Who among the following first coined the word 'Pakistan'?

Question

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Correct — B, Choudhry Rehmat Ali. A Punjabi Muslim student at Cambridge, Rehmat Ali coined the term 'Pakistan' in his January 1933 pamphlet 'Now or Never', proposing a separate Muslim homeland in north-western India. He went on to found the Pakistan National Movement to campaign for the idea, which long remained on the fringes of mainstream Muslim politics.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Jinnah led the Muslim League and the eventual political movement for Pakistan's creation from the 1940 Lahore Resolution onward, but did not coin the name — he in fact resisted the demand for a separate state for years before adopting it.  (c) A 19th-century reformer and founder of the Aligarh movement/MAO College; he predates the Pakistan idea by decades and never used the term.  (d) Not a figure associated with coining the term 'Pakistan'.

Concept: The word 'Pakistan' did not originate with the Muslim League's political leadership — it was coined by Choudhry Rehmat Ali, a Cambridge student, in his 1933 pamphlet 'Now or Never', years before the League's 1940 Lahore Resolution formally demanded separate Muslim states. Rehmat Ali intended it as an acronym built from the names of the Muslim-majority regions of north-western India, also read as meaning 'land of the pure' in Urdu/Persian.

State PCS 2023 Q64 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q64 — History PYQ with Answer