Pakistan to honour two Indian doctors: What is Nishan-e-Imtiaz?

Pakistan will confer its highest civilian award , the Nishan-e-Imtiaz , upon two Indian doctors who had kept the founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s terminal illness a secret in 1946. This was a year before Partition, which saw a mass exodus of people from both sides of the border and the division of colonial India, famously along the ‘Radcliffe Line,’ which affected the erstwhile provinces of Punjab and Bengal.

In a statement on social media on Pakistan’s Independence Day, August 14, Minister Ahsan Iqbal announced that a radiologist and a physician were pivotal in keeping the secret of Jinnah’s frail health. The Minister went on to say that Lord Mountbatten (last Viceroy of India) had later acknowledged that, had he known how seriously ill Jinnah was, he might have delayed Partition, “potentially altering the course of history and perhaps even jeopardizing the creation of Pakistan.”