Lala Avtar Narain Gujral (also, Lala Avatar Narayan Gujral; died 1976) was an Indian politician from Punjab and the father of I. K. Gujral, the 12th prime minister of India (hence also the father-in-law of noted Hindi poet Sheila Gujral), and artist Satish Gujral. He represented the non-Muslim population of West Punjab in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan for a few months.
His grandson Naresh Gujral is also a politician in India.
Gujral was born in Pari Darwaza, a hamlet about twenty five miles away from Jhelum; he lost his father Duni Chand at an age of sixteen to bubonic plague. [1] Gujral was an alumnus of D.A.V. Lahore, and finished his higher secondary schooling from Jammu; he was a lawyer, by profession. [1] He was married to Pushpa. [1]
Gujral's son described him as a Hindu reformist who drew inspiration from the Arya Samaj movement and especially, Lala Lajpat Rai. [1]
Gujral served as the district-president for the Jhelum unit of the Indian National Congress. [1] He was jailed multiple times by the British Government for engaging in subversive activities. [1]
As the 1946 Cabinet Mission to India decided on partitioning India, Gujral chose to stay in Pakistan; he was ensured of a harmonious environment by Ghazanfar Ali Khan, a lawyer from Jhelum and a leading League politician. [2] On 4 July 1947, Gujral was elected by the non-Muslim members of the (yet-undivided) Punjab Assembly to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan; [3] [lower-alpha 1] he attended the inaugural session on 10 August. [4]
Three days later, the non-Muslim members of the Constituent Assembly met in Gujral's home at Karachi, and formed the "Pakistan Congress"; he was elected as the Chief Whip. [1] Soon, Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister of Pakistan, sent him to Delhi to ensure the safety of Muslims who wished to migrate to Pakistan; while in Delhi, Gujral arranged for the migration of his extended family and esp. the women. [1] He stayed with his son in Karachi for a while, before following suit. [1] [lower-alpha 2] A year later, in January 1949, the "Committee on Addition and/or Redistribution of Seats" recommended the dissolution of his seat in the Constituent Assembly. [lower-alpha 3]
Gujral settled in Jalandhar; at Nehru's behest, he was appointed as a Judge in the Punjab Industrial Tribunal. [5] He died on 30 May 1976 of cardiac arrest. [6]
The history of Pakistan preceding the country's creation in 1947. Although, Pakistan was created in 1947 as a whole new country by the British through partition of India, but the history of the land extends much further back and is intertwined with that of Afghanistan, India, and Iran. Spanning the northwestern expanse of the Indian subcontinent and the eastern borderlands of the Iranian plateau, the region of present-day Pakistan served both as the fertile ground of a major civilization and as the gateway of South Asia to Central Asia and the Near East.
Punjab, historically known as Pentapotamia or Panchanada, is a historical, geopolitical, ethnolinguistic and cultural region in the northwestern part of South Asia, along the five major eastern tributaries of the Indus River in the Indian Subcontinent. The region is divided between modern-day eastern-Pakistan and northwestern-India.
Punjab is a province of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest by population. Lahore is the capital and the largest city of the province. Other major cities include Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Multan.
The Partition of India in 1947 was the change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent and the creation of two independent dominions in South Asia: India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan—which at the time comprised two regions lying on either side of India—is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947. The change of political borders notably included the division of two provinces of British India, Bengal and Punjab. The majority Muslim districts in these provinces were awarded to Pakistan and the majority non-Muslim to India. The other assets that were divided included the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Indian Air Force, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury. Provisions for self-governing independent Pakistan and India legally came into existence at midnight on 14 and 15 August 1947 respectively.
The All-India Muslim League (AIML) was a political party established in Dhaka in 1906 when some well-known Muslim politicians met the Viceroy of India, Lord Minto, with the goal of securing Muslim interests in British India.
West Punjab was a province in the Dominion of Pakistan from 1947 to 1955. It was established from the western-half of British Punjab, following the independence of Pakistan. The province covered an area of 159,344 km sq, including much of the current Punjab province and the Islamabad Capital Territory, but excluding the former Princely state of Bahawalpur. Lahore, being the largest city and the cultural centre, served as the capital of the province. The province was composed of four divisions and was bordered by the state of Bahawalpur to the south-east, the province of Baluchistan to the south-west and Sind to the south, North-West Frontier Province to the north-west, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir to the north. It shared International border with Indian state of East Punjab to the east and Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir to the north-east. It was dissolved and merged into West Pakistan upon creation of One Unit Scheme, in 1955.
The Pakistan Movement was a nationalist and political movement in the first half of the 20th century that aimed for the creation of Pakistan from the Muslim-majority areas of British India. It was connected to the perceived need for self-determination for Muslims under British rule at the time. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a barrister and politician led this movement after the Lahore Resolution was passed by All-India Muslim League on the 23 March 1940 and Ashraf Ali Thanwi, as a religious scholar, supported it.
The Radcliffe Line was the boundary demarcated by the two boundary commissions for the provinces of Punjab and Bengal during the Partition of India. It is named after Cyril Radcliffe, who, as the joint chairman of the two boundary commissions, had the ultimate responsibility to equitably divide 175,000 square miles (450,000 km2) of territory with 88 million people.
The Constituent Assembly of India was elected to frame the Constitution of India. It was elected by the 'Provincial Assembly'. Following India's independence from the British rule in 1947, its members served as the nation's first Parliament as the 'Provisional Parliament of India'. It was conceived and created by V. K. Krishna Menon, who first outlined its necessity in 1933 and enshrined it as a Congress demand.
The Lahore Resolution, also called Pakistan Resolution, was written and prepared by Muhammad Zafarullah Khan and was presented by A. K. Fazlul Huq, the Prime Minister of Bengal, was a formal political statement adopted by the All-India Muslim League on the occasion of its three-day general session in Lahore on 22–24 March 1940. The resolution called for independent states as seen by the statement:
That geographically contiguous units are demarcated regions which should be constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North Western and Eastern Zones of (British) India should be grouped to constitute ‘independent states’ in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign.
The Punjab Province was a province of British India. Most of the Punjab region was annexed by the British East India Company on 29 March 1849; it was one of the last areas of the Indian subcontinent to fall under British control. In 1858, the Punjab, along with the rest of British India, came under the rule of the British Crown. It had a land area of 358,355 square kilometers.
The Dominion of India, officially the Union of India, was an independent dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations existing between 15 August 1947 and 26 January 1950. Until its independence, India had been ruled as an informal empire by the United Kingdom. The empire, also called the British Raj and sometimes the British Indian Empire, consisted of regions, collectively called British India, that were directly administered by the British government, and regions, called the princely states, that were ruled by Indian rulers under a system of paramountcy. The Dominion of India was formalised by the passage of the Indian Independence Act 1947, which also formalised an independent Dominion of Pakistan—comprising the regions of British India that are today Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Dominion of India remained "India" in common parlance but was geographically reduced. Under the Act, the British government relinquished all responsibility for administering its former territories. The government also revoked its treaty rights with the rulers of the princely states and advised them to join in a political union with India or Pakistan. Accordingly, the British monarch's regnal title, "Emperor of India," was abandoned.
Satish Gujral was an Indian painter, sculptor, muralist and writer of the post-independent era. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award of the Republic of India, in 1999. His elder brother, Inder Kumar Gujral, was the Prime Minister of India between 1997 and 1998.
Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan Khokhar was an Indian politician and monarch. He was born in Pind Dadan Khan, a town in Jhelum district, British India. He was a leading member of the All India Muslim League and a trusted lieutenant of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, serving in the Interim Government of India of 1946 as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly of India.
Sir Mian Fazl-i-Husain, KCSI was an influential politician during the British Raj and a founding member of the Unionist Party of the Punjab.
When the All-India Muslim League was founded at Dacca, on 30 December 1906 at the occasion of the annual All India Muhammadan Educational Conference, It was participated by the Muslim leaders from Punjab, i.e., Sir Mian Muhammad Shafi, Mian Fazl-i-Hussain, Abdul Aziz, Khawaja Yusuf Shah and Sh. Ghulam Sadiq. Earlier Mian Muhammad Shafi organised a Muslim Association in early 1906, but when the All-India Muslim League was formed, he established its powerful branch in the Punjab of which he became the general secretary. Shah Din was elected as its first president. This branch, organised in November 1907, was known as the Punjab Provincial Muslim League.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a barrister, politician and the founder of Pakistan. Jinnah served as the leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until the inception of Pakistan on 14 August 1947, and then as the Dominion of Pakistan's first governor-general until his death.
Lala Achint Ram was an Indian freedom fighter, Gandhian and a member of the Indian National Congress party.
Hinduism is a minority religion in Punjab province of Pakistan followed by about 0.2% of its population. Punjab has the second largest number of Hindus in Pakistan after Sindh. Hinduism is followed mainly in the Southern Punjab districts of Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur.
Rai Bahadur Ganga Saran was an Indian trade unionist and politician from Punjab. He was a member of the Punjab Provincial Assembly and both the Constituent Assembly of India and the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.