Khizr, the Unionist Party and the Struggle for a United Punjab: 1943-47
Author(s)
Talbot, Ian
Abstract
The prospects for an independent Pakistan hinged on the future of the Punjab, a province in which, as historians have acknowledged, the Muslim League before 1940 was unable to build up a mass following. However, it should not be assumed from this (as it sometimes has) that the cross-communal Unionist Party was still securely in position. The article considers how the Unionist party had become dangerously weakened by 1943, and the efforts taken by its new leader, Malik Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana, to promote an alternative future for the Punjab, that of being a unified state within a federal India. While these dreams never materialized, Khizr’s government was successful in keeping communal violence to a minimum for a time.
