Nevertheless, it infinitely simplified British negotiations during the
war to be dealing with two parties rather than several. For all practical
purposes, then, the British position that there were many ‘interest groups’
and ‘minorities’ in India that the British had to stay on to protect was
replaced by the de factorecognition of two parties to represent the two
major ‘communities’. Jinnah, now armed with British recognition, could
bargain with other Muslim groups to operate through the League and
through him – because no political settlement was possible without the
British being a party to it, and it was with Jinnah that the British had
chosen to deal. Viceroy Linlithgow’s and Secretary of State for India
(from 1940) Leo Amery’s private statements make it clear that it was the
British intention to use the League as a counterweight to the Congress in
an attempt to contain opposition to British policy during the war.
Muslims were to be encouraged through the League to keep contacts with
the British. Given that the British were anxious to show some form
of support for their war effort, they were able to promote the League to
the status of sole negotiator and representative of ‘Muslim’ opinion – the
assumption was, of course, that the genie could be persuaded back into the
bottle afterwards.
Asked to put his demands on the table, Jinnah now came forward
with the resolution passed by a number of Muslim parties at Lahore on
March 23, 1940. The Lahore Resolution envisaged territorial units
grouped together in North-Western and Eastern India ‘to constitute
Independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous
and sovereign’.^6 Retrospectively known as the ‘Pakistan Resolution’, it
mentioned neither the word Pakistan nor the principle of partition. As
a compromise formula, however, it was useful by virtue of its vagueness.
Internal discussions reveal some desire for a weak central government in
an eventually independent India, one rationale being that Muslims in the
Muslim-minority provinces needed protection that could only be provided
by the newly-created Muslim-majority independent states remaining
within an Indian union, however defined. There were other opinions;
but nothing clear was about to emerge, and Fazlul Huq, who moved
the resolution, was to stand in the 1946 elections against the Pakistan
demand.106 THE END OF THE RAJ