10 All-India Muslim League would work for the interests of the Muslims The constitution of the league, the Green Book, was drafted by Maulana Muhammad Ali Jouhar (1878–1931) The headquarters of the league was set up in Aligarh (Lucknow from 1910), and Aga Khan was elected the first president Thus, a separate all-India platform was created to voice the grievances of the Muslims and contain the growing influence of the Congress Party The AIML had a membership of 400, and a branch was set up in London two years afterward by Syed Ameer Ali (1849–1928) The league was dominated by landed aristocracy and civil servants of the United Provinces In its initial years it passed pious resolutions The leadership had remained loyal to the British Empire, and the Government of India Act of 1909 granted separate electorates to the Muslims A sizable number of Muslim intellectuals advocated a course of agitation in light of the annulment of the partition of Bengal in 1911 Two years afterward the league demanded self-government in its constitution There was also change in leadership of the league after the resignation of President Aga Khan in 1913 Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), the eminent lawyer from Bombay (now Mumbai), joined the league DRIVING OUT THE BRITISH Hailed as the ambassador of “Hindu-Muslim unity,” Jinnah was an active member of the INC He still believed in cooperation between the two communities to drive out the British He became the president of the AIML in 1916 when it met in Lucknow He was also president between 1920 and 1930 and again from 1937 to 1947 Jinnah was instrumental in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the congress and the league, which assigned 30 percent of provincial council seats to Muslims But there was a gradual parting of the ways between the INC and the AIML The appearance of Mohandas K Gandhi (1869–1948) on the Indian scene further increased the distance, as Jinnah did not like Gandhi’s noncooperation movement The short-lived hope of rapprochement between the two parties occurred in the wake of the coming of the Simon Commission The congress accepted the league’s demand for one-third representation in the central legislature But the Hindu Mahasabha, established in 1915, rejected the demand at the All Parties Conference of 1928 The conference also asked Motilal Nehru (1861–1931) to prepare a constitution for a free India The Nehru Report spelled out a dominion status for India The report was opposed by the radical wing of the INC, which was led by Motilal’s son Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) The league also rejected the Nehru Report as it did not concede to all the league’s demands Jinnah called it a parting of the ways, and the relations between the league and the congress began to sour The league demanded separate electorates and reservation of seats for the Muslims From the 1920s on the league itself was not a mass-based party In 1928 in the presidency of Bombay it had only 71 members In Bengal and the Punjab, the two Muslim majority provinces, the unionists and the Praja Krushsk Party, respectively, were powerful League membership also did not increase substantially In 1922 it had a membership of 1,093, and after five years it increased only to 1,330 Even in the historic 1930 session, when the demand for a separate Muslim state was made by President Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), it lacked a quorum, with only 75 members present After coming back from London, Jinnah again took the mantle of leadership of the league The British had agreed to give major power to elected provincial legislatures per the 1935 Government of India Act The INC was victorious in general constituencies but did not perform well in Muslim constituencies Many Muslims had subscribed to the INC’s ideal of secularism It seemed that the two-nation theory, exhorting that the Hindus and Muslims form two different nations, did not appeal to all the Muslims The Muslims were considered a nation with a common language, history, and religion according to the two-nation theory In 1933 a group of Cambridge students led by Choudhary Rahmat Ali (1897–1951) had coined the term Pakistan (land of the pure), taking letters from Muslim majority areas: Punjab P, Afghania (North-West Frontier Province) A, Kashmir K, Indus-Sind IS, and Baluchistan TAN The league did not achieve its dream of a separate homeland for the Muslims until 1947 It had been an elite organization without a mass base, and Jinnah took measures to popularize it The membership fees were reduced, committees were formed at district and provincial levels, socioeconomic content was put in the party manifesto, and a vigorous anti-congress campaign was launched The scenario changed completely for the league when in the famous Lahore session the Pakistan Resolution was adopted on March 23, 1940 Jinnah reiterated the two-nation theory highlighting the social, political, economic, and cultural differences of the two communities The resolution envisaged an independent Muslim state consisting of Sindh, the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, and Bengal The efforts of Jinnah after the debacle in the 1937 election