The North-West Frontier Province held a referendum on its future in July 1947. The referendum took place in an atmosphere of communal tension and violence whilst the referendum itself was limited to just 572,799 voters in a province with a population of just under 8,000,000.

Of these voters, 289,244 were in favour of acceding to Pakistan, 2,874 to India, and the rest did not vote.

Prior to the referendum, several sources in the province predicted a favourable result for Pakistan. The editor of the journal Light, Muhammad Yakub Khan, relayed the following to Muhammad Ali Jinnah:

“Respected Quaid-i-Azam,
During a month’s stay in the Frontier Province (having returned only yesterday) I have formed some definite impressions about the state of things in that Province which I feel, I should, in the interest of the stability of our national state of Pakistan, bring to your notice. These impressions are based on personal contacts with people and leaders of all schools of thought.

The Referendum will, by God’s Grace, be a decisive victory for Pakistan. But it will by no means be the end of the struggle. It will only open up another and a more difficult phase of the struggle. The enclosed note is an appraisement of those difficulties and a suggestion how to meet them.

I hope you will find it of some use to you in arriving at correct conclusions about affairs in the Frontier which are assuming urgency as the Referendum is coming to a close.”

Khan’s letter indicates that the referendum victory was seen as a foregone conclusion and that the more pressing issue was addressing the issues of the Province going forward. He warns Jinnah that:

“the Frontier Province, the most explosive area in the whole of India, is going to become the battle ground of diverse conflicting forces contending for supremacy. The League High Command must know and appreciate that three million sturdy, valiant Pathans, ready for any sacrifice for Pakistan, with another three to four million of their Kinsmen scattered across the border belt from Gilgit to Baluchistan, with no less than a full million rifles and crack riflemen, constitute the most invaluable asset of Pakistan. Coupled with this is the consider- ation that in another few weeks when Pakistan Ministries come into saddle, we will be laying the first brick, as it were, of Pakistan. This first brick will be a fateful brick. Upon it will largely depend how far Pakistan is going to be a state worthy of the great faith, culture and history of Islam.”

Source: ‘Muhammad Yakub Khan to M. A. Jinnah’ cited in Z. H. Zaidi (ed.), Jinnah Papers, On the Threshold of Pakistan (Government of Pakistan: 1996), p. 168-169