Give any four clauses of the Mountbatten Plan of 1947.

(1) India was to be PARTITIONED into two Dominions, INDIA and PAKISTAN, each with its own Constituent Assembly free to frame its own constitution, and each free to remain in or leave the Commonwealth. (2) The Legislative Assemblies of BENGAL AND PUNJAB were to meet in two groups, Hindu and Muslim, to decide whether those provinces should be partitioned; a BOUNDARY COMMISSION under Sir Cyril Radcliffe was to demarcate the frontier. (3) A REFERENDUM was to be held in the North West Frontier Province and in the district of Sylhet in Assam to decide which Dominion they would join. (4) British PARAMOUNTCY over the Princely States would LAPSE, and each State was free to accede either to India or to Pakistan, having regard to its geographical position and the wishes of its people; none would be granted Dominion Status of its own.

Four marks, four clauses, one mark each. The date, 3 June 1947, belongs in your opening line. Cover the different KINDS of provision — the two Dominions, the divided provinces, the referendums, and the Princely States — rather than four aspects of the partition itself. The lapse of paramountcy is the most consequential: it left over 560 States technically independent, which is why Sardar Patel’s work of integration mattered so much.