Pakistan Affairs MCQs – Page 4 (Q31-40)

The All-India Muslim League was founded in 1906 to safeguard the political rights and interests of Muslims in British India, initially advocating loyalty to the British Crown while seeking separate electorates. It was formed shortly after the partition of Bengal in 1905, an event that heightened communal political organising across the subcontinent. Early leaders included the Aga Khan III and Nawab Salimullah of Dhaka, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah joining later and eventually rising to lead the party from the 1930s onward. Under Jinnah's leadership the League evolved from advocating minority rights within a united India to championing outright partition and the creation of Pakistan.

The All-India Muslim League was founded in Dhaka in December 1906, at a gathering held alongside the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference. Dhaka was then part of the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, created by Lord Curzon's controversial 1905 partition of Bengal along religious lines. Nawab Salimullah of Dhaka hosted and helped organise the founding meeting, making the city a symbolically important birthplace for Muslim political organisation in South Asia. The League later shifted its centre of political gravity toward Lahore, Bombay and Delhi as Muhammad Ali Jinnah rose to lead the movement for Pakistan.

Allama Iqbal delivered his famous Allahabad Address in 1930 as presidential address to the All-India Muslim League session, where he proposed the idea of a separate, consolidated Muslim state in the northwestern regions of British India. Though he did not use the name 'Pakistan', his address is widely regarded as an early ideological blueprint for the later Pakistan Movement, earning him the title 'spiritual father of Pakistan'. Iqbal was primarily renowned as a poet-philosopher, writing extensively in Urdu and Persian, including works like Bang-e-Dra and Bal-e-Jibril. His birthday, 9 November, is observed in Pakistan as Iqbal Day, a national holiday honouring his contributions.

The Lahore Resolution, also called the Pakistan Resolution, was passed on 23 March 1940 at the All-India Muslim League's annual session held at Minto Park (now Iqbal Park) in Lahore. It called for independent states for Muslims in the northwestern and eastern zones of British India, laying the political groundwork for the eventual creation of Pakistan. The resolution was moved by A.K. Fazlul Huq of Bengal and presided over by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In commemoration, 23 March is observed annually in Pakistan as Pakistan Day, marked by a national holiday and military parade in Islamabad.

A.K. Fazlul Huq, then Chief Minister of Bengal and a prominent Bengali Muslim leader, moved the Lahore Resolution at the 1940 Muslim League session, even though its language was largely drafted by others including Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan. Huq's political career spanned both Congress and Muslim League affiliations at different points, and he later became a key figure in the movement that led to Bangladesh's independence in 1971. Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, premier of Punjab, was another influential regional leader present at the session, and Choudhry Khaliquzzaman later seconded the resolution. Jinnah presided over the session as Muslim League president throughout.

Direct Action Day was observed on 16 August 1946, called by the All-India Muslim League to press its demand for a separate Muslim state after political negotiations over a united India's future stalled. The day triggered severe communal violence in Calcutta, known as the 'Great Calcutta Killings', which left thousands dead and set off a wave of rioting that spread to other parts of Bengal and Bihar. The unrest significantly hardened communal divisions and accelerated British and Congress acceptance of partition as the only viable path forward. Direct Action Day is often cited by historians as a critical turning point that made the division of British India nearly inevitable.

The Indian Independence Act was passed by the British Parliament in July 1947, providing the legal framework for partitioning British India into the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan effective from 14-15 August 1947. It ended nearly two centuries of British colonial rule and Crown authority over the subcontinent, transferring power to the new dominion governments. The Act also allowed the roughly 560 princely states to choose which country to join or, in theory, remain independent, a decision that later fuelled disputes like the one over Kashmir. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, oversaw the transition and became independent India's first Governor-General.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer with no prior experience of India, was tasked with drawing the boundary line between India and Pakistan, completing the task in just about five weeks in 1947. The resulting Radcliffe Line split the provinces of Punjab and Bengal along religious majority lines, dividing communities, families and infrastructure and triggering mass migration and violence that killed hundreds of thousands to over a million people. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, oversaw the overall transfer of power and pushed for an accelerated independence timeline. The boundary award was kept secret until after independence day, adding to the chaos of the initial migration.

The Two-Nation Theory, holding that Muslims and Hindus constitute two distinct nations deserving separate homelands, is most closely associated with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who used it as the ideological basis for demanding Pakistan. While Jinnah became its foremost political champion from the 1940s onward, earlier thinkers including Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Allama Iqbal had articulated related ideas about Muslim distinctiveness and political separation decades before. The theory underpinned the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and ultimately the 1947 partition of British India. It remains central to Pakistan's national ideology and is taught as a founding principle in the country's school curricula.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born on 25 December 1876 in Karachi, then part of the Bombay Presidency of British India, into a Gujarati Khoja merchant family. He studied law at Lincoln's Inn in London, becoming one of the youngest Indians called to the bar, before building a successful legal career in Bombay. His birthday is celebrated in Pakistan as a national holiday, Quaid-e-Azam Day, with celebrations especially prominent in his native Karachi. He died on 11 September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan's independence, from tuberculosis he had largely kept secret from the public.