World War II, along with Jinnah's strategic handling of the situation, paved the way for the demand for Pakistan and its eventual realization as a separate state. Jinnah adeptly leveraged this period to steadily advance the Pakistan demand throughout the war and beyond.

In this brief article, an attempt is made to highlight the role of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Indian politics, particularly in Muslim politics, during World War II (1939-45), thrust upon the Indians by their British rulers in September 1939. The main focus will be his efforts to advance the Pakistan demand (1940) and its ultimate realization through the partition of India, leading to the creation of the separate state of Pakistan in 1947.  
The WWII served as a catalyst for a number of far-reaching developments in India, apart from the critical creation of Pakistan. Firstly, it led to the end of British colonial empire in South Asia. Secondly, it caused the independence of India and Pakistan. Lastly, it tested the will, caliber, and strategic foresight of political leaders in India. How did they deal with it, and to what effect, and more importantly, did they succeed or not in pursuit of their goals and objectives?  

The WWII served as a catalyst for a number of far-reaching developments in India, apart from the critical creation of Pakistan.

While evaluating and assessing the leadership prominent figures like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Subhas Chandra Bose—who were the prominent leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC)—falls beyond the scope of this article, the focus here is on Jinnah’s role in influencing the war towards the goal of Pakistan, indeed creating a pathway to Pakistan. 
The British rule in India rested on their military strength and resources to hold their colony, notwithstanding the cooptation and indeed cooperation of the local Indian leadership through a phased system of representative government introduced for the purpose. In the plain words of Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India (1924-28), speaking at Oxford, ‘India is our prized possession. We in England have to live on it, the Indians may live in it. It is [for] the younger generation to hold India to the last drop of blood’. In 1942, Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, at the height of the war, boasted: ‘We intend to remain the effective rulers of India for a longtime and indefinite period… I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire…’ The ultimate reality after the war, in 1945, was that the British could no longer hold India against its will. They had indeed won the war, but they had ‘lost’ India, and for pretty obvious reasons. 
Though victorious, the British were left exhausted and weak, confronted as they now were with the daunting task of post-war reconstruction both at home and in India. The economy was in tatters. As the noted British economist, John Maynard Keynes told the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, the British debt had risen to 3000 million pounds. The ‘expenditure’ on ‘policing and administering the empire’ alone cost some 2000 million pounds. There was no way the government could agree to make India a ‘burden’ on the British taxpayer. Whether Gandhi’s ‘Quit India’ movement (1942-45) aimed to end British rule in India or not, the British were desperate to ‘extricate [themselves] from its Indian Empire’. In fact, the empire already had lost its ‘machine’ irreparably and for good. As Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, lamented: ‘… but supposing Churchill had come back, and given a decision that we were not going to discuss anything for 25 years, I don’t know if we could have restored that machine that we had. It had run completely down’.  

Jinnah’s task of paving the way for Pakistan was extraordinarily difficult and challenging, almost an impossible mission. However, Jinnah was a keen strategist, and according to one of his fiercest opponents, he was “one of the cleverest strategists among Indian politicians.” He knew how to capitalize on every situation, no matter how unpromising. Jinnah devised a brilliant strategy to leverage the wartime conditions, aided by several “blunders” made by both the British and the Congress throughout the period.

There is no gainsaying that both the British and the Congress were against the Pakistan demand. Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy, confided to Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India on March 24, 1940, the day the Lahore Resolution was adopted: ‘I do not attach too much importance to Jinnah’s demand for the carving out of India into an indefinite number of so-called “Dominions”’.   It was an ‘extreme’ and ‘preposterous’ demand. Zetland, on his part, readily agreed and indeed charged that encouraging ‘Ulsters in India’ meant the ‘wrecking of all that we have been working for a number of years past…’ As Leonard Mosely, British journalist and historian bluntly stated, ‘that their work should end in the division of the country into two separate nations was not something which sincere British officials in India could contemplate without abhorrence. Liking the Muslims or not, he could not swallow their desire for vivisection’. Gandhi, of course, could not approve the ‘vivisection’ of India, the ‘cutting the baby into two halves’, as he vehemently put it.  
Thus, Jinnah’s task of paving the way for Pakistan was extraordinarily difficult and challenging, almost an impossible mission. However, Jinnah was a keen strategist, and according to one of his fiercest opponents, he was “one of the cleverest strategists among Indian politicians.” He knew how to capitalize on every situation, no matter how unpromising. Jinnah devised a brilliant strategy to leverage the wartime conditions, aided by several “blunders” made by both the British and the Congress throughout the period.

There is no gainsaying that both the British and the Congress were against the Pakistan demand. Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy, confided to Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India on March 24, 1940, the day the Lahore Resolution was adopted: ‘I do not attach too much importance to Jinnah’s demand for the carving out of India into an indefinite number of so-called “Dominions”’.   

In reaction to the British declaration of war on behalf of India (in September 1939), without taking the Indian political parties on board, the Congress jumped the ship and soon resigned all its ministries formed in 1937, in the wake of 1936-37 elections. Jinnah not only called for a ‘Day of Deliverance’ from the Congress rule but, indeed, hastened to install Muslim League ministries in all the provinces included in his Pakistan scheme, that is, Assam, Sind (Sindh now), Bengal, and North-West Frontier Province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa now). The Punjab was already allied with the League through the so-called ‘Jinnah-Sikandar Pact’. Baluchistan (Balochistan now) was not a political province yet (special status). While its resignations left the Congress into ‘political wilderness’ and, unsurprisingly, subject to harshest treatment from the British authorities, Jinnah was able to reinforce and strengthen the League leadership in those provinces to work more actively for the promotion and indeed acceptance of the Pakistan demand. Jinnah was also able to convey now the all-important message both to the British and Congress leaders that the League represented all the Muslim-majority provinces and that its Pakistan demand was not simply a demand of the central leadership but, more importantly, a demand of the entire Muslim ‘nation’ all over India.
However, the resignation of its ministries in 1939 was not the only blunder committed by Congress during the war years which went on to strengthen Jinnah’s hands over the demand for Pakistan. In August 1942, the Congress committed a greater blunder by launching its ‘Quit India’ movement, convinced that, given their military had suffered severe setbacks (from 1940 to 1942) in almost every theatre of war, the British had already lost the war. This was quite evident in Gandhi’s response to Stafford Cripps with regard to his proposals for the creation of a ‘Dominion’ after the war, declaring it as ‘a post-dated cheque’, and indeed advising him to take ‘the first plane home…’ In fact, the Congress leadership was convinced of a Japanese advance in the east to help them ‘step in and take over the control of the country’. The disastrous consequences of the Quit India movement for the Congress are too well known to be recounted here. Suffice it to say that the British savagely crushed this ‘open rebellion’. Jinnah, of course, took full advantage of this tussle between the two to help the League grow into a ‘power unto itself’. The British ‘barrage against Congress and Hindu political aspirations further advanced the cause of the League’ and Pakistan. 

Jinnah made it absolutely clear that unless these ‘essential’ demands were met, the League could not support the war effort at the center.

Inevitably, the British found it increasingly difficult to ignore Jinnah and his demand for Pakistan.  
The Congress leadership misunderstood and indeed miscalculated the war and its significance and value for the British who wanted to win the war at all costs. It was a matter of life and death for them. They would do everything possible to woo the Indian political parties, to seek their support and cooperation for the war effort. But the Congress could not comprehend this simple point. Gandhi, the supreme leader of the Congress, expressed his belief that ‘the best way to counter Hitlerism was for Great Britain to disarm and welcome the German invaders as Vichy France had done’. Jinnah, of course, had a realistic and amazingly prophetic grasp of the situation. He claimed that ‘the war would last another three years or so’, and in the end, the British will be ‘in a state of exhaustion’ and thus all they had to do was ‘to wrest our ideal’, Pakistan, from ‘unwilling hands’. 
Thus, understandably, Jinnah, unlike Gandhi and the rest of Congress leadership, decided to cooperate with the British in the war effort, but, with one major caveat, however, and so smartly. It will be cooperation at the provincial level, and not center, unless the British conceded the demand for Pakistan. This was a smart move, and, interestingly, almost a win-win situation for both parties. The British badly needed support in the provinces, the recruiting ground for Indian soldiers for the war. They needed Muslim soldiers in the army for their eventual deployment in the Middle East, Africa, and South-East Asia during the war years. Jinnah was fully aware of this critical factor and hence, the value of Muslim cooperation. In 1942, he told a British correspondent who wanted to know what effect the League’s decision to not cooperate in the war effort could have in the army and the Middle East: ‘the League campaign [of non-cooperation], if launched, will affect a large body of army and besides the entire frontier would be ablaze… and the various Muslim countries (such as Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt)… were bound to be influenced if there was a conflict between the Muslims and the British Government… We can give five hundred times more trouble…’

Jinnah was also able to convey now the all-important message both to the British and Congress leaders that the League represented all the Muslim-majority provinces and that its Pakistan demand was not simply a demand of the central leadership but, more importantly, a demand of the entire Muslim ‘nation’ all over India.

But while Jinnah decided to cooperate with the British, he refused to extend full cooperation unless they agreed to concede the Pakistan demand. However, he was careful to press the demand to the extent that it did not hurt their sensibilities and interests during the war. Indeed, to his credit, he ‘neither antagonized the British by attempting to extract too many concessions nor adopted the opposite cause of offering unconditional support in the war effort’. He was a realist in politics and, of course, had a realistic sense of all situations.   
The British, naturally, with the ongoing war affected by some early setbacks and at loggerheads with the Congress, indeed up in arms, had little choice but to accommodate Jinnah and his demand. They realized that he will not stand any ‘nonsense’, though they hoped ‘that there is going to be nothing doing with either the Congress or the Muslim League while the war lasts…’. 
The British could not be more circumspect. They failed to reckon that Jinnah meant business. He wanted progress on his Pakistan demand. Thus, on June 27, 1940, he pointedly told them that: ‘No pronouncement should be made by his Majesty’s government which would in any way militate against, or prejudice, the ‘two nations’ position which had become the universal faith of Muslim India’. He also sought a ‘definite assurance’ to the effect that ‘no interim or final scheme of constitution would be adopted by the British Government without the previous approval and consent of Muslim India’. Indeed, Jinnah made it absolutely clear that unless these ‘essential’ demands were met, the League could not support the war effort at the center.
The British could not dismiss these demands off hand. Upsetting Jinnah would not only have led to the League’s opposition to the war effort as such, but also to a possible alliance between the League and the Congress against the British aggravating the situation further. After all, Rajagopalachari and, more importantly, Tej Bahadur Sapru, as late as May 1941, were in touch with Jinnah, seeking ‘rapprochement’ between the League and the Congress. The British, thus, felt compelled to respond with their so-called ‘August Offer’, assuring Jinnah that the government will not impose its system upon unwilling ‘minorities’. This, of course, was the first major gain over the Pakistan demand. Later, the Cripps Proposals of 1942 went further and proposed ‘non-accession’ option for a province not willing to join Indian Union. This was a major advance for the Pakistan demand, though not enough. The proposals ‘did not provide for the right of option to be exercised by vote of Muslim population alone’. This, for all practical purposes, amounted ‘to rejecting the Pakistan claim, since the League could not obtain necessary majorities in Bengal and Punjab’. Thus, Jinnah rejected the proposals insisting that: ‘So far as the Pakistan demand is not agreed to, we cannot agree to any present adjustment which will in any way militate against or prejudice the Pakistan demand’. He agreed that there was some ‘recognition’ of the ‘principle of partition’, but the fact remained that Pakistan was ‘treated as a remote possibility…’. Yet, as later events were to show, the Cripps Proposals offered Jinnah ‘a hole in the dyke’ which he was determined to widen as the war went on and the British needed more Muslim support along the way.  

Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan emerged as the only viable alternative to the British-Congress concept of the future constitution of India. Indeed, India had to be partitioned to make room for the separate, sovereign state of Pakistan. 

The next major gain, however, came through the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, after the war, and, ironically enough, to help frame a constitution for ‘united India’. It proposed a three-tiered constitutional structure in which provinces were grouped into ‘sections’ which, in turn, would not only determine the jurisdiction of their respective government but also, collectively, of a Union Constitution. Once the Union Constitution had come into force, the provinces could ‘opt out’ of their respective groups/sections. The Cabinet Mission, of course, ruled out Pakistan upfront insisting that ‘neither a larger [with Muslim-majority provinces intact and undivided] nor a smaller sovereign state of Pakistan would provide an acceptable solution of the communal problem’.  
While the plan clearly passed a ‘sentence of death on Mr. Jinnah’s Pakistan’, Jinnah himself saw hope in it for the future. In fact, he claimed that ‘the foundation and the basis of Pakistan are there in their own scheme’. Sections B and C of the plan, comprising the Muslim-majority areas of the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province and Sind (with the addition of a representative of British Baluchistan), Bengal and Assam, helped assure the Muslims that they could ‘reach our goal and establish Pakistan’. In fact, shortly after the League Council passed the resolution accepting the plan, Jinnah declared, ‘Believe me, this is the first step towards Pakistan’. And it turned out to be so soon enough. The Congress, and particularly Gandhi, refused to accept the essential ‘grouping’ clause in the plan. He was ‘frontally opposed to Assam and NWFP being placed… in the “Pakistan” area…’. In fact, he went on to insist that, ‘No province could be forced against its will to belong to a group even if the idea of grouping was accepted.’ Nehru went on to deal a fatal blow to the plan in his press conference of July 10, 1946 declaring, in categorical terms, that ‘there will be no grouping’. The plan was dead on arrival, leaving Jinnah betrayed and frustrated, indeed calling for ‘Direct Action to achieve Pakistan’.  

World War II and its sensible and strategic handling by Jinnah had paved the way for Pakistan demand and its ultimate realization in the separate state of Pakistan. There clearly was ‘a marked difference between the Muslim struggle for independence before and after World War II.

While Viceroy Mountbatten tried to revive the plan, later, in 1947, Jinnah refused to oblige. As he told him point blank, ‘there had been some prospect that this atmosphere could be created. Now, nearly a year later, the atmosphere so far from improving had taken a serious turn for the worse, and it was clear that in no circumstances did Congress intend to work the plan either in accordance with the spirit or the letter’. The end result was that Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan emerged as the only viable alternative to the British-Congress concept of the future constitution of India. Indeed, India had to be partitioned to make room for the separate, sovereign state of Pakistan. 
Thus, all said and done, World War II and its sensible and strategic handling by Jinnah had paved the way for Pakistan demand and its ultimate realization in the separate state of Pakistan. There clearly was ‘a marked difference between the Muslim struggle for independence before and after World War II. The military considerations, particularly the Muslim potential for contribution to the war effort had, on the one hand, made the British more susceptible to the Indian public opinion and, on the other hand, altered the relative importance of the Muslim community vis-à-vis the Hindus’. And Jinnah took full advantage of this eventuality to advance his Pakistan demand steadily, but surely, through the war years, and indeed beyond.

The author is a distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Forman Christian College University, Lahore. He has authored several books on Quaid and the Pakistan Movement, with the most recent being A Leadership Odyssey (OUP, 2021/24).