Comment Lahore Resolution and Pakistan

Abstract

The Lahore Resolution of 23-24 March 1940 is invariably referred to as the basic document on the emergence of Pakistan. It is usually invoked by ‘nationalists’ to provide political ballast to their provincial demands and for the curtailment of central/federal authority. The present paper argues that the resolution represents the basic idea behind Pakistan’s emergence only in the sense as the Magna Carta (1215) launched the devolution of power process from the all-powerful sovereign to the nobility, which process, evolving through a series of creatively calibrated stages, finally blossomed into full fledged parliamentary democracy in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It further argues that the significance of the resolution must be seen and assessed in the total context of a series of Muslim political demands and Indian developments since Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s born-again-Muslim posture of the 1880s.