Lahore Resolution
The Lahore Resolution (Urdu: قراردادِ لاہور, Qarardad-e-Lahore; Bengali: লাহোর প্রস্তাব, Lahor Prostab), also called Pakistan Resolution, was written and prepared by Muhammad Zafarullah Khan and was presented by A. K. Fazlul Huq, the Prime Minister of Bengal, was a formal political statement adopted by the All-India Muslim League on the occasion of its three-day general session in Lahore on 22–24 March 1940. The resolution called for independent states as seen by the statement:
That geographically contiguous units are demarcated regions which should be constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North Western and Eastern Zones of (British) India should be grouped to constitute ‘independent states’ in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign.
| Lahore Resolution | |
|---|---|
Muslim leaders from across British India at the All-India Muslim League Working Committee session in Lahore | |
| Presented | 22 March 1940 |
| Ratified | 23 March 1940 |
| Location | Lahore |
| Author(s) | Muhammad Zafarullah Khan |
| Signatories | All-India Muslim League |
| Purpose | To announce the declaration of independence from British India |
Although the name "Pakistan" had been proposed by Choudhary Rahmat Ali in his Pakistan Declaration, it was not until after the resolution that it began to be widely used.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah's address to the Lahore conference was, according to Stanley Wolpert, the moment when Jinnah, once a proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity, irrevocably transformed himself for the cause of separate Muslim homeland called Pakistan.