Claude Auchinleck - Role in Partition of India

Role in Partition of India

Auchinleck continued as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army after the end of the war helping, though much against his own convictions, to prepare the future Indian and Pakistani armies for the Partition of India (August 1947). In November 1945 he was forced to commute the sentence of transportation for life awarded to three officers of the Indian National Army in face of growing unease and unrest both within the Indian population, and the British Indian Army. In June 1946 he was promoted to field marshal but refused to accept a peerage, lest he be thought associated with a policy (i.e. Partition) that he thought fundamentally dishonourable. Having disagreed sharply with Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of India, he resigned as C-in-C and retired in 1947.