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

You can read post covering 1939 – 1947 here: A History of Modern Pakistan #3 1939 – 1947

1947 – 1953

August 1947

In August 1947, India and Pakistan became independent dominions within the British Commonwealth of Nations, ending almost two centuries of expanding British power over the Indian subcontinent. King George VI remained the constitutional head of state, but his powers in each new dominion were exercised through its own Governor-General. In Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah became the first Governor-General, while Liaquat Ali Khan became the country’s first Prime Minister.

It is important to remember what Pakistan actually looked like at independence. Pakistan was not simply the territory that would eventually become the modern country. The new state consisted of two geographically separate regions, West Pakistan and East Bengal, separated by more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Pakistan had been created from the Muslim-majority areas of British India, but these areas were not culturally or ethnically uniform. Punjabis, Sindhis, Pashtuns, Baloch, Bengalis and many other communities were now being asked to build a single country around a shared political and religious identity.

This was the great experiment of Pakistan. The Muslim League had spent decades arguing that Indian Muslims constituted a distinct political nation, but now that argument had to be translated into an actual state. Pakistan was no longer an idea being discussed in political meetings. It had borders, a government, a treasury, an army, refugees, international relations and millions of people expecting their new leaders to make the country work.

Remember Pakistan was the land of the Muslims. It covered both the western region of India and the Bengal region.

Jinnah as Governor-General

The role of a Governor General was akin to a President of a republic, but Jinnah did more than that. As the first GG, he was on a mission to build Pakistan. Liaqat Ali Khan was chosen (non-elected) as the first Prime Minister.

The majority of Pakistan was never part of the core of the British Indian or Mughal empire, as a result the infrastructure of the country was poor, along with:

• No administrative structure
• No one to run a government/the country or a civil service
• No building to conduct meetings
• No banking system
• No economic model or plan
• No established industries
• Very few existing industrial sites
• No international relations
• No medical facilities and other institutions

The constitution was loosely based on the 1935 agreement and needed to be rewritten to reflect Pakistan values. So, Jinnah was tasked to establish the foundations of Pakistan. Jinnah envisioned for Pakistan an Islamic state with an Islamic finance model. This was no way an easy task, especially with the immediate problems of immigration and new refugees. This was Jinnah’s first priority alongside uniting and guiding the new state (provinces) based on ‘Unity, Faith and Discipline’. During this period, Jinnah famously was paid 1 rupee as a salary.

Jinnah’s position was formally that of Governor-General, broadly comparable to the constitutional head of state in a dominion, but his influence was considerably greater than that description suggests. Pakistan was a new country with virtually every major institution still needing to be established, and Jinnah took an active role in the early administration of the state. Liaquat Ali Khan, his closest political associate and one of the leading figures of the Pakistan Movement, became Prime Minister and was responsible for much of the day-to-day running of government.

The scale of the challenge was enormous. Pakistan had inherited parts of the administrative machinery of British India, but it did not inherit an established state ready to operate smoothly from day one. The new government had to establish ministries, departments, diplomatic missions, financial institutions and administrative structures, while finding buildings in which government could actually operate and recruiting officials to run them. Pakistan also had to establish its own currency and banking arrangements, develop industries, organise trade, build medical and educational institutions and create relationships with other sovereign states, all while millions of refugees were arriving from India.

The economic inheritance was particularly difficult. Much of the industrial and commercial infrastructure of British India was concentrated in areas that became India, while Pakistan inherited a largely agricultural economy. West Pakistan had major agricultural potential, particularly through the irrigation system of Punjab and Sindh, but relatively little large-scale industry. East Bengal had its own economic importance, particularly through jute, but was geographically separated from the western wing and heavily dependent on trade routes that now crossed an international border.

Pakistan therefore began with a paradox. It had been created partly because Muslims believed they needed political power in order to control their own future, yet the new country initially lacked many of the institutions and resources required to exercise that power effectively.

Jinnah’s immediate priorities were therefore to establish authority, maintain unity between the provinces, settle refugees and create the foundations of a functioning state. His message of “Unity, Faith and Discipline” became associated with this early period because Pakistan needed all three if it was to survive its extraordinarily difficult beginning.

Jinnah’s health, however, was already deteriorating. He had been suffering from tuberculosis and lung disease for years, and the immense workload of establishing the new state placed further strain on him. Although he would remain Pakistan’s dominant political figure during its first year, he would not live long enough to see the constitutional and political system he had helped create properly established.

Accession of States

The partition of British India created another major problem. British India had consisted not only of territories directly governed by the British but also hundreds of princely states ruled by Indian princes under British paramountcy. When British paramountcy ended, these rulers no longer had their previous relationship with the Crown.

The situation was more complicated than simply giving every ruler a free choice between India, Pakistan and independence. The British Government made clear that the princely states would no longer have the old relationship with Britain and were expected to accede to one of the two new dominions, with geographical contiguity and the interests of their populations important considerations. Most of the smaller states eventually acceded without creating a major crisis, but several larger states became extremely contentious.

Punjab and Bengal were different because they were British Indian provinces rather than princely states. Their populations were religiously mixed, and neither side could simply claim the entire province without leaving millions of people on the other side. Boundary commissions were therefore established under Sir Cyril Radcliffe to determine the new borders. The Radcliffe Award was announced only after independence, meaning that millions of people did not even know which country their homes would belong to when Pakistan and India became independent.

This uncertainty contributed to the chaos that followed partition.

Kashmir became the most serious dispute of all. The state was Muslim-majority but ruled by the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. Hari Singh initially wanted to remain independent, hoping to avoid the consequences of joining either India or Pakistan, but the situation rapidly deteriorated after armed tribesmen entered the state from the direction of Pakistan and fighting broke out. Hari Singh then signed an Instrument of Accession to India, which India accepted, and Indian troops were subsequently sent into Kashmir.

Pakistan disputed the circumstances and consequences of the accession, and the first India-Pakistan war followed. The conflict eventually produced a ceasefire on 1 January 1949 and left the territory divided between areas administered by India and Pakistan. What was established at the time was a ceasefire line, not the modern Line of Control, which would only receive that name following the 1972 Simla Agreement. Kashmir had therefore become the first major unresolved dispute between the two new states, and it would remain one of the defining issues of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

The other major princely-state disputes demonstrated why Kashmir could not be treated in isolation. Junagadh was almost the mirror image of Kashmir. It had a Muslim ruler, Nawab Muhammad Mahabat Khan III, but a population that was overwhelmingly Hindu. The ruler decided to accede to Pakistan, despite the state’s geographical position within India. India rejected the accession, intervened militarily and subsequently organised a referendum in which the population overwhelmingly voted to join India.

Hyderabad presented another difficult case. It was one of the largest and wealthiest princely states, ruled by the Muslim Nizam Osman Ali Khan, while the majority of its population was Hindu. Unlike Junagadh, Hyderabad was geographically surrounded by India and had no land corridor to Pakistan. The Nizam initially sought independence rather than accession to either dominion, but India eventually launched a military operation in September 1948 and incorporated Hyderabad into the Indian Union.

These disputes demonstrated an important reality of partition. Creating Pakistan had not solved the question of where the new borders of South Asia should be. In some places, the political wishes of rulers, the wishes of populations, religious demographics and geographical realities all pointed in different directions.

Liaqat Ali Khan as PM

Liaquat Ali Khan became the first Prime Minister of Pakistan and was arguably the most important political figure in the country after Jinnah. He had been one of Jinnah’s closest colleagues during the Pakistan Movement and had played a major role in turning the Muslim League from a political organisation into the movement that eventually secured Pakistan.

Liaquat now had the considerably harder task of governing the country that the League had fought to create. Pakistan needed to establish a functioning administration, settle refugees, manage its relationship with India and create an economy capable of supporting an independent state. At the same time, the government had to decide what kind of political system Pakistan would actually have.

The international situation made the task even more complicated. The Second World War had ended only two years earlier and the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union was rapidly deteriorating into the Cold War. Pakistan therefore emerged into a world where the major powers were already competing for influence. Within Pakistan itself, political opinion was far from uniform. There were socialists, communists, conservatives, religious scholars, secular nationalists and regional political movements, particularly in East Bengal.

Pakistan had been created around the Muslim political identity, but that did not mean everyone agreed about what an Islamic Pakistan should actually look like.

That question would become one of the most important political debates of the country’s early history.

Sir Malik Ghulam Muhammad as Finance Minister

Sir Ghulam Muhammad became Pakistan’s first Finance Minister and was given the enormous task of establishing the financial foundations of the new country. Pakistan had inherited an overwhelmingly agricultural economy and relatively little industrial infrastructure, while the sudden disruption caused by partition had damaged trade, transport and production.

The government therefore had to begin constructing the economic machinery of a modern state. One of the most important developments was the establishment of the State Bank of Pakistan, which began operations on 1 July 1948. Pakistan could now exercise monetary authority through its own central bank rather than relying upon the financial institutions of British India.

The government also began thinking about long-term economic development. Pakistan needed roads, power, industry, irrigation, education, healthcare and transport, but it had limited resources with which to fund all of them. The challenge was therefore not simply to write an economic plan. The government first had to create the institutions that could collect revenue, manage expenditure and direct investment.

The country’s economic problems were made worse by the division of assets between India and Pakistan. The two new states had to divide financial reserves, military equipment, government buildings, railway assets and other resources that had previously belonged to British India.

For a country that had existed for only months, Pakistan was already having to operate as a full sovereign state.

Water Canal problem

One of the first major confrontations with India concerned something more basic than money or territory.

Water.

The irrigation system of Punjab had been constructed as one interconnected system under British rule. After partition, the headworks controlling canals supplying areas of West Punjab were left on the Indian side of the new border. On 1 April 1948, India temporarily stopped the flow of water into several canals supplying Pakistan.

This was an extremely serious matter because agriculture in Pakistan’s Punjab depended heavily on irrigation. Without the water, crops could be threatened and the economic consequences could have been severe.

An agreement was eventually reached in May 1948 to restore the water supply while negotiations continued. The immediate crisis was therefore avoided, but the dispute demonstrated how partition had divided systems that had previously operated as a single unit.

The problem did not disappear. Water became one of the most important long-term disputes between India and Pakistan, eventually leading to the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960.

For Pakistan, the 1948 crisis also reinforced a growing fear that India, because of its greater size and resources, could use its geographical and economic advantages to put pressure on the new state.

Jinnah Dies

Pakistan had barely begun to establish itself when its most important political figure died.

On 11 September 1948, Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in Karachi after years of serious illness. He had been Governor-General for just over a year.

His death was a profound blow to the new country. Jinnah had been the one figure capable of commanding the respect of the different political factions within the Muslim League and the provinces of Pakistan. He had provided the movement with a clear political direction before independence and had then become the central authority holding the new state together.

His death also meant that Pakistan lost the person who had been most closely associated with its founding vision before that vision had been fully translated into a constitutional system.

The comparison with India is significant. Jawaharlal Nehru would remain India’s Prime Minister for the next 17 years and therefore had considerably more time to shape India’s political institutions, foreign policy and economic direction. Pakistan did not have that continuity.

Jinnah became known throughout Pakistan as Quaid-e-Azam, meaning “Great Leader”, and Baba-e-Qaum, “Father of the Nation”. His image would become central to the national identity of Pakistan, but the political system he left behind was still unfinished.

Constitutional Crisis

The death of Jinnah brought an increasingly important question to the centre of Pakistani politics.

What exactly should an Islamic state look like?

Pakistan had been created through a movement based upon Muslim political identity, but the Muslim League had never produced one universally accepted model for the constitution of the new country. Some wanted Pakistan to develop as an explicitly Islamic state whose laws and institutions would be based upon the Qur’an and Sunnah. Others wanted a democratic state in which Islam would provide the moral and cultural foundation but the constitution would operate through modern parliamentary institutions and protect the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Liaquat Ali Khan attempted to establish a constitutional middle ground through the Objectives Resolution of 1949.

The Resolution declared that sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty and that the authority exercised by the people within the limits prescribed by Him was a sacred trust. It also committed the future constitution to democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as understood within Islam, while explicitly providing safeguards for minorities and fundamental rights.

Some of the main features were:

• Sovereignty belongs to Allah
• Laws based on Quran and Sunnah
• Federal system
• Democratic state
• Freedoms and rights established
• Minority rights
• Independent judiciary

The Objectives Resolution therefore became one of the foundational documents of Pakistan’s constitutional history.

It did not itself create the final constitution. Instead, it established the principles around which the future constitution would be developed.

This compromise would remain at the heart of Pakistan’s political debate for decades. Was Pakistan supposed to be a modern parliamentary democracy inspired by Islam, or was it supposed to become a state whose laws were directly derived from Islamic principles? The answer was not universally agreed, and the debate would continue long after the first constitution was eventually written.

Nazimuddin as Governor General

After Jinnah’s death, Khawaja Nazimuddin became Governor-General.

Nazimuddin was a Bengali Muslim from East Bengal and had been an important figure in the Pakistan Movement. He had served as the first Chief Minister of East Bengal after independence and therefore represented an important connection between the country’s two wings.

His appointment was also significant because it demonstrated that the leadership of Pakistan was not confined to West Pakistan. East Bengal contained the largest population of Pakistan, and Bengali political representation would become increasingly important as the new state developed.

During Nazimuddin’s period as Governor-General, the Constituent Assembly continued the difficult process of preparing a permanent constitution. Pakistan was still technically a dominion within the British Commonwealth, operating largely under an adapted version of the Government of India Act 1935. The ultimate aim was to replace this inherited framework with a constitution designed specifically for Pakistan.

The problem was that even the basic principles of that constitution remained contested.

Liaqat Ali Khan Assassinated

Pakistan suffered another devastating political shock in October 1951.

On 16 October, Liaquat Ali Khan was addressing a public meeting in Rawalpindi when he was shot by an assassin, Saad Akbar Babrak. Liaquat was rushed for medical treatment but died from his wounds.

The assassin was immediately killed by a police officer, meaning that he could never be properly interrogated in court. His motive and whether anyone else had organised or supported the assassination therefore remained the subject of speculation.

Liaquat Ali Khan was given the title Shaheed-e-Millat, meaning “Martyr of the Nation”.

His assassination removed another of the men who had been central to the creation of Pakistan. Within only four years, the country had lost both Jinnah and Liaquat, the two leading figures who had carried the Pakistan Movement from political campaign to independent state.

The loss of this leadership created a vacuum at precisely the time when Pakistan was still trying to establish its constitutional and political institutions.

Nazimuddin as Prime Minister and Malik Ghulam Muhammad as Governor-General

After Liaquat’s assassination, Khawaja Nazimuddin moved from the Governor-General’s office to become Prime Minister.

Ghulam Muhammad, who had previously served as Finance Minister, became Governor-General.

This arrangement placed two powerful men at the centre of the state, but the political balance was changing. The Governor-General was not merely a ceremonial figure, and Pakistan’s parliamentary institutions had not yet developed the conventions that would clearly define the limits of each office.

The country was therefore moving into a period in which unelected officials, civil servants and governors-general could exercise considerable political influence.

This would become one of the defining features of Pakistan’s early constitutional crisis.

Civil Unrest in 1953

By 1953, Pakistan was facing serious political and economic problems.

The early optimism surrounding independence had given way to shortages, inflation and pressure on government finances. Agricultural production had also been affected by poor harvests and floods, while the country was still struggling to build sufficient industrial capacity and infrastructure.

At the same time, a major religious and political movement had developed around the status of the Ahmadiyya community.

Religious parties and activists demanded that Ahmadis be declared non-Muslims and that Sir Zafarullah Khan, an Ahmadi who was serving as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, be removed from office. The movement became particularly strong in Punjab, where the Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam, the Jamaat-e-Islami and other religious groups mobilised public opposition, although the organisations involved differed in their positions and methods.

The agitation eventually developed into serious violence in Lahore in March 1953. The government lost control of parts of the city and the authorities imposed martial law.

The Lahore disturbances became a major turning point in Pakistan’s early history because the Munir Commission, established afterwards to investigate the disturbances, examined the question of what constituted a Muslim and whether the state could enforce one theological definition of Islam without creating further division. The Commission’s findings became one of the most important documents in the later debate over religion and the state in Pakistan.

The crisis also demonstrated the growing power of religious political mobilisation and the difficulty faced by a government trying to define Pakistan’s Islamic identity while simultaneously maintaining law and order and protecting political minorities.

The constitutional crisis was not confined to West Pakistan either.

East Bengal had its own growing political tensions. Bengali speakers formed the majority of Pakistan’s population, yet Urdu had been promoted by Jinnah and the central government as the principal national language. Jinnah had famously declared in 1948 that Urdu, and Urdu alone, would be the state language of Pakistan, which was deeply unpopular among many Bengalis who wanted Bengali to receive equal recognition.

The language dispute was not merely about vocabulary. For Bengalis, language was tied to their history, literature and cultural identity, and there was growing concern that the political leadership in West Pakistan would dominate the country’s institutions despite East Bengal containing the majority of Pakistan’s population.

These tensions would erupt into the Bengali Language Movement, particularly in 1952, when students protesting for recognition of Bengali as a state language were killed by police in Dhaka.

By 1953, therefore, Pakistan was facing several problems simultaneously. The country had lost both Jinnah and Liaquat, its constitutional system was still incomplete, religious politics had produced serious civil unrest, East Bengal was demanding recognition of its linguistic identity, and the relationship between elected politicians and the bureaucracy was becoming increasingly strained.

In April 1953, Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad dismissed Prime Minister Nazimuddin despite Nazimuddin retaining the confidence of the Constituent Assembly. Muhammad Ali Bogra, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, was brought back to Pakistan and appointed Prime Minister.

This was more than a change of government.

It demonstrated that Pakistan’s political system had a fundamental weakness. The country had been created as a parliamentary democracy, but the institutions that were supposed to govern it had not yet become strong enough to prevent unelected state officials from removing an elected Prime Minister.

Pakistan had been independent for only six years.

Already, the struggle was no longer simply about creating Pakistan.

It was becoming a struggle over who would control Pakistan.

And that question would dominate the next stage of the country’s history.