In the Indian provinces with
Muslim majorities -Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), and East-Bengal – democracy was not viewed as a threat by Muslims. But,
the Urdu-speaking Muslims of central India were a minority in their province and
felt threatened by democracy in independent India.
To prevent their eclipse, they quickly assumed positions of leadership in the
All India Muslim League, and supported a religious division of India and the
creation of a separate country for Indian Muslims. Their most difficult task
would be to convince Muslims in majority provinces to follow suit.
The All India Muslim League began a quest to assert Muslim unity – espousing the
belief that all Muslims of India were one nation, with not only one religion but
also one language, one culture, and one destiny. Undoubtedly, that one language
was their Urdu language, one religion was their version of Islam, and one
culture was their Gunga Jumna culture and one destiny in which they hoped to
gain supremacy in the new Muslim country.
Although having a common religion, the Muslims of India themselves were not a
homogenous nation. Distinct cultures, diverse religious outlooks, separate
languages, individual histories, and unique national identities all existed
within the diverse Muslim population of India.
As a result, the “Two Nation Theory” did not initially sit well in all Muslim
circles. In the elections of 1937, for example, having campaigned on a platform
based on the “Two Nation Theory”, the All India Muslim League suffered a
humiliating defeat in all the Muslim-majority provinces.
In the elections of 1937, only 4.6 percent of the Muslim population voted for
the Muslim League, and it won a mere 3 out of 33 seats reserved for Muslims in
Sindh, 2 out of 84 seats in Punjab, 39 out of 117 seats in Bengal and none in
NWFP. Thus, just a decade before its birth, Muslims of India had almost
unanimously rejected the very idea of unified Muslim country.
In the year 1940, All India Muslim League called its full annual session at
Lahore, where a sharp division of visions was vividly visible. Urdu-speaking
Muslims of central India, proponents of a unified Muslim country, formed one
faction; leaders of Muslim majority provinces, who advocated linguistic,
cultural and ethnic preservation, formed the other. Emboldened by the results of
the 1937 elections, the Muslim majority provinces held the upper hand and
proceeded to set forth their own, divergent aspirations. The results were
formulated in a resolution presented at the session by Bengali nationalist A.K.
Fazlul Haq.
However, before Fazlul Haq could present his resolution, Mohammad Ali Jinnah,
leader of the Muslim League tried to usher sentiments of the oneness of Muslims
of India. In a thundering speech before the delegates of the session at Lahore
he said:
“Mussalmans (Muslims) came to India as conquerors, traders, and preachers and
brought with them their own culture and civilization. They reformed and remolded
the sub-continent of India. Today, the hundred million Mussalmans in (British)
India represent the largest compact body of the Muslim population in any single
part of the world. We are civilization, language, and literature, art and
architecture, names and nomenclature, value and proportion, legal laws and moral
code, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitude and ambitions, in
short, we have our distinctive outlook of life and on life. By all canons of
international law, we are a nation.”
Despite such roaring words of Muslim nationhood, neither Jinnah nor any other
leader of the Muslim League presented a resolution demanding a Muslim homeland.
In wake of fresh memories of the defeat in 1937 of the “Two Nation Theory”,
probably, the leadership was not sure of support for such a demand from the
Muslim majority provinces.
Instead, Fazlul Haq, a leader of one of the Muslim majority provinces of Bengal,
ignoring the words unified Muslim country altogether, as well as support for the
future creation of a Muslim state, proposed a resolution for the future of
Muslim society. The Muslim League formally adopted this resolution on March 23,
1940, in Lahore. It states the following:
The Lahore Resolution
March 23, 1940 – Lahore
While approving and endorsing the action taken by the Council and the Working
Committee of the All-India Muslim League, as indicated in their resolutions
dated the 27th of August, 17th & 18th of September and 22nd of October, 1939,
and the 3rd of February, 1940 on the constitutional issue, this session of the
All India Muslim League emphatically reiterates that the scheme of federation
embodied in the Government of India Act 1935 is totally unsuited to, and
unworkable in the peculiar conditions of this country and is altogether
unacceptable to Muslim India.
It further records its emphatic view that while the declaration dated the 18th
of October, 1939 made by the Viceroy on behalf of His Majesty’s Government is
reassuring in so far as it declares that the policy and plan on which the
Government of India Act, 1935, is based will be reconsidered in consultation
with various parties, interests, and communities in India, Muslims in India will
not be satisfied unless the whole constitutional plan is reconsidered de novo
and that no revised plan would be acceptable to Muslims unless it is framed with
their approval and consent.
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 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 (British) India should be grouped
to constitute ‘independent states’ in which the constituent units should be
autonomous and sovereign.
That adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards should be specifically
provided in the constitution for minorities in these units and in the regions
for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political,
administrative and other rights and interests in consultation with them and in
other parts of India where the Muslims are in a minority adequate, effective and
mandatory safeguards shall be specifically provided in the constitution for them
and other minorities for the protection of 0their religious, cultural, economic,
political, administrative and other rights and interests in consultation with
them.
The Session further authorizes the Working Committee to frame a scheme of
constitution in accordance with these basic principles, providing for the
assumption finally by the respective regions of all powers such as defense,
external affairs, communications, customs, and such other matters as may be
necessary.”
The following is the full list of the 25 original, formally designated members
of the Special Working Committee of the All India Muslim League, 1940, which met
between 21 and 24 March 1940, and which drafted the Lahore Resolution.
Quaid i Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan
Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan
Sir Shahnawaz Khan Mamdot
Amir Ahmed Khan Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad
Maulvi A.K. Fazlul Huq
Sir Abdullah Haroon
Al-Hajj Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin
Amjadi Bano Begum
Molana Muhammad Akram Khan
Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman
Nawab Muhammad Ismail Khan
Sir Currimbhoy Ebrahim
Ali Muhammad Khan Dehlvi
Qazi Muhammad Isa
Sardar Aurangzeb Khan
Abdul Mateen Chauhdry
Ashiq Mohamed Warsi
Haji Abdus Sattar Essak Saith
S.M. Sharif
Syed Abdul Rauf Shah
Mohammad Latif ur Rahman
Abdul Rehman Siddiqui
Malik Barkat Ali
Sadullah Khan Umarzai