Editing Pakistan Movement (section)

===The end of the war===

In 1942, Gandhi called for the [[Quit India Movement]] against the United Kingdom. On the other hand, the Muslim League advised Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]] that Great Britain should "divide and then Quit".<ref name="ABC-Clio"/> Negotiations between Gandhi and Viceroy [[The Viscount Wavell|Wavell]] failed, as did talks between Jinnah and Gandhi in 1944.<ref name="ABC-Clio"/> When World War II ended, the Muslim League's push for the Pakistan Movement and Gandhi's efforts for [[Indian independence movement|Indian independence]] intensified the pressure on Prime Minister Churchill.<ref name="ABC-Clio"/> Given the rise of American and [[Soviet Union|Russian]] [[New world order (politics)|dominance]] in world politics and the general unrest in India, Wavell called for general elections to be held in 1945.<ref name="ABC-Clio"/>

In the 1940s, Jinnah emerged as a leader of the Indian Muslims and was popularly known as ''Quaid-e-Azam'' ('Great Leader'). The [[1945 Indian general election|general elections]] held in 1945 for the [[Constituent Assembly of India|Constituent Assembly]] of [[British Indian Empire]], the Muslim League secured and won 434 out of 496 seats reserved for Muslims (and about 87.5% of Muslim votes) on a policy of creating an independent state of Pakistan, and with an implied threat of secession if this was not granted. The Congress which was led by Gandhi and Nehru remained adamantly opposed to dividing India. The partition seems to have been inevitable after all, one of the examples being [[Lord Mountbatten]]'s statement on Jinnah: "There was no argument that could move him from his consuming determination to realize the impossible dream of Pakistan."<ref>{{cite book |author=Akbar S. Ahmed |author-link=Akbar Ahmed |year=2005 |orig-year=First published 1997 |title=Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RqyniTHXFxUC&pg=PG202 |publisher=Routledge |page=129 |isbn=978-1-134-75022-1 |access-date=2 February 2019 |archive-date=4 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204130809/https://books.google.com/books?id=RqyniTHXFxUC&pg=PG202 |url-status=live }}</ref>

American historian [[Stephen P. Cohen]] writes in ''The Idea of Pakistan'' with regards to the influence of [[South Asian Muslim nationalism]] on the Pakistan movement:<ref name="Pakistan. Stephen Philip Cohen 2004">{{cite book |last=Cohen |first=Stephen Philip |author-link=Stephen P. Cohen |date=2004 |title=The Idea of Pakistan |location=Washington |publisher=Brookings Institution Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/ideaofpakistan00cohe/page/203 203, 205] |isbn=978-0-8157-1502-3 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/ideaofpakistan00cohe/page/203 }}</ref>

{{blockquote|[The ethnolinguistic-nationalist narrative] begins with a glorious precolonial state-empire when the Muslims of South Asia were politically united and culturally, civilizationally, and strategically dominant. In that era, ethnolinguistic differences were subsumed under a common vision of an Islamic-inspired social and political order. However, the divisions among Muslims that did exist were exploited by the British, who practiced 'divide-and-rule' politics, displacing the Mughals and circumscribing other Islamic rulers. Moreover, the Hindus were the allies of the British, who used them to strike a balance with the Muslims; many Hindus, a fundamentally insecure people, hated Muslims and would have oppressed them in a one-man, one-vote democratic India. The Pakistan freedom movement united these disparate pieces of the national puzzle, and Pakistan was the expression of the national will of India's liberated Muslims.|author=[[Stephen P. Cohen|Stephen Cohen]] |source=''The Idea of Pakistan'' (2004)<ref name="Pakistan. Stephen Philip Cohen 2004"/>}}