Reflections around a Resolution.

To be in Lahore in March evoked ruminations about the related commonalities and contrasts between 1940 and 2023. For instance: severe polarisation in politics. The present miasma plumbs dark new depths of viciousness and vitriol. Dangerous violence erupted on March 14, 2023, between Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf workers and the police.

Almost coincidentally, 83 years ago, on March 19, 1940, about 300 members of the Khaksar Tehreek of Allama Inayatullah Mashriqi violently clashed with police on the city's streets. Killings occurred, and injuries were aplenty.

The Sikander Hayat-led Unionist Party, which then ruled Punjab, had covertly facilitated the rally as a timed distraction from the All-India Muslim League's (AIML) Convention, set to open on March 21 - all because Hayat strongly opposed the content of the draft Resolution approved earlier in February 1940 in a New Delhi meeting. Logistical arrangements for the about 25,000 AIML delegates who had travelled from across the region to the city were pointedly inadequate and discomfiting.

The Khaksar clash spun out of control and greatly embarrassed Hayat. He became a virtually silent spectator during the preliminary sessions of the various committees to amend the draft text. His views were fundamentally different from the strategic approach of the Quaid-i-Azam and the Muslim League. The Unionist leaders did not want a division of the subcontinent and no diminution of Punjab's importance compared to other Muslim-majority provinces or aspects affecting Muslim-minority areas.

Yet, to secure unanimity and help Hayat avoid being openly condemned for violence against the Khaksar workers, Mr Jinnah dexterously postponed tabling the subject of the Khaksar episode in the convention sessions until after the Resolution was unanimously adopted on March 24. For the first time in the evolution of Muslim nationalism in South Asia, the Lahore Resolution introduced a precise, tangible framework within which such national aspirations could be peacefully strengthened and productively developed.

Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, who invented the name 'Pakistan' in 1933, deliberately absented himself from attending the pivotal AIML sessions in March 1940. He had a radically different, quite eccentric vision for the future of Muslims in South Asia, compared to the ambivalent concept gradually being evolved by Mr Jinnah and his colleagues with differing views from across the region. He chose to convene on the very same date, far away in Karachi, a meeting of the Pakistan National Movement, which he led.

In previous months, he absented himself from two scheduled one-on-one meetings with the Quaid. It was ironic that such a wide gulf in perspectives separated the man who formulated the unique name for a new nation, and the man who overcame formidable opposition to create a new nation-state...