Sir Cyril Radcliffe chaired the Boundary Commissions for Punjab and Bengal and was given roughly five weeks to divide a territory of about 4,50,000 sq km holding some 88 million people. He submitted his award on 9 August 1947, but the line was published only on 17 August — after both dominions had already become independent. Millions of people therefore celebrated or mourned independence without knowing which country their village had been placed in. That gap between the transfer of power and the announcement of the border is one reason the migration was so sudden and so violent, and it is the specific historical fact the remembrance day points to.

The observance was created to keep the human record of Partition — survivor testimony, oral history, photographs and documents — from disappearing as the generation that lived through it passes away. Its stated purpose is not commemoration of a political event but of displacement, family separation and communal violence, and its official framing is that remembrance should strengthen communal harmony rather than supply fresh grievance. For exam purposes, note that it is an observance declared by executive announcement, not by statute.