Dominion of Pakistan

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Pakistan
پاکستان (
Urdu)
পাকিস্তান (Bengali)
1947–1956[1]
Anthem: 
Monarch 
• 1947–1952
George VI
• 1952–1956
Elizabeth II
Iskander Mirza
Chaudhry Mohammad Ali
LegislatureConstituent Assembly
History 
14 August 1947[2]
23 March 1956
Area
• Total
1,030,373 km2 (397,829 sq mi)
CurrencyIndian rupee (1947–1948)
Pakistani rupee (1948–1956)
Preceded by
Succeeded by
British Raj
Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Today part ofPakistan
Bangladesh [a]
  1. ^ Official Language: 14 August 1947
  2. ^ First National Language: 23 February 1948
  3. ^ Second National Language: 29 February 1956

The Dominion of Pakistan, officially Pakistan,

14 August 1947 and 23 March 1956, created by the passing of the Indian Independence Act 1947 by the British parliament, which also created an independent Dominion of India
.

Before its independence, Pakistan consisted of those Presidencies and provinces of British India which were allocated to it in the Partition of India. Until 1947, they had been ruled by the United Kingdom as a part of the British Empire.

During the year that followed its independence, the new country was joined by the Princely states of Pakistan ruled by princes who had previously been in subsidiary alliances with the British, which acceded to Pakistan, one by one, with their rulers signing Instruments of Accession. For many years, these states enjoyed a special status within the dominion and later the republic, but they were slowly incorporated into the provinces. The last remnants of their internal self-government had been lost by 1974.

Initially, the Dominion of Pakistan had two wings, one in the East, which is now

Islamic Republic of Pakistan
was proclaimed.

The status as a federal dominion within the

Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
, East Pakistan seceded as the new nation of Bangladesh, whereas West Pakistan became Pakistan.

History

Partition and independence

Section 1 of the

Lahore resolution), believing they would become second-class citizens in a Hindu majority India otherwise. The British monarch became the head of state of both the new dominions, with Pakistan sharing a king with the United Kingdom and the other dominions of the British Commonwealth, and the monarch's constitutional roles in Pakistan were delegated to the Governor-General of Pakistan
.

Before August 1947, about half of the area of present-day Pakistan was part of

with the British, enjoying semi-autonomous self-government. The British abandoned these alliances in August 1947, leaving the states entirely independent, and between 1947 and 1948 the states all acceded to Pakistan, while retaining internal self-government for several years.

More than ten million people migrated across the new borders and between 200,000–2,000,000

Kashmir dispute, unresolved as of 2024
.

A 1950 documentary about Pakistan

In 1947, the

first prime minister, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah as both first governor-general and speaker of the State Parliament.[12] Mountbatten had offered to serve as Governor-general of both India and Pakistan but Jinnah refused this offer.[13]

The first formal step to transform Pakistan into an ideological Islamic state was taken in March 1949 when Liaquat Ali Khan introduced the

Gandhi's pressurisation.[18]

Political unrest

In a 1948 speech, Jinnah declared that "Urdu alone would be the state language and the lingua franca of the Pakistan state", although at the same time he called for the Bengali language to be the official language of the Bengal province.[19] Nonetheless, tensions began to grow in East Bengal.[19] Jinnah's health further deteriorated and he died in 1948. Bengali leader, Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin succeeded as the governor general of Pakistan.[20]

During a massive political rally in 1951, Prime Minister Ali Khan was

Radcliffe Line and territory

Small vexillological symbol or pictogram in black and white showing the different uses of the flag Mountbatten's proposed flag for Pakistan, consisting of the flag of the Muslim League defaced with a Union Jack in the canton.

The dominion began as a federation of five provinces:

Khanate of Kalat
.

The controversial

Punjab. The western part of Punjab became the Pakistani province of Punjab and the eastern part became the Indian state of Punjab. Bengal was similarly divided into East Bengal (in Pakistan) and West Bengal
(in India).

Monarchy and the Commonwealth

The Prime minister of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Bogra (second from left) with the Queen of Pakistan and other Commonwealth leaders, 1955

Under the

British India was to be divided into the independent sovereign states of India and Pakistan. From 1947 to 1952, George VI was the sovereign of Pakistan, which shared the same person as its sovereign with the United Kingdom and the other Dominions in the British Commonwealth of Nations.[28][29]

Following George VI's death on 6 February 1952, his elder daughter Princess Elizabeth, who was in Kenya at that time, became the new monarch of Pakistan. During the Queen's

Pakistan abolished the monarchy on the adoption of a

23 March 1956.[33] However, Pakistan became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations. The Queen sent a message to President Mirza which said, "I have followed with close interest the progress of your country since its establishment ... It is a source of great satisfaction to me to know that your country intends to remain within the Commonwealth. I am confident that Pakistan and other countries of the Commonwealth will continue to thrive and to benefit from their mutual association".[34]

Foreign relations

President Harry Truman

Territorial problems arose with neighbouring

Ben-Gurion of Israel sent a secret courier to Jinnah to establish the diplomatic relations
, but Jinnah did not give any response to Ben-Gurion.

After gaining Independence, Pakistan vigorously pursued bilateral relations with other Muslim countries

unity of Muslim World.[40] Since most of the Arab world was undergoing a nationalist awakening at the time, there was little attraction in Pakistan's pan-Islamic aspirations.[41] Some of the Arab countries saw the 'Islamistan' project as a Pakistani attempt to dominate other Muslim states.[42] Pakistan vigorously championed the right of self-determination for Muslims around the world. Pakistan's efforts for the independence movements of Indonesia, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Eritrea were significant and initially led to close ties between these countries and Pakistan.[43]

List of heads of state

Monarchs

From 1947 to 1956, Pakistan was a constitutional monarchy. The Pakistani monarch was the same person as the sovereign of the nations in the British Commonwealth of Nations.[44][29]

Portrait Name Birth Reign Death Consort Relationship with Predecessor(s) Royal House
George VI 14 December 1895 14 August 1947

6 February 1952
6 February 1952

Queen Elizabeth

None (position created); Emperor of India before partition Windsor
Elizabeth II 21 April 1926 6 February 1952

23 March 1956
8 September 2022

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Daughter of George VI

Governors-General

The Governor-General was the representative of the monarch in the Dominion of Pakistan.[45]

Picture Name

(birth–death)

Took office Left office Appointer
Muhammad Ali Jinnah

(1876–1948)

15 August 1947 11 September 1948

George VI

Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin

(1894–1964)

14 September 1948 17 October 1951
Sir Ghulam Muhammad

(1895–1956)

17 October 1951 7 August 1955

Elizabeth II

Iskander Mirza

(1899–1969)

7 August 1955 23 March 1956

See also

Notes

  1. ^ See territorial exchanges between India and Bangladesh (India–Bangladesh enclaves).

References

  1. from the original on 17 January 2023. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
  2. from the original on 17 January 2023. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  3. ^ As to official name being just "Pakistan" and not "Dominion of Pakistan": Indian Independence Act 1947, Section1.-(i) As from the fifteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, two independent Dominions shall be set up in India, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan."
  4. S2CID 147110854
    . The number of casualties remains a matter of dispute, with figures being claimed that range from 200,000 to 2 million victims.
  5. ^ "Murder, rape and shattered families: 1947 Partition Archive effort underway". Dawn. 13 March 2015. Archived from the original on 14 February 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2017. There are no exact numbers of people killed and displaced, but estimates range from a few hundred thousand to two million killed and more than 10 million displaced.
  6. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. An estimated 12–15 million people were displaced, and some 2 million died. The legacy of Partition (never without a capital P) remains strong today ...
  7. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. 2,000,000 killed in the Hindu-Muslim holocaust during the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan
  8. ^ Brass, Paul R. (2003). "The partition of India and retributive genocide in the Punjab, 1946–47: means, methods, and purposes" (PDF). Journal of Genocide Research. Carfax Publishing: Taylor and Francis Group. pp. 81–82 (5(1), 71–101). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 March 2015. Retrieved 16 August 2014. In the event, largely but not exclusively as a consequence of their efforts, the entire Muslim population of the eastern Punjab districts migrated to West Punjab and the entire Sikh and Hindu populations moved to East Punjab in the midst of widespread intimidation, terror, violence, abduction, rape, and murder.
  9. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. The official estimate of the number of abducted women during Partition was placed at 33,000 non-Muslim (Hindu or Sikh predominantly) women in Pakistan, and 50,000 Muslim women in India.
  10. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. The horrific statistics that surround women refugees-between 75,000–100,000 Hindu, Muslim and Sikh women who were abducted by men of the other communities, subjected to multiple rapes, mutilations, and, for some, forced marriages and conversions-is matched by the treatment of the abducted women in the hands of the nation-state. In the Constituent Assembly in 1949 it was recorded that of the 50,000 Muslim women abducted in India, 8,000 of then were recovered, and of the 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women abducted, 12,000 were recovered.
  11. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. In addition thousands of women on both sides of the newly formed borders (estimated range from 29,000 to 50,000 Muslim women and 15,000 to 35,000 Hindu and Sikh women) were abducted, raped, forced to convert, forced into marriage, forced back into what the two States defined as 'their proper homes,' torn apart from their families once during partition by those who abducted them, and again, after partition, by the State which tried to 'recover' and 'rehabilitate' them.
  12. ^ a b c d "Government of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan". Story of Pakistan press (1947 Government). June 2003. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
  13. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. Mountbatten tried to convince Jinnah of the value of accepting him, Mountbatten, as Pakistan's first governor-general, but Jinnah refused to be moved from his determination to take that job himself.
  14. ^ Hussain, Rizwan. "Pakistan". The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Archived from the original on 29 March 2016. Retrieved 23 March 2017. Mawlānā Shabbīr Ahmad Usmānī, a respected Deobandī ʿālim (scholar) who was appointed to the prestigious position of Shaykh al-Islām of Pakistan in 1949, was the first to demand that Pakistan become an Islamic state. But Mawdūdī and his Jamāʿat-i Islāmī played the central part in the demand for an Islamic constitution. Mawdūdī demanded that the Constituent Assembly make an unequivocal declaration affirming the "supreme sovereignty of God" and the supremacy of the sharīʿah as the basic law of Pakistan.
  15. ^ Hussain, Rizwan. "Pakistan". The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Archived from the original on 29 March 2016. Retrieved 23 March 2017. The first important result of the combined efforts of the Jamāʿat-i Islāmī and the ʿulamāʿ was the passage of the Objectives Resolution in March 1949, whose formulation reflected compromise between traditionalists and modernists. The resolution embodied "the main principles on which the constitution of Pakistan is to be based." It declared that "sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust," that "the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed," and that "the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accord with the teaching and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Qurʿan and Sunna." The Objectives Resolution has been reproduced as a preamble to the constitutions of 1956, 1962, and 1973.
  16. JSTOR 20837002
    .
  17. .
  18. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021.
  19. ^ a b Yasser Latif Hamdani (22 February 2010). "Jinnah And Urdu-Bengali Controversy". Pakistan Tea House. Archived from the original on 16 March 2013. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
  20. ^ Administration. "Khawaja Nazimuddin Becomes Governor General". Administration. Archived from the original on 30 March 2017. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
  21. . Pakistan: A Country Study.
  22. ^ Munir, Muhammad; Malik Rustam Kayani (1954). Punjab. Court of Inquiry to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953 (PDF). Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
  23. ^ Ahmad, Khurshid (1956). An Analysis of the Munir report; a critical study of the Punjab disturbances inquiry report. Karachi: Jamaat-e-Islami Publications.
  24. ^ Rizvi, Hasan Askari (1974). The military and politics in Pakistan. Lahore: Progressive Publishers.
  25. ^ "One Unit Program". One Unit. June 2003. Archived from the original on 11 April 2013. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
  26. ^ .
  27. . Pakistan: A Country Study.
  28. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33370. Retrieved 20 April 2008. India and Pakistan remained among the king's dominions but both were set on republican courses, becoming republics within the Commonwealth in 1950 and 1956 respectively. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  29. ^ from the original on 13 January 2022, retrieved 7 July 2021
  30. ^ "The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II". YouTube. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
  31. ^ "The Form and Order of Service that is to be performed and the Ceremonies that are to be observed in the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster, on Tuesday, the second day of June, 1953". Oremus.org. Archived from the original on 7 October 2016. Retrieved 3 February 2013.
  32. ^ "Page 6240 | Supplement 40020, 17 November 1953 | London Gazette | The Gazette". www.thegazette.co.uk. Archived from the original on 14 August 2021. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
  33. . Retrieved 22 March 2011.
  34. ^ Pakistan Affairs. Information Division, Embassy of Pakistan. 1956. p. 7. Archived from the original on 17 January 2023. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
  35. "See: Iran-Pakistan relations"
    .
  36. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. Pakistan's expression of solidarity was followed, after Independence, by a vigorous pursuit of bilateral relations with Muslim countries like Iran and Turkey.
  37. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. Pakistan was making a wholehearted bid for the leadership of the Muslim world, or at least for the leadership in achieving its unity.
  38. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. Following Khaliquzzaman, the Ali brothers had sought to project Pakistan, with its comparatively larger manpower and military strength, as the natural leader of the Islamic world.
  39. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. As a top ranking ML leader Khaliquzzaman declared, 'Pakistan would bring all Muslim countries together into Islamistan- a pan-Islamic entity'.
  40. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. Within a few years the president of the Muslim League, Chaudhry Khaliq-uz-Zaman, announced that Pakistan would bring all Muslim countries together into Islamistan-a pan-Islamic entity. None of these developments within the new country elicited approval among Americans for the idea of India's partition ... British Prime Minister Clement Attlee voiced the international consensus at the time when he told the House of Commons of his hope that 'this severance may not endure.' He hoped that the proposed dominions of India and Pakistan would "in course of time, come together to form one great member state of the British Commonwealth of Nations."
  41. from the original on 12 May 2017. Retrieved 23 March 2017. During this time most of the Arab world was going through a nationalist awakening. Pan-Islamic dreams involving the unification of Muslim countries, possibly under Pakistani leadership, had little attraction.
  42. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. The following year, Choudhry Khaliquzzaman toured the Middle East, pleading for the formation of an alliance or confederation of Muslim states. The Arab states, often citing Pakistan's inability to solve its problems with Muslim neighbor Afghanistan, showed little enthusiasm ... Some saw the effort to form 'Islamistan' as a Pakistani attempt to dominate other Muslim states.
  43. from the original on 16 January 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2021. The belief that the creation of Pakistan made Pakistan the true leader of Muslim causes around the world led Pakistan's diplomats to vigorously champion the cause of self-determination for fellow Muslims at the United Nations. Pakistan's founders, including Jinnah, supported anti-colonial movements: Our heart and soul go out in sympathy with those who are struggling for their freedom ... If subjugation and exploitation are carried on, there will be no peace and there will be no end to wars. Pakistani efforts on behalf of Indonesia (1948), Algeria (1948–1949), Tunisia (1948–1949), Morocco (1948–1956) and Eritrea (1960–1991) were significant and initially led to close ties between these countries and Pakistan.
  44. from the original on 17 January 2023, retrieved 18 August 2019
  45. ^ Chief Justice Muhammad Munir: His Life, Writings, and Judgements, Research Society of Pakistan, 1973, p. 341

Further reading