11 August 1947 · Karachi
Jinnah to Pakistan's Constituent Assembly
The setting
Three days before the partition of British India created Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had led the Muslim League's campaign for a separate homeland, was elected president of the new state's Constituent Assembly in Karachi. As violence between communities spread across Punjab and Bengal, he set out his view of citizenship in the new state.
Key passage
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State.
Presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Karachi, 11 August 1947.
What followed
Partition was followed by mass migration and killing in which perhaps a million people died and some fifteen million were uprooted. Jinnah, Pakistan's first governor-general, died in September 1948, and the meaning of his speech for a state founded as a Muslim homeland has been debated ever since; the Objectives Resolution of 1949 committed the future constitution to Islamic principles.