Days come and pass by — a phenomenon that does not merit any mention or elaboration. However, a nation-state hardly ever experiences a moment when a particular day becomes a point of reference to help it reflect on its standing in the present, know its brittle status in the past, and recalibrate the course of its destiny in the future.

When seen through the chronology of the solar calendar, the Saturday of March 23, 1940, was the beginning of yet another balmy weekend. However, what transpired after March 23 was, per se, a phenomenal occurrence: an abrupt transition of a decades-long political journey from a slow-paced rights movement to a fast-moving liberation drive zeroed in on nothing less than full freedom.

A day that represents an era

Freedom cannot be won in a day or two, but some days attain historical significance because they symbolise the protracted, blood-ridden struggle for freedom spanning generations and serve as a yearly, yet necessary reminder that no sovereign nation can lay claim to glory without revisiting its tragic past, time and again.

Though a lot has been written about the creation of Pakistan as an independent state, scant attention has been paid to the decisive moments when the far-fetched idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India culminated in a near-term goal all of a sudden, and those who had once categorically dismissed any likelihood of an independent Muslim state to be carved out of British India were able to see it coming as an inevitable reality with their eyes wide open.

March 23, a day that represents an era, can frankly be referred to as the moment a half-baked conceptual fantasy incubated through poetic immersion turned into a full-blown reality, to be soon accomplished through blood, sweat, and tears. And the reality on the horizon was stark not only for Muslims, India’s largest minority counting in millions, but also for the country’s formidable Hindu majority, along with the seemingly civilised, ostensibly cultured, yet practically the most ruthless colonists: the British empire, on which the sun would never set.

Pakistan Day is a moment to reflect on the numerous sacrifices made by our founding fathers and look back on generations after generations who were lost in the hope of a better future.

Setting the course of Muslim political thought

Seven years later, as propagated in the enemy’s discourse, the making of Pakistan as an independent nation-state was largely attributed to the hasty retreat of the British rulers from the Indian subcontinent. However, if history is anything to go by, the making of an independent Muslim-majority state in the north-west and north-east of the defunct British-Indian Empire, that too through entirely political means, was the product of a centuries-long historical process that suddenly saw itself at the forefront of a paradigm shift in the last decade of the mid-twentieth century. At that point in time, nobody would have believed that it would take merely a period of seven years for India’s largest yet most deprived minority to finally secure themselves a country they could call home.

The dawn of March 23, 1940, heralded the imminent end of the 150-year colonial rule in the subcontinent, and, at the same time, it set the rectifying course of the Muslim political thought that was intrinsically divided into two major groups: one that perceived the making of a separate country as the ultimate division of the Muslims and Hindus of India, and the second that welcomed the idea of a separate Muslim state.

Dawn of a new era

The 27th three-day Working Committee Session of the All-India Muslim League was held at Minto Park in Lahore from March 22 to March 24, 1940. It is pertinent to note that the session was not planned earlier than expected as it was neither an emergency session nor a crisis meeting, but rather a yearly political convention attended by nearly 100,000 people other than the top Muslim League leadership. Oddly enough, the number of attendees of the annual session was considerably lower than that of those gathered every week for Friday prayers in the Badshahi Mosque of Lahore or the Jama Masjid of New Delhi. As strange as it may seem, United India had seen much more dense gatherings and powerful political shows than the one held by the Muslim League in March 1940.

Lahore Resolution or Pakistan Resolution?

When the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution calling for a separate Muslim-majority homeland, the word ‘Pakistan’ was not used in the statement prepared by a subcommittee of the All-India Muslim League, which was headed by none other than Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself. Other members of the subcommittee included prominent figures such as Khawaja Nazimuddin, Nawab Ismail Khan, Sir Abdullah Haroon, and Khan Liaquat Ali Khan.

Drafted by the then-undivided Punjab’s chief minister, Sikandar Hayat Khan, the resolution was presented by the then-prime minister of Bengal, A.K. Fazlul Haq. On this historic occasion, Amjadi Bano Begum, the wife of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, Maulana Abdul Hamid Qadri Badayuni, Sardar Aurangzeb Khan, Qazi Muhammad Isa, and I.I. Chundrigar were also present.

Some scholars interpret the Lahore Resolution as mainly calling for “independent sovereign states,” as, according to them, the text reflected not more than a unified call to accommodate the political aspirations of Indian Muslims, who desired a loosely federated state structure in a United India, not a divided one. Relatedly, a coterie of liberal and secular opinion leaders argue that the Lahore Resolution had nothing to do with Islam since the word ‘Islam’ was not used in the 343-word resolution, which featured only the words ‘Muslim’, ‘Muslims,’ and ‘Mussalmans.’ However, such interpretations go against the fact that even a layman’s analysis of the speeches delivered at the Lahore conference, along with the approved text of the Lahore Resolution, proves the contrary.

Begum Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, for instance, used the word ‘Pakistan’ in her speech on the occasion, according to Pakistan was Inevitable by Syed Hassan Riaz. Although Choudhary Rahmat Ali coined the name ‘Pakistan’ when he published Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever? in 1933, it was not until after the Lahore Resolution that the word ‘Pakistan’ began to be used throughout the Indian subcontinent by those supporting the creation of a single and sovereign Muslim nation as well as by those opposing the idea with all might and main.

Presidential address by Quaid-i-Azam

A complete silence swept the audience when Quaid-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the President of the All-India Muslim League, emerged on the podium. Not only was his address to the Lahore conference lengthier than his previous addresses in his by-then 37-year-long political career, but his keynote speech on the occasion exuded a profound political wisdom and showed his utmost concern for the future of Indian Muslims after the exit of the British empire from India and the ensuing rise of Hindu hegemony in particular.

The Quaid’s presidential address teemed with words and phrases like ‘freedom,’ ‘Islam,’ ‘Muslim,’ ‘Mussalmans,’ ‘slavery of Mussalmans,’ ‘the value, the importance, the significance of organising ourselves,’ ‘defend yourselves,’ ‘depend upon yourselves,’ ‘We have no right to disagree,’ ‘can we trust them anymore?’ ‘our right of self-determination,’ ‘Congress regards separate electorates as an evil,’ ‘what better guarantees can the minorities have?’, ‘we must depend on our own inherent strength,’ ‘the Mussalmans of India will resist it,’ ‘Mussalmans are not a minority,’ ‘the Mussalmans are a nation by any definition,’ ‘come forward as servants of Islam,’ and many more words and phrases imbued with a desire for all-inclusive freedom.

According to Stanley Wolpert, American historian and an authority on Pakistan and India’s political history, even though Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s rise to the Indian political scene portrayed him as a steadfast proponent of Muslim-Hindu unity in the initial phase of his political career, his presidential address to the Lahore session of the All India Muslim League, as reflected in his words below, was the watershed when “Jinnah irrevocably committed to forcing the creation of an independent Pakistan.”

“If the British government are really in earnest and sincere to secure [the] peace and happiness of the people of this subcontinent, the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into autonomous national states. There is no reason why these states should be antagonistic to each other. On the other hand, the rivalry and the natural desire and efforts on the part of one to dominate the social order and establish political supremacy over the other in the government of the country will disappear. It will lead more towards natural goodwill by international pacts between them, and they can live in complete harmony with their neighbours. This will lead further to a friendly settlement all the more easily with regard to minorities, by reciprocal arrangements and adjustments between Muslim India and Hindu India, which will far more adequately and effectively safeguard the rights and interests of Muslim and various other minorities.”

The second-last paragraph of his detailed speech can be termed as a vision statement — concise to the core, yet setting the course to the ultimate objective that Muslims, being a single nation, must follow:

“Mussalmans are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state. We wish to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours as a free and independent people. We wish our people to develop to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social, and political life in a way that we think best and in consonance with our own ideals and according to the genius of our people.” “……But at the same time, we cannot be moved or diverted from our purpose and objective by threats or intimidations. We must be prepared to face all difficulties and consequences, make all the sacrifices that may be required of us, to achieve the goal we have set in front of us.”

As mentioned below, the concluding part of the Quaid’s address to the Lahore conference spoke volumes of the ultimate motif, which was nothing but freedom:

“I have placed before you the task that lies ahead of us. Do you realise how big and stupendous it is? Do you realise that you cannot get freedom or independence by mere arguments? I should appeal to the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia in all countries in the world have been the pioneers of any movements for freedom. What does the Muslim intelligentsia propose to do? I may tell you that unless you get this into your blood; unless you are prepared to take off your coats and are willing to sacrifice all that you can and work selflessly, earnestly, and sincerely for your people, you will never realise your aim. Friends, I, therefore, want you to make up your mind definitely and then think of devices and organise your people, strengthen your organisation, and consolidate the Mussalmans all over India. I think that the masses are wide awake. They only want your guidance and your lead. Come forward as servants of Islam. Organise the people economically, socially, educationally, and politically, and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody.”

The die was cast

On March 25, the Hindu-dominated English press, in a sarcastic tone, rechristened the move as the ‘Pakistan Resolution’ merely to downplay the resolution as a flight of fancy, an improbable task against the prevailing ground realities that were predominantly in favour of those forces working to safeguard their political interests within the framework of a federation of India as a single entity.

But once the clock strikes, nobody can stop the making of history. What lay seven years down the line was simply more than phenomenal, as the resolution was a call to action unanimously endorsed by the representatives of the most deprived minority of India, enjoying no military support or any backing of global powers other than their self-belief and determination. The making of a country is no joke. However, the emergence of Pakistan, with its flesh-and-blood existence emerging out of non-existence against all odds — that too in the name of Islam — made it more than just another country.

Over and above a day to observe patriotic commemoration rituals, Pakistan Day is a moment to reflect on the numerous sacrifices made by our founding fathers and look back on generations after generations who were lost in the hope of a better future. Above all else, the day affords us yet another opportunity for course correction.

The writer is associated with a political journal and engaged at an IT firm as a senior editor.