ISLAMABAD: The 71st death anniversary of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Shaheed-e-Millat, Khan Liaquat Ali Khan, is being observed today (Sunday).
Born in Karnal‚ East Punjab, Liaquat Ali Khan got education from Aligarh Muslim University, India and Oxford University, United Kingdom.
He then struggled with Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to get a separate homeland for Muslims of Sub-continent.
Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated on this day in 1951 during a public meeting at Company Bagh in Rawalpindi which was later named after him as Liaquat Bagh.
Liaquat had been a devoted follower of the Quaid-i-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, since 1928, and was appointed general secretary of the All India Muslim League by his leader in 1936. Over the subsequent 12 years, Jinnah and Liaquat developed a close working relationship, with Jinnah calling Liaquat “my right hand” in 1943, and appointing him prime minister in 1947.
Liaquat was an Urdu-speaking Punjabi, the second son of the Nawab of Karnal. He was educated in law at Syed Ahmed Khan’s Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College, which later became the Aligarh University, and he remained devoted all his life to the modernist ideals and the integration of Western and Islamic learning he acquired there.
Liaquat was married to his first cousin in 1915 and had a son, Wilayat, born in 1919, the year after his father died leaving him an independently wealthy man. Liaquat then studied law at Exeter College, Oxford, and the Inner Temple, London. He was called to the Bar and returned to India in 1922 after touring Europe as a well educated, cosmopolitan man, who could recite Iqbal’s Jawab-i-Shikwa by heart, was fond of entertaining and music, and whose passion was politics.
