Explain how the demand for Pakistan was formalized gradually.
1. On 23rd March 1940, Muslim League passed a resolution demanding limited autonomy for Muslim-dominated areas of the sub-continent. But there was no mention of partition or Pakistan in this resolution. On contrary to it, Sikandar Hayat Khan, Prime Minister of Punjab and leader of the Unionist Party, who had drafted the 1940 resolution, declared in Punjab Assembly speech on 1 March 1941 that ‘‘Muslim Raj here and Hindu Raj elsewhere ” 2. Some people believe that the demand for the creation of Pakistan could be traced back to the Urdu poet Mohammad Iqbal. During his presidential speech to the Muslim League in 1930, he stressed the need for a ‘North West Indian Muslim State’. But in this address, he was not stressing the creation of a new country” but was stressing on an autonomous unit of Muslim-dominated areas in North-Western India. This unit must have been structured in the Indian federation.3.It took only seven years between the raising of demand of Pakistan and actual partition of the country. No one was aware of the meaning of the creation of Pakistan or how it might shape the lives of people in the future. Many people who migrated from their homelands in 1947 thought that when peace prevailed again then they would return to their homelands.
