London, July 18: The Royal Commission’s historic move conveying to Parliament King George’s assent to the Indian Independence Bill, creating the two Dominions of India and Pakistan, came soon after noon. Only a few Peers, members of the Commons and spectators saw the ceremony, which marked the passing of British sovereignty over about a fifth of the human race.

The Commission met in the King’s robing room, the small chamber in which the House of Lords has met since bombs destroyed the Commons Chamber and compelled the Commons to take over the Lords’ meeting room.

For the ceremony, attendants uncovered two gilded thrones on the dais, beneath a richly embroidered panel bearing the Royal arms immediately behind the woolsack on which lay the mace. The five members of the Commission, all dressed in peers’ robes of scarlet and ermine, were Lord Chancellor Viscount Jowitt; the Earl of Cytton, a former acting Viceroy of India whose father proclaimed Queen Victoria, Empress of the Indian Empire; the Earl of Listowel, the present and past Secretary of State for India; Viscount Stansgate, a former Secretary and Lord Llewellin.

Precisely at 10.40 GMT today 14.10 a.m. IST, the great new Dominions of India and Pakistan were born and the 400,800,000 people of India came into their inheritance of full political freedom, when in the British House of Lords, a Royal Commission of Peers with ceremony and ritual dating back to William the Conqueror’s time, announced the Royal assent to the Indian Independence Bill, writes Fraser Wighton, Reuter’s Political Correspondent.

... contd.