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Following the unsuccessful First War of Independence in 1857, the British resolved to suppress and weaken the Muslims, whom they held primarily responsible for the uprising. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-98), one of the first to set about restoring Muslim status, founded the Aligarh Movement, later to evolve into the Muslim League. The League was initially part of the Indian National Congress, which had been founded in 1885 to promote political freedom for all communities of the subcontinent. The Muslims broke away, however, because they felt that the Congress neglected their interests.
In 1930, the great Muslim poet and philosopher, Dr Muhammad Iqbal, proposed the creation of a separate Muslim state comprising those areas of the subcontinent with a Muslim majority. His goal was adopted by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a British-trained lawyer who was to lead the struggle for Pakistan and become its first head of state When the British realised that they had to relinquish their imperial hold over the subcontinent, they tried to keep the country intact by suggesting that there be autonomous Muslim states under a central government. They failed, however, to devise a plan acceptable to both the Muslim League and the Hindu-dominated Congress. The British finally agreed that the subcontinent should be partitioned into two states upon Independence in 1947.
The division of the subcontinent proved a difficult task. It had to be executed within a limited period of time to coincide with separation from Great Britain. Pakistan was to consist of the Muslim-majority areas of the northeast and northwest, while India would retain the predominantly Hindu central region. The most explosive problem area was the fertile Punjab, where Hindu, Muslim and Sikh populations were inextricably mixed. At Independence, an estimated six million Muslim refugees, mainly from Punjab, streamed across the border into Pakistan, while some four and a half million Sikhs and Hindus went the other way. This migration was accompanied by some of the most grisly communal violence of modern times, resulting in the loss of perhaps half a million lives.
The accession of hundreds of princely states scattered over the subcontinent provided considerable scope for disagreement between India and Pakistan. Though the vast majority were Hindu and readily acceded to India, control of two Hindu-majority states under Muslim rulers was achieved only by sending in the Indian army.