Muslim League

Muslim League An Indian party founded on 30 December 1906 in Dacca, initially in order to campaign for separate Muslim representation in all levels of government. It claimed to represent the grievances and demands of the entire Indian Muslim community. Hence in the first decades, it pursued the dual aim of winning greater rights of self-government from the British, and of winning greater rights for Muslims within that system. To achieve the former aim, it cooperated frequently with the Indian National Congress (INC), with which it allied itself in the Lucknow Pact of December 1916. Briefly eclipsed by the Khilafat movement, it was largely ineffective during the 1920s, when it claimed little over 1,000 members throughout the subcontinent. This led to a decade in the 1930s of major revision of its goals and its organization which would enable it to appeal to the disparate Muslim community.

In 1930, Iqbal addressed its annual conference (attended by only seventy-five members) to demand, for the first time, a separate Muslim state in the west. This stance became gradually accepted, particularly after the Muslim League's catastrophic showing in the 1937 elections, when it gained but 104 out of 489 Muslim seats. Its leader, Jinnah, now sought to broaden its mass base, while on 23 March 1940 the demand for separate Muslim homelands became an accepted policy of the League. By 1944, it could claim over two million members, which in the 1945–6 elections translated into 75 per cent of the Muslim vote. It thus had a popular mandate for the creation of a separate Muslim state, and was able to achieve the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Initially dominant in Pakistan politics, now that independence had been gained, and after the death of the commanding Jinnah, it lacked an integrative force, so that it dissolved into various groups during the 1950s.