KARACHI, India, Aug. 13, 1947 (UP) - Adm. Viscount Mountbatten, great-grandson of Queen Victoria in whose name the empire of India was created, arrived in this new world capital Wednesday to hand over to the Moslem Dominion of Pakistan the power of self-government.
Before the Pakistan Constituent Assembly Thursday morning, Mountbatten will read a message from his cousin, King George VI, creating the Moslem Dominion.
In the Hindu capital of New Delhi the Constituent Assembly of the new Dominion of Hindustan will meet at the stroke of midnight Thursday to take over its powers.
Top man in the government will be Jawaharlal Nehru, who will be prime minister and foreign minister.
It is at midnight Thursday that the two new dominions will be formally inaugurated, making 400,000,000, people nearly one-fifth the population of the world, self-governing.
Mountbatten, who as viceroy was the chief engineer of the conversion of this subcontinent into two dominions, will become governor general of Hindustan.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah becomes king of all the Moslems and governor general of Pakistan.
(The spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi has no official status in independent India. He is an influential member of the All-India Congress Party, the predominantly Hindu party which presumably will dominate the political administration of Hindu India.)
The turnover comes just at the end of the yearly Moslem fast of Ramadan. The real feasting will start when it ends Sunday. But private feasting already is under way.
After Thursday's function, Mountbatten will continue on to Bombay. There on Sunday, he will review the first contingent of the British Army to leave India.
After Thursday midnight, new maps will show a Hindustan of about 600,000 square miles, in which live about 200,000,000 people. Pakistan, split into two main parts, will comprise about 250,000 square miles with 60,000,000 people. The rest of India consists of about 565 native states nearly all of which will adhere to one or the other of the dominions.
