The Pakistan (Lahore) Resolution 1940

This handout covers the resolution passed by the All-India Muslim League at Lahore in March 1940, in which the Muslims of India first formally demanded independent states of their own. It belongs to Section 2 of the syllabus: the emergence of Pakistan 1906-47.

Key dates

Date	Event
December 1930	Allama Iqbal's Allahabad Address proposes a Muslim state in the north-west
January 1933	Chaudhry Rahmat Ali publishes "Now or Never" with the name Pakistan
1937-39	Congress ministries govern most provinces
September 1939	Second World War begins; India is declared at war
22 December 1939	Day of Deliverance
22 March 1940	Muslim League session opens at Minto Park, Lahore; Jinnah's presidential address
23 March 1940	The resolution is moved by A. K. Fazlul Haq
24 March 1940	The resolution is passed
August 1940	The British "August Offer" promises that no constitution will be imposed against the wishes of the minorities
April 1946	Convention of Muslim League legislators at Delhi states the demand as one sovereign state

Background: why was the resolution passed?

1. The experience of Congress rule, 1937-39. Under the Congress ministries Muslims complained about Bande Matram, the Wardha and Vidya Mandir education schemes, the promotion of Hindi and unfair treatment. Congress had also refused to share power with the League. Muslims concluded that in a united India with a permanent Hindu majority their religion, language and culture would not be safe, whatever safeguards were written on paper.
2. The growth of the two-nation idea. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had argued in the nineteenth century that Hindus and Muslims were separate communities. Allama Iqbal in 1930 proposed a Muslim state in the north-west, and in letters to Jinnah in 1937 he urged him to take up this aim. Chaudhry Rahmat Ali gave the idea a name in 1933. By 1940 the idea of a separate homeland was widely discussed among Muslims.
3. The war and the need for a clear demand. When war began in 1939 the Congress ministries resigned, and the British turned to the Muslim League for support. The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, asked the League what it wanted in place of the federation of the 1935 Act, which it had rejected. The League needed to state a positive aim of its own before Congress and the British settled the future without it.
4. The League was now strong enough. Since 1937 Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had rebuilt the League into a mass party with the support of the premiers of the Punjab and Bengal.

The Lahore session

The League held its annual session at Minto Park (now Iqbal Park) in Lahore from 22 to 24 March 1940. A few days earlier there had been a clash in Lahore between the police and members of the Khaksar movement in which many Khaksars were killed, and the city was tense. Jinnah decided that the session should go ahead, and a very large crowd attended.

In his presidential address on 22 March Jinnah set out the two-nation theory in clear words. He said that Hindus and Muslims belonged to two different religions, with different customs and literatures. Their heroes and histories were different, so that the hero of one was often the enemy of the other. To join two such nations in a single state, one as a majority and the other as a minority, would lead to growing discontent and the final breakdown of the state. The Muslims were a nation by any definition, and they must have their homeland, their territory and their state.

On 23 March the resolution was moved by A. K. Fazlul Haq, the premier of Bengal, who was known as Sher-e-Bengal. It was seconded by Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman of the United Provinces and supported by speakers from the other provinces, including Maulana Zafar Ali Khan from the Punjab, Sardar Aurangzeb Khan from the North-West Frontier Province, Sir Abdullah Haroon from Sindh and Qazi Muhammad Isa from Balochistan. It was passed on 24 March.

The terms of the resolution

• No constitutional plan would be workable or acceptable to the Muslims unless it was based on the following principle.
• Geographically connected units should be marked out as regions, with such changes of boundary as might be necessary.
• The areas in which Muslims were in a majority, as in the north-western and eastern zones of India, should be grouped to form "independent states" in which the constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign.
• Adequate and effective safeguards should be written into the constitution for minorities in these units, to protect their religious, cultural, economic, political and administrative rights, in consultation with them.
• The same safeguards should be given to Muslims in the other parts of India where they were a minority.
• The federal scheme of the Government of India Act 1935 was rejected as unsuited to India and unacceptable to Muslims.

Two points about the wording are often asked about. First, the word "Pakistan" does not appear in the resolution. It was the Hindu press that mockingly called it the "Pakistan Resolution" in the following days. The League then adopted the name itself. Second, the resolution speaks of "states" in the plural. In April 1946 a convention of Muslim League members of the legislatures, meeting in Delhi, made clear that the demand was for one sovereign state called Pakistan.

Reactions

Muslims. The resolution was welcomed with great enthusiasm. It gave Muslims a single clear goal in place of the earlier demands for safeguards and weightage. Some Muslims did not agree, including those inside Congress such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Congress and Hindu opinion. Congress rejected the resolution completely. Gandhi described the plan as the vivisection (cutting up) of India and held that Hindus and Muslims were one nation. The Hindu press attacked it.

The British. The British did not accept partition at this stage and hoped to keep India united. However, they could not ignore the League while they needed Muslim support for the war. In the August Offer of 1940 the Viceroy promised that power would not be handed to any system of government whose authority was denied by large and powerful groups in India.

How important was the Lahore Resolution?

Reasons it was important

• It changed the Muslim aim. Before 1940 the League had asked for rights as a minority inside India. After it, the League demanded a separate homeland as a nation.
• It united Muslims behind one goal and one leader, and turned the League into the only party that could claim to speak for Muslims. This showed in the elections of 1945-46, when the League won nearly all the Muslim seats.
• It set the terms of every later negotiation. The Cripps Mission, the Gandhi-Jinnah talks, the Simla Conference and the Cabinet Mission all had to deal with the demand for Pakistan.
• Pakistan was created only seven years later. The day is remembered each year on 23 March as Pakistan Day, and the Minar-e-Pakistan stands on the spot where the resolution was passed.

Its limits

• The wording was vague. It did not name Pakistan, did not define borders and spoke of "states", which later caused argument about whether one country or two had been intended.
• A resolution alone could not create a country. Congress and the British both rejected it at first. Pakistan was won through later events: Jinnah's leadership in the negotiations, the League's election victory of 1945-46, Direct Action in 1946 and the British decision to leave quickly.

Judgement. The Lahore Resolution did not create Pakistan in 1940, and its wording left questions open. But it was the turning point of the Pakistan Movement, because it gave the Muslims a definite aim that could not afterwards be withdrawn.

Key terms and people

• Two-nation theory: the belief that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations, each entitled to its own homeland.
• Minto Park: the ground in Lahore where the session was held, now Iqbal Park, site of the Minar-e-Pakistan.
• A. K. Fazlul Haq: premier of Bengal who moved the resolution.
• August Offer: the British statement of August 1940 that reassured the minorities about any future constitution.

Exam practice

1. Describe the terms of the Lahore Resolution of 1940. [4]
2. Why did the Muslim League pass the Lahore Resolution in 1940? [7]
3. "The Lahore Resolution was the most important step towards the creation of Pakistan between 1940 and 1947." How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [14]

Outline answers

1. Muslim-majority areas in the north-west and east of India should be grouped to form independent states. The units of these states would be autonomous and sovereign. Minorities in these areas, and Muslims in the rest of India, should have their rights protected by safeguards. No constitution would be acceptable to Muslims unless it followed this principle. The word Pakistan was not used.

2. (i) Congress rule from 1937 to 1939, with Bande Matram, the Wardha Scheme and the refusal to share power, convinced Muslims that they would not be safe under a Hindu majority in a united India. (ii) The two-nation idea had developed through Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Allama Iqbal's 1930 address and Rahmat Ali's scheme, and by 1940 Jinnah accepted that Muslims were a nation needing a homeland. (iii) The war had begun and Congress had left office, so the British needed the League and were asking for its proposals; the League had to state a clear demand before a new constitution was decided.

3. Agree: it set the goal of a separate homeland for the first time, united Muslims behind the League and shaped all later talks. Other steps: the Cripps Mission recognised that provinces could opt out; the Gandhi-Jinnah talks treated Jinnah as an equal; the 1945-46 elections proved the League spoke for Muslims; the Cabinet Mission, Direct Action Day and the 3 June Plan of 1947 led to the actual partition. Judgement: the later events delivered Pakistan, but each depended on the demand first made at Lahore, so it can be argued to be the most important single step, while the election victory of 1945-46 was what made the demand impossible to refuse.