The year 1945 began with Mohammad Ali Jinnah determined to convince the British and the Congress Party that he and the Muslim League would not accept any resolution to the British Indian constitutional crisis, except the creation of Pakistan. He made it absolutely and categorically clear that he was not interested in even a loose India federation, as he had once proposed–during his Muslim communitarian phase. For him, the creation of Pakistan was an existential matter, which no power-sharing deal within a united India could supplant. Viceroy Wavell called the Simla Conference in June 1945 to form a government with him as the head of that government and Indian ministers in his executive council. Jinnah wrecked it on the grounds that only the Muslim League could nominate a member to that executive council. That meant that Congress could not nominate Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the then president of the Congress Party to that council. In July 1945, general elections were held in the UK, which Winston Churchill lost, notwithstanding his fame as the prime minister who won the Second World War. People voted for the Labour Party, led by Sir Clement Attlee, to introduce welfare reforms because Britain’s industry had been smashed and its economy was in shambles and there was a chronic shortage of food supplies. Since 1941, when President Franklin Roosevelt met Winston Churchill, the Americans had been pressuring Churchill to grant India independence. Churchill had resisted American pressure, but Attlee realised that Britain could not hold on to India any longer. Therefore, the government called elections in India for early 1946. The incarcerated Congress leaders were released from prison, where they had been confined since August 1942. The plan to keep India united through the Cabinet Mission Plan was finally abandoned when even an Interim Government failed to establish cordial relations between the Muslim League and Congress ministers. The election campaign picked momentum from August 1945. The Congress Party sought a mandate from the electorate–still restricted to roughly 11 per cent of the total population of India–to keep India united. The Muslim League campaigned for the partition of India to create Pakistan. The Sikhs of Punjab campaigned for keeping India united or in the case of partition, demanding a partition of Punjab as well, so that the Hindu-Sikh majority districts of Punjab were separated from Pakistan and given to a Sikh state or India. Contrary to the widespread propaganda that Islamists opposed Jinnah and Pakistan, it was only the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind led by Hussain Ahmed Madani who opposed Jinnah and Pakistan. Yet, the influence of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind was confined to the Urdu-speaking belt of North India. And, in any case, a dissenting group of Deobandis led by Ashraf Ali Thanvi and Shabbir Ahmed Usmani came out in support of Pakistan. The Majlis-e-Ahrar in Punjab was Deobandi-oriented and opposed to Pakistan, but its support base was limited mainly to the radical petty bourgeoisie of Lahore and other towns. With his extraordinary political instincts, Jinnah mobilised the dominant Barelvi ulema and pirs of the north-western Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Sindh. who controlled thousands of mosques and Sufi shrines. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with the help of Pir Sahib Manki Sharif, Jinnah made a breakthrough in that bastion of Congress support in the form of Khudai Khidmatgars of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The election campaign was rabidly communal, and the Muslim League gave a free hand to the ulema and pirs to project Pakistan as an Islamic utopia, where social justice and spiritual bliss would prevail. The election result produced a polarised electorate. For the reserved 494 Muslim seats, the Muslim League won 442. The Congress won 930 out of the 1500 general seats, while the Sikh Panthic parties won all 23 reserved seats for Sikhs in Punjab. Frantic efforts now ensued to find a constitutional formula that would be acceptable to the parties in conflict over the future of India. The Cabinet Mission Plan of May 16 and June 16 proposed a loose Indian federation, comprising of three groups: group A, constituted by Hindu-majority provinces; group B, by the Muslim-majority provinces of north-western India and group C, by the Muslim-majority Bengal province. After intervals of 10 years, groups, or their provinces, could reconsider if they wanted to remain a part of the Indian union or opt out. Moreover, nearly 600 princely states could decide to join India or Pakistan or remain independent. The Muslim League first rejected it because the demand for Pakistan had been rejected, but later accepted it, declaring that it would use all opportunities to advance the establishment of Pakistan. The Indian National Congress rejected it on the grounds that without an effective central government, India could not be ruled cohesively and coherently. The plan to keep India united through the Cabinet Mission Plan was finally abandoned when even an Interim Government (formed by Wavell with Nehru as the vice-president) failed to establish cordial relations between the Muslim League and Congress ministers. Jinnah’s call to direct action to protest Nehru’s statement that the Congress Party will go to the Constituent Assembly and frame a constitution in the best interest of a strong and integrated India resulted in the Great Calcutta Killing of August 16 to August 18, which claimed some 10 thousand Hindu, Muslim and Sikh lives. Communal violence then spread and engulfed many other parts of India. In March 1947, Lord Mountbatten became the last viceroy of India. He quickly decided that India could not be kept united, because the Congress and Muslim League were not willing to cooperate. On June 3, 1947, the Partition Plan was announced. Power was to be transferred to India and Pakistan by mid-August 1947, not June 1948. Punjab and Bengal were also to be partitioned, based on contiguous religious majorities. The Radcliffe Award made public on August 17, 1947, fixed the international boundary between India and Pakistan. The actual transfer of power entailed unprecedented bloodshed, causing deaths of at least one million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Around 15 million crossed the border largely in search of havens on the other side. (To Be Continued) The writer is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; Visiting Professor Government College University; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He can be reached at billumian@gmail.com