Pakistan

National Flag and State Emblem of Pakistan.
Basic Facts

Official Name

Islamic Republic of Pakistan

Independence - 14 th August 1947.
Capital - Islamabad
Ethnic Groups-Punjabi,Pushtun,Sindhi,Baluchi,Saraiki,Muhajir and Kashmiri.
History of Pakistan.
BACKGROUND TO PARTITION.
The proposal for a Muslim state in India was first enunciated in 1930 by the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, who suggested that the four northwestern provinces (Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, and the North-West Frontier Province) should be joined in such a state. In 1933 Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a Cambridge student, coined the name Pakstan,on behalf of those Muslims living in Punjab, Afghan (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir, Sind, and Balochistan. Alternatively the name was said to mean "Land of the Pure."

Birth of the new state.
Pakistan came into existence in August 1947, with M. Jinnah as governor-general and Liaquat Ali Khan as prime minister,with West and East Pakistan separated by more than 1,000 miles. Pakistan's survival seemed to hang in the balance. Of all the provinces of British India, Sindh, Balochistan, and the North-West Frontier came to Pakistan . The Punjab and Bengal were divided, and Kashmir became disputed territory. Economically, the situation seemed almost hopeless; the new frontier cut off Pakistani raw materials from the Indian factories, disrupting industry, commerce, and agriculture. The partition and the movement of refugees were accompanied by terrible massacres for which both communities were responsible.The dispute over Kashmir brought the two countries to the verge of war.

THE TRANSFER OF POWER AND THE BIRTH OF TWO NATIONS.
British India in 1947, showing major administrative divisions, the distribution of the principal. Elections held in the winter of 1945-46 for Muslim League , as the league won all 30 seats reserved for Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly and most of the reserved provincial seats as well. Britain's Parliament passed in July 1947 the Indian Independence Act, ordering the demarcation of the dominions of India and Pakistan by midnight of Aug. 14-15, 1947, and dividing within a single month the assets of the world's largest empire, which had been integrated in countless ways for more than a century. Racing the deadline, two boundary commissions worked desperately to partition Punjab and Bengal in such a way as to leave a majority of Muslims to the west of the former's new boundary and to the east of the latter's, but as soon as the new borders were known, no fewer than 10 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fled from their homes on one side of the newly demarcated borders to what they thought would be "shelter" on the other. In the course of that tragic exodus of innocents, some 1 million people were slaughtered in communal massacres that made all previous conflicts of the sort known to recent history pale by comparison.

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah died in September 1948, within 13 months of independence. The leaders of the new Pakistan were mainly lawyers with a strong commitment to parliamentary government. They had various degrees of personal commitment to Islam,subscribed to Islam as a total way of life, and people wish to establish Pakistan as an Islamic Country. The members of the old Constituent Assembly, elected at the end of 1945, assembled at Karachi, the new capital. Prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan issued a resolution on the aims and objectives of the constitution, which began, "Sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty alone" and emphasized on Islamic values.

Constitution of Pakistan