Encyclopedia of Islam

All-India Muslim League

  

35  J

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the activism of Jinnah and other AIML leaders, the 

tide was turned. The AIML emerged victorious in 

the 1945 elections, winning 460 of 533 Muslim 

legislative seats.

After World War II, the final status nego-

tiations with the British (who were rapidly los-

ing interest in either retaining their authority or 

seeing through the negotiations to maintain a 

unified India) led to the 1947 partition of India. 

Jinnah called the new Muslim majority nation of 

p

akistan

 “moth-eaten,” as the eastern and west-

ern halves of the country were hundreds of miles 

apart, separated by Hindu majority India. As the 

governor-general of Pakistan, Jinnah attempted 

to establish a secular 

constitUtion

 for the new 

nation-state. However, following his death in 

1948, a resolution was passed in 1950 affirming 

the Islamic identity of the state in which no law 

would be passed in violation of the 

sharia

. During 

the era of political turmoil that followed partition 

and independence, the All-India Muslim League 

disbanded, reforming as the Muslim League (ML) 

in the newly independent nations. In Pakistan, 

the ML failed to establish itself as an effective 

political party. The lack of infrastructure, financial 

crises, and the ML’s secular stance contributed to 

its eventual marginalization in Pakistani politics. 

In Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) the ML 

has not been a major factor in politics because it 

is viewed as the chief architect of a Pakistan in 

which the western part of the country dominated 

the eastern part in terms of language, resources, 

and authority. In India, the Muslim League no 

longer has a significant political voice, and only 

one member of parliament has represented the ML 

from the state of Kerala in 1999 and 2004.

See also  a

Wami

  l

eagUe

;  h

indUism

 

and

  i

slam

; 

secUlarism

.

Anna Bigelow