Lahore Resolution

Lahore Resolution
Muslim leaders from across British India at the All-India Muslim League Working Committee session in Lahore
Presented22 March 1940
Ratified23 March 1940; 84 years ago (1940-03-23)
LocationLahore, Punjab, British India
SignatoriesAll-India Muslim League
PurposeEstablishment of a separate homeland for the Muslims of (British) India.

The Lahore Resolution,[a] also called the Pakistan Resolution, was a formal political statement adopted by the All-India Muslim League on the occasion of its three-day general session in Lahore, Punjab, from 22 to 24 March 1940, calling for a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India.

It was written and prepared by a nine-member subcommittee of the All-India Muslim League (which included Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Khawaja Nazimuddin, Abdullah Haroon, and Nawab Ismail Khan)[1][2][3] and was presented by A. K. Fazlul Huq, the Prime Minister of Bengal.

The resolution mainly called for independent sovereign states:

That geographically contiguous units are demarcated 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.

Although the name "Pakistan" had been proposed by Choudhary Rahmat Ali in his Pakistan Declaration,[4] it was not until after the resolution that it began to be widely used.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah's address to the Lahore conference was, according to Stanley Wolpert, the moment when Jinnah, once a proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity, irrevocably transformed himself for the cause of separate Muslim homeland called Pakistan.[5]


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  1. ^ Sherwani, Latif Ahmed (1990). Pakistan Resolution Revisited. National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research. p. 45.
  2. ^ Khan, Zafarullah. The Agony of Pakistan. Kent Publications. p. 15.
  3. ^ Zaidi, Hassan Jafar. "Pakistan Resolution". Dawn.
  4. ^ Choudhary Rahmat Ali, (1933), Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?, pamphlet, published 28 January. (Rehmat Ali at the time was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge)
  5. ^ Stanley Wolpert (1984). Jinnah of Pakistan. Oxford University Press. p. 182. ISBN 978-0-19-503412-7. Jinnah's Lahore address lowered the final curtain on any prospects for a single united independent India ... once his mind was made up he never reverted to any earlier position ... The ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity had totally transformed himself into Pakistan's great leader. All that remained was for his party first, then his inchoate nation, and then his British allies to agree to the formula he had resolved upon.