Legacies are unavoidable in the histories of states, as in the history of families or of our bodies. Always we make our futures in the presence of our pasts. Legacies are peculiarly substantial and durable in those states which emerge from partitions. In this respect the subcontinent of South Asia is not a case on its own; the partitions of Palestine, of Ireland, of Germany are also events which seem never to die, nor even smoothly to fade away. Partitions bear witness, often with acute poignancy, to the element of tragedy in human affairs: solutions, however genuine, to one set of pressing problems simply set the scene for the next set. The purpose of this essay is to try to disentangle the elements, positive and negative, of the British contribution to the legacies of 1947 as transmitted to the subcontinent. The task has been made practicable by the opening up to public inspection of the records a few years ago. What is more extraordinary is that in principle the task can be undertaken even by those who have not the time nor the patience nor the practical possibility of burrowing into the heaps of files. For this we have to thank the Harold Wilson government which took the bold decision to publish a vast selection of the papers which record the process of Britain's first and largest decolonization operation. We have also to thank Professor Nicholas Mansergh and his staff who undertook with exquisite care and judgment the giant task of editing the twelve massive volumes of the Transfer of power series. I propose to identify six facets of the 1947 Mountbatten operation. With simplification, I shall present each of the six as having primarily either a positive or negative set of consequences for the future. For the sake of readers who do not enjoy suspense, let me say that I shall find three of each kind. In football parlance this is a draw, three goals for and three against. But whereas in football all goals bear equal weight in scoring, in politics some goals are more important than others. The largest issue is that of the partition decision itself. Was it wise; was it necessary? But since that matter arose only in the context of a British determination to transfer power somehow, there is a prior question to be disposed of: was 1947 the right time for Britain to have arrived at that determination? To this, a brief answer will suffice: yes-in the sense that while it could have been earlier, it could certainly not have been later if quite appalling consequences were to be avoided. The Labour government was not only the first government in London that willed to discontinue the attempt to exercise outside control over the subcontinent; it was also the first that was without the capacity-in terms of resources, above all in terms of support at home and in the world-effectively to succeed even if it had wished to try. That will was not a mere derivation from the lack of capacity, though the latter helped to consolidate the resolve. There was thus a double recognition of