Correspondence with Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah on Territorial Claims and Sikh Negotiations

Sub title : Strategic Demographics and Last-Minute Diplomacy on the Eve of Partition

Subject: Radcliffe Boundary Commission | Partition of Punjab | Sikh Proposals | Pakistan Territory

Date of publication: 1947

Language: English

Page: 8 p.

Source: National Archives of Pakistan

Serial no: 27732

Keyword: M.A. Jinnah -- I.H. Qureshi -- Boundary Commission | Radcliffe Award -- Partition of Punjab 1947 | Sikh Negotiations -- Baldev Singh -- Territorial Demarcation | Demographic Statistics -- Muslim League -- Pakistan Constituent Assembly

Abstract: This file contains a series of letters from Professor I.H. Qureshi of the University of Delhi to M.A. Jinnah, written in the critical months leading up to the Partition of India. The correspondence begins with a letter of gratitude and an offer of service. It quickly moves to strategic matters, with Qureshi providing detailed demographic tables of contested districts in Punjab to bolster the Muslim League's case for territorial adjustments before the Boundary Commission. He argues for claims based on population, strategy, and irrigation. The later letters reveal a secret diplomatic initiative, reporting that Sikh leaders, including Baldev Singh, were seeking an agreement to remain within Pakistan as an autonomous province with a protected status and a fixed percentage in the army, and requesting Jinnah to invite them for talks.

Description: This collection comprises the strategic and diplomatic correspondence of Professor I.H. Qureshi with Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah during the final phase of the Pakistan movement. The documents provide a ground-level view of the intense political and territorial maneuvering before Partition. They include meticulously prepared census data tables for key Punjab tehsils, highlighting Muslim majorities to argue for their inclusion in Pakistan. Most significantly, the letters document a clandestine backchannel, relayed through a European intermediary, in which Sikh leaders expressed a willingness to negotiate a future within Pakistan as a autonomous entity, showcasing the complex and fluid political alliances of the time and the missed opportunities that shaped the subcontinent's map. SCANNED BY: NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF PAKISTAN.

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