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Independence arrived with two jobs unfinished. One was a border that had not yet been drawn. The other was a map full of holes: roughly 565 princely states, covering about two-fifths of the subcontinent, which were not British territory at all and so did not transfer automatically to either new country.
Exams treat these as one chapter because they happened together, in the same eighteen months, and were handled by the same handful of people. But they test them differently. Partition is asked as a sequence of named plans and Acts. Integration is asked as three hard cases.
That is the shape to store. For partition, learn the chain: Cabinet Mission, Direct Action Day, the 3 June Plan, the Indian Independence Act, the Radcliffe award. For the states, learn Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir — because the other 562 signed without drama, and the three that did not were each settled by a different method.
SSC CGL, RRB NTPC, BPSC TRE-4 general studies, UPSC Prelims and the school-syllabus version in CTET all draw from this.
1. Who chaired the boundary commissions that drew the line dividing India and Pakistan in 1947?
2. Which princely state was integrated into India through the military action of September 1948 code-named Operation Polo?
3. Who headed the States Department created in July 1947 to bring the princely states into India?
4. Junagadh's accession to India was finally settled by which means?
5. Which was the first Indian state to be created on a linguistic basis, in 1953?
6. The States Reorganisation Commission appointed in 1953 was chaired by whom?
7. On which date did Maharaja Hari Singh sign the Instrument of Accession for Jammu and Kashmir?
8. The plan announced in June 1947 that accepted partition and the division of Bengal and Punjab is known as what?