Liquaat Ali Khan

Liaquat Ali Khan[a] (1 October 1895 – 16 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 was as pivotal to the consolidation of
Pakistan as the Quaid-i-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was central to the creation of
Pakistan. He was one of the leading figures of the Pakistan Movement and is
revered as Quaid-e-Millat ("Leader of the nation") and later on as "Shaheed e
Millat" (Martyr of the nation).
Khan was born in Karnal, East Punjab into the Nawab family of the United Provinces
and Punjab. He himself owned 300 villages, 60 in the Punjab and 240 in
Muzaffarnagar, UP. Khan was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University and
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.[1]
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. Khan was posthumously given the title Shaheed-e-Milat ('Martyr of the
Nation') and is honored as one of Pakistan's greatest prime ministers.
Early life[edit]
Muhammad Liaquat Ali Khan was born on 1 October 1895 into a wealthy Muslim Jat
family in the Karnal, British India with roots in Talera village of Jansath Tehsil in
Muzaffarnagar District of Present Day- Uttar Pradesh.[2][3] 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 in Saharanpur's[3][4][5] He received his early
education at home before attending school in Karnal.[5][6][7][8]
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 Saasanid king of Persia,
although this may be no more than legend, and they were settled in Uttar Pradesh
by the time of his grandfather, Nawab Ahmad Ali Khan. [9] They had adopted the
Urdu language.[10]
According to his family, Nawab Ahmad Ali 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.[11]
His family had deep respect for the Indian Muslim thinker and philosopher Syed
Ahmad Khan, and his father had a desire for the young Liaqat Ali Khan to be
educated in the British educational system; therefore, his family sent Ali Khan to
the famous Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), where he obtained degrees in law and
political science.[12]
In 1913, Ali 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.[13] After the death of his father in 1919, Ali Khan, with British
Government awarding the grants and scholarship, went to England,[citation needed]
attending Oxford University's Exeter College to pursue his higher education.[2] In
1921, Ali Khan was awarded the Master of Law in Law and Justice, by the college
faculty who also conferred on him a Bronze Medallion.[citation needed] While a graduate
student at Oxford, Ali Khan actively participated in student unions and was elected
Honorary Treasurer of the Majlis Society—a student union founded by Indian
Muslim students to promote the Indian students' rights at the university. [citation needed]
He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple of London in 1922 but never
practised.[14]

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Liaquat Ali Khan[a] (1 October 1895 – 16 October 1951) was a Pakistani lawyer,

In March 1951, he survived an attempted coup by left-wing political opponents and

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