1. Write short notes on Lahore Resolution.

In the late 1930s, some Indian politicians and thinkers were considering ways to
protect the rights of Indian Muslims. They thought about dividing the country into
areas where Muslims were the majority and other areas. These ideas became
more concrete in a resolution passed by the Muslim League in 1940. The
resolution said that any plan for the country's constitution wouldn't work well or
be accepted by Muslims unless it followed certain basic principles. One of these
principles was to divide the country into regions with connected areas. Another
was to group together areas where Muslims were the majority, like in the North
Western and Eastern Zones of British India, to create independent states where
each part would have its own authority and freedom.

The Lahore (or Pakistan) Resolution grabbed the attention of many Muslims in
British India. This made the idea of creating one or more Muslim homelands from
the colony politically important for the first time. It went against the main idea of
the Congress Party's campaign, which said that all Indians were one nation
fighting for self-determination. The movement for a Muslim homeland started by
saying that Muslims weren't just part of the Indian nation, but a separate nation
with the right to decide for themselves. So, in British India, there were seen as
two nations: the Muslims and everyone else. This became known as the 'two-
nations theory.'

However, the idea of a Muslim homeland was not clear. Would it be one state or
many? Would it be entirely independent or a self-governing part within a
federation including the whole former colony? Was the absence of the word
'Islam' from the Lahore Resolution suggesting that Pakistan wouldn't be a state
ruled by Islamic laws and institutions? These questions remained unanswered
until the very end of British rule: the envisioned homeland covered a range of
different interpretations. The homeland for Indian Muslims became known as
'Pakistan', an acronym coined in the early 1930s but not widely used until the
1940s. It represented several regions claimed as parts of the homeland: P for
Punjab, A for Afghans (Pashtuns), K for Kashmir, S for Sindh, and 'tan' for
Baluchistan. There was no mention of Bengal.