Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan was the first prime minister of Pakistan and being the closest lieutenant of Quaid-e-Azam, he has was given a semi-divine status in Pakistani history. There is to this date, very little objective assessment of his role as prime minister of Pakistan has been done. It is folly since Liaquat Ali Khan lived a much longer time compared to Quaid-e-Azam after the birth of Pakistan, and his legacy still shapes Pakistan today in several critical areas.
First and foremost is the fact that Pakistan's disastrous constitutional history has much to do with Liaquat Ali Khan. He restrained from writing the constitution. He had no constituency in Pakistan. His hometown was left behind in India. Bengalis were a majority in the newly created state of Pakistan and Punjabi was the second biggest majority of Pakistan. This was a painful reality for him. While India was able to promulgate a constitution by 1950 and hold a first direct election on adult franchise in 1951, the Muslim League under Liaquat Ali Khan scrupulously avoided its responsibility to frame a constitution. The reason was simple. Had a constitution been framed, the political power would have granted to Bengali and Punjabi political players due to Bengali and Punjabi demographic majority and Liaquat Ali Khan would have been sent out of the prime minister's office. The person who would have replaced him would have been Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, the most popular political leader of Bengali Muslims and a great stalwart of the freedom movement. He had been chief minister and head of a Muslim League government of United Bengal before partition. Had Liaquat Ali Khan ignored his personal political interests and respected the ground reality of the Bengali and Punjabi majority, Pakistan might have got itself a workable constitution in 1949 or 1950. He was in a position to do the right thing. The Pakistani army was in formative stages and was in no position to challenge civilian authority. All the service chiefs were British.
Liaquat Ali Khan was the person to bring the religion into politics. His alliance with the mullahs produced the 'Objectives Resolution', which declared Pakistan to be an 'Islamic state'. Common perception holds Zia or Bhutto responsible for mixing religion and politics, but it was Liaquat Ali Khan under whose leadership mullahs were given entry into politics and the right to decide the fate of the nation. In 1949 after Jinnah's death, Liaquat Ali Khan intensified his vision to establish the Islamic system in the country, presenting the Objectives Resolution— a prelude to future constitutions, in the Constituent Assembly. It was hurriedly passed on 12 March 1949. But it met with harsh criticism from minority members even from Law Minister Jogendra Nath Mandal who argued against it. So it was Liaquat Ali Khan who promoted right-wing forces while mixing up religion with politics- a blunder due to which we are still suffering after seven decades.
Liaquat Ali Khan developed the educational infrastructure of Pakistan. He called the Raziuddin Siddiqui and Ziauddin Ahmed from his native United Provinces. He asked the Raziuddin Siddiqui to plan and establish the educational research institutes in the country and asked the Ziauddin Ahmed to draft the educational policy of Pakistan, which was submitted to his office in November 1947, and a roadmap for establishing the education in the country was quickly adopted by Liaquat Ali Khan's government. Liaquat Ali Khan was the person who manipulated, maneuvered, and corrupted the educational curriculum of Pakistan by penetrating the UP-ite mindset, infiltrating the Gunga Jumna culture and introducing the Hindustani traditions in the educational curriculum of Pakistan for the Urdu-ization of Pakistan, a state created on Indus Valley Civilization land.
Choudhry Rahmat Ali was a Pakistani Muslim nationalist. He is credited with creating the name "Pakistan" which we mean the five western units of India, Viz: Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan." After the creation of Pakistan he came back to Pakistan from England in April 1948, planning to stay in his country, but he was ordered by the then Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to leave the country, because he had been voicing his dissatisfaction over a different Pakistan than the one he had conceived in his 1933 pamphlet Now Or Never due to division of Punjab and inclusion of East Bengal but excluding Kashmir from Pakistan. His belongings were confiscated, and he left empty-handed for England in October 1948. He died in February 1951 and was buried on 20 February at New Market Road Cemetery, Cambridge, UK.
Then there is Kashmir. During the initial stages of the Kashmir conflict, Sardar Patel, India's deputy prime minister, offered Pakistan to exchange Hyderabad Deccan for Kashmir but Liaquat Ali Khan declined it. This fact is corroborated by a host of impeccable sources including Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, Liaquat's close confidant. The latter has described how this offer was made by the Indians and Liaquat Ali Khan declined it, in his masterly biography. At the Emergence of Pakistan. Hyderabad Deccan was a gone case from day one. It was surrounded on all sides by the Indians and had a Hindu majority. Kashmir, on the other hand, had a Muslim majority and was Pakistan's jugular vein and we should have aimed to get it by hook or crook.
In 1949, the Soviet Union under its leader Joseph Stalin sent an invitation to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to visit the country, followed by the U.S. invitation after learning the Soviet move. In May 1950, he paid a state visit to the United States after being persuaded to snap ties with the Soviet Union and set the course of Pakistan's foreign policy towards closer ties with the West.
When the economic planning of Liaquat Ali Khan failed in the late 40’s he focused on the United State aid program. Nehru, on the other hand, focused on socialism and went on to be a part of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The newly birthed Pakistan faced a number of immigration and naturalization difficulties due to the division of Punjab and displacement of Punjabi Hindu and Punjabi Sikh from the western side of Punjab to the eastern side of Punjab and Punjabi Muslim from the eastern side of Punjab to the western side of Punjab. But, after the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the problem of religious minorities flared in Sindh and the United Province, during late 1949 and early 1950. Therefore; Liaquat Ali Khan took the advantage to help the Urdu-speaking population of United Province to settle in Pakistan. At this time, Liaquat Ali Khan met the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to sign the Liaquat-Nehru Pact in 1950 to protect the religious minorities on both sides of the border and patronized the immigration of Urdu-speaking communities from the United Provinces, which polarized the West Pakistani population, especially in the cities of Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Hyderabad and other parts of Punjab and Sindh Provinces. As a result, in 1951, close to half of the population of the Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Multan, Hyderabad and other major cities of Pakistan were Urdu-Speaking immigrants from India.
Differences and problems also leveled up with Pakistan Armed Forces, and a section of Pakistan Army became hostile towards Liaquat Ali Khan politics, governance and policies. The existence of high-level opposition was revealed in Rawalpindi conspiracy, sponsored by Chief of General Staff Major-General Akbar Khan, and headed by communist leader Faiz Ahmad Faiz.
After completion of General Sir Douglas Gracey term on16 January 1951, the senior most officer of the Army was Bengali Major-General Ishfakul Majid and he was senior to Ayoub Khan (Pathan). But, Liaquat Ali Khan appointed the Ayoub Khan as the first Pakistani commander-in-chief of the army on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Major-General Iskandar Mirza (Bihari but a resident of Bengal) and paved the way for Pakistan's first military dictator. Ayoub Khan was merely a colonel in 1947. Quaid-e-Azam had given orders that he will not wear wings for one year and will be transferred to East Pakistan forthwith due to his involvement in looting evacuee gold and silver. No less a person than Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar had written a report on Ayoub Khan's misconduct. Ayoub Khan's British superiors had given him a horrible ACR for his timidity and refusal to participate in combat in Burma in World War II. Had independence not come about, the British would have retired him early. Most importantly, Ayoub Khan had not even taken part in the Kashmir war. Strangely, this bad service record was ignored by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan who also happened to be Pakistan's first defense minister, and appointed Ayoub Khan as Army Chief over two senior generals.
