The Unionist Party tried to invent a third way, beyond the demands for India and Pakistan, in addition to toying with the idea of an independent Punjab. Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana, who was the last premier of the unified Punjab and the leader of the Punjab Unionist Party from 1942 to 1947, opposed Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Partition from a Punjabi nationalist perspective. As a last-ditch effort to save a single Punjab, he tried to tempt the British into accepting his proposal for carving out Punjab as an independent political entity, different from both India and Pakistan, but rather as a part of the larger British Empire. There briefly appeared to be a small chance that the Punjabis could have gotten back the sovereign Punjabi state that had been annexed in 1849. However, the events of 1947 compounded the tragedy of Punjab. If in 1849 Punjab had lost its sovereignty, it had at least kept its united entity intact; in 1947, it lost that too.
