Important leaders in the Muslim League highlighted that Pakistan would be a 'New Medina', in other words the second Islamic state established after the Prophet Muhammad's creation of an Islamic state in Medina. Pakistan was popularly envisaged as an Islamic utopia, a successor to the defunct Turkish Caliphate and a leader and protector of the entire Islamic world. Islamic scholars debated over whether it was possible for the proposed Pakistan to truly become an Islamic state.[3][4]
While the Congress' top leadership had been in prison following the 1942 Quit India Movement, there was intense debate among Indian Muslims over the creation of a separate homeland.[4] The majority of Barelvis[5] and Barelvi ulema supported the creation of Pakistan[6]and pirs and Sunni ulema were mobilized by the Muslim League to demonstrate that India's Muslim masses wanted a separate country.[7] The Barelvis believed that any co-operation with Hindus would be counter productive.[8] On the other hand, most Deobandis, who were led by Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, were opposed to the creation of Pakistan and the two-nation theory. According to them Muslims and Hindus could be one nation and Muslims were only a nation of themselves in the religious sense and not in the territorial sense.[9][10][11] At the same time some Deobandi ulema such as Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, Mufti Muhammad Shafi and Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani were supportive of the Muslim League's demand to create a separate Pakistan.[12][7]
Muslims who were living in provinces where they were demographically a minority, such as the United Provinces where the Muslim League enjoyed popular support, were assured by Jinnah that they could remain in India, migrate to Pakistan or continue living in India but as Pakistani citizens. The Muslim League had also proposed the hostage population theory. According to this theory the safety of India's Muslim minority would be ensured by turning the Hindu minority in the proposed Pakistan into a 'hostage' population who would be visited by retributive violence if Muslims in India were harmed.[4][13]
In the Constituent Assembly elections of 1946, the Muslim League won 425 out of 496 seats reserved for Muslims (polling 89.2% of total votes).[14] The Congress had hitherto refused to acknowledge the Muslim League's claim of being the representative of Indian Muslims but finally acquiesced to the League's claim after the results of this election. The Muslim League's demand for Pakistan had received overwhelming popular support from India's Muslims, especially those Muslims who were living in provinces such as UP where they were a minority. The 1946 election in the British Raj was essentially a plebiscite among Muslims over the creation of Pakistan.[15][16][17]
The British had neither the will, nor the financial resources or military power, to hold India any longer but they were also determined to avoid partition[18] and for this purpose they arranged the Cabinet Mission Plan.[19] According to this plan India would be kept united but would be heavily decentralized with separate groupings of Hindu and Muslim majority provinces. The Muslim League accepted this plan as it contained the 'essence' of Pakistan but the Congress rejected it. After the failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan, Jinnah called for Muslims to observe Direct Action Day to demand the creation of a separate Pakistan. The Direct Action Day morphed into violent riots between Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta. The riots in Calcutta were followed by intense communal rioting between Hindus and Muslims in Noakhali, Bihar, Garhmukteshwar and Rawalpindi.
The British Prime Minister Attlee appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten as India's last viceroy, to negotiate the independence of Pakistan and India and immediate British withdrawal. British leaders including Mountbatten did not support the creation of Pakistan[20] but failed to convince Jinnah otherwise.[21][22] Mountbatten later confessed that he would most probably have sabotaged the creation of Pakistan had he known that Jinnah was dying of tuberculosis.[23]
In early 1947 the British had announced their desire to grant India its independence by June 1948. However, Lord Mountbatten decided to advance the date. In a meeting in June, Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad representing the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singhrepresenting the Sikhs, agreed to partition India along religious lines.
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