Lahore Resolution
A. K. Fazlul Huq moves the Lahore Resolution at the Muslim League’s Lahore session
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The document later treated as Pakistan’s founding political charter never uses the word “Pakistan” — and its pivotal phrase is plural: “independent states.”
Moved on the 23rd, passed on the 24th
At the All-India Muslim League's open session at Minto Park, Lahore, the Bengal premier A. K. Fazlul Huq formally moved the resolution on 23 March 1940. Choudhury Khaliquzzaman seconded it and other provincial leaders spoke in support.
Debate ran into 24 March, when the session unanimously adopted it. Pakistan commemorates the 23rd, but documentary histories and Banglapedia distinguish the day it was introduced from the day it passed.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah presided over the three-day session, arguing that India's Muslims constituted a nation rather than a minority.
What the text actually said
The resolution rejected the federal scheme of the Government of India Act 1935 and declared that no constitutional plan would be acceptable unless Muslim-majority areas in India's northwestern and eastern zones were grouped into 'independent states,' whose constituent units would be autonomous and sovereign.
It required constitutional safeguards for minorities both inside the proposed units and elsewhere in India — religious, cultural, economic, political and administrative.
It authorized the League Working Committee to prepare a scheme under which the regions would ultimately assume defence, external affairs, communications and customs.
Whose draft, and whose plural
Authorship is contested. Punjab premier Sikandar Hayat Khan said he prepared an original draft that the Working Committee radically altered, removing its provisions for a coordinating centre; Fazlul Huq, Abdullah Haroon and others also made claims, and the record shows substantial committee redrafting.
Newspapers quickly called it the 'Pakistan Resolution' even though the name appears nowhere in the text.
The relationship between plural 'independent states' and their 'autonomous and sovereign' units was left ambiguous; a 1946 League convention used the singular 'state,' sharpening the later dispute over what 1940 had meant.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 4 sources not yet audited Date disputed
How this was checked
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Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.
What the sources leave uncertain
- Pakistan commemorates 23 March, and many summaries call that the adoption date. Documentary histories and Banglapedia distinguish between Huq moving the resolution on 23 March and the session finally passing it on 24 March.
- Authorship is contested. Sikandar Hayat Khan claimed the original draft, while Fazlul Huq, Abdullah Haroon and others also made claims or supplied proposals; the surviving account indicates substantial committee redrafting.
- The plural “independent states” and the relationship between those states and their “autonomous and sovereign” constituent units were ambiguous. A 1946 League convention used the singular “state,” intensifying later debate about what the 1940 text meant.