Like a number of aspects of the evolution of Pakistan, the Pakistan Resolution of 1940 is also discussed differently. Pakistan was established on the basis of the Two-Nation Theory, embodied in the Pakistan Resolution of 1940. It has been propagated that the need for the Pakistan Resolution emerged from the fear of Hindu majority rule expected to be imposed in the future constitutional setup of India.
No doubt, it is a matter of pride for the Muslim Millat that they are meant to rule instead of being ruled on. However, the immediate cause which led the All-India Muslim League to draft the Pakistan Resolution under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was the fear of losing their identity as a Muslim nation in the emerging growth of the Western concept of a nation-state.
The concept of a nation-state did not exist anywhere before the 18th century, and sovereign powers were not divided on the basis of nationalities. Similarly, people or groups did not surrender their loyalties to the national status of any person or institution, but they continued to live under the sovereignty of religious groups, city-states, feudal or tribal chiefs, or traditional monarchies, while observing their individual group identities, if any.
However, when the states, along with their governments, were divided on the basis of a new emerging Western concept of a nation-state, the Muslims of the subcontinent became alert. The Muslims of India already had their own concept of the Muslim Millat, which was not restricted to any geographical boundary, whereas the concept of a nation-state was applied as “one nation, one state.” According to this concept, the people living in the subcontinent were going to be considered a single nation.
The situation was further aggravated when the British government tried to enforce one set of laws for two different nations of India, by ignoring the religious sensitivities of the Muslims. It compelled Muslims to find protection for their own religion and civilisation. It was the reason why Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah piloted the Muslim Wakf-al-Aulad Bill through the Indian Legislative Council, which became law on March 5, 1913. It was the first private bill moved by a Muslim which protected the rights of Muslims to make wakf for their descendants.
This was the major cause that led Indian Muslims to think that any government formed in India, in collaboration with Hindus, could not represent their aspirations and would in no sense be a nation-state. Consequently, they expressed themselves as a separate nation and demanded separate electorates for Muslims in 1909. The Pakistan Resolution of 1940 declared to secure separate electorates through the independence of the Muslim majority areas.
There are people who object, asking why the Indian Muslims expressed themselves as a separate nation during the British occupation. The answer to this question is simple. In India, the need to express Muslims as a separate nation politically was felt only when the British took control of the Indian subcontinent in 1858 and started calling Hindus and Muslims one nation, who had been two separate individual groups of people long before the term “nation” or “nation-state” found their expression in the 18th century.
In fact, the centuries-old division between Muslims and Hindus helped the British to establish their rule in India. As Maulana Mohammad Ali Johar had declared in his historic speech at the first Round Table Conference in London on November 19th, 1930:
“It is the old maxim of divide and rule. But there is a division of labour. We divide and you rule. The moment we decided not to divide, you will not be able to rule as you are doing today.”
Today, many people say that the idea propounded by the Pakistan Resolution to establish a Muslim independent state in India was not new, as it was proposed by a number of persons during the British Raj. No doubt, it is correct that the concept of a separate province or state for Muslims had been presented from time to time by different persons during 1858 to 1940. The prominent among those were John Bright, Saiyyed Ahmed (Shaheed), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Jamaluddin Afghani, Kheri Brothers, Rehmat Ali, Obaidullah Sindhi, Lajpat Rai, Hasrat Mohani, and Allama Iqbal.
It is said that the idea of a separate Muslim state spanned over a period of 82 years and a total of 170 proposals and reports were presented in this regard. However, all such proposals or schemes about the establishment of a separate province or state were presented by individuals in their individual capacities. Secondly, most of them were neither clear nor organized.
It was the Muslim League which, under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam, first presented this idea in an organised way from a political platform. Thirdly, concepts and ideas are always produced by philosophers and thinkers, and political leaders select the most suitable concepts among the emerging ideas given by the thinkers of the time.
The philosopher and thinker behind the idea of Pakistan was Allama Iqbal, and M. A. Jinnah materialised the dream of Iqbal. Chaudhry Rehmat Ali not only gave the idea of a separate Muslim state with Pan-Islamism but also coined the name “Pakistan” for his independent Muslim state.
The Pakistan Resolution, also known as the Lahore Resolution, was drafted by a four-member Subjects Committee headed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, including Nawab Ismail, Malik Barkat Ali, and Sikandar Hayat Khan, and presented by A.K. Fazlul Huq at the Minto Park in Lahore on March 23, 1940. The session was held in three sittings under the presidentship of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was an open session.
The first sitting of the session, held on Friday, March 22, 1940, started with the recitation of the Holy Quran. A number of poems, including one by Mian Bashir Ahmad:
were recited. The scheduled time of the session was 2:30 p.m., and the Quaid-i-Azam arrived at 2:25 p.m. The chairman of the reception committee, Nawab Sir Shah Nawaz Khan of Mamdot, read his welcome address. Then Quaid-i-Azam delivered his historic presidential address in which he evaluated the political developments in India, especially the Hindu-Muslim question and its solution.Referring to Lala Lajpat Rai’s letter to Das on the question of Hindu and Muslim unity, he said:
“The word Nationalist has now become the play of conjurers in politics.”
Expressing his remarks over the contents of Lala Lajpat Rai’s letter, he said,
“When Lala Lajpat Rai said that we cannot rule this country on democratic lines, it was all right, but when I have the temerity to speak the same truth about 18 months ago, there was a shower of attacks and criticisms.”
Explaining the difference between Hinduism and Islam, he further expressed:
“They are not religions in the strict sense of the word but are in fact different and distinct social orders. It is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of our troubles and will lead Indians to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belonged to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature. They neither intermarry nor interdine together, and indeed they belonged to two different civilizations which are based on mainly conflicting ideas and conceptions.... Muslim India cannot accept any constitution which must necessarily result in a Hindu majority government... Muslims are not a minority as it is commonly known and understood.... Muslims are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homeland, their territory, and state...”
Jinnah was himself a great champion of Hindu-Muslim unity, but his sincere efforts in this direction ultimately proved that Hindus and Muslims could not live united.
In the same speech, Jinnah informed the audience that the Muslim League had already appointed a subcommittee to examine the details of the scheme to solve the Indian constitutional problem.
On the same day, Friday, March 22, 1940, a meeting of the Subject Committee of the All India Muslim League was held at night. Liaquat Ali Khan presented the draft of the Lahore Resolution before the committee for discussion. The subject committee again met in the early hours of Saturday, March 23, 1940, and then again from 10:30 a.m. to 02:00 p.m.
The second sitting of the All India Muslim League open session was held on March 23, 1940, at 03:00 p.m. under the presidentship of the Quaid-i-Azam. The pandal was crowded to capacity. Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan read the annual report, which was adopted. A. K. Fazlul Haq, Premier of Bengal, then moved the following resolution:
“…Resolved that it is the considered view of this session of the All India Muslim League that no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to the Muslims unless it is designed on the following basic principles, viz., that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in north-western and eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The resolution was seconded by Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman and then put forward for discussion. Various Muslim leaders expressed their views in support of the resolution.
On March 23, 1940—the day the Pakistan Resolution was submitted to the open session—only three Muslim leaders were able to express their opinions. They were Maulana Zafar Ali Khan (Punjab), Sardar Aurangzeb Khan (N.W.F.P.), and Sir Abdullah Haroon (Sindh).
The third day’s sitting of the open session started at 11:15 a.m. The Quaid-i-Azam attended this session a little late, and Liaquat Ali Khan, the General Secretary of the Muslim League, had started the proceedings. The Nawab of Mamdot then moved to the chair, and the session of March 24, 1940, commenced with the recitation of the Holy Quran.
Muslim leaders who then spoke in favour of the Lahore Resolution included: Qazi Isa (Baluchistan), Abdul Hamid Khan (Madras), Ismail Chundrigar (Bombay), Dr Mohammad Alam (Punjab), Khan Bahadur Mohammad Ismail Khan (Bihar), Syed Abdur Rauf Shah (C.P.), Syed Zakir Ali (U.P.), Maulana Abdul Hamid Badayuni (U.P.), and Begum Maulana Mohammad Ali.
Hence, the discussion on the Lahore Resolution of 1940 lasted until March 24, 1940, and it was passed unanimously and with great enthusiasm on the same day (i.e., March 24, 1940, instead of March 23, 1940). However, it is not wrong to celebrate Pakistan Day on March 23, as many writers argue, because the resolution was passed by the All India Muslim League Subject Committee on March 23, 1940, and presented to the open session on the same day.
The word “Pakistan” was not used by anyone during the session of the All India Muslim League in March 1940. The name “Pakistan” had been suggested by Choudhry Rehmat Ali for his own scheme of an independent Muslim state in India in his pamphlet Now or Never. That scheme was quite different from the plan outlined in the Lahore Resolution of 1940.
Choudhry Rehmat Ali’s scheme included:
• P for Punjab
• A for Afghan (including N.W.F.P.)
• K for Kashmir
• I for Iran
• S for Sindh
• TAN for Baluchistan
Thus, he coined the name Pakistan for his proposed Muslim state. However, Eastern Bengal (later East Pakistan) was not included in his scheme, though it was included in the Lahore Resolution of 1940. Choudhry Rehmat Ali’s vision had a wide scope and represented an idea of Pan-Islamism, which was not expressed in the Lahore Resolution.
The Hindu press deliberately mixed the Lahore Resolution of 1940 with Choudhry Rehmat Ali’s scheme and began calling it the Pakistan Scheme, again with ulterior motives. However, since the name “Pakistan” became popular among Muslims, it was eventually accepted as a synonym for the Lahore Resolution of 1940.
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah later clarified the issue and exposed the Congress propaganda. In his presidential address at the All India Muslim League session on April 24, 1943, in Delhi, he condemned the Hindu propaganda.
The Quaid further explained that the Lahore Resolution did not represent Pan-Islamism, as was being propagated by the Hindu and British press. However, since the word “Pakistan” had become popular among Muslims, the Quaid thanked the Hindu and British press for giving the Muslims a single unifying word. He acknowledged Choudhry Rehmat Ali’s earlier coinage of the word and, while explaining its origins, declared the adoption of the name Pakistan for the state envisioned in the Lahore Resolution.
There are a number of interpretations and objections related to the wording of the Lahore Resolution. Some writers argue that Jinnah or the Muslim League had no concept of the present-day independent Pakistan at that time because the resolution used the word “States” instead of “State,” and that “states” was written in small letters, implying the existence of multiple independent states.
However, if this objection is analyzed in the broader context of the evolution of a new independent state, it will be seen as nothing more than part of a gradual conceptual development. It is no surprise that a resolution or constitution is reviewed and corrected with the passage of time—especially during the process of state formation.
Sikandar Hayat, who was responsible for drafting the Lahore Resolution, admitted:
“I have no hesitation in admitting that I was responsible for drafting the original resolution. But let me make it clear that the resolution which I drafted was readily amended by the working committee.” (March 11, 1941)
This proves that resolutions and constitutions are subject to change and refinement over time.
The Lahore Resolution, later known as the Pakistan Resolution, emerged in its crude form in March 1940 and was later refined by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League legislators in the 1946 Convention. During the Jinnah-Gandhi talks of 1944, Gandhi, in a letter dated September 15th, 1944, asked:
“Are the constituents in the two zones to constitute ‘independent states’ — undefined number in each zone?”
Jinnah, in his reply dated September 17th, 1944, stated:
“No, they will form units of Pakistan.”
This confirms that the concept of a single independent state was already clear in Jinnah’s mind, and the Lahore Resolution of 1940 had laid its foundation.
The 1946 resolution of the Muslim League Legislators’ Convention further solidified this:
“That the zones comprising Bengal and Assam in the North East and the Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Sindh and Baluchistan in the North West of India—namely Pakistan Zones—where the Muslims are in a dominant majority, be constituted into a sovereign independent State and that an unequivocal undertaking be given to implement the establishment of Pakistan without delay.”
These legislators were the elected representatives of the Muslims of India. After the 1946 resolution, misinterpretations of the 1940 Resolution should have ended.
One important yet often overlooked fact is that a large number of Muslims living in minority provinces of India actively supported this resolution—even though they knew that the proposed independent state of Pakistan would not include their areas. They still struggled to create Pakistan because of their strong belief in the idea of one Muslim nation.
Is it not a pity that even after seventy-seven years of independence, Pakistan is still unable to achieve the goals upon which it was founded?
Millions of Muslims migrated to Pakistan after the 1947 partition to protect their Islamic civilisation and ideology. They left behind their properties, wealth, and even blood relations. Yet, their dreams remain unfulfilled.
However, it is not too late. If the people of Pakistan unite now and follow the principles laid out by the Quaid, they can still fulfill the dream that began with the Pakistan Resolution in March 1940.