23RD MARCH PAKISTAN RESOLUTION DAY: Transformation from community to nationhood
National days are observed not only to link the present with the past but also to pay tribute to the noble personalities that led the political struggle for the establishment of Pakistan as an independent and sovereign state. Their relentless efforts and the sacrifices of life and property by lakhs of people in the last phase of the struggle for independence are recalled.
There is an additional reason to understand the struggle for the making of Pakistan because Pakistan did not physically exist as a political entity on the global map before August 1947. However, there is enough historical material available to show that the regions that became the state of Pakistan had a peculiar physical and historical character that underlined their exclusive character. Similarly, the Muslims of the Indo-Pak Sub-continent maintained their separate socio-cultural and civilizational identity despite living with others in a geographical setting. It is important to examine how the exclusive character of a region and a distinct civilizational and historical identity of the Muslims of this Sub-continent turned into a nationhood that called for the establishment of a separate homeland.
Human beings have multiple identities. However, every identity does not turn into a national identity and a basis for the establishment of a sovereign and independent homeland. Therefore, it is a learning experience to examine how the Muslims of this Sub-continent were transformed from a separate community to a separate nation.
The transformation from a community to a nation was the outcome of the peculiar political and economic experience of the Muslim community during years of British rule in India. The British government directly assumed the governance of India in 1858, replacing the earlier system of indirect rule through the East India Company. In 1858-1947, the British government gradually established a new state system derived from their British experience. The changes introduced by the new state system increased competition among various communities in India and made the Muslims conscious of their identity who felt the need for acquiring modern western education, including the English language, and organizing them politically to preserve and promote their civilization and historical identity inspired by the teachings and principles of Islam, their rights and interests in the new political system introduced by the British.
Their strategies to secure their distinct identity, rights and interests changed over time by “political learning” from their interaction with the other major community in British India and the British government.
This political journey of the Muslims in British India is a remarkable history of nation-making. A noteworthy date for this transformational journey is March 23, 1940, when the leading Muslim political party of India, the All-India Muslim League (AIML), formally asked for the establishment of a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India, who were, it was argued, a separate nation. This demand was made in the annual session of the AIML, held at Lahore, on March 22, 23, 24, 1940. It was a representative gathering of the Muslim leaders from all over India. Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, President of the All-India Muslim League, chaired the session. On March 23, the All-India Muslim League presented a resolution for the establishment of a separate state for the Muslims comprising the Muslim majority regions of British India. The Muslim leaders from different parts of India debated the resolution for two days on March 23 and 24, who fully supported the demand for a separate homeland. It was in the final session on March 24 that this resolution was unanimously approved. The All-India Muslim League decided before the establishment of Pakistan to celebrate the Resolution on March 23 — the day the resolution was presented for an open debate.
The significance of the demand for a separate homeland can be appreciated if we focus on the fact that the Muslims of British India did not start their political struggle with a demand for a separate state. Initially, they demanded safeguards to protect their identity, rights and interests. This included the demand for a separate electorate to elect the representatives of the Muslims to the elected bodies (October 1906) and the establishment of All-India Muslim League as a political forum to discuss their problems and issues and present their demands to the British government (December 1906). They also demanded constitutional and legal guarantees for them from 1916 onwards. They also favoured federal system with provincial autonomy, hoping that they will have the governments of their choice in Muslim majority provinces. Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s famous speech at the AIML session in 1929, described as his Fourteen Points, was a catalogue of constitutional and political guarantees to protect their separate civilizational identity, and their rights and interests. They pursued these demands in the Roundtable Conferences in 1930-32.
In March 1940, the AIML shifted its strategy by advocating for a separate homeland for the Muslims and began defining their identity as a distinct nation. What factors contributed to this change? Over time, the Muslim leadership realized that the Congress Party, which represented the majority community, was unwilling to address their demand for constitutional guarantees and safeguards. The Congress Party wanted to establish its political hegemony in post-British India, discarding all Muslim demands. The most bitter experience for the Muslims was their mistreatment by the Congress-led provincial governments in seven provinces after the provincial elections in 1937. These provincial governments functioned from July 1937 to October-November 1939 and openly discriminated against the Muslims for government jobs and introduced a system of education that projected Hindu religious and cultural values in the name of Indian identity and culture. The Muslim leadership learnt from all this experience over the years, especially from the Congress rule in the provinces, that constitutional commitments and federalism will not protect their identity, rights and interests under the Congress rule in an independent India. That the Congress Party would use its numerical advantage to dominate the governance system and threaten the civilizational and cultural identity of the Muslims and deny their rights and interests. They concluded that any future constitutional and political order in India must be based on the recognition of the existence of two major nations in British India, each with a distinctive cultural and civilizational heritage, history and political experiences, and divergentaspirations for the future.
The AIML leadership challenged the Congress Party-sponsored nationalism of “one Indian nation” with an alternative nationalism of two major nations in British India, the Muslims and the Hindus and others. The two-nation argument emphasized that the Muslims are a separate nation and as a distinct nation they need a separate homeland to protect and advance their national identity, religious and cultural orientations, and their political future. These views were articulated from 1938-39 onwards and presented in an AIML resolution on March 23, 1940. The major features of the AIML’s Lahore Resolution for a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India are given below:
The resolution rejected the Government of India Act, 1935 that proposed a federal system, arguing that it did not suit the “peculiar conditions” of India.
The resolution demanded that the existing constitutional arrangements in India should be revamped and that the Muslims would not accept any constitutional plan unless it was framed “with their approval and consent.”
The future constitutional framework should be based on 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 Northwestern and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The Lahore Resolution promised “adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards” to the religious minorities for “the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights and interests in consultation with them.”
The Resolution empowered the Working Committee of the AIML to prepare a constitutional scheme incorporating the principles set out in this resolution.
The text of the resolution did not include the word “Pakistan” but the press and the political leaders labelled it as the “Pakistan Resolution.”
The notion of the Muslims as a separate nation was fully articulated in Quaid-i-Azam’s speeches and statements in 1940-47. He published an article on the constitutional future of India in a British weekly magazine “Time and Tide,” January 19, 1940, arguing that the “democratic systems based on the concept of a homogenous nation such as England are very definitely not applicable to heterogeneous countries such as India, and this simple fact is the root cause of all India’s constitutional problems.” He maintained that the Muslims and the Hindus were “two different nations.” He was categorical in demanding that “no declaration regarding the question of constitutional advance be made without the consent and approval of the All-India Muslim League, nor any constitution be framed and finally adopted by His Majesty’s government and the British Parliament without such consent and approval.” He further said in this article that the AIML stood for a “free India” but it was “irrevocably opposed to any federal objective which must necessarily result in a majority community rule under the guiseof democracy and a parliamentary system of government.”
Quaid-i-Azam’s presidential address to the annual session of the All-India Muslim League at Lahore in March 1940 presented a comprehensive review of politics in British India, separate nationhood of the Muslims and the demand for a separate homeland. The most comprehensive articulation of the separate nationhood of the Muslims was done by Jinnah in his letter to Mahatma M.K. Gandhi on 17 September 1944. He wrote:
“We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation. We are a nation of a hundred million, and what is more, we are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportions, legal and moral codes, customs and calendar, history, and traditions, aptitudes, and ambitions – in short, we have our distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation.”
The Pakistan Resolution of March 1940 dealt with the Muslim question in the political context of British India of that time rather than offering a formula for power-sharing or provincial autonomy in post-independence Pakistan because no Muslim League leader could be certain about the establishment of Pakistan in 1940.
The March 1940 Resolution should also be viewed against the backdrop of various proposals of “Muslim homelands” in circulation in the 1930s. In addition to the ideas expressed by Allama Muhammmad Iqbal (1930) and Chaudhry Rehmat Ali (1933) for a Muslim homeland, several other proposals surfaced in Muslim political circles that envisaged more than one Muslim homeland and also talked of its relationship with non-Muslim India. In order to stand up to the existing multiple proposals suggesting several Muslim homelands, the text of the Lahore Resolution (March 1940) was kept open-ended.
The next seven years (1940-47) were critical to fully developing the notion of separate homeland for the Muslims of British India. Two processes were noticeable in this period, which turned the notion of separate Muslim homeland into a reality in August 1947. First, the British government made political offers to Indian political leaders and held talks to evolve a broadly based agreement on the constitutional future of India. Some efforts were also made to bring the Congress Party and the AIML closer to each other. Some important political measures in this period were the August 1940 British offer for constitutional changes; the Cripps Mission (1942), the Quit-India Movement by the Congress Party (1942), different efforts to bring the Congress Party and the AIML closer to each other, including the Jinnah-Gandhi talks and exchange of letters (1944); the Simla Conference (1945); and the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946). The AIML was active in these political affairs but it stood by its demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India. Its consistency in its political demand strengthened the notion of a separate homeland.
Second, the notions about a separate Muslim nation and a separate homeland for them were initiated at the Muslim elite level. The AIML took these two inter-connected messages to the Muslim common people through a sustained public mobilization campaign during these seven years. The AIML’s resounding success in the 1946 provincial elections strengthened the democratic credentials of the political struggle for the establishment of Pakistan. It was during these years that the textual ambiguities in the Lahore Resolution were resolved by Jinnah and his colleagues. As early as 1941-42, the AIML leadership was clear in the demand for a single Pakistan homeland as an independent state. Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah expressed similar views in his letters to Mahatma Gandhi in 1944. The convention of the elected parliamentarians of the AIML, held in Delhi in April 1946, reiterated the demand for a separate homeland of Pakistan. The Resolution of March 23, 1940 is therefore a milestone in the political struggle for the making of Pakistan, whose roots go deep into history of the Sub-continent and the last seven years of the independence movement were critical to turning this Resolution into a concrete reality.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Hasan Askari Rizvi is an independent political analyst who holds the PhD degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026