With the clarity of mind and backing of the Muslim community behind him, Quaid-i-Azam called for the 27th annual session of the All India Muslim League to be held from March 22 to 24, 1940 at Lahore. Sir Shah Nawaz Khan of Mamdot was made the head of the reception committee and Main Bashir Ahmad was nominated as secretary of the session. Prominent leaders including Chaudhry Khaliquzzam, Nawab Muhammad Ismail Khan, Nawab Bahadur Yar Jang, A.K. Fazlul Haq, Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, Abdullah Haroon, Qazi Muhammad Isa, I.I. Chundrigar, Sardar Aurangzeb Khan, Khawaja Nazimuddin, Abdul Hashim and Malik Barkat Ali, etc. attended the session.
On March 23, A.K. Fazul Haq, the Chief Minister of Bengal, moved the historical Lahore Resolution. The Resolution consisted of five paragraphs and each paragraph was only one sentence long. Although clumsily worded, it delivered a clear message. The resolution declared:
lahore resolution 1940 pdf 47
While approving and endorsing the action taken by the Council and the Working Committee of the All-India Muslim League, as indicated in their resolutions dated the 27th of August, 17th and 18th of September and 22nd of October, 1939, and 3rd of February 1940, on the constitutional issue, this session of the All-India Muslim League emphatically reiterates that the scheme of Federation embodied in the Government of India Act, 1935 is totally unsuited to, and unworkable in the peculiar conditions of this country and is altogether unacceptable to Muslim India.
Besides many others, the Resolution was seconded by Chaudhary Khaliquzzam from UP, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan from Punjab, Sardar Aurangzeb from the N. W. F. P, Sir Abdullah Haroon from Sindh, and Qazi Muhammad Esa from Baluchistan. Those who seconded the resolution, in their speeches declared the occasion as a historic one. The Resolution was eventually passed on the last day of the moot, i.e. March 24.
The Pakistan Movement (Urdu: تحریکِ پاکستان, romanized: Teḥrīk-e-Pākistān) was a political movement in the first half of the 20th century that aimed for the creation of Pakistan from the Muslim-majority areas of British India. It was connected to the perceived need for self-determination for Muslims under British rule at the time. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a barrister and politician led this movement after the Lahore Resolution was passed by All-India Muslim League on 23 March 1940 and Ashraf Ali Thanwi as a religious scholar supported it.[1] Thanwi's disciples Shabbir Ahmad Usmani and Zafar Ahmad Usmani were key players in religious support for the creation of Pakistan.[2]
Until 1937 the Muslim League had remained an organisation of elite Indian Muslims. The Muslim League leadership then began mass mobilisation and the League then became a popular party with the Muslim masses in the 1940s, especially after the Lahore Resolution.[26][27] Under Jinnah's leadership its membership grew to over two million and became more religious and even separatist in its outlook.[28][29] The Muslim League's earliest base was the United Provinces.[30] From 1937 onwards, the Muslim League and Jinnah attracted large crowds throughout India in its processions and strikes.[31]
At Lahore the Muslim League formally committed itself to create an independent Muslim state, including Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan, the North West Frontier Province and Bengal, that would be "wholly autonomous and sovereign". The resolution guaranteed protection for non-Muslims. The Lahore Resolution, moved by the sitting Chief Minister of Bengal A. K. Fazlul Huq, was adopted on 23 March 1940, and its principles formed the foundation for Pakistan's first constitution.
In opposition to the Lahore Resolution, the All India Azad Muslim Conference gathered in Delhi in April 1940 to voice its support for a united India.[32] Its members included several Islamic organisations in India, as well as 1400 nationalist Muslim delegates.[33][34]
The Indian Congress and Muslim League responded differently over the World War II issue. The Indian Congress refused to support the British unless the whole Indian subcontinent was granted independence.[38] The Muslim League, on the other hand, supported Britain both politically and via human contributions.[38] The Muslim League leaders' British education, training, and philosophical ideas helped bring the British government and the Muslim League closer to each other.[38] Jinnah himself supported the British in World War II when the Congress failed to collaborate.[38] The British government made a pledge to the Muslims in 1940 that it would not transfer power to an Independent India unless its constitution was first approved by the Indian Muslims, a promise it did not subsequently keep.[38]
The separation of Sind from the Bombay Presidency triggered Sindhi Muslim nationalists to support the Pakistan Movement. Even while the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province were ruled by parties hostile to the Muslim League, Sindh remained loyal to Jinnah.[60] Although the prominent Sindhi Muslim nationalist G.M. Syed (who admired both Hindu and Muslim rulers of Sindh) left the All India Muslim League in the mid-1940s,[61] the overwhelming majority of Sindhi Muslims supported the creation of Pakistan, seeing in it their deliverance.[62] Sindhi support for the Pakistan Movement arose from the desire of the Sindhi Muslim business class to drive out their Hindu competitors.[63]
During the Pakistan Movement in the 1940s, Rohingya Muslims in western Burma had an ambition to annex and merge their region into East-Pakistan.[87] Before the independence of Burma in January 1948, Muslim leaders from Arakan addressed themselves to Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and asked his assistance in annexing of the Mayu region to Pakistan which was about to be formed.[87] Two months later, the North Arakan Muslim League was founded in Akyab (modern: Sittwe, capital of Arakan State), it, too demanding annexation to Pakistan.[87] However, it is noted that the proposal never materialised after it was reportedly turned down by Jinnah.[87]
Pakistan Day (also referred to as Pakistan Resolution Day or Republic Day), 23 March (1940); note - commemorates both the adoption of the Lahore Resolution by the All-India Muslim League during its 22-24 March 1940 session, which called for the creation of independent Muslim states, and the adoption of the first constitution of Pakistan on 23 March 1956 during the transition to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Pakistan-India: Kashmir remains the site of the world's largest and most militarized territorial dispute with portions under the de facto administration of China (Aksai Chin), India (Jammu and Kashmir), and Pakistan (Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas); UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan has maintained a small group of peacekeepers since 1949; India does not recognize Pakistan's ceding historic Kashmir lands to China in 1964; India and Pakistan have initiated discussions on defusing the armed standoff in the Siachen glacier region; the Siachen glacier is claimed by both countries and militarily occupied by India: Pakistan opposed India's fencing the highly militarized Line of Control (completed in 2004) and the construction of the Baglihar Dam on the Chenab River (opened in 2008) in Jammu and Kashmir, which is part of the larger dispute on water sharing of the Indus River and its tributaries; to defuse tensions and prepare for discussions on a maritime boundary, India and Pakistan seek technical resolution of the disputed boundary in Sir Creek estuary at the mouth of the Rann of Kutch in the Arabian Sea; Pakistani maps continue to show Junagadh in India's Gujarat State as part of Pakistan
The passing of the resolution marked the transformation of the Muslim minority in British India into a nation with its distinguishing socio-cultural and political features, a sense of history and shared aspirations for the future within a territory.
The Hindu press and leaders were quick to describe the resolution as the demand for the creation of Pakistan; some people began to call it the Pakistan Resolution soon after the Lahore session of the Muslim League.
What did the Lahore Resolution (1940) stand for? What did it signify in essence? What did it imply in a broad sense? Since the mid 1960s, several interpretations have been foisted on it, and it is time that they are examined in perspective and in the total context, that some conclusions, even if tentative, be arrived at in the light of hard evidence available in the literature.
The confusion, and hence the controversy, arising out of this resolution stems from two points: (i) the Muslim majority areas "should be grouped to constitute Independent States"; and (ii) "the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign". And we would examine these two controversial points in the same order. Since both these points are directly related to the wording of the resolution, the initial questions to be tackled are: who drafted it, and how did it come to be drafted?
Commenting on Sir Sikander's version, Khalid B. Sayeed says, "it seems that the Working Committee removed the federal elements from the resolution and made the Muslim zones in the North-West and in the North-East 'Independent States', which had no federal relationship with an Indian Federation. This probably explains the origin of the term `Independent States'." This also seems a valid explanation in the light of what Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman records about the February 4 meeting. According to him, Sir Sikander, who had earlier published his scheme for the division of India into seven different zones, grouped together under a confederal structure, pled for his confederal scheme, and after two hours' discussion, the Working Committee, with the concurrence of Jinnah, rejected it, and decided to confine its demand to the separation of Muslim zones.
The March 3, 1943 resolution in support of Pakistan, moved by G. M. Sayed in, and adopted by, the Sind Assembly included the phrase, "national states", which was a little squint-eyed. Inter alia, it said, "whereas the Muslims of India are a separate nation... they are justly entitled to the right as a single, separate nation, to have independent national states of their own, carved out in the zones where they are in majority in the sub-continent of India." The concept and claim of a single, separate nation logically leads to a demand for a single, separate state, and not to national states. Clearly, the resolution fails to see the asymmetry between the claim and the demand. But, then, the Sind Assembly resolution seems to have been drawn up on the lines of the Cripps Offer (1942), which had flaunted the provincial option as its basis. But when Sayed talked in terms of the all-India context as he did in his welcome address as Chairman Reception Committee, at the Karachi (1943) League session on December 24, 1943, he described Pakistan as a "National State." This means, the second-cadre League leadership was not too clear whether what was demanded was one or two national states. 2ff7e9595c
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