Anniversaries are important in the life of a nation because these symbolise different turning points in its history, representing the events, days and personalities that leave strong imprints on the course of history.
Twenty-third March represents two important anniversaries. (i) On March 23, 1940, 2nd day of the three-day annual session of the All India Muslim League held at Lahore, a resolution was moved on behalf of the party that demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India. This resolution was adopted on March 24.
We will discuss this later. (ii) On March 23, 1956, the first constitution passed by the 2nd Constituent Assembly, was implemented and Pakistan became a Republic. The office of Governor-General was replaced with that of the President of the Republic. Governor General Iskander Mirza took the oath as the first President of Pakistan. This constitution lasted until October 7, 1958, when President Iskander Mirza abolished it, declaring martial law throughout the country.
March 23 is associated with the Pakistan or Lahore Resolution of 1940 that represented a turning point in the Muslim struggle for separate identity, rights and interests in British India. The resolution rejected the existing constitutional arrangements in British India and suggested fresh ideas to secure the socio-political and economic future of the Muslims.
Five Features:
Five features of the Muslim League resolution stand out
1. The Muslim League argued that the federal system set-out in the Government of India Act, 1935, was not suited to "the peculiar conditions" of India and it was "altogether unacceptable to Muslim India."
2. The Muslim League wanted that the existing constitutional scheme in India should be reconsidered and that "no revised [constitutional] plan would be acceptable to the Muslims unless it is framed with their approval and consent."
3. The Muslim League and the Muslims would not accept any constitutional plan unless it incorporates the principle "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 the North Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." This was the core provision of the Resolution.
4. The new constitutional scheme should provide "adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards" for religious minorities in these units for "the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and others rights and interests in consultation with them." The resolution expected that similar safeguards will be available to the Muslims in other parts of India.
5. The Working Committee of the Muslim League was authorised to prepare a constitutional scheme in accordance with the "basic principles "outlined in the resolution. The above-mentioned five points of the Lahore Resolution served as the main framework of Muslim politics in British Indian during the next seven years. The Muslim League advanced the notion of a separate Muslim homeland in the territorially contiguous Muslim majority regions.
There is a need to focus on three statements of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in order to understand the dynamics of the demands presented in the Lahore Resolution: Jinnah's presidential address to the Lahore session of the Muslim League; an interview to a British correspondent a couple of weeks before the Lahore session; and his article published in a British magazine, Time and Time, in the first week of March 1940.
Jinnah's presidential address on March 22 set the stage for the presentation of the Lahore Resolution one day later. He reviewed the major political developments in India over the last couple of years and argued that the Muslims were not satisfied with the constitutional safeguards because they could no longer be treated as a minority community.
I.H. Qureshi writes in his book "The Struggle for Pakistan" (1965) that Jinnah maintained in the presidential address that "the Muslims were a nation by any definition" and that they belonged to "two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither inter-marry nor inter-dine together and, indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.... Their concepts on life and of life are different." Hector Bolitho writes in Jinnah's biography "Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan" (1966) that Jinnah told the British Correspondent that the "sole aim of the Congress [was] to annihilate every other organization in the country, and to set itself up as a Fascist and authoritarian organization of the worst-type." In his Time and Tide article, Jinnah concluded that the new constitution must recognize that there are "two-nations" in India.
Liaquat H. Merchant writes in his article "Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah" published in the special book "The Jinnah Anthology", 3rd edition, 2010, that by 1940, Jinnah was very clear on the nationhood of the Muslims of British India: "Muslims are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state." Sharif al Mujahid, in his article "Jinnah A Portrait" published in the Jinnah Anthology, 3rd edition, 2010, highlights Jinnah's role in the making of Pakistan. He argues that in 1940, Jinnah "launched the demand for Pakistan, goaded and galvanised Muslims in its support and wrested Pakistan from unwilling hands within seven years. This he did through a three-tiered complex of skilful negotiations, tactical moves, and mobilising Muslims for revolt and sacrifices..."
Evolutionary Nature:
The Lahore Resolution cannot be fully understood without taking into account the evolutionary nature of the struggle for the establishment of Pakistan.
The Muslim League demand for a separate homeland was presented in 1940, after having tried various other methods to secure the Muslim identity, rights and interests.
The Muslim League started in December 1906 as an advocacy forum for removing misunderstandings between the Muslims and the British and for articulating their political demands. It moved to the demand of self-governance and later revised its strategies in view of its political experience and the imperatives of changing time. Its demands for the protection and promotion of Muslim identity, rights and interests included separate electorate, legal and constitutional safeguards and guarantees, reservations of quota for the Muslims in legislative bodies and government jobs and provincial autonomy. It was not until 1938 that the Muslim League began to think about the options beyond the federal system. The Muslim League adopted a new course of political action in March 1940 by passing the homeland and partition resolution.
The movement for the establishment of Pakistan did not stop in 1940. The next seven years are extremely important for understanding the establishment of Pakistan. It was during these seven years that the Muslim League became a mass party by cultivating roots among the Muslim populace and the idea of a separate homeland was fully articulated.
The Lahore Resolution addressed the Muslim question in the context of British India. It hardly offered any concrete proposal for the organization of the Pakistani state after attaining independence because no Muslim League leader thought in March 1940 that Pakistan would come into existence as an independent and sovereign state.
Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah kept the option of political accommodation with the Congress party open until August-September 1946 within the framework of a loose Indian federation. The Muslim League's acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) was understandable. It created two zones of Muslim-majority areas, which were similar to what the frames of the Lahore Resolution had in mind. It gave them internal autonomy with an option to review the relationship with each other and the Indian federation after 10 years. The Muslim League thus retained the option of separation.
Post-Independence Period:
In the post-independence period, the Lahore Resolution is regularly invoked by several regional-nationalist groups and leaders in Pakistan to demand greater provincial autonomy and severe restrictions on the role of the federal government. Some talk of independent status for the provinces in a confederation- type Pakistani state where the units are sovereign and they confer some powers to the government of the confederation which is nothing more than a union of sovereign entities, lacking a sovereign or overriding status over its members.
Such a reading of the Lahore Resolution represents a narrow and literalist approach to the text of the resolution without taking into account its context and the gradual evolution of the demand for a separate homeland. This resolution was not meant for offering a plan for the constitution of independent Pakistan. Rather, it addressed the constitutional question in the British Indian context.
As a matter of fact, the constituent units of a federation cannot be both "autonomous and sovereign." If the constituent units are autonomous, they are required to evolve the details of the autonomy because these are not given in the Lahore resolution. If the constituent units are sovereign, there cannot be a federation because the units of a federation cannot be sovereign.
The Lahore Resolution addressed the constitutional issues in the all-India context and offered broadly-based ideas to settle the Hindu-Muslim question in British India rather than presenting a fully articulated proposal for the partition of India and a constitutional framework for the new Muslim state. It attempted to tackle the question of relationship between the Muslim-majority areas and the rest of India. It used three terms, ie, units, regions and zones instead of naming the Muslim-majority provinces or giving the precise boundaries of the new state of Pakistan.
The Lahore Resolution has to be examined against the backdrop of two important facts of India's political context of that time. The Muslim League leaders learnt from the experience of the Congress provincial ministries (1937-39) that the constitutional arrangements under the federal system did not secure the Muslim identity, rights and interests. This led them to think of alternatives to their earlier demands of constitutional safeguards and guarantees or a federal system with provincial autonomy. The first formal demand to review the existing federal system was made by the Sindh Provincial Muslim League in 1938. These were ideas articulated in the Muslim League during 1938-40. It seems that by the beginning of 1940, the idea of two-nations in British India and a separate homeland for the Muslims had become quite popular among the Muslim elite.
The second 'reality' that conditioned the perspective of the drafters of the Lahore Resolution included various proposals for the partition of India that existed in the 1930s; some of which suggested two or more Muslim homelands. The 1940 Resolution used the word "states" in order win over the maximum support for diverse Muslim regions and population whose elite were familiar with other proposals about the future of the Muslims in India Within two years of the passing of the Lahore Resolution, the focus began to shift to a singular term of state in the political discourse of the Muslim League leaders, although they were still not sure of the establishment of an independent and sovereign Pakistan as the homeland of the Muslims of British India.
The communication between Mahatama Gandhi and Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah in 1944 is instructive on this issue. Gandhi wrote to Jinnah on September 15, 1944: "Are the constituents in the two zones to constitute 'independent states', an undefined number in each zone?" Jinnah replied on September 17, 1944: "No. They will form units of Pakistan." This issue was formally clarified by the Muslim League in April 1946 when the elected Muslim League members of central and provincial assemblies met in Delhi.
Independence was granted to India and Pakistan on August 15, 1947 under the Indian Independence Act, July 1947, passed by the British Parliament. The power was transferred to the state of Pakistan and its federal government as one of the successor states to British India. The determination of the territorial boundaries of Pakistan was announced on August 17. The Lahore Resolution was relevant only to the extent of the notion of separate homeland for the Muslims of India in Muslim-majority contiguous units in north-western and eastern zones of British India.
However, the demand for provincial autonomy and rights can be traced back to the Pakistan movement. The pre-independence Muslim League advocated a federal model for India with provincial autonomy. The underlying assumption was that this would give administrative and financial freedom to the Muslims in the Muslim-majority provinces to manage their affairs to their satisfaction. The Muslim League leaders also talked of the rights of religious minorities in order to win the confidence of non-Muslim in Muslim-majority areas and to make sure that similar guarantees were available to the Muslim in the regions where they were a minority. The 18th constitutional amendment (2010) has made a significant attempt to expand the domain of the provinces and restrict the role of the federal government. The abolition of the concurrent list in the 1973 Constitution assigns more departments and subjects to the provincial government. When this is coupled with the new National Financial Commission Award, it can be argued that Pakistan is now moving towards a more pluralist and federal polity with a greater capacity to accommodate diversity.
Lahore Resolution of 1940 that represented a turning point in the Muslim struggle for separate identity, rights and interests in British India.