Liaquat Ali Khan
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Date of Birth |
: |
Oct 1, 1896 |
Date of Death |
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Oct 16, 1951 |
Place of Birth |
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Karnal |
Nawabzadah Khan Liaquat Ali Khan was the first Prime Minister of
Pakistan.He was born in Karnal, India, studied law at the University of
Oxford, and was admitted to the English bar in 1922. Returning to India,
he joined the All-India Muslim League in 1923 and was elected to the
legislative council of the United Provinces. In 1936 he became
secretary-general of the league and the chief aide to its founder,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah. As such, he was the principal architect of the
partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947. An obvious
choice for prime minister, he guided the country through its first
difficult years. He was assassinated in October 1951 under circumstances
never fully explained. He was born in the town of Karnal in present-day
Haryana to a land-holding family.
Khan completed his early education at Aligarh Muslim
University, and obtained a Law degree from the University of Oxford in
1921. Upon his return to India in 1923, Khan devoted himself to the
Indian nationalist cause, and increasingly began to work for a Muslim
state due to the injustices he felt were leveled upon Muslims by the
British. In April 1933, he was married to Begum Ra'Ana Liaquat Ali Khan.
He was invited to join the Indian National Congress, but refused,
forming his own party. He joined the legislative council of Uttar
Pradesh, and served there until 1940, when he was elevated to the
central legislative assembly. During this time, Muhammed Ali Jinnah had
moved to the United Kingdom, where he was disinvolved from Indian
politics. Khan was instrumental in getting Jinnah back to the
subcontinent, and Jinnah made Khan the secretary of the Muslim League.
Thus in the 1940s, Khan was heavily involved in convincing the British
of the need for a separate Muslim homeland in India. His primary
emphasis was on separation from "Hindu" India, rather than on freedom
from British colonialism. This work helped lead to the formation of
Pakistan in 1947, and Liaquat Ali Khan was made the first Prime
Minister. Liaquat Ali Khan was given the title of "Qaid-i Millat"
(Leader of the Nation) by Muslim League for his great leadership and
contribution to the cause of Pakistan. Khan's time as Prime Minister was
cut short by an assassin's bullet. On October 16, 1951, he had been
scheduled to make an important announcement in a public meeting of
Muslim City League at Municipal Park, Rawalpindi. Khan was shot twice in
the chest during that meeting by a man sitting in the audience's only
fifteen yards away, and the security forces immediately shot the
assassin, who was later identified as Saad Akbar. Killing the assassin
erased all clues to the identity of the real culprit behind the murder.
Upon his death, Liaquat Ali Khan was given the honorific title of
"Shahid-i Millat", or "Martyr of the Nation".