Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan (1915-2003)
Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan was born on April 22, 1915 in the village of Horna Meera near the town of Rawalkot in Poonch. He belonged to the Sadhan tribe. His father's name was Muhammad Alam Khan. Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan passed the matriculation examination from Poonch High School in 1933. BA from Islamia College, Lahore in 1938. In 1940 the state government fixed his scholarship and he went to England for barite law.
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| Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan |
Government job
When he returned home after passing the barrister's examination in 1942, the government appointed him as Public Prosecutor (PP) in Mirpur. Shortly afterwards, he was promoted to the post of Assistant Advocate General, Jammu. During his tenure he felt that he would not be able to withstand the restrictions of public service, so he decided to quit his job and try his luck in the political arena.
Join the Muslim Conference
In October 1946, he resigned from the post of Assistant Advocate General and joined the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference. Khan Muhammad Khan, a member of the State Assembly from Poonch constituency, offered to run in the January 1947 elections on a Muslim Conference ticket from this constituency in his place. Thus, Sardar Ibrahim Khan won the Kashmir Assembly elections in January 1947. As a highly educated member of the Assembly, he played a dignified role in the Assembly. He continued to serve in the Assembly as the head and hip of the Muslim Conference.
In 1946, some senior leaders of the Muslim Conference were behind bars for their civil disobedience movement. Since Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan had not been arrested, he carried out important responsibilities at the party level during this critical period. Due to the rivalry between Mirwaiz Maulana Yusuf Shah and Chaudhry Hameedullah Khan, the Muslim Conference had split into two factions. Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan played a pivotal role in saving the party from this chaos. On 19 July 1947, a meeting of the Muslim Conference was held at his residence in which Maharaja Hari Singh was asked to annex the state of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan.
Pakistan came
Immediately after the Partition of India, when the situation in the State of Jammu and Kashmir began to deteriorate, Sardar Ibrahim Khan, in the company of his friend Raja Abdul Hameed Khan of Muzaffarabad, left Srinagar on 25 August 1947 and reached Abbottabad via Muzaffarabad. Meanwhile, preparations were being made for a tribal attack on Kashmir. In this regard, consultations were going on in Murree Abbottabad and some other places. Sardar Ibrahim Khan also attended these meetings. On October 4, 1947, a revolutionary government headed by Khwaja Ghulam Nabi was formed at the Paris Hotel Rawalpindi. The headquarters of which was informed to Muzaffarabad. Sardar Ibrahim Khan became the Prime Minister in this government. On October 21, Pakistan invaded the state through armed tribesmen, as a result of which a small part of Kashmir became empty of Dogra forces.
Free Revolutionary Government
On 24th October, at the behest of the Government of Pakistan, an independent revolutionary government headed by Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan was reconstituted and Pallandri was made its headquarters. In these critical moments, Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan took over as the President of the Independent Government.
When banned from going to the UN.
In February 1948, Sardar Ibrahim Khan was sent to the United Nations at the behest of the Quaid-e-Azam to present his case before the Security Council as a representative of the Kashmiris, but the then Foreign Minister Zafarullah Khan asked him Prohibited from appearing and presenting his position. Therefore, Sardar Sahib informed the world about his position through press conferences.
In 1948, when Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas and other leaders of the Muslim Conference were released from occupied Kashmir and sent to Pakistan, Sardar Ibrahim Khan welcomed them as the President of Azad Kashmir. Khan's differences arose. The main reason for the differences was the party leadership and the chair presidency. The Muslim Conference became increasingly fragmented and eventually split into three factions, the Abbas Group, the Ibrahim Group and the Mirwaiz Group.
Duration of presidency
In 1950, the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs removed Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan from the presidency. He was replaced by Col. Ali Ahmad Shah as President. In 1957, Sardar Ibrahim Khan was re-elected President of Azad Kashmir and held the post till 1959. In 1959, the government of Pakistan arrested him and imprisoned him in the Central Jail, Rawalpindi, from where he was released 28 days later. He contested the first presidential election of Azad Kashmir in 1961, but was unsuccessful. He ran in the 1970 presidential election but was unsuccessful. He was the President of Azad Kashmir for the third time from June 5, 1975 to October 30, 1978. He held the post for the fourth time from August 23, 1996 to August 24, 2001. After leaving the post for the fourth time, he stayed in his village Kot Mate Khan due to old age. He passed away on June 31, 2003. He was buried in his native village. They own
Services on the pen front
Sardar Ibrahim Khan played a very active role in the politics of Azad Kashmir. He was always dissatisfied with the dictatorial regimes of Pakistan and their anti-Kashmir policies. Their relations with such governments have always been strained. That is why for some time he kept aloof from the politics of Azad Kashmir. Apart from politics, Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan also served on the pen front. His autobiography, Mutta-e-Zindagi , was published in the 1960s. He also wrote another book in Urdu entitled "Kashmir War of Independence" and then in English he wrote a book on Kashmir issue " Kashmir Saga ". In this book, he called an independent state of Jammu and Kashmir the preferred solution to the Kashmir issue.
