HISTORY OF PAKISTAN

BRITISH RULE:

The British ruled the Indian subcontinent for nearly 200 years-from 1756 to 1947. After the
Indian Mutiny of 1857, the British government abolished the powers of the British East India
Company, which had ruled the sub-continent on behalf of the British Crown, and took on direct
powers of governance. Political reforms were initiated, allowing the formation of political
parties. The Indian National Congress, representing the overwhelming majority of Hindus, was
created in 1885. The Muslim League was formed in 1906 to represent and protect the position
of the Muslim minority. When the British introduced constitutional reforms in 1909, the
Muslims demanded and acquired separate electoral rolls. This guaranteed Muslims
representation in the provincial as well as national parliaments. The idea of a separate Muslim
state in south Asia was raised in 1930 by the poet and philosopher Sir Muhammad Allama
Iqbal.

He suggested that the north-western provinces of British India and the native state of Jammu
and Kashmir should be joined into a state. The name "Pakistan", which came to be used to
describe this grouping was made up of letters of the names of the provinces involved, as
follows: Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan. An alternative
explanation says the name means "Land of the Pure". By the end of the 1930s, Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League and considered the founding father of Pakistan, had also
decided that the only way to preserve Indian Muslims from Hindu domination was to establish a
separate Muslim state.

Freedom Movement of Pakistan

Pakistan Movement or Tehrik-e-Pakistan has its origins in the United Provinces of Agra and
Oudh (present day Uttar Pradesh).Muslims there were a minority. The idea of Pakistan began
from this part of Northern India. The movement was led by a lawyer named Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, along with such leaders as Allama Iqbal, Liaqat Ali Khan, Fatima Jinnah, Huseyn
Shaheed Suhrawardy, A.K. Fazlul Huq, and Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar among the many others.

Page | 1
MINORITY MUSLIMS:
Muhammad Ali Jinnah desired to build a state on a principle, composed of three parts, "one
nation, one culture and one language". Pakistan was to be the homeland of Muslims belonging
to British India. Jinnah represented the Muslims of the British Raj, who belonged to the
provinces where Muslims were a minority. Muslims who migrated to Pakistan after the partition
are known as Muhajirs in Pakistan today. The replacement of Persian, in 1837, with English and
the local languages, resulted in Hindi being given the same status as Urdu as an official
language of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Furthermore, the democratization
process by the British in the late 1800s, made the Muslims feel that they would lose all of their
privileged influence.

In 1909, the British allowed their subjects elect part of their Legislative Councils. This move
added further to the fears of marginalization among Muslims as they made up only 20% of the
population of British India and, to make matters worse, only a small number of them (20%)
even bothered to vote (1881 census). The provinces where the Muslims were a minority were
the most alarmed, particularly those belonging to the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh as the
Muslim elite they had the most to lose. In the United Provinces, Muslims made up only 13.4%
of the population but held 45% of the civil service jobs. An example of the privilege they still
enjoyed.

In the late 1800s, the Muslims from the United Provinces got together under Syed Ahmed
Khan. First of all, he wanted to improve education within his community. Toward this goal he
founded the Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO College) in Aligarh in 1869 which
later developed into the Aligarh Muslim University by 1911. MAO College produced the first
opponents of the Indian National Congress. Congress claimed to represent all Indians, but
Muslims made up only 6.6% of the delegates between 1892 and 1909.

The 1882 local self-government act had already troubled Syed Ahmed Khan. When, in 1906,
the British announced their intention to establish Legislative Councils, Muhsin al-Mulk, the
secretary of MAO College, hoping to win a separate Legislative Council for Muslims, led a
delegation to meet with Viceroy Lord Minto, a deal to which Minto agreed because it followed
the British divide and rule strategy. The UP Muslims were over-represented in the delegation,
which included seven Punjabis and one Bengali..

The role of the graduates from Aligarh in creating the Muslim League and then taking part in
the Khilafat movement shows the significance of UP Muslims in the origin of Muslim separatist
ideas in India. These Muslims actually had a sense of Muslim identity. Separatist feelings
among Muslims developed due to not discrimination but social and economic factors. The
Muslim elite of UP saw their influence being challenged by the Hindu elite.

Though Muslim separatism was diluted as a result of the irregularity of social dissatisfaction felt
by the community, people from present-day Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra
were ready to distance themselves from the growing Hindu influence. However, the Muslims in
majority from Greater Punjab, Greater Bengal, Sindh, and NWFP did not share the same

Page | 2
sentiment, as they ruled their own regions. Jinnah's task was to convince these Muslims to join
two-nation theory.

For Jinnah, Islam laid a cultural base for an ideology of ethnic nationalism whose objective was
to gather the Muslim community in order to defend the Muslim minorities. Jinnah's
representation of minoritarian Muslims was quite apparent in 1928, when in the All-Party
Muslim Conference, he was ready to swap the advantages of separate electorates for a quota of
33% of seats at the Centre. He maintained his views at the Round Table Conferences, while the
Muslims of Punjab and Bengal were vying for a much more decentralized political setup. Many
of their requests were met in the 1935 Government of India Act. Jinnah and Muslim League
played a peripheral role at the time and in 1937 could manage to gather only 5% of the Muslim
vote. Jinnah refused to back down and went ahead with his separatist plan. He presented the
two-nation theory in March 1940, now famous as Lahore Resolution.

The idea of a separate state had first been introduced by Allama Iqbal in his speech in December
1930 as the President of the Muslim League. The state that he visualized included only Punjab,
Sindh, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and Balochistan. Three years later, the name
Pakistan was proposed in a declaration in 1933 by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a University of
Cambridge graduate. Again, Bengal was left out of the proposal. In the Lahore Resolution of
March 1940, the proposed state's name remained unrecognized and its borders so undetermined
that it was not clear whether there would be one Muslim state or two. It stated "that the areas in
which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the north-western and eastern zones of
India should be grouped to constitute independent states."

Part of Jinnah's strategy to entice the leaders of those provinces who continued to oppose the
idea of Pakistan was to present all the provinces as loose groupings of the state. The 1937
election resulted in a major shift in Indian politics; the Congress won in seven provinces and
lost in four. The Congress success worried the Muslims. Jinnah grasped this moment and
suggested that Muslims would be left to contend with a Hindu government after the withdrawal
of the British. He stated that "Hindu Congress" was "putting Islam in danger."

WHY MUSLIMS DEMANDED PAKISTAN?

The purpose of achieving Pakistan is to make sure that Muslims can live their lives according to
the teachings of Islam without any restrictions. The great leader QUAID_E_AZAM said that:

“We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art
and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral
code, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short, we have our
own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation".

Page | 3
Some incidents after which the Muslims realized that they deffinetly need a saperate country:

MORLEY-MINTO REFORMS (1909):

Morley-Minto Reforms were intrduced by John Morley, the Liberal Secretary of State for
India, and the Conservative Governor-General of India.

The Act of 1909 was important for the following reasons:

1) It effectively allowed the election of Indians to the various legislative councils in India for
the first time.

2) The introduction of the electoral principle laid the groundwork for a parliamentary system
even though this was contrary to the intent of Morley.

Muslims expressed serious concern about these reforms because this British type of electoral
system would leave them permanently subject to Hindu majority rule. The Muslim Leaders did
not accepted these reforms.

LUCKNOW PACT:
Lucknow Pact refers to an agreement between Indian National Congress and Muslim League.
In 1916, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a member of the Muslim League negotiated with the Indian
National Congress to reach an agreement to pressure the British Government to have a more
liberal approach to India and give Indians more authority to run their country.

Main clauses of the Lucknow Pact:

The main clauses of the Lucknow Pact were as follows:

1. There shall be self-government in India.

2. Muslims should be given one-third representation in the central government.

3. There should be separate electorates for all the communities until a community demanded for
joint electorates.

4. System of weightage should be adopted.

Page | 4
5. The number of the members of Central Legislative Council should be increased to 150.

6. At the provincial level, four-fifth of the members of the Legislative Councils should be
elected and one-fifth should be nominated.

7. The strength of Provincial legislative should not be less than 125 in the major provinces and
from 50 to 75 in the minor provinces.

8. All members, except those nominated, were to be elected directly on the basis of adult
franchise.

9. No bill concerning a community should be passed if the bill is opposed by three-fourth of the
members of that community in the Legislative Council.

10. Term of the Legislative Council should be five years.

11. Members of Legislative Council should themselves elect their president.

12. Half of the members of Imperial Legislative Council should be Indians.

13. Indian Council must be abolished.

14. The salaries of the Secretary of State for Indian Affairs should be paid by the British
Government and not from Indian funds.

15. Out of two Under Secretaries, one should be Indian.

16. The Executive should be separated from the Judiciary.

This Hindu Muslim Unity was not able to live for more than eight years, and collaped after the
development of differences between the two communities after the Khilafat Movement.

INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (1885):

The Indian National Congress WAS Founded in 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai
Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun
Ghose, Mahadev Govind Ranade and William Wedderburn. Muslims thought that Indian
National Congress will represent all the people living in the Sub-continent but they were proved
when Congress started to avoid muslims views. The Congress wanted that the government of
Sub-continent should be given only to Hindus. At that time Muslims felt that their sould be a
political party that will represent only the Muslims of Sub-continent.

Page | 5
NEHRU REPORT (1928):
The "Nehru Report" (1928) was a memorandum outlining a proposed new Dominion
constitution for India. It was prepared by a committee of the All Parties Conference chaired by
Motilal Nehru with his son Jawaharlal acting as secretary. There were nine other members in
this committee including two Muslims.

Muslim League's Reaction to the Nehru Report:

With few exceptions League leaders rejected the Nehru proposals. In reaction Mohammad Ali
Jinnah drafted his Fourteen Points in 1929 which became the core demands the Muslim
community put forward as the price of their participating in an independent united India. Their
main objections were:

 Separate Electorates and Weightage - the 1916 Congress-Muslim League agreement The
Lucknow Pact provided these to the Muslim community whereas they were rejected by
the Nehru Report;
 Residuary Powers – the Muslims realized that while they would be a majority in the
provinces of the North-East and North-West of India, and hence would control their
provincial legislatures, they would always be a minority at the Centre. Thus they
demanded, contra the Nehru Report, that residuary powers go to the provinces.

The inability of Congress to concede these points must be considered a major factor in the
eventual partition of India. This was the major historical significance of the Nehru Report.

Other Important Incidents:

 1857 War of Independence

 1901 Partition of Punjab

 1905 Partition of Bengal
 1906 Simla Deputation
 1930 Simon Commission Report
 1931 Kashmir Resistance movement
 1942 Cripps' mission

Page | 6
 HOW MUSLIMS ACHIEVED THEIR GOAL:

ESTABLISHMENT MUSLIM LEAGUE:

The Muslim League was established in 1906. The Muslim League was not well-established. It
did not had any primary branches and even its provincial organizations for the most parts were
ineffective. The central body didn’t had any clear policy of its own till the Bombay session
(1936), which was organized by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In the Punjab, Bengal, Sindh and the
North West Frontier various Muslim leaders had set up their own provincial parties to serve
their personal ends. The situation was extremely frustrating, the only consultation Muhammad
Ali Jinnah had at that time was with Allama Iqbal (1877-1938), the great poet and philosopher,
who stood with him and helped to change the structure of Indian politics from behind the scene.

PUNJAB:
In Punjab, the Muslim League had to defeat not just the Congress, whose support base was
Hindus living in the cities, but also the Unionist Party, founded in 1922, by peasant leaders
Fazl-e-Hussain (a Muslim) and Chhotu Ram (a Hindu). This party won all the elections between
1923 and 1937. However, Fazl-e-Hussain died in 1936 and in September 1937, the new party
leader, Sikandar Hayat Khan (Punjabi politician) agreed to sign a pact with Jinnah. This helped
the Muslim League to win election in Punjab. In the 1946 election campaign, the Muslim
League was able to publicize its views widely. It claimed that Islam was threatened by
Congress. "Pirs" and "Sajjada Nashin" helped the Muslim League to attract Muslim voters. It
won 75 seats to Union Party's 10.

SINDH:
In Sindh, the Muslim League remained at the margins till the mid-1940s. Just as in Punjab, it
faced two parties, Congress and the Sindh United Party, which had been founded in 1936 when
the Sindh Province came into existance. Its inspiration was the Punjab Unionist Party. The
Muslim League first gained a foothold in Sindh in the 1930s over the Manzilgarh issue, named
after a very controversial site that the Muslim League wanted to officially declare as a mosque.

The Muslim League in Sindh was more interested in defending Sindhi culture than in creating
an Islamic state for British Raj Muslims. This was obvious from the behaviour of its leader in
the 1940s. Many Sindhis supported the formation of Pakistan as a way of freeing their region
from British rule.

Page | 7
BENGAL:
In Bengal, the Muslim League enjoyed more support than in the other majoritarian Provinces.
But even here, it gained strength later on. Its popularity was based on its ability to create
separatist feelings in East Bengal where the Muslims were mostly concentrated. Here again, the
Muslim League had to face off two parties in the 1930s the Congress and the Krishak Proja
Party, a peasant party, founded in 1936 by A.K.Fazlul Haq. This party narrowly ousted the
Muslim League by winning 31% of the votes, compared to Muslim League's 27% in the 1937
Elections. However, the success of the two-nation theory depended on the strong regional
feelings with the President of the Bengal Muslim League, declaring in 1944, that religion
transcends geographical boundaries, but culture does not and so Bengalis are different from
people of other provinces of India and the "religious brothers" of Pakistan.

NWFP:
In NWFP, the Muslim League faced its hardest challenge yet. It had intense competition from
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan dubbed as the "Frontier Gandhi" due to his efforts in following in the
footsteps of Gandhi. The popularity of the Congress, along with the strong Paktoon identity
created by Ghaffar Khan in the cultural and the political arenas made life hard for the Muslim
League. With the support of Ghaffar Khan, the Congress was able to contain the Muslim
League to the non-Pakhtoon areas, particularly, the Hazara region. The Muslim League could
only manage to win 17 seats, against the 30 won by Congress, in the 1946 elections.

FOURTEEN POINTS OF JINNAH (1929):

The Fourteen Points of Jinnah were proposed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a constitutional
reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in a self-governing India. The report
was given in a meeting of the council of the All India Muslim League on March 28, 1929.

THE FOURTEEN POINTS:

1. The form of the future constitution should be federal with the residuary powers
vested in the provinces.
2. A uniform measure of autonomy shall be granted to all provinces.
3. All legislatures in the country and other elected bodies shall be constituted on the
definite principle of adequate and effective representation of minorities in every
province without reducing the majority in any province to a minority or even
equality.
4. In the Central Legislature, Muslim representation shall not be less than one third.

Page | 8
 5. Representation of communal groups shall continue to be by means of separate
electorate as at present, provided it shall be open to any community at any time to
abandon its separate electorate in favor of a joint electorate.
6. Any territorial distribution that might at any time be necessary shall not in any way
affect the Muslim majority in the Punjab, Bengal and the North West Frontier
Province.
7. Full religious liberty, i.e. liberty of belief, worship and observance, propaganda,
association and education, shall be guaranteed to all communities.
8. No bill or any resolution or any part thereof shall be passed in any legislature or
any other elected body if three-fourth of the members of any community in that
particular body oppose such a bill resolution or part thereof on the ground that it
would be injurious to the interests of that community or in the alternative, such
other method is devised as may be found feasible and practicable to deal with such
cases.
9. Sindh should be separated from the Bombay Presidency.
10. Reforms should be introduced in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and
Baluchistan on the same footing as in the other provinces.
11. Provision should be made in the constitution giving Muslims an adequate share,
along with the other Indians, in all the services of the state and in local self-
governing bodies having due regard to the requirements of efficiency.
12. The constitution should embody adequate safeguards for the protection of Muslim
culture and for the protection and promotion of Muslim education, language,
religion, personal laws and Muslim charitable institution and for their due share in
the grants-in-aid given by the state and by local self-governing bodies.
13. No cabinet, either central or provincial, should be formed without there being a
proportion of at least one-third Muslim ministers.
14. No change shall be made in the constitution by the Central Legislature except with
the concurrence of the State's contribution of the Indian Federation.

The Muslims of Sub-continent followed these points to achieve Pakistan.

KHILAFAT MOVEMENT:
The Khilafat movement (1919-1924) was a political campaign launched mainly by Muslims in
British India to influence the British government and to protect the Ottoman Empire during the
aftermath of World War I. The position of Caliph after the Armistice of Mudros of October
1918 with the military occupation of Istanbul and Treaty of Versailles (1919) fell into a
disambiguation along with the Ottoman Empire's existence. The movement gained force after
the Treaty of Sèvres (August 1920) which solidified the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.

Page | 9
In India, although mainly a Muslim religious movement, the movement became a part of the
wider Indian independence movement. The movement was a topic in Conference of London
(February 1920).

ESTABLISHMENT OF PAKISTAN:

After a long struggle and thousand of sacrifices Pakistan was established on 14 August 1947 (27
Ramadan 1366 in the Islamic Calendar), consisting on the two Muslim-majority areas in the
eastern and northwestern regions of British India and comprising the provinces of Balochistan,
East Bengal, the North-West Frontier Province, West Punjab and Sindh. The controversial, and
ill-timed, division of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal caused communal riots across India
and Pakistan — millions of Muslims moved to Pakistan and millions of Hindus and Sikhs
moved to India. Disputes arose over several states including Muslim-majority Jammu and
Kashmir, whose Hindu ruler had acceded to India following an invasion by Pashtun tribal
militias, leading to the First Kashmir War in 1948.

MIGRATION:
Data from the 1951 census suggests that migrants constituted 7 million people in Pakistan with
6.3 million in West Pakistan and 700,000 in East Pakistan, the majority being Punjabis who
crossed from East Punjab to West Punjab and hence settled in the same cultural environment.
However, there were 100,000 people who went from Bihar to East Bengal and a million from
the United Provinces, Bombay Presidency and Hyderabad who migrated to West Pakistan.
These groups later on came to be known as Muhajirs in Pakistan. At the time of partition,
migrants from the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh made up only 2% of the migrants and
3% of Pakistan's total Population.

Page | 10
 STATEMENTS AND SAYINGS OF GREAT
LEADERS:

Allama Iqbal:

“I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan
amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without
the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State
appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.”

Choudhary Rahmat Ali:

“At this solemn hour in the history of India, when British and Indian statesmen are laying
the foundations of a Federal Constitution for that land, we address this appeal to you, in
the name of our common heritage, on behalf of our thirty million Muslim brethren who
live in Pakistan - by which we mean the five Northern units of India, Viz: Punjab, North-
West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan - for your

Page | 11
 sympathy and support in our grim and fateful struggle against political crucifixion and
complete annihilation.”

Quaid-e-Azam :

“It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real
nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religious in the strict sense of the word, but
are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and
Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian
nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in
time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social
customs, literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they
belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and
conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and
Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different
epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the
other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations
under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to
growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the
government of such a state.”

Page | 12