North-West Frontier Province in the context of "Second Anglo-Sikh War"

Provincial elections were held in British India in the winter of 1936–37 as mandated by the Government of India Act 1935. Elections were held in all gubernational eleven provinces - Madras, Central Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, United Provinces, Bombay, Assam, North-West Frontier Province, Bengal, Punjab and Sind. No elections were held in the British provinces of Delhi, Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg & Baluchistan and in the princely states.

The final results of the elections were declared on 20 February 1937. The Indian National Congress emerged in power in five of the provinces, Bombay, Madras, the Central Provinces, the United Provinces, the North-West Frontier Province, Bihar, and Orissa. The exceptions were Punjab, Sindh (where it failed to obtain majority), Assam & Bengal (where it was nevertheless the single-largest party). The All-India Muslim League failed to form the government in any province on its own.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, commonly abbreviated KP or KPK and formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), is a province of Pakistan. Located in the northwestern region of the country, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the fourth largest province of Pakistan by land area and the third-largest province by population. It is bordered by Balochistan to the south; Punjab, Islamabad Capital Territory, and Azad Kashmir to the east; and Gilgit-Baltistan to the north and northeast. It shares an international border with Afghanistan to the west. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a varied geography of rugged mountain ranges, valleys, rolling foothills, and dense agricultural farms.

The history of the present province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is characterized by frequent invasions by various empires, largely due to its geographical proximity to the historically important Khyber Pass. It was the site of the ancient Gandhara, and was historically a stronghold of Buddhism. Islam became dominant in the region after the 11th-century conquest of the Hindu Shahi kingdom by the Ghaznavids. The predecessor of the present province was constituted in 1901, under the British Raj, when the North-West Frontier Province was created by bifurcating the northwestern districts of the erstwhile Punjab Province.

Peshawar is the capital and largest city of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the eighth-most populous Pakistani city, with a population of over 1.9 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, lying in the Valley of Peshawar, a broad area situated east of the Khyber Pass.

Peshawar's recorded history dates back to at least sixth century BC, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia. One of the principal cities of the ancient Gandhara, Peshawar served as the capital of the Kushan Empire during the rule of Kanishka the Great, in the second century CE. A variety of Muslim empires ruled the city following the conquest of Peshawar by the Ghaznavids from the Hindu Shahis, in 1001 CE. It was an important trading centre in the Mughal Empire, later serving as the winter capital of the Durrani Empire from 1776 until the capture of the city by the Sikh Empire in 1823. In 1849, the city was captured by the East India Company and subsequently became part of British Raj. In 1901, Peshawar became capital of the North-West Frontier Province after it was created from the northwestern districts of Punjab Province. Following the Partition of British India it became part of Pakistan, in 1947.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (6 February 1890 – 20 January 1988), also known as Bacha Khan, was a Pakistani politician and anti-colonial activist from the North-West Frontier Province. He was the founder and leader of the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar resistance movement and played a significant role in the Indian independence movement against British rule.

He was a political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition and lifelong pacifism; he was a secular Muslim and an advocate for Hindu–Muslim unity in the subcontinent. Because of his similar ideology and close friendship with Mahatma Gandhi, Khan was nicknamed Sarhadi Gandhi ("Frontier Gandhi") In 1929, Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar, an anti-colonial nonviolent resistance movement. The Khudai Khidmatgar's success and popularity eventually prompted the colonial government to launch numerous crackdowns against Khan and his supporters; the Khudai Khidmatgar experienced some of the most severe repression of the entire Indian independence movement.

Sind, sometimes spelled Scinde, was a province of Pakistan from 1947 till its amalgamation into West Pakistan in 1955; and prior, a province of British India from being granted provincial status in 1936 till Pakistan's independence in 1947. Karachi was the capital of the province till 1948, succeeded by Hyderabad.

Under the British, it encompassed the current territorial limits excluding the princely state of Khairpur. In 1948, Karachi was separated from the province to form the Federal Capital Territory and serve as the federal capital of Pakistan; this resulted in the provincial capital being shifted to Hyderabad. The province was dissolved alongside Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, West Punjab, and a number of Pakistani princely states to form a unified province of West Pakistan in 1955, upon implementation of the One Unit Scheme.

West Pakistan was the western province of Pakistan between 1955 and 1970, covering the territory of present-day Pakistan. Its land borders were with Afghanistan, India and Iran, with a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman in the Arabian Sea.

Following its independence from British rule, the new Dominion of Pakistan was physically separated into two exclaves, with the western and eastern wings geographically separated from each other by India. The western wing of Pakistan comprised three governor's provinces (the North-West Frontier, West Punjab and Sind), one chief commissioner's province (Baluchistan) along with the Baluchistan States Union, several independent princely states (notably Bahawalpur, Chitral, Dir, Hunza, Khairpur and Swat), the Karachi Federal Capital Territory, and the autonomous tribal areas adjoining the North-West Frontier Province. The eastern wing of the new country—known as East Pakistan—comprised the single province of East Bengal (which included the former Assamese district of Sylhet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts).

West Punjab was a province in the Dominion of Pakistan from 1947 to 1955. It was established from the western-half of British Punjab, following the independence of Pakistan. The province covered an area of 159,344 km (61,523 sq mi), including much of the current Punjab province and the Islamabad Capital Territory, but excluding the former Princely state of Bahawalpur. Lahore, being the largest city and the cultural centre, served as the capital of the province. The province was composed of four divisions (Lahore, Sargodha, Multan and Rawalpindi) and was bordered by the state of Bahawalpur to the south-east, the province of Baluchistan to the south-west and Sind to the south, North-West Frontier Province to the north-west, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir to the north. It shared International border with Indian state of East Punjab to the east and Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir to the north-east. It was dissolved and merged into West Pakistan upon creation of One Unit Scheme, in 1955.

The One Unit Scheme (Urdu: ون یونٹ; Bengali: এক ইউনিট ব্যবস্থা) was the reorganisation of the provinces of Pakistan by the central Pakistani government. It was led by Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra on 22 November 1954 and enacted on 30 September 1955. The government claimed that the programme would overcome the difficulty of administering the two non-contiguous, unequal polities of West and East Pakistan separated from each other by more than a thousand miles. To diminish the differences between the two regions, the 'One Unit' programme merged the four provinces of West Pakistan (West Punjab, Sind, the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan) into a single province to parallel the province of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

The One Unit program met with great resistance and grievances were raised by the four provinces after its establishment. As per scholar Julien Levesque, the One Unit project had mainly been pushed by the Punjabi elite of West Pakistan since 1953 with the aim of preventing politicians from East Pakistan from gaining power at the centre. The National Awami Party successfully sponsored a bill in the National Assembly calling for its dissolution and providing for regional autonomy. This led to the military takeover of the national government. The One Unit programme remained in effect until 1970. Finally, President General Yahya Khan imposed Legal Framework Order No. 1970 to end the One Unit program and reinstate the provisional status of the Four Provinces as of August 1947.