Sikandar Hayat Khan

Khan Bahadur Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan (5 June 1892 – 26 December 1942) was a British Indian politician and statesman from the Punjab who served as the first Premier of the Punjab (1937–1942) at the head of the Unionist Party, the party of the province's landed gentry across its Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities. He signed the Jinnah–Sikandar Pact in October 1937 and was a chief supporter and architect of the Lahore Resolution of March 1940, while opposing the partition of India itself. He twice served as acting Governor of the Punjab, died in office, and was buried at the footsteps of the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore. ^{1 2}

He was born in Multan, Punjab, in a Punjabi family of the Khattar tribe. His father was Nawab Muhammad Hayat Khan, a civil servant and close associate of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and his grandfather Sardar Karam Khan died in battle fighting for the British against the Sikhs in the Second Anglo-Sikh War. He was educated at Oriental Collegiate High School in Aligarh and at Aligarh Muslim University, and was sent to study medicine at King's College London but was recalled home by his family around 1915. ¹

In the First World War he worked first as a war recruitment officer in his native Attock district and then served as one of the first Indian officers to receive the King's Commission, with the 67th Punjabis on the Western Front in France, and later in the Third Afghan War; he was appointed MBE (Military Division) for his services. After 1920 he turned to business, becoming a director or managing director of several companies, including railway, tea, sugar, cement and electricity concerns, and remained an honorary magistrate and chairman of the Attock District Board. In 1935 he briefly served as acting deputy governor of the newly established Reserve Bank of India and sat on its first central board of directors. ¹

Elected to the Punjab Legislative Council in 1921, he became one of the main leaders of the Unionist Party, succeeded Sir Fazli Husein as its leader, and led it to victory in the 1937 elections held under the Government of India Act 1935. He then governed the Punjab as Premier in coalition with the Akali Dal and the Indian National Congress, carrying out agrarian reforms and measures to relieve the peasantry's debts during the crash in agricultural prices. He was appointed KBE in the 1933 New Year Honours. ^{1 2}

In October 1937 he signed the Jinnah–Sikandar Pact with Muhammad Ali Jinnah at Lucknow, merging the Muslim elements of his Unionist force with the All India Muslim League in a move towards a united front for Muslim community rights. He was later a chief supporter and architect of the Lahore Resolution of March 1940, which called for an autonomous Muslim-majority region within a larger Indian confederation; but he opposed the partition of India and condemned any reference to the Lahore Resolution as a "Pakistan Resolution", holding that partition meant disrupting the Punjab and the Unionist Party. ¹

These positions are reported as the sources record them, including Viceroy Linlithgow's personal evaluation in a letter written two days after Khan's death; the museum gives no verdict on them.

He died on the night of 25/26 December 1942, of sudden heart failure at his home in Lahore, and is buried at the footsteps of the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore. Among his children who attained public standing were Begum Mahmooda Salim Khan, Pakistan's first woman minister, Shaukat Hayat Khan, a senior Muslim League leader, and Tahira Mazhar Ali, a socialist leader and activist. ^{1 2}

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