 18th August? From secret political manoeuvres to last-minute map changes and a date chosen because of World War II drama, this is the wild, untold story of the week India and Pakistan were born. Trust us — after this, you’ll never look at 15th August the same way again.

More Videos:
Jodhabai Did What To India? The Real Truth: https://youtu.be/NPCB7mIDvaU
Lies of History About Ancient India: https://youtu.be/9AxXwYGgWK4
Counterintuitive Reasons for India's Overpopulation:https: //youtu.be/Sjur6Bu30YM

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Independence_Act_1947
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radcliffe_Line
https://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2002/02/the-1947-partition-drawing-the-indo-pakistani-boundary/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/9654550.cms
https://www.partitionmuseum.org/partition-of-india
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1160291/pakistan-created-august-14-15
https://www.thesocialistcorrespondent.org.uk/articles/end-of-british-rule-in-india/
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=UAkarK3gLDgC&pg=PA149&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

00:00 Introduction
00:25 Why '15th August'?
03:19 Pakistan Changed Their Independence Date?
05:03 Why did the Partition lead to violence?
07:06 Migration Plan of Our Leaders
08:13 Indian Borders Were Kept a Secret!
09:59 Only 2 Hours to Devide India & Pakistan
11:16 Partition Hotch Potch
13:44 17th August Independence Day Mystery

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

#futureiq #indiahistory #independenceday

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Transcript

- Today we are going to talk about a bunch of interesting things about India's independence that you might not know. Okay. Because everybody is going to celebrate India's independence on 15th August except people in Malda and Nadia in Bengal. Wait, what? They are in West Bengal. Yeah, they celebrate on 17th and 18th. Why? End of the episode I will tell you. Until then there are other things. Okay. Okay. Okay, first of all, do you know why 15th August specifically was chosen? Uh, I actually have no idea about this.

0m 33s Well, it's a lovely story and it involves Hitler. So, let's get started. Right. India's independence day and Hitler. Yes. So, in 1947, British Parliament said that India has to get free by June 48. Okay. And they sent Mount Batton here and Mount Patton looked at the political situation. It looked very dicey to him and he wanted Britain to get rid of India quickly. So he picked okay August seems good and he remembered August 15th is a good date because Japan had surrendered on 15th August 1945.

1m 08s Okay so that explains why August 15th is India's independence day because Japan surrendered on August 15th. But what does that have to do with Hitler? Well, why did Japan surrender on August 15th? That's because US dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August. Correct. Where does Hitler come in? Well, why did US drop bombs on 6th and 9th August? The reason is because they were afraid that Stalin is going to come to Japan on 9th August. And once he comes and defeats Japan, then Russia will get the credit for defeating Japan.

1m 43s US didn't want that to happen. So they very quickly dropped the bombs on 6th and 9th. How did they know Stalin was coming on 6th and 9th? And again what does it have to do with Hitler? So on 9th May Germany surrendered and Stalin who was there for the signing he promised that within 3 months he will reach Japan and defeat them. Ah, so Stalin deciding that three-month window after Germany surrender on the 9th of May is why US bombed Japan on 6th and 9th and the 9th of May surrender date is because Hitler died by suicide on the 30th of April. Exactly. Interesting chain of events. But hold on a second.

2m 21s You said the UK was desperate to leave India and they had set a deadline of June 1948. Why were they desperate? Well, they realized that to hold India, they are going to need half a million troops and half a billion US dollars. That was just too much. Uh they already were holding India for 150 years. What changed? Well, one is that because of World War II, their finances were already low. Mhm. But after the 1946 Indian Navy mutiny, they realized that they have to double the number of troops here if they want to hold otherwise you know anything could happen.

3m 00s So that significantly increased expense the British public was not willing to put up with and that is why UK was desperate to get rid of India as fast as possible and make it someone else's problem. Ah, so that's why Mount Batton decided to advance the date even further to August 1947. Correct. And so 15th August India and Pakistan became free. India became free on 15th August. Pakistan 14th of August. Are you sure? Yeah. They celebrate their independence day 14th of August. Yeah. That's just kind of a madeup thing. Okay. Wait. What? India and Pakistan both got independent on the exact same moment which is midnight of August 14th according to the British act of parliament.

3m 45s Okay. Okay. And Jina's speech in that he said August 15th is the birthday of the independent and sovereign state of Pakistan. Okay. And in July 1948, Pakistan released commemorative stamps which still show August 15th as the independence day of Pakistan. Okay. So when did this 14th of August business happen? Well, in 1948, their prime minister just decided that they should celebrate on 14th of August from then on. Right? The reasons are not very clear, but mostly people think that he wanted a celebration before India. So it was just India envy. Okay. And so Pakistan Parliament passed a resolution saying from now on we are going to celebrate on 14th August. Okay. It kind of makes

4m 37s sense and also is kind of funny. You know what one thing always bothered me about uh the entire independence day date whatever you want to call it is the fact that um the partition happened on that day. I mean if they knew that the two countries were going to split on religious lines then the migration of people should have happened much earlier right it would have made everybody's lives so much easier yeah so the question is why did suddenly on that day we have so much violence associated with partition right so here is the thing right one is that most people believed that partition wouldn't actually happen okay because mount batton only came in March 47 7.

5m 20s Okay. And the next few months he spent still trying to talk to the different parties to figure out if you know there could be a compromise that is reached. Okay. This went on until June. So only in early June was it decided that there is going to be a partition and we're talking about August. That's part one of the problem. Part two of the problem is that which parts go to India, which parts go to Pakistan? That was not known for some of those places, right? Because June is when it was decided there will be a partition and Radcliffe who drew the line didn't show up until July.

5m 57s Oh, but also some of this was already going on. Some of this migration had already started. Some of the riots were already going on in in 1946 August the Muslim League announced direct action day. I remember riots. Yeah. October Nokali riots, right? October, November, Bihar riots. December Hazra riots right March Rahul Pindi massacre so you know this was just going on and this is in the year before the partition 1946 leading up to June 47 correct so some of this was going on minor migration did happen half a million people had migrated before independence okay but after independence the fullcale chaos that ensured right that caused people to run for their lives but even then we did not think

6m 46s this was a permanent migration. Nehu, Jina, Lyakatali, all of them felt that this is a temporary displacement and after things settled down people will go back to staying where they were. Uh they were given the option of staying as minority. So basically this seems like our leaders did not foresee this scale of migration. These leaders okay Patel and Ambedkar actually were in favor of a fullscale migration. So all the people from this country belong to Yes. All the Muslims of India should go to Pakistan. All the Hindus of Pakistan should go to India at the time of partition. That is what they had in mind.

7m 26s Wow. That sounds insane. Why did they even think that this would work? Because in 1923 this had worked in Turkey and Greece. Oh there they came up with a plan like this and all the Turks living in Greece moved to Turkey. All the Greeks living in Turkey moved to Greece or at least a certain region, right? And that was largely considered a success and they were hoping that this would prevent a potential genocide by doing this exchange between Hindus and Muslims and India and Pakistan. Correct. Correct.

7m 59s Okay. So why didn't it happen? Because Neu and Gandhi opposed this, right? They believed in communal harmony and they totally believed that the people of India would live together happily ever after in Pakistan and that's why full chaos happened on the 15th of August. Nope. No chaos didn't happen on 15th of August. 15th of August was a very happy day because the partition boundaries had not been announced on 15th of August at all. But the two states became independent. Yes, in theory two states became independent without knowing which exactly those two states were. The boundary line was publicized only on 17th August.

8m 44s So until 17th August, neither India nor Pakistan knew what their borders were. Yes. The only people who knew Radcliffe had decided the borders by 12th August. Okay. And he had given it to Mount Battleton. Okay. So can you guess why it was not announced till 17th? I cannot because if the borders were given on the 12th of August 15th should you Yeah. Because Mountbatton claimed that he wanted 15th to be a day of celebration and he knew that once the border is announced there is going to be a lot of unhappiness probably riots and so on. Right.

9m 22s Yeah. and also the migration because people will have to move across borders and that is the claim. Okay. But many people think that the real reason was that Mount Batton wanted it to be announced after the two countries are independent. So that you know it sounds like not something we did. It is something you guys are announcing. Right. So all right that kind of makes sense. Uh but you know what is funny about the whole thing for an empire that prided itself on its administrative efficiency all of this partition drama you haven't heard the best part right so the leadersh Neu they were shown the borders on 16th August 5:00 p.m. And they were given

10m 10s only 2 hours to study it. Then it was taken away and then just announced publicly the next morning. Right. Just 2 hours they got to prepare. So these borders are kind of forced upon us. Oh, of course. Of course the border was like totally random in some sense. Okay. Because now imagine the guy who's been brought in to draw this border. One of the most dangerous borders in the world. Yeah. Right. You would expect him to be an expert in what? In geography, in politics, in geopolitics, none of the above. He didn't know anything about geography. He didn't know anything about India. He didn't know anything about Pakistan. He didn't know anything about the area,

10m 52s right? Well, the British wisdom was that well, that way then we will have a truly neutral guy doing the border, right? No partiality. In a weird way, it makes sense, but it also is silly because you need someone who understands the nuances in that moment, in that space. Well, what Radcliffe thought, huh, was that you know what, no matter what I'm going to do, people are going to suffer, so I might as well just be casual. So on 12th of or on 12th of August, Radcliffe basically said, here are the borders. Take it. I am done.

11m 28s Well, there are two things wrong with that story, right? One is that although Radcliffe was casual about it, the other people of course were not casual about it. So there was a lot of maneuvering and politicking going on. So the borders were being changed until the last days. So for example on August 9th 10th two the right firospur and zera had been awarded to Pakistan because they were Muslim majority. But then somebody realized that there is an arms depot there which shouldn't go to Pakistan. M and the Raja of Bikanir who was going to join India he realized that the headquarters of the Bikanir canal are there and you can't have that in Pakistan and rest of Bikanir here.

12m 13s Yeah. So we don't know who changed it but it is known that between 9th and 12th things shifted and things like that kept happening right. Yeah. Okay. So that's one thing is that there were two things wrong. Yeah. The other is that although Radcliffe was doing the actual work casually, he wasn't casual in his mind about this, right? He knew he's doing something big and he knew that no matter what he does, this is going to be horrible, right? So, he refused to accept his fee for this. He collected all his papers and draft maps, took them home to England before 15th August. Okay? He didn't wasn't in India when the partition happened. He burnt all his notes, all

12m 57s his papers, everything and he refused to say a word even to his family about what and why and everything. Okay. So, so the architect of the IndiaPakistan border drew a line with some reasoning that was in his head, wrote those reasonings down except we can't access those because he's burnt them. We only have the line he drew. Right? So, in fact, there is a play about how, you know, Radcliffe felt about all of this afterwards, right? But let's move on. Okay, we'll have to look into that play and figure out what it is. Now, I'm very curious about it. If you already know about it, drop a comment and let us know. And while you're at it, like, subscribe, share it

13m 39s with others who might not know all of these details about uh India's history. But there is still one question that is unresolved which you spoke at the beginning which is Nadia Malda in West Bengal. Right? Celebrating Independence Day not on the 15th of August. Correct. Because when on 17th August morning the line was announced publicly they realized that they're in Pakistan. Okay. Okay. And this wasn't a issue with politicking and something like that. It was just that cliff making a mistake. Okay. Okay. So they complained. Mountbatton realized it. It said, "Oh, we need to fix it." And so on 17th an order was passed that oh these are really in India, right? So some of them celebrate Independence Day

14m 26s on 17th and some of them celebrate it on 18th. Even today, even today, that is an interesting bit. So if you're watching this from Nadia, Malda, West Bengal, you're not going to wish you happy independence day on the 15th. We wish you on the 17th or 18th or whatever of those two dates you celebrate. Fascinating things about India's independence that I genuinely uh did not know some of them or I thought I knew some of them but turns out there is a much larger story behind it. But that's basically what we do here at future IQ.

14m 56s We look at the uh stories and then go deeper and find the larger stories behind it. Shriant Navi Future IQ