This series will cover the history of Modern Pakistan, from the earliest notions of a separatist Muslim governance to the creation of Pakistan and all the way to 2023.

You can read post covering 1857 – 1927 here: A History of Modern Pakistan #1 1857 – 1927

You can read post covering 1927- 1939 here: A History of Modern Pakistan #2 1927 – 1939

By 1939, the political relationship between the Muslim League and Congress had changed considerably. The 1937 elections had demonstrated the strength of Congress, but they had also given Jinnah an opportunity to argue that the Muslim League needed to become the political voice of Indian Muslims. The experience of Congress rule gave the League material with which to campaign among Muslims, while the failure of earlier constitutional negotiations had made Jinnah increasingly sceptical that Muslims could rely upon Congress to protect their political interests.

Then, in September 1939, Europe went to war.

1939 -1947

Second World War 1939

When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, India was automatically declared to be at war because it was part of the British Empire. The Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, made the declaration without consulting India’s elected political leaders.

Congress was furious.

Congress leaders had been demanding Indian self-government and argued that Britain could not ask Indians to fight for democracy and freedom overseas while denying those same principles to India. Congress offered to cooperate with the British war effort, but wanted a clear commitment towards Indian independence and a form of national government at the centre.

The British refused to make that commitment.

As a result, the Congress ministries that had been formed after the 1937 elections resigned from office in October and November 1939.

For Jinnah, this was a major political opportunity. He called upon Muslims to observe 22 December 1939 as a Day of Deliverance, celebrating the end of Congress provincial governments. It was not simply a celebration of the end of an election term. Jinnah was deliberately presenting the resignation of the Congress ministries as an opportunity for Muslims to reflect on what Congress rule had meant for them.

The Muslim League was now positioning itself as the political organisation that would protect Muslims from what it regarded as the danger of permanent Hindu-majority rule.

The political landscape had therefore changed again.

Congress was demanding independence.

The British were trying to win a world war.

The Muslim League was demanding that any future settlement must recognise Muslims as a distinct political community.

And then, in 1940, the movement for Pakistan took its most important step yet.

Khaskar Movement

At this point, it is worth stepping outside the two dominant political organisations of Congress and the Muslim League.

The Indian independence movement contained many other Muslim movements, and one of the most unusual was the Khaksar Tehrik, founded by Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi.

Mashriqi was an intellectual, mathematician and political thinker who believed that India needed deep social reform rather than simply a change of political rulers. His movement was based on discipline, self-reform, physical training, service to society and the idea that human beings should overcome the divisions created by wealth, caste, religion and social status.

The Khaksar movement was open to people of different religions and backgrounds. Its members wore a distinctive khaki uniform and carried a spade, or belcha, as a symbol of labour and service. The movement developed a highly disciplined and semi-military structure and eventually claimed millions of members. Contemporary claims of four million members exist, although the precise size of the movement is difficult to establish and should not be treated as a verified membership census.

Mashriqi was also strongly opposed to British rule, but he did not believe the answer was the partition of India. He wanted India to remain united and regarded British colonialism as the fundamental problem. In this respect, his political vision was very different from that of Jinnah, even though both were Muslims who opposed British domination.

The Khaksars became particularly active in Punjab. In March 1940, the Punjab authorities had placed restrictions on their activities and military-style parades. On 19 March, Khaksars defied the restrictions and marched in Lahore. A confrontation took place between the Khaksars and the police, during which police opened fire. Contemporary reports recorded 32 Khaksars and two policemen killed, with many others injured. Other accounts have claimed a substantially higher death toll, so the exact number remains disputed.

The timing was remarkable.

Only a few days later, Lahore would become the centre of another political movement that would change the history of South Asia.

The Lahore Resolution

On 23 March 1940, the All-India Muslim League held its annual session at Minto Park in Lahore.

Thousands gathered to hear Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

For years, Jinnah had demanded constitutional safeguards for Muslims. He had supported separate electorates, provincial autonomy and Muslim representation in the central legislature. He had repeatedly tried to find a constitutional formula that would allow Muslims to live within a united India while protecting them from permanent political domination by the majority.

But the political situation had changed.

In his Lahore address, Jinnah argued that Muslims were not simply a minority within India. They were a distinct nation with their own religion, culture, social system and historical traditions.

The Muslim League then passed what became known as the Lahore Resolution.

The resolution declared that no constitutional arrangement would be acceptable to Muslims unless the Muslim-majority areas in the north-western and eastern zones of India were grouped into “independent states” in which the constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign.

There is an important historical detail here.

The word Pakistan does not appear in the Lahore Resolution itself.

The resolution also referred to “states” in the plural, which has led historians to debate precisely what the League leadership intended in 1940. It was subsequently interpreted and developed into the demand for a single Pakistan, but the final form of the demand was not yet completely settled.

Nevertheless, the direction of the Muslim League had changed fundamentally.

The demand was no longer simply for Muslims to have additional seats in a united India.

The League was now arguing that Muslim-majority regions needed their own sovereign political arrangements.

The Lahore Resolution therefore became the foundation of what would later be called the Pakistan Resolution.

The British were now facing a much more difficult problem. They had spent decades presenting themselves as the power that held India together. They could not simply ignore a movement demanding that India be reorganised along communal and territorial lines.

But Britain was now fighting for its survival.

The Second World War would accelerate everything.

The Cripps Mission

By 1942, the war had reached a critical stage.

Japan had entered the war and rapidly conquered large areas of South-East Asia. British territories in Burma had fallen, Singapore had been captured and Japanese forces were moving towards India.

Britain desperately needed Indian support.

At the same time, the United States was putting pressure on Britain to move towards a political settlement with India.

The British Government therefore sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India in March 1942.

The Cripps Mission offered a major constitutional proposal. After the war, India would be given dominion status and allowed to frame its own constitution. Importantly, the proposal also recognised that provinces that did not wish to join the proposed Indian Union could choose a different constitutional arrangement.

This was significant for the Muslim League because it appeared to leave open the possibility that Muslim-majority areas could eventually separate.

But neither Congress nor the Muslim League accepted the proposal.

Congress wanted a much more immediate transfer of real power and objected to the continued British control during the war. The League, meanwhile, wanted the principle of Pakistan to be explicitly recognised rather than left as a possible consequence of provincial choice.

The mission therefore failed.

The failure demonstrated just how far apart the major political organisations had moved.

Congress wanted Britain to leave India.

The Muslim League wanted Britain to leave, but wanted the political future of Muslims settled before that happened.

The British were willing to promise constitutional change after the war, but they were not prepared to surrender control while the war was still being fought.

Quit India Movement

The failure of the Cripps Mission convinced Congress that negotiations were going nowhere.

In August 1942, Congress launched the Quit India Movement, demanding that Britain leave India immediately.

Gandhi called for the British to withdraw from India and declared that the struggle would continue until independence was achieved.

The British response was immediate.

Congress leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru and other senior figures, were arrested. The movement was suppressed, and Congress was effectively removed from active national politics for the remainder of the war.

This is an important point in understanding the period.

The Muslim League did not join the Quit India Movement.

Instead, it continued to operate legally and used the period to expand its political organisation and campaign for the Muslim demand. The British therefore increasingly dealt with the Muslim League as one of the principal political organisations through which Muslim opinion had to be considered.

The League did not become the government of India. That would be an exaggeration. But with Congress leadership imprisoned, the League had far greater political space to organise, recruit and present itself as the representative of Indian Muslims.

The next three years would be crucial.

1943 Bengal Famine

While Indian politicians were arguing over the future of the country, millions of ordinary Indians were suffering from one of the worst famines in modern South Asian history.

In 1943, Bengal experienced a catastrophic famine.

The death toll is disputed depending on the period and causes included in the calculation, but the famine killed millions of people. It was not simply a case of India suddenly running out of food.

The war had severely disrupted the economy.

Japan’s conquest of Burma cut off an important source of rice imports. The British authorities also implemented what became known as the denial policy in parts of eastern Bengal. Rice stocks were removed from areas considered vulnerable to a Japanese invasion, while thousands of boats were confiscated or destroyed because the British feared they could be used by a Japanese invading force.

The policies disrupted local transport and food markets at precisely the time when the population needed them most. Wartime inflation then caused food prices to rise dramatically, while many workers’ wages failed to keep pace. Hoarding, speculation, administrative failures and the prioritisation of wartime requirements all contributed to the disaster.

The British response to the famine remains one of the most controversial aspects of the period. Relief was eventually expanded, but many people had already died from starvation and disease.

The famine also exposed something fundamental about colonial government.

India was producing and moving resources within an empire fighting a global war, yet millions of Indians were unable to obtain enough food to survive.

For many Indians, this was another reminder that British rule ultimately served imperial priorities rather than the interests of the Indian population.

1944 Gandhi Jinnah Talks

By 1944, Gandhi had been released from prison, and he began negotiations with Jinnah.

Gandhi wanted to find a way of achieving independence while preserving a united India.

Jinnah had moved much further.

The Lahore Resolution had established the political direction of the Muslim League, and Jinnah now insisted that Muslims had to be recognised as a nation rather than simply a minority.

The two men met in Bombay in September 1944.

The talks failed.

Gandhi proposed that the question of Muslim-majority areas could be settled after independence through a plebiscite. Jinnah wanted the principle of Pakistan to be accepted first and wanted Muslims to negotiate from the position of a nation rather than as a minority within a single Indian nation.

The disagreement therefore went back to the question that had been developing since the 1920s.

Was India one nation containing different religious communities?

Or did Hindus and Muslims constitute two political nations that required separate political arrangements?

Neither side was prepared to accept the other’s fundamental premise.

Simla Conference 1945

By 1945, the Second World War was coming to an end.

Britain was exhausted financially and militarily. The cost of maintaining the British Empire had become increasingly difficult to justify, and the British Government knew that India could not be governed indefinitely in the old way.

Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India, therefore proposed a new arrangement for the central government.

The Wavell Plan proposed that the Viceroy’s Executive Council should be reconstituted so that almost all its members would be Indians. There would be equal representation for Muslims and caste Hindus, while other communities would also receive representation. The Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief would remain British, and defence would remain under British control until the final transfer of power.

1. Constitutional reforms would be introduced in India
2. The Viceroy’s Executive Council will include Hindus and Muslims as well as low-caste Hindus, Shudders, and Sikhs.
3. All the members of the Council, except the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief, would be Indians.
4. An Indian foreign affairs member
5. Defence of India was to be in the hands of a British authority till Power was transferred to the Indian hands
6. Viceroy consult both the League and Congress on who will be in the council

The Simla Conference was held in June and July 1945.

The central dispute quickly became the question of who had the right to nominate Muslim representatives.

Jinnah argued that the Muslim League was the sole representative of Indian Muslims and therefore should nominate all Muslim members of the Executive Council.

Congress disagreed.

Congress had Muslim members of its own, most prominently Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was himself Congress president. Congress therefore rejected the idea that the League could claim to speak for every Muslim in India. Nehru’s own contemporary explanation of the dispute makes clear that Congress objected to being prevented from nominating Muslims simply because the League claimed exclusive representation.

The conference failed.

The failure was significant because it demonstrated that the dispute was no longer simply between India and Britain.

Britain wanted to transfer power.

Congress wanted independence and a united India.

The Muslim League wanted recognition that it represented India’s Muslims and wanted Pakistan.

The question of who represented Muslims had itself become one of the major obstacles to creating a united Indian government

1945/1946 Elections

The next major test was the elections.

The elections of 1945 and 1946 were fought under the constitutional system created by the Government of India Act 1935.

Congress campaigned for Indian independence and a united India.

The Muslim League campaigned increasingly on the demand for Pakistan.

This time the result was dramatically different from 1937.

Congress remained the largest party overall, winning 923 of the 1,585 provincial seats. But the Muslim League won 429 of the 492 seats reserved for Muslims, capturing almost 90 percent of the Muslim-reserved seats. It also won all Muslim seats in the Central Legislative Assembly.

This was the election Jinnah needed.

The Muslim League could now make a much stronger claim to speak for Indian Muslims.

The election did not mean that every Muslim in India personally voted for Pakistan in a modern one-person, one-vote referendum. The electoral system was based on separate electorates and limited franchises. But politically, the result was extremely important.

In 1937, the Muslim League had struggled to establish itself as the dominant Muslim political organisation.

By 1946, it had won the overwhelming majority of Muslim-reserved seats.

The political argument had therefore changed.

Jinnah could now enter negotiations with Britain and Congress and say that the demand for Pakistan was not simply his personal idea.

The League had received a powerful electoral mandate from Muslim constituencies.

Delhi Resolution 1946

In April 1946, the Muslim League met in Delhi and formally sharpened its demand for Pakistan.

The League now called for a single sovereign Pakistan, rather than the possibility of several independent Muslim states.

The resolution demanded that the Muslim-majority areas of north-western India, including Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province, be constituted into a sovereign and independent state. It also called for separate constitution-making bodies for Pakistan and Hindustan.

Most importantly, it warned that Muslims would resist any attempt to impose a constitution based upon a united India without their agreement.

The political position had therefore moved a long way since the Simla Deputation of 1906.

In 1906, Muslims had asked for representation.

In 1927, Jinnah had been prepared to abandon separate electorates in exchange for constitutional safeguards.

In 1929, he had presented fourteen conditions for Muslim participation in a united India.

In 1930, Iqbal had spoken of a consolidated Muslim political unit in the north-west.

In 1940, the Muslim League had demanded independent Muslim-majority states.

By 1946, the League was demanding one sovereign Pakistan.

The journey was not the product of a single speech or a single event.

It had developed through decades of political negotiation, disagreement, compromise and failure.

1946 Cabinet Mission to India

The British Government now faced a difficult choice.

It could partition India.

Or it could attempt one final time to preserve a united India.

In March 1946, the British sent the Cabinet Mission, consisting of three senior British politicians, to negotiate a settlement.

The Mission’s proposal was an attempt to find a middle ground.

India would remain united, but the provinces would be grouped into three sections. One group would contain the largely Hindu-majority provinces in the centre and south. The other two groups would contain the Muslim-majority provinces in the north-west and north-east.

The central government would have only limited powers, principally defence, foreign affairs and communications. Most other powers would remain with the provinces.

For the Muslim League, this was attractive because the Muslim-majority groups would have substantial autonomy while remaining formally within a united India.

The League therefore accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan.

Congress also initially accepted the plan, but serious disagreement remained over how much authority the central government would ultimately possess and whether provinces could be compelled to remain within the proposed groups.

On 10 July 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru stated that Congress had agreed to participate in the Constituent Assembly but was not bound by the compulsory grouping arrangements in the way the League understood them.

Jinnah interpreted this as a rejection of the central bargain.

The Cabinet Mission settlement began to collapse.

This was perhaps the last major opportunity for a united India under a federal arrangement that gave the Muslim-majority regions substantial autonomy.

It failed.

The consequences were enormous.

After the Cabinet Mission broke down, Jinnah held a press conference at his home in Bombay. He proclaimed that the Muslim league was “preparing to launch a struggle” and that they “have chalked out a plan”. He said that if the Muslims were not granted a separate Pakistan, then they would launch “direct action”. Jinnah proclaimed 16 August 1946 “Direct Action Day”

Direct Action Day 1946

After the Cabinet Mission Plan began to collapse, Jinnah announced that the Muslim League would launch Direct Action to achieve Pakistan.

16 August 1946 was declared Direct Action Day.

The League initially presented it as a mass political demonstration designed to show Muslim strength and determination.

In Calcutta, however, the day descended into horrific communal violence.

Over the following days, Hindus and Muslims were killed in large numbers. The violence then spread beyond Bengal and contributed to a wider breakdown of communal relations in several parts of India.

The killings were not a simple one-sided event. Muslims killed Hindus, Hindus killed Muslims, and later violence spread through other regions. The scale of the violence convinced many political leaders that a peaceful transfer of power within a single India was becoming increasingly difficult.

The political debate had now moved beyond constitutional negotiations.

India was approaching the point where the question would be settled not merely by speeches and conferences, but by the reality of whether different communities could continue living together under one central government.

India’s last viceroy

In February 1947, the British Government announced that it intended to transfer power in India no later than June 1948.

A new Viceroy was appointed.

Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived in India in March 1947 with the task of overseeing the transfer of power.

The original British preference was still to avoid partition if possible. The Cabinet Mission framework had been an attempt to achieve this. But by 1947, the political situation had deteriorated dramatically.

Communal violence was spreading, Congress and the Muslim League remained deeply divided and the British Government wanted to leave India quickly.

Mountbatten initially explored whether some form of united India could still be preserved, but the political reality increasingly pointed towards partition.

Congress leaders eventually accepted partition.

For Congress, partition was a bitter price to pay for obtaining independence and avoiding what they feared could become a prolonged civil war.

For Jinnah and the Muslim League, partition had become the means through which Muslims could obtain their own sovereign state.

The British now moved rapidly.

In early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948.

3^rd June Plan 1947

On 3 June 1947, Mountbatten announced the plan for the partition of British India.

The British Parliament then passed the Indian Independence Act 1947. The Act provided for the creation of two independent Dominions, India and Pakistan, from 15 August 1947.

The plan was more complicated than simply drawing a line between Muslim and Hindu areas.

Punjab and Bengal were divided because their populations were religiously mixed.

The Punjab Legislative Assembly voted to divide the province, with the western part becoming part of Pakistan and the eastern part joining India.

Bengal was similarly divided.

Sindh’s legislature voted to join Pakistan.

The North-West Frontier Province was dealt with through a referendum, in which voters were asked whether the province should join Pakistan or India.

In Assam, the predominantly Muslim Sylhet district held a referendum that resulted in most of the district joining East Bengal, although the Karimganj area remained in India.

Balochistan’s political institutions also voted for accession to Pakistan.

The princely states were a separate issue. British paramountcy over them was ending, meaning that the British relationship with the princes would no longer continue. The rulers were encouraged to accede to either India or Pakistan, taking geographical considerations and the interests of their populations into account. The situation of the princely states would subsequently become one of the most difficult issues facing both new countries.

The British plan therefore created two new dominions, but it did not produce neat religious boundaries.

Millions of people would find themselves on the “wrong” side of the new borders.

The following was agreed:

• Principle of the partition of British India was accepted by the British Government
• Successor governments would be given dominion status
• Autonomy and sovereignty to both countries
• Can make their own constitution
• Princely States were given the right to join either India or Pakistan (Princely states had no option to remain independent)
• Based on two major factors: Geographical contiguity and the people’s wishes.

New Pakistan

The new Dominion of Pakistan came into existence in August 1947.

Pakistan’s Independence Day is observed on 14 August, while the Indian Independence Act legally designated 15 August as the appointed day for the two new dominions. Pakistan held its formal transfer-of-power ceremonies in Karachi on 14 August, and Jinnah was sworn in as the country’s first Governor-General. India formally became independent on 15 August.

Pakistan was born with two geographically separate wings.

West Pakistan consisted of the western Muslim-majority territories, while East Bengal formed the eastern wing of Pakistan.

The two parts were separated by more than a thousand miles of Indian territory.

This created a country that was united primarily by the political idea behind Pakistan rather than by geographical continuity.

Pakistan also inherited a huge administrative problem.

The new state had to establish a government almost from nothing. Civil servants, military personnel, financial assets, records, offices, railways and other institutions had to be divided between the two new countries.

At the same time, perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis in modern South Asian history was unfolding.

Partition triggered one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. Millions of Muslims moved towards Pakistan, while millions of Hindus and Sikhs moved towards India. The estimates vary, but around 14 to 18 million people were displaced.

And this movement was not peaceful.

Communal violence spread across Punjab, Bengal, Delhi and other areas. Trains arrived at stations carrying refugees and, in some cases, the bodies of those who had been killed on the journey. Families were separated, homes were abandoned and communities that had lived alongside one another for generations were suddenly uprooted.

Punjab suffered particularly badly.

The province had a near-even balance between Muslims and non-Muslims in many areas, but the distribution was not uniform. The western districts were predominantly Muslim while the eastern districts contained large Hindu and Sikh populations.

When Punjab was divided, millions suddenly found themselves living on the side of the border that they believed was no longer safe for them.

The result was a brutal exchange of populations.

Muslims fled east Punjab for Pakistan.

Hindus and Sikhs fled west Punjab for India.

The violence was committed by people on all sides, and the suffering was enormous.

Pakistan therefore began its life not in peace, but amid one of the largest refugee crises in modern history.

Jinnah’s government immediately faced the task of establishing the machinery of the new state while simultaneously providing shelter, food, employment and security for millions of refugees.

But there was another issue that would define Pakistan almost from the moment of its creation.

Kashmir.

About 18 million people migrated to either side. Other assets that were divided included the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Indian Air Force, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury.

The partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947. At this point Pakistan meant state for the Muslims. It was not a state based on border, ethnicities or culture. As India took the majority of central lands, Pakistan was split in two, East and West Pakistan.

Later in the years as the Muslim state is established, culture and ethnicity start to come in, and this is where West Pakistan becomes Pakistan, a nationalistic country for people of the region and East Pakistan becomes Bangladesh, again based on a different culture and ethnicity.

In terms of Punjab, the province had about 50:50 ration of Muslims and Hindus. Neither country would allow the other to take it all. So, Punjab was split, with the Muslim majority west becoming part of Pakistan and Hindu Sikh majority east becoming part of India. This meant Hindus in Pakistan Punjab would need to migrate and likewise Muslims in India Punjab. Unfortunately, this was a bloody ordeal with torture on both sides.

As the first Governor-General of Pakistan, Jinnah worked to establish the new nation’s government and policies, and to aid the millions of Muslim migrants who had emigrated from neighbouring India to Pakistan.

Kashmir

After the British won the Anglo-Sikh war in 1845, they retained Kashmir and captured Jammu. Instead of taking direct rule, the British created a new princely state (the largest in India) called Jammu and Kashmir. Ghulab Singh who was the former Raja of Jammu paid indemnity for the new state and because the new Maharaja. The Princely states had service to the crown where the crown would manage the defence, external affairs, and communications for the princely state and station a British official to oversee the internal administration.

Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim majority state with a Hindu maharaja. The Muslim suffered high taxes and had few opportunities for growth and advancement. This continued for the next 100 years.

As British rule in India came to an end in 1947, so did paramountcy over the princely states. The states were left to choose whether to join India or Pakistan or to remain independent. At the time, Jammu and Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu, Maharaja Hari Singh. And since it was a princely state, it had its own level of sovereignty, India or Pakistan could not just claim it.

Hari was advised by his administration to become an independent state because if he joined India, the Muslims would revolt and if he joined Pakistan, Hindu and Sikh subjects would become vulnerable. Jinnah and the Muslim league made various efforts to persuade the Maharaja of Kashmir to join Pakistan.

As Muslims and Hindus fought elsewhere in Pakistan, local Hindus stirred up violence in Jammu, prompting the Hindu Dogra troops to massacre Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. This instigated Muslims in Pakistan to stand alongside Muslim Kashmiris. Pakistan blockaded supplies reaching the state. The Maharaja looked for support from the Indians and thus leaned towards joining India. On 24 October, they formed a provisional Azad Kashmir (free Kashmir) government.

India required the Maharaja to accede to India before it could send troops. Accordingly, the Maharaja signed an instrument of accession on 26 October 1947, which was accepted by the Governor General the next day. While the Government of India accepted the accession, it added the proviso that it would be submitted to a “reference to the people” after the state is cleared of the invaders, since “only the people, not the Maharaja, could decide where Kashmiris wanted to live.”; it was a provisional accession.

The Indians supported the Maharaja with resources and an army, placing the Pakistanis and Indians at a holt. The UN was called for a resolution. In April 1948, the measure called for an immediate cease-fire and called on Pakistan ‘to secure the withdrawal from the state of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the state for the purpose of fighting.’ It asked ‘India to reduce its forces to minimum strength, after which the circumstances for holding a plebiscite should be put into effect on the question of Accession of the state to India or Pakistan.’

The UN also created a temporary line of control so that the ceasefire could take place. This line of control instead became the new borders for Azad Kashmiri and Jammu and Kashmir. Both countries did not ceasefire till Jan 1949 and the Indians delayed any form of vote or plebiscite citing many reason like sovereignty and for purposes of defence.

Since then there has been ongoing conflict.

To understand the Kashmir dispute, we need to go back before 1947.

Following the First Anglo-Sikh War, the British defeated the Sikh Empire in 1846. Rather than taking Jammu and Kashmir under direct British administration, they transferred the territory to Gulab Singh under the Treaty of Amritsar.

Gulab Singh became the Maharaja of the new princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.

For the next century, Jammu and Kashmir remained a princely state under British paramountcy. The Maharaja controlled its internal administration, while the British retained overarching authority over matters such as defence and external relations.

The population of the state was majority Muslim, but the ruling Dogra dynasty was Hindu.

This created a difficult political situation.

Muslims formed the majority of the population, particularly in the Kashmir Valley, but political power remained in the hands of the Maharaja and his administration.

By 1947, the ruler was Maharaja Hari Singh.

When British paramountcy ended, Jammu and Kashmir was not automatically transferred to either India or Pakistan.

Hari Singh initially wanted to remain independent.

This was understandable from his perspective. Joining Pakistan could create difficulties with his Hindu and Sikh subjects, while joining India could provoke opposition among the Muslim majority.

Pakistan, however, believed that Kashmir should join Pakistan because of its Muslim majority, its geographical links to Pakistan and its economic connections with the areas that had become Pakistan.

The situation deteriorated rapidly.

Communal violence had already begun in Jammu, and large numbers of Muslims were killed or displaced. The exact scale and circumstances remain heavily contested, but the violence was severe and contributed to the wider uprising against Dogra rule.

At the same time, armed tribesmen from Pakistan’s frontier areas entered Kashmir in October 1947.

The Maharaja requested military assistance from India.

India’s position was that it could not send troops without a formal accession.

Hari Singh signed an Instrument of Accession to India on 26 October 1947, and the Indian Governor-General, Lord Mountbatten, accepted it on 27 October.

The accession became the foundation of India’s legal claim over Jammu and Kashmir.

However, Mountbatten’s acceptance was accompanied by the position that, once peace and order had been restored, the question of the state’s final accession should be settled by reference to the wishes of its people.

India then sent troops into Kashmir.

Pakistan supported forces fighting on the other side.

The first India-Pakistan war had begun.

Kashmir and the United Nations

The conflict eventually reached the United Nations.

In April 1948, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 47, which dealt with the restoration of peace and order in Jammu and Kashmir and proposed a process leading towards a plebiscite on the question of accession.

The proposed process involved the withdrawal of Pakistani tribesmen and other non-resident forces, followed by a reduction of Indian forces and the creation of conditions for a free and impartial plebiscite.

The details of the proposed sequence became the subject of continuing disagreement between India and Pakistan.

The ceasefire eventually came into effect on 1 January 1949.

A ceasefire line was established between the territories controlled by India and Pakistan. It was not originally the modern Line of Control. The term Line of Control came much later, following the 1972 Simla Agreement. The 1949 arrangement was known as the ceasefire line.

The promised plebiscite was never held.

India and Pakistan continued to disagree over the conditions that would have to be fulfilled before one could take place, including the withdrawal and disposition of forces.

Kashmir therefore remained divided between areas administered by India and areas administered by Pakistan, while both countries continued to claim the whole territory.

The dispute would lead to further wars, military confrontations and decades of political instability.

For Pakistan, Kashmir was not simply another territorial dispute.

It was deeply connected to the reason for which Pakistan had been created.

The new country had been established as a homeland for Muslims in the Muslim-majority regions of British India. Kashmir was a Muslim-majority territory immediately adjacent to Pakistan, yet it had acceded to India.

The question of Kashmir would therefore become embedded in Pakistan’s national identity, its foreign policy, its military strategy and its relationship with India.

And this brings us to the end of the first chapter of Pakistan’s history.

The movement that began with the political consequences of the 1857 uprising had passed through educational reform, religious revival, constitutional politics, Hindu-Muslim cooperation, political disagreement, Muslim representation, the demand for autonomy and finally the demand for a separate state.

Pakistan had been created.

But creating Pakistan and building Pakistan were two very different things.

The new country had no established constitutional system of its own, millions of refugees to settle, a divided geography, an unresolved Kashmir conflict, disputes over financial and military assets, and a population that had never previously lived under a state called Pakistan.

The next chapter therefore begins with a completely different question.

Now that Pakistan existed, what kind of country was it going to become?