Muslim League, All-India

Muslim League, All-India, the political organization for Indian Muslims which was founded in 1906 to safeguard their rights. It quickly grew, once Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1949) became its president in 1934, from being only a few hundred strong to being a political force that rivalled Gandhi's mainly Hindu Indian National Congress.

Though its Lahore Resolution of March 1940 demanded a sovereign Muslim homeland, there was nothing inevitable during the war years about the creation of Pakistan. However, the British, not wanting to alienate the Muslim community—which provided, especially from the Punjab, valuable recruits for the Indian Army—assured the Muslims that they would not have to be ruled by any post-war independent Indian government if they did not wish it. This undertaking was clarified by the Cripps mission in March 1942, whose offer of post-war independence for India specifically stated that no part of India would be forced to become part of an independent state if it did not wish to (see India, 3). These promises gave Jinnah useful leverage in the various negotiations which preceded India's independence in 1947.

Soon after the outbreak of war in 1939, the eight Congress ministries in the provinces and the pro-Congress North-West Frontier Provinces ministry resigned. The Muslim League stepped into the vacuum, forming ministries in Assam and Sind, which had had Congress-led coalition ministries, and in the North-West Frontier Provinces, where the pro-Congress ministry of Dr Khan Saheb had held office. By 1944 the League had a membership of about three million and in the 1945–6 election it polled 4.5 million votes, or about 75% of the Muslim vote. It was this dominance of Muslim voters by the League that made Pakistan a reality.