What was the significance of the Amritsar Massacre for British Relations in India?

The partition can be considered to be a British catastrophe as when the time came, showing that Britain would actually leave, the demands for Pakistan strengthened causing chaos and arguments through out of India. This was a situation which caught Britain straight in because they could just not disbanded a country after many years of ruling and leaving it in a state the fore the partition was heading to be a catastrophe not only to the British, to the Indians too because they also needed help and direction. This attitude of the Indians was shown at the Simla conference in 1946 where Ghandi, representing some Indian people, announced that “he would block any moves towards partition” showing that he did not want the British to leave as the state of the country was not stable and this backfired to the British as they desperately needed to depart. At first, the British did not want to make it sound like a partition but wanted Nehru and Jinnah to come to some sort of agreement. After the failure of the Silma Conference failed and no agreement was made, a constituent assembly was announced to be created and congress did accept the May statement on June as they were seeking to not be excluded when various Indian parties where gathered to agree with each other and not. However, this shows that the British themselves in a way caused the catastrophe as they themselves still wanted to have Influence and to know what was going on showing that it was not only the partition which was the British catastrophe. Also, when the congress agued that they should merge back into one Indian state but this angered Jinnah which felt betrayed and withdrew from the May statement, therefore, this lead to the country sliding towards civil war.

Mountbatten became the viceroy of India in March 1947 and was given instructions that he must introduce partition and power should be given to India no later than June 1948. This is a very short amount of time and from historian’s point of view, very impossible, because there were many riots such as the Calcutta massacre where the Muslims were stoned by the Hindus as they were marching a protesting. This shows that it was impossible at this short time period and is one of the reasons why the partition was a British catastrophe as it might have not been thought thoroughly and carefully as it had to be passed.