Liaquat Ali Khan

Liaquat Ali Khan was a Pakistani lawyer, politician and statesman who served as the first prime minister of Pakistan from 1947 until his assassination in 1951. He was one of the leading figures of the Pakistan Movement and is revered as Quaid-e-Millat (transl. "Leader of the nation"). Khan was born in Karnal to an Urdu-speaking family. He was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University and University of Oxford. After first being invited to the Indian National Congress, he later opted to join the All-India Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, an Indian independence activist who later advocated for a separate Muslim nation-state out of Hindu-majority India. Khan assisted Jinnah in the campaign for what would become known as the Pakistan Movement. He was a democratic political theorist who promoted parliamentarism in British India. Khan's premiership oversaw the beginning of the Cold War, in which Khan's foreign policy sided with the United States-led Western Bloc over the Soviet Union-led Eastern Bloc. He promulgated the Objectives Resolution, in 1949, which stipulated Pakistan to be an Islamic democracy. He also held cabinet portfolio as the first foreign minister, defence minister, and frontier regions minister from 1947 until his assassination in 1951. Prior to the part, Khan briefly tenured as Finance minister of British India in the Interim Government that undertook independence of Pakistan and India, led by Louis Mountbatten, the then-Viceroy of India. He was knighted by the British government in 1922, and was awarded the title of Allama (learned) by his admirers. He was assassinated in Rawalpindi in 1951 by a Muslim fanatic who resented his steady refusal to contemplate war with India.