Long before the British invaded and seized control of the subcontinent, Muslim armies had conquered the settled populations in the rolling flat land that stretched from the foothills of the Hindu Kush to the city of Delhi and the Indo-Gangetic Plain and eastward to Bengal. The last and most successful of the Muslim conquerors was the Mughal dynasty (1526–1857), which eventually spread its authority over virtually the entire subcontinent. British superiority coincided with Mughal decline, and, following a period of European successes and Mughal failures on the battlefield, the British brought an end to Mughal power. The last Mughal emperor was exiled following the failed Indian Mutiny of 1857–58.

Less than three decades after that revolt, the Indian National Congress was formed to give political representation to British India’s indigenous people. Although membership in the Congress was open to all, Hindu participants overwhelmed the Muslim members. The All India Muslim League, organized in 1906, aimed to give Muslims a voice so as to counter what was then perceived as the growing influence of the Hindus under British rule. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, earlier a prominent Muslim member of the Congress, assumed leadership of the league following his break with Congress leader Mohandas K. Gandhi. A firm believer in the Anglo-Saxon rule of law and a close associate of Iqbal, Jinnah questioned the security of the Muslim minority in an India dominated by essentially Hindu authority. Declaring Islam was endangered by a revived Hindu assertiveness, Jinnah and the league posited a “two-nation theory” that argued Indian Muslims were entitled to—and therefore required—a separate, self-governing state in a reconstituted subcontinent.

The British intention to grant self-government to India along the lines of British parliamentary democracy is evident in the Government of India Act of 1935. Up to that time, the question of Hindus and Muslims sharing in the governance of India was generally acceptable, although it was also acknowledged that Hindus more so than Muslims had accommodated themselves to British customs and the colonial manner of administration. Moreover, following the failed Indian Mutiny, Hindus were more eager to adopt British behaviours and ideas, whereas Indian Muslims bore the brunt of British wrath. The Mughal Empire was formally dissolved in 1858, and its last ruler was banished from the subcontinent. Believing they had been singled out for punishment, India’s Muslim population was reluctant to adopt British ways or take advantage of English educational opportunities. As a consequence of these different positions, Hindus advanced under British rule at the expense of their Muslim counterparts, and when Britain opened the civil service to the native population, the Hindus virtually monopolized the postings. Although influential Muslims such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan recognized the growing power imbalance and encouraged Muslims to seek European education and entry into the colonial civil service, they also realized that catching up to the more progressive and advantaged Hindus was an impossible task.

It was this juxtaposition of an emerging feeling of Hindu superiority and a sustained sense among Muslims of inferiority that the All India Muslim League addressed in its claim to represent the Muslims of India. Unlike other Muslim movements of the period, the Muslim League articulated the sentiments of the attentive and at the same time more moderate elements among India’s Muslim population. The Muslim League, with Jinnah as its spokesman, was also the preferred organization from the standpoint of British authority. Unlike Gandhi’s practices of civil disobedience, the lawyer Jinnah (who was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, London) was more inclined to promote the rule of law in seeking separation from imperial rule. Jinnah, therefore, was more open to a negotiated settlement, and, indeed, his first instinct was to preserve the unity of India, albeit with adequate safeguards for the Muslim community. For Jinnah, the Lahore (later Pakistan) Resolution of 1940, which called for an independent Muslim state or states in India, did not at first imply the breakup of the Indian union.

World War II (1939–45) proved to be the catalyst for an unanticipated change in political power. Under pressure from a variety of popular national movements—notably those organized by the Congress and led by Gandhi—the war-weakened British were forced to consider abandoning India. In response to the Congress campaign that Britain quit India, London sent a mission headed by Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (the Cripps Mission) to New Delhi in early 1942 with the promise that Congress’s cooperation in the war effort would be rewarded with greater self-rule and possibly even independence when the war ended. Gandhi and the other Congress leaders, however, could not be appeased, and their insistence that Britain allow for a transfer of power while the war raged produced an impasse and the failure of the mission.

During that period, the Jinnah-led Muslim League was substantially less aggressive in seeking immediate British withdrawal. The differences between the two groups were not lost on Britain, and the eventual defeat of Germany and Japan set the scene for the drama that resulted in the partition of British India and the independence of Pakistan. The new postwar Labour Party government of Clement Attlee, succeeding the Conservative Winston Churchill government, was determined to terminate its authority in India. A cabinet mission led by William Pethick-Lawrence was sent in 1946 to discuss and possibly arrange the mechanisms for the transfer of power to indigenous hands. Throughout the deliberations the British had to contend with two prominent players: Gandhi and the Congress and Jinnah and the Muslim League. Jinnah laboured to find a suitable formula that addressed the mutual and different needs of the subcontinent’s two major communities. When Pethick-Lawrence’s mission proved unequal to the task of reconciling the parties, the last chance for a compromise solution was lost. Each of the major actors blamed the other for the breakdown in negotiations, with Jinnah insisting on the realization of the “two-nation theory.” The goal now was nothing less than the creation of a sovereign, independent Pakistan.