Pakistan to celebrate 63rd Independence Day

It was on August 14, 1947 that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan emerged on the world map as an independent sovereign state, carved out from the Indian Sub-Continent.

The nation is to celebrate its 63rd Independence Day anniversary on Friday with flag-hoisting ceremonies, tributes to its national heroes and fireworks.

Celebrations will begin with a 31-gun salute in the Federal Capital and a 21-gun salute in all the four provincial capitals.

Pakistan was freed under the leadership of Quaid-e Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) from the clutches of the British colonial rulers, who ruled over the Sub-Continent with an iron-fist for around 200 years.

Quaid-e Azam described Pakistan as "a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and classification, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation."