Pakistan

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan emerged from the partition of British India effected under the Indian Independence Act, 1947, passed by the British Parliament on 18 July 1947, which gave legal form to the demarcation of the Radcliffe Award. Its creation rested on the Two-Nation Theory articulated by the All-India Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah, formalised in the Lahore Resolution of 23 March 1940, which demanded autonomous Muslim-majority states in the north-west and north-east of the subcontinent. Jinnah became its first Governor-General; Liaquat Ali Khan its first Prime Minister. Originally comprising two non-contiguous wings — West Pakistan and East Pakistan separated by roughly 1,600 km of Indian territory — the eastern wing seceded to become Bangladesh after the 1971 war, sealed by the Instrument of Surrender of 16 December 1971 and the Simla Agreement of 1972.

Pakistan is today a federation of four provinces — Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan — plus the Islamabad Capital Territory and the administered territories of Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir. It is governed under the Constitution of 1973, drafted under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, which establishes a bicameral Majlis-i-Shoora (the National Assembly and the Senate), a parliamentary executive led by a Prime Minister, and an indirectly elected President as ceremonial head of state. The Eighteenth Amendment (2010) devolved substantial powers to the provinces and abolished the Concurrent List. Pakistan's constitutional history is punctuated by abrogation and military rule under Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul-Haq, and Pervez Musharraf, with the judiciary's "doctrine of necessity" (State v. Dosso, 1958) repeatedly invoked to validate coups before its later repudiation.

Pakistan declared itself a nuclear-weapons state following the Chagai tests of 28–30 May 1998, conducted in response to India's Pokhran-II. It is a founding member of SAARC and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation since 2017, and the linchpin of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship of China's Belt and Road Initiative anchored at Gwadar port. Its relations with India remain dominated by the Kashmir dispute and the Line of Control; the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, brokered by the World Bank, governs river-sharing. As of 2026 Pakistan faces acute economic strain managed through successive IMF Extended Fund Facility programmes, persistent civil-military imbalance, and security challenges from the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Baloch separatism.

For the exam, Pakistan recurs across the International Relations and Post-Independence India sections. UPSC GS-II and the exam-ir course test Indo-Pak relations: Partition mechanics, the Indus Waters Treaty, the Simla and Tashkent agreements, cross-border terrorism, and India's neighbourhood policy. The upsc-post-independence syllabus probes the integration of princely states (Junagadh, Hyderabad, Kashmir) and the 1947–48, 1965, 1971, and Kargil (1999) conflicts. FSOT, CSS, and BCS candidates should command Pakistan's constitutional evolution and great-power alignment. Typical question angles ask candidates to compare the Two-Nation Theory with composite nationalism, or to assess the strategic logic of CPEC.