What is the Indian Muslim League ?

Jinnah was a secularist. He was regarded as cerebral, aloof and alone. In many ways he was the opposite of Gandhi. He was a successful and wealthy barrister. He was cosmopolitan and a fastidious dresser. Ignoring the rules of his religion, Jinnah smoked constantly, drank a nightly whiskey and soda, rarely went to a mosque and never fasted or visited Mecca. Describing his impression after meeting a Jinnah, his biographer Ahmed Rizwan, told Newsweek, "You had to look down. You felt such powerful rays were being directed at you."

the league functioned less effectively as a modern political party in Pakistan than it had as a mass-based pressure group in British India, and hence it gradually declined in popularity and cohesion.

According to rumors that floated around, Jinnah was a Muslim-convert who had been born a Hindu on Christmas Day, but in reality he was the first of seven children born in 1876 to an affluent Muslim merchant in Karachi. After graduating from the University of Bombay at the age of 16, he was married to a young girl and shipped off to Britain to study law. When he returned his bride was dead.

In the elections of 1954 the Muslim League lost power in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and the party lost power in West Pakistan (now Pakistan) soon afterward.

When Jinnah was 39-year-old, he fell hopelessly in love with a Ruttoe, the beautiful 16-year-old daughter of a Parsi millionaire. Against the objection of both families, the couple eloped and Ruttie bore Jinnah one daughter before leaving in 1928 and fleeing to Paris. He followed her and helped nurse her back to health after a grave illness only to have her leave him again. She died a year later. Jinnah's companion for the rest of his life was his sister Fatima.

The All-India Muslim League (popularised as Muslim League) was a political party established during the early years of the 20th century in the British Indian Empire

In 1935, as part of the Government of India Act, the National Congress failed to include members of the Muslim League in the formation of provisional and provincial government. This was a fatal mistake. After the 1937 elections, when the Congress party of Gandhi and Nehru refused to share power with te Muslim League, Jinnah concluded that under its leadership Muslim's would become second class citizens. From then on he was committed to the creation of Pakistan and never trusted the National Congress or its leaders, particularly Nehru.

. Its strong advocacy for the establishment of a separate Muslim-majority nation-state, Pakistan, successfully led to the partition of British India in 1947 by the British Empire

At the Muslim League’s landmark Lahore Conference in 1940, which favored the creation of Pakistan, Jinnah said, "Think 100 times before you make a decision. But once that decision is taken, stand by it as one man." Jinnah had no military force backing him, he forged Pakistan through sheer will and determination. Jinnah's supporters were aroused by Jinnah’s unyielding determination to create a Muslim state. "Failure is word unknown to me," Jinnah once said. He energized Muslims. Under the rallying cry “Islam in Danger,” Muslim League branches were opened all over South Asia, even in some of the remotest locations.

Muslim League, political organization of India and Pakistan, founded 1906 as the All-India Muslim League by Aga Khan III.

The party arose out of a literary movement begun at The Aligarh Muslim University in which Syed Ahmad Khan was a central figure

The poet-philosopher Sir Muhammed Iqbal is credited with being the first to call for the creation of a Muslim state in South Asia—in 1930. A group of students at Cambridge University invented the name Pakistan—an acronym including the first initials of states of Punjab, Afghania (the present-day Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan), Kashmir, Sind, and the last three letters of Balochistan—in 1933. In Urdu it means "Land of the Pure"

Its original purpose was to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in India. An early leader in the League, Muhammad Iqbal , was one of the first to propose (1930) the creation of a separate Muslim India.

It remained an elitist organisation until 1937 when the leadership began mobilising the Muslim masses and the league then became a popular organisation

While Congress leaders languished in jail, the Muslim League consolidated its strength. Under Jinnah, the league had finally become a mass movement, appealing to all classes of Muslims. Provincial self government had shown the League how difficult coexistence with the Congress would be in an independent nation with a Hindu majority.

By 1940, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah , it had gained such power that, for the first time, it demanded the establishment of a Muslim state (Pakistan), despite the opposition of the Indian National Congress .

In the 1930s, the idea of a separate nation-state and influential philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal's vision of uniting the four provinces in North-West British India further supported the rationale of the two-nation theory.

With global events leading up to World War II and the Congress party's effective protest against the United Kingdom unilaterally involving India in the war without consulting the Indian people, the Muslim League went on to support the British war efforts.

During World War II the Congress was banned, but the League, which supported the British war effort, was allowed to function and gained strength.

In 1940, the Muslim League, afraid of a Hindu-run government, adopted a resolution calling for the partition of India into separate Muslim and Hindu zones and the creation an independent Muslim state. On March 23, 1940 Jinnah called the creation of a sovereign Muslim homeland. The proposal was submitted as the Lahore resolution, also known as the Pakistan resolution.

The Muslim League played a decisive role in the 1940s, becoming a driving force behind the division of India along religious lines and the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state in 1947

Most people believe Pakistan would be a much better place today if Jinnah hadn't died so soon. "His first priority was self-respect for all human beings—Muslims, Hindus and everyone," Ahmed Rizwan, Jinnah's biographer told Newsweek. "After Mr. Jinnah's death's, adventurists took over and brought our country to virtual ruin, politically and economically," Jinnah' former secretary told Newsweek. Democratic elections weren't held until 1971. "When he died," one man told National Geographic, "so soon after his dream of Pakistan came true, the entire nation wept."

It won nearly all of the Muslim vote in the elections of 1946. The following year saw the division of the Indian subcontinent and the Muslim League became the major political party of newly formed Pakistan .

After the partition and subsequent establishment of Pakistan, the Muslim League continued as a minor party in India where it was often part of the government. In Bangladesh, the Muslim League was revived in 1976 but it was reduced in size, rendering it insignificant in the political arena. In India, the Indian Union Muslim League and in Pakistan the Pakistan Muslim League became the original successors of the All-India Muslim League.

Despite efforts by the pioneers of the Congress to attract Muslims to their sessions the majority of the Muslim leadership, such as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Syed Amir Ali, rejected the notion that India's "two distinct communities" could be represented by the Congress