New Delhi, June 9 -- It was 12 May 1947. Clement Atlee, the newly elected prime minister of the United Kingdom then, was meeting with military commanders at his official residence, 10 Downing Street. WW-II hero Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and some policy experts were also at the meeting, convened to discuss India's independence and its eventual partition.

These men believed India as a nation had socialistic impulses and, if given independence in an undivided form, could be influenced by communism, which they saw as a mortal threat to British colonialism. So they decided to create a "buffer state" between the Soviet Union and India that would do their bidding in the region. On 14 August 1947, Pakistan was given independence and turne...