Liaquat Ali Khan (1 October 189516 October 1951) was a Pakistani lawyer, politician and statesman who served as the first prime minister of Pakistan from 1947 until his assassination in 1951. He played a key role in consolidating the state of Pakistan, much as Muhammad Ali Jinnah did in founding it. A leading figure in the Pakistan Movement, he is revered as Quaid-e-Millat ("Leader of the Nation") and Shaheed-e-Millat ("Martyr of the Nation").
Khan was born in Karnal, Haryana, to a wealthy Rajput family. His grandfather, Nawab Ahmad Ali, provided significant support to the British during the Mutiny uprising of 1857–1858, earning him substantial rewards in the form of prestigious honours and complete remission of rent. Khan was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University and the University of Oxford. After first being invited to the Indian National Congress, he later opted to join the All-India Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, an Indian independence activist who later advocated for a separate Muslim nation-state out of Hindu-majority India. Khan assisted Jinnah in the campaign for what would become known as the Pakistan Movement and was known as his 'right hand'. He was a democratic political theorist who promoted parliamentarism in British India.
Khan's premiership oversaw the beginning of the Cold War, in which Khan's foreign policy sided with the United States-led Western Bloc over the Soviet Union-led Eastern Bloc. He promulgated the Objectives Resolution in 1949, which stipulated Pakistan to be an Islamic democracy. He also held cabinet portfolio as the first foreign minister, defence minister, and frontier regions minister from 1947 until his assassination in 1951. Prior to the part, Khan briefly tenured as Finance minister of British India in the Interim Government that undertook independence of Pakistan and India, led by Louis Mountbatten, the then-Viceroy of India. In March 1951, he survived an attempted coup by left-wing political opponents and segments of the Pakistani military. While delivering a speech in the Company Bagh of Rawalpindi, Khan was shot dead by an Afghan militant Said Akbar for unknown reasons.
Early life and education Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan was born on 1 October 1895 into a wealthy family belonging to the Mandal clan, in the Karnal, Punjab Province with roots in Talera Village of Jansath Tehsil in Muzaffarnagar District of present day-Uttar Pradesh. He was the second of four sons of the wealthy land owner Rukn-ud-Daulah Shamsher Jung Nawab Bahadur Rustam Ali Khan of Karnal and his wife, Mahmoodah Begum, the daughter of Nawab Quaher Ali Khan of Rajpur, a prominent Rajput family of Saharanpur. He received his early education at home before attending school in Karnal. Khan was instructed in the Qur’an and hadith and was also given music lessons, learning to play the harmonium and flute; in addition, he developed an interest in singing and theatre. From an early age he showed strong religious devotion, choosing to observe the Ramadan fast at the age of four and participating in tazia processions during Muharram, even organizing and leading his own tazia at a young age.
Despite being "courteous, affable and socially popular" and coming from an aristocratic family known for its philanthropy, his biographer Muhammad Reza Kazimi notes that little is known of his early life and that which has to be pieced together from snippets of mostly hagiographic writings. The family claimed a Persian origin going back to Nausherwan the Just, the Sasanian king of Persia, although this may be apocryphal, and were settled in Uttar Pradesh by the time of the birth of his grandfather, Nawab Ahmad Ali Khan. They had adopted the Urdu language. Khan identified as a Punjabi.
According to his family, Khan gained sufficient prestige that the British East India Company recognised him with titles such as Rukun-al-Daulah, Shamsher Jang and Nawab Bahadur, which they say were later inherited by his sons. The validity of those titles has been questioned because the family estates in Uttar Pradesh were diminished as a result of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, after which Uttar Pradesh itself ceased to be an autonomous area. His family had deep respect for the Indian Muslim thinker and philosopher Syed Ahmad Khan, and his father had a desire for young Liaquat Ali Khan to be educated in the British educational system. He was sent to Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), where he earned degrees in law and political science.
In 1913, Khan attended the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University), graduating with a BSc degree in Political science and LLB in 1918, and married his cousin, Jehangira Begum, also in 1918, however the couple later separated. At Aligarh, he expanded his range of interests, captaining the cricket team and learning to play chess; he also continued his musical education by studying classical Hindustani vocal music and taking piano lessons. After the death of his father in 1919, he attended Oxford University's Exeter College to pursue his higher education. In 1921, Khan was awarded the Master of Law in Law and Justice, by the college faculty who also conferred on him a Bronze Medallion. While a graduate student at Oxford, Khan actively participated in student unions and was elected Treasurer of the Majlis Society—a student union founded by Indian students to promote the Indian students' rights at the university. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple of London in 1922 but never practised.
Political activism in British India Khan returned to India in 1923, entering in national politics, determined to eradicate what he viewed as the injustice and ill-treatment of Indian Muslims under the British Indian Department and by the British government. His political philosophy strongly emphasised a united India, first gradually believing in Indian nationalism. The Congress leadership approached Khan to become a part of the party, but after attending the meeting with Jawaharlal Nehru, Khan's political views and ambitions gradually changed. Khan refused, informing the Congress Party about his decision, and instead joining the Muslim League in 1923, led under another lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah who called for an annual session meeting in May 1924 in Lahore where the goals, boundaries, party programs, vision, and revival of the League, was an initial party agenda and was carefully discussed at the Lahore caucus. At this meeting, Khan was among those who attended this conference, and recommending the new goals for the party.
United Province legislation Khan was elected to the provisional legislative council in the 1926 elections from the rural Muslim constituency of Muzaffarnagar. Khan embarked his parliamentary career, representing the United Provinces at the Legislative Council in 1926. In 1932, he was unanimously elected Deputy President of UP Legislative Council.
During this time, Khan intensified his support for Muslim-dominated populations, often raising the problems and challenges faced by the Muslim communities in the United Province. Khan joined academician Sir Ziauddin Ahmed, taking to organise the Muslim students' communities into one student union, advocating for the provisional rights of the Muslim state. His strong advocacy for Muslims' rights had brought him into national prominence and significant respect was also gained from Hindu communities whom he fought for at higher levels of the government. Khan remained the elected member of the UP Legislative Council until 1940, when he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly; he participated actively, and was the influential member in legislative affairs, where his recommendations would also be noted by other members.
During his parliamentary career, Khan established his reputation as "eloquent, principled and honest spokesman" who would never compromise on his principles even in the face of severe odds. Khan, on several occasions, used his influence and good offices for the resolution of communal tension.
Joining the Muslim League Khan rose to become one of the influential members of the Muslim League and was one of the central figures in the Muslim League delegation that attended the National Convention held at Calcutta. Earlier, the British Government had formed the Simon Commission to recommend the constitutional and territorial reforms to the British Government. The commission, compromising seven British Members of Parliament, headed under its Chairman Sir John Simon, met briefly with the Congress Party and Muslim League leaders. The commission had introduced the system of dyarchy to govern the provinces of British India, but these revisions met with harsh criticism and clamour by the Indian public. Motilal Nehru presented his Nehru Report to counter British charges.
In December 1928, Khan and Jinnah decided to discuss the Nehru Report. In 1930, Khan and Jinnah attended the First Round Table Conference which ended in disaster, leading Jinnah to depart from British India to the UK. In 1932, Khan married for a second time to Begum Ra'ana who was a prominent economist and academic who became an influential figure in the Pakistan movement.
In his party presidential address delivered at the Provisional Muslim Education Conference at AMU in 1932, Khan expressed the view that Muslims had "distinct [c]ulture of their own and had the (every) right to persevere it". At this conference, Khan announced that:
Soon, he and his new wife departed to England but did not terminate his connections with the Muslim League. With Khan departing, the Muslim League's parliamentary wing disintegrated, with many Muslim members joining the either Democratic Party, originally organised by Khan in 1930, and the Congress Party. At the deputation in England, Khan made close study of organising the political parties and would soon return to his country with Jinnah.
In 1930, Jinnah urged Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his Viceroy Lord Irwin to convene a Round Table Conferences in London. In spite of what Jinnah was expecting, the conference was a complete failure, forcing Jinnah to retire from national politics and permanently settle in London and practise law before the Privy Council.Liaquat Ali Khan: A worthy successor to the Quaid, Prof Dr M Yakub Mughal , The News International Special Edition. Retrieved on 31 December 2006.
During this time, Khan and his wife joined Jinnah, with Khan practising economic law and his wife joining the faculty of economics at the local college. The couple spent most of their time convincing Jinnah to return to British India to unite the scattered Muslim League mass into one full force. Meanwhile, Choudhry Rahmat Ali coined the term Pakistan in his famous pamphlet Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?
Pakistan Movement
In 1930, Jinnah, along with his sister Fatima and daughter Dina, decided to settle in London. When the Muslim India and the All India Muslim League became a divided house, Liaquat and his wife Ra'na went to England and met with Jinnah and his family in July 1933 at their Hampstead residence in London. There they convinced him to return to India to save the Muslims from further division. Jinnah returned to India in December 1934 and started to reorganize the All-India Muslim League. In 1936, the annual session of the League met in Bombay (now Mumbai). In the open session on 12 April 1936, Jinnah moved a resolution proposing Khan as the Honorary General Secretary. The resolution was unanimously adopted and he held the office until the establishment of Pakistan in 1947. In 1940, Khan was made the deputy leader of the Muslim League Parliamentary party. Jinnah was not able to take active part in the proceedings of the Assembly due to his heavy political workload. Khan stood in his place.