The Lahore Resolution — Birth of the Pakistan Idea

On March 23, 1940, the All-India Muslim League, meeting in Lahore under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, passed a resolution demanding "independent states" for Muslim-majority regions in the northwestern and eastern zones of British India. The resolution, moved by A.K. Fazlul Huq, did not use the word "Pakistan" — coined by Choudhary Rahmat Ali in 1933 — but it crystallized the two-nation theory: that Hindus and Muslims constituted separate nations requiring separate homelands. The Lahore Resolution marked the point of no return in the subcontinent's political trajectory. Jinnah, a secular, Savile Row-suited barrister who had once been called the "Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity," now led the demand for partition. March 23 is celebrated as Pakistan Day, and the Minar-e-Pakistan monument stands at the site where the resolution was passed.