Muslim League

The All India Muslim League was a political party in British India and was the driving force behind the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state from British India on the Indian subcontinent. After the independence of India and Pakistan, the League continued as a minor party in India, especially in Kerala, where it is often in government within a coalition with others. In Pakistan, the League formed the country's first government, but disintegrated during the 1950s following an army coup. A party using the name Muslim League, but with no organisational connection with the original League, is currently in government in Pakistan.

Campaign for Pakistan

At a League conference in Lahore in 1940, Jinnah said: "Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs and literature... It is quite clear that Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes... To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state."

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Lahore - 1940

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At Lahore the League formally recommitted itself to creating an independent Muslim state including Sindh, Punjab, the North West Frontier Province and Bengal, that would be "wholly autonomous and sovereign." The resolution guaranteed protection for non-Muslim religions. The principles of the Lahore Resolution formed the foundation for Pakistan's first constitution. Talks between Jinnah and Gandhi in 1944 in Bombay failed to achieve agreement. These was the last attempt to reach a single-state solution.

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1944 - Bombay

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In the 1940s Jinnah emerged as the recognised leader of the Indian Muslims and was popularly known as "Qaid-e-Azam" (Great Leader). In the Constituent Assembly elections of 1946, the League won 425 out of 496 seats reserved for Muslims on a policy of creating an independent state of Pakistan, and an implied threat of secession if this was not granted. Gandhi and Nehru, who with the election of a Labour government in Britain in 1945 saw independence within reach, were adamantly opposed to dividing India. They knew that the Hindu masses, who saw Mother India as a holy and indivisible entity, could never agree to such a thing.

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Constituent Assembly - 1946 - Labour - 1945

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By 1946 the British had neither the will, nor the financial or military power, to hold India any longer, and Jinnah knew that independence was imminent. He made it clear that he would plunge India into chaos if India was not partitioned to create a Muslim state, and the British could not resist this threat. Political deadlock ensued in the Constituent Assembly, and Britain's Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, sent a special mission to India to mediate the situation.

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1946 - Clement Attlee

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When these talks broke down, Attlee sent Earl Mountbatten, India's last Viceroy, to negotiate the partition of India and immediate British withdrawal. Mountbatten told Gandhi and Nehru that if they did not accept partition there would be civil war, and they were reluctantly compelled to agree. Civil war did in fact break out in Punjab and other areas of mixed population.

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The Muslim League survived as a minor party in India after partition, but later splintered into several groups, the most important of which is the Indian Union Muslim League.

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