045. Making & Naming Of Pakistan

Stanley Wolpert (born December 23, 1927) is an American historian. Among Wolpert's well-known works is Jinnah of Pakistan (1982), a biography of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Wolpert described his subject as:

"Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three".

Answering the question of how he accomplished all these feats is neither simple nor easy. It remains a subject of great debate—one that will likely continue for many centuries to come. In this post, I shall briefly touch on only two questions: how the new state of Pakistan got its borders and its name. Both are very interesting topics. But before that, let me say a few words about the idea of a separate country itself.

After the rebellion of 1857, due to many reasons, Hindus and Muslims began to drift apart. This process accelerated after the fiasco of the partition of Bengal in 1905. The realization among Muslims of being a distinct nation led first to their demand for a separate electoral system and eventually to the idea of a separate country. For almost four decades, the differences seemed bridgeable, but by the 1940s, the chances of compromise diminished with each passing month.

The idea of a separate country was probably not new, and some people were definitely thinking along those lines quite early. However, it was the famous philosopher and poet Allama Muhammad Iqbal who, while chairing the annual session of the All India Muslim League (AIML) in Allahabad in 1930, formally presented this idea in his presidential address. He said:

"I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state. Self-government within the British Empire or without the British Empire—the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India."

Indian politicians were constantly demanding more powers to run their own country. This long struggle continued for decades and eventually led to the Government of India Act of 1935. This was a significant step toward self-rule and, ultimately, complete independence. The main features of the Act were as follows:

1. The grant of a large measure of autonomy to the provinces of British India (ending the system of dyarchy introduced by the Government of India Act 1919.
2. Provision for the establishment of a "Federation of India", to be made up of both British India and some or all of the "Princely States"
3. The introduction of direct elections, thus increasing the franchise from seven million to thirty-five million people
4. A partial reorganisation of the provinces:
5. Sindh was separated from Bombay. 
6. Bihar and Orissa was split into separate provinces of Bihar and Orissa. 
7. Burma was completely separated from India
8. Aden was also detached from India, and established as a separate Crown colony
9. Membership of the provincial assemblies was altered so as to include more elected Indian representatives, who were now able to form majorities and be appointed to form governments
10. The establishment of a Federal Cour                               

The above map shows the provinces of British India and the distribution of Muslim Population, according to the census of 1941.

The above map shows the distribution of the Muslim population district-wise, according to the census of 1941.

Under the new act, elections were held in the winter of 1936-37 in eleven provinces and the results were declared in February 1937. The Congress party performed well in 7 provinces. However, the performance of the Muslim League was poor. Results of the elections for the provincial assemblies are given below:

The election results, as shown in the table above, were disappointing for the Muslim League. Under the Government of India Act 1935, governments were formed in the provinces. A coalition government of the Krishak Praja Party and the Muslim League, headed by Abul Qasim Fazl ul Haq, was formed in Bengal. In Punjab, the Unionists, under the leadership of Sir Sikander Hayat Khan, formed the government. Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah of the Muslim Peoples' Party formed the government in Sindh. In the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum Khan formed a coalition government, but it lasted only six months before being replaced by a Congress-led government under Dr. Khan Sahib.

These governments were an important step towards freedom. However, their tenure was cut short by rapidly changing global circumstances. The Second World War began in September 1939, and Congress-led governments resigned over the issue of whether to support the British war effort. They also demanded a guarantee of full independence after the war. Bengal and Punjab were exceptions. The governments in these two Muslim-majority provinces had a different stance—they chose to fully cooperate with the British and therefore did not resign, continuing in power. In doing so, the two largest Muslim-majority provinces took a different path from the rest of India.

Amid this rapidly changing national and international scenario, the annual session of the All India Muslim League (AIML) was held in March 1940 in Lahore. That session proved to be the most significant landmark on the road to the creation of Pakistan. In the resolution passed at the end of the session, the AIML demanded a separate country in the following words:

"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."

Naturally, Congress and many other political powers rejected any division of the country and political wrangling continued for many years. After the end of WW II, the British government decided to again start the political process stalled because of the war and decided to hold elections.

On 19 September 1945, the Viceroy Lord Wavell announced that elections to the central and provincial legislatures would be held in December 1945 to January 1946. The purpose was to elect a body that can make a constitution for an independent India. So, we can say that it was a test and a chance for AIML and Congress to prove their power, before the fast approaching final showdown.

    (Akalis 22, Unionists 20)

Hence, these elections decisively settled two key matters in favour of the All India Muslim League (AIML). First, they vindicated its claim to be the sole representative of Indian Muslims. Second, they demonstrated overwhelming public support for the demand for Pakistan. The AIML secured 74.75% of the Muslim vote, while the Congress obtained 80.9% of the votes on general seats. The results convinced both the Congress and the British government that no political settlement would be viable without the consent of the AIML.

In these circumstances, the British government sent a delegation consisting of three cabinet ministers to India to find a political solution to the ongoing crisis, in consultation with all major stakeholders. This delegation is known in history as the Cabinet Mission. On May 16, 1946, it presented the following plan:

1. A united Dominion of India would be given independence. 
2. Muslim-majority provinces would be grouped - Sind, Punjab, Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province would form a group called Group A, and Bengal and Assam would form Group B. 
3. While Hindu-majority provinces in central and southern India would form the Group C. 
4. The Central government, stationed in Delhi, would be empowered to handle nationwide affairs, such as defense, currency, and diplomacy, while the rest of powers and responsibility would belong to the provinces, coordinated by groups.

Groups of provinces as proposed in Cabinet Mission Plan.

Initially, both parties accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan with some reservations, but later, both rejected it—first the Congress, and then the All India Muslim League (AIML). With that, all hopes of a united India were dashed, and no alternative remained except to divide the country into two separate entities. This was finally carried out in mid-August 1947.

Once the issue of partition was agreed upon, the next major question was to determine the borders of the new country, Pakistan. Below, I will briefly discuss how Pakistan's borders were shaped.

Most of the areas comprising present-day Pakistan came under British rule in the 1840s, when they annexed Sindh in 1843 and Punjab (including most of present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) in 1849. With these conquests, the boundaries of British India reached the frontiers of Afghanistan and Persia (modern-day Iran), or their associated princely states. However, the British authorities were not content and continued to expand their sphere of influence westward, mainly due to their fear of Russian advances in Central Asia. They wanted to extend their borders as far from the Indian heartland as possible.

As a first step, the British imposed an agreement on Persia in 1871, dividing Balochistan into zones of influence between British India and Persia. Then, in 1875, an agreement was signed with the State of Kalat, which made Kalat and its vassal states British protectorates. In 1877, through the Treaty of Mastung, the British took direct control of vast areas, including the city of Quetta and the Chaghai district, and organized them under the Baluchistan Agency.

In 1879, an agreement was reached with Afghanistan, under which jurisdiction over the Kurram and Pishin valleys, the Sibi district, and the Khyber Pass was transferred to British control. During this period, several small hill states, such as Dir, Swat, and Chitral, also accepted the suzerainty of the expanding British power. The final and most significant step came in 1893, when a treaty was signed between British diplomat Sir Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan. This agreement established what is still known today as the Durand Line, named after the British negotiator. The vast princely state of Jammu and Kashmir had already been under British influence since the annexation of Punjab in 1849.

By 1893, the western and northwestern borders of the future Pakistan had been largely secured. Now fast forward to 1947. Once the partition of India was agreed upon, the British government appointed a boundary commission to determine the borders between the two new countries. The commission was headed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer who had never set foot in India before. The main challenge before him was the division of two major provinces: Punjab in the northwest and Bengal in the east. For this gigantic and sensitive task, the commission was given just five weeks.

Radcliffe’s decision was announced on 17 August 1947, two days after independence, thereby defining Pakistan’s eastern borders. The provinces of Balochistan, Sindh, and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) were incorporated into Pakistan in their entirety, along with several princely states that opted to join Pakistan.

But the matter was far from over. Hostilities soon broke out between India and Pakistan over the accession of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. This led to the first war between the two countries, which lasted more than a year and ended on 1 January 1949, with a UN-mandated ceasefire. The resulting Ceasefire Line became the de facto border between the two countries until the war of 1971, after which it was renamed the Line of Control (LoC) under the Simla Agreement, with some territorial losses for Pakistan. Further losses came in 1984, when India occupied the Siachen Glacier. Since then, the borders have remained relatively stable.

Now, coming to the naming of the new country. We all know that even naming a newborn child can be a challenging task for parents. Imagine, then, the complexity of naming an entirely new country. This historic task was accomplished by Chaudhry Rahmat Ali.

He was born in 1895 in Hariana, district Hoshiarpur, or possibly in Balachaur, which at the time was part of Hoshiarpur but now lies in Nawanshahr district. (This information is based on Wikipedia, where both places are mentioned as his possible birthplace.) He earned a BA degree from the University of Cambridge in 1933, and later an MA in 1940 from the same institution. Rahmat Ali spent most of his adult life in Britain, where he remained politically active and an ardent advocate for a separate homeland for the Muslims of India.

On 28 January 1933, he published a now-famous pamphlet titled "Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?" In this pamphlet—apparently addressed to the British authorities—he not only demanded an independent federation of five northwestern Muslim-majority units but also proposed a name for this new country. Here is the first paragraph of the pamphlet:

"I am enclosing herewith an appeal on behalf of the thirty million Muslims of PAKISTAN, who live in the five Northern Units of India – Punjab, N.W.F.P. (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan, embodying their inexorable demand for the recognition of their separate national status, as distinct from the rest of India, by the grant of a separate Federal Constitution on social, religious, political and historical grounds."

So this small pamphlet gave the name to this new country. An event that was unparalleled in history. He was definitely an imaginative man, as he proposed not just PAKISTAN, but envisioned many more states for Muslims of India. 

Further details are given in Wikipedia as following:

In 1932, Ali moved to a now famous house in Cambridge, on 3 Humberstone Road. It was in one of the rooms of this house that he is said to have written the word 'Pakstan' for the first time. There are several accounts of the creation of the name. According to a friend, Abdul Kareem Jabbar, the name came up when Ali was walking along the banks of the Thames in 1932 with his friends Pir Ahsan-ud-din and Khwaja Abdul Rahim. According to Ali's secretary Miss Frost, he came up with the idea while riding on the top of a London bus.

On 28 January 1933, Ali voiced the idea in a pamphlet titled "Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?". The word 'Pakstan' referred to "the five Northern units of India, viz. :Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan". By the end of 1933, 'Pakistan' had become common vocabulary, and and i was added to ease pronunciation (as in Afghan-i-stan).

In a subsequent book, Ali discussed the etymology in further detail.

'Pakistan' is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our South Asia homelands; that is, Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. It means the land of the Paks – the spiritually pure and clean.

According to Ali's biographer, K.K.Aziz writes that "Rahmat Ali alone drafted this declaration (in which the word Pakistan was used for the first time), but in order to make it "representative" he began to look around for people who would sign it along with him. This search did not prove easy, "for so firm was the grip of 'Muslim Indian Nationalism' on our young intellectuals at English universities that it took me (Rahmat Ali) more than a month to find three young men in London who offered to support and sign it. "Later on, his political opponents used the name of these signatories and other friends of Ali, as creator of word 'Pakistan'.I found the names of the following four persons at the end of the pamphlet:

1. Mohd Aslam Khan Khattak; President, Khyber Union 
2. Choudhry Rahmat Ali 
3. Sahibzada Sheikh Mohd Sadiq 
4. Inayatullah Khan (of Charsaddah) Secretary, Khyber Union 

The following two pictures are also taken from Wikipedia.

Choudhry Rehmat Ali (seated first from left) with Muhammad Iqbal (center), Khawaja Abdul Rahim (right) and a group of other young activists during Iqbal visit to England in 1932.

Grave Of Choudhry Rehmat Ali (Cambridge City Cemetery)

So, this is how our beloved country, Pakistan, got its borders and its name. It is indeed strange that we know so little about Chaudhry Rahmat Ali and his family. The plaque mentioned above includes the name of his brother, Haji Mohammad Baksh, a resident of Chak No. 66 JB, Lyallpur, Pakistan. This suggests that Rahmat Ali’s family migrated from Hoshiarpur and settled in Chak 66 after the Partition in 1947. It would be fascinating if someone could uncover more information about his family and their life in Pakistan.

Tariq Amir

January 8, 2016.
Doha - Qatar.

For more details about Chaudhry Rehmat Ali, kindly visit:

073. Choudhary Rahmat Ali - The Man Who Named Pakistan