A. K. Fazlul Huq

Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq (26 October 1873 to 27 April 1962), called Sher-e-Bangla, the Tiger of Bengal, was a lawyer and politician who served as Premier of Bengal and, on Jinnah's choice, moved the Lahore Resolution at the Muslim League's session at Lahore on 23 March 1940. A Bengali, he sits in the Punjab story because of that resolution and because he served on the Congress committee that looked into Jallianwala Bagh.

Key moments

• 1906 to 1913: helps found the All India Muslim League at Dacca on 30 December 1906, and enters the Bengal Legislative Council in 1913.
• 1916 to 1921: president of the All India Muslim League, according to Banglapedia. He helped shape the 1916 Lucknow Pact and was general secretary of the Indian National Congress in 1918 and 1919.
• 1919: member of the Congress's Punjab Enquiry Committee on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He left the Congress around 1920 over non-cooperation.
• 1 April 1937 to 1943: Premier of Bengal. His government passed the Bengal Agricultural Debtors' Act and Money Lenders' Act in 1938, set up debt settlement boards, and amended the tenancy law.
• 23 March 1940: moves the Lahore Resolution, which called for "independent states" in the Muslim-majority areas of the north-west and east. The original text was drafted by Sikandar Hayat Khan, the Punjab Premier, and substantially amended by the Subject Committee.
• 1941 to 1943: joins the Viceroy's Defence Council against Jinnah's wishes and is expelled from the League. He resigns on 2 December 1941, heads a broad coalition of most Hindu members, the Bose group of the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha from 12 December, and resigns on 28 March 1943 under pressure from the Governor.
• 1954 to 1958: leads the United Front to victory in East Bengal and becomes its Chief Minister in April 1954, then Home Minister of Pakistan in August 1955 and Governor of East Pakistan from 1956 to 1958.

The Sikh side

On 12 February 1940, weeks before the Lahore session, the SGPC General House under Master Tara Singh strongly opposed the Pakistan scheme proposed by the Muslim League, according to Ira Pande in The Tribune. The same article records an SGPC resolution of 27 February 1943 warning that creating Pakistan would be extremely damaging, and notes that Master Tara Singh was raising the slogan "Pakistan murdabad" outside the Punjab Assembly in Lahore as late as 3 March 1947. The 1940 text did not use the word Pakistan; the Hindu press called it the Pakistan demand and the name stuck.

Huq opposed the League and the two-nation theory from 1942, according to Banglapedia, and rejoined the League only in September 1946 after the communal violence in Calcutta. He died at Dhaka, and his funeral drew an estimated half a million mourners.

He is remembered as the man who moved the resolution that Pakistan's founders took as their charter, and as the peasants' champion of Bengal.