Lahore Resolution demanded separate homeland for the Muslims of India and Quaid-e-Azam presided over this gathering
The Lahore Resolution Qarardad-e-Lahore; Bengali: লাহোর প্রস্তাব, Lahor Prostab), was prepared by Muslim League Working Committee[1][2][3] and was presented by A. K. Fazlul Huq, the Prime Minister of Bengal was a formal political statement adopted by the All-India Muslim League on the occasion of its three-day general session in Lahore on 22–24 March 1940. The resolution called for independent states as seen by the statement:
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, a former proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity, irrevocably transformed himself into the leader of the fight for an independent Pakistan
Historical context
Until the mid-1930s the Muslim leaders were trying to ensure maximum political safeguards for Muslims within the framework of federation of India in terms of seeking maximum autonomy for Muslim majority provinces. They got some safeguards through a system of separate electorate on communal basis in the 1935 Government of India Act. As a result of elections held under this Act, Indian National Congress formed government in six out of eight provinces. During Congress rule from 1937–39, its “High Command whose iron control over its own provinces clearly hinted at what lay ahead for the Muslim majority provinces once it came to dominate the center. Much of the League’s propaganda at this stage was directed against the Congress ministries and their alleged attacks on Muslim culture; the heightened activity of Hindu Mahasabha, the hoisting of Congress tricolor, the singing of Bande Mataram, the Vidya Mandir scheme in the Central Provinces and the Wardha scheme of education, all were interpreted as proof of ‘Congress atrocities’. So, the Congress was clearly incapable of representing Muslim interests, yet it was trying to annihilate every other party.”[6]
Therefore, by 1938-39, for most of the Muslim leaders, in or out of Muslim League, the idea of separation was strongly gaining ground. The Sindh Provincial Muslim League Conference held its first session in Karachi in October 1938, adopted a resolution which recommended to the All India Muslim League to devise a scheme of constitution under which Muslims may attain full independence. The premiers of other Muslim majority provinces, e.g. A. K. Fazal-ul-Haque (Bengal) and Sir Sikander Hayat Khan (Punjab), who were not in the Muslim League, also were quite convinced in favor of separation. The idea was more vividly expressed by M. A. Jinnah in an article in the London weekly Time & Tide on 9 March 1940.[7] Jinnah wrote: