All-India Muslim League founded

On December 30, 1906 Muslim leaders meeting in Dhaka, at the sidelines of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference, founded the All-India Muslim League. Its host was Nawab Khwaja Salimullah of Dhaka. Its first aims were to promote loyalty to the British government, to protect the political rights of Muslims, and to keep Muslims from joining other groups hostile to British rule.¹

The party grew out of anxieties about the changes that representative government might bring, as British reforms were extending elections, which would favour the majority community in most provinces. In October 1906 a Muslim delegation, led by the Aga Khan III, had asked the Viceroy, Lord Minto, at Simla for separate electorates and a share of seats that reflected the community's importance. The partition of Bengal the year before had also created a Muslim-majority province in the east. The Indian Councils Act of 1909, the Morley-Minto reforms, granted separate electorates for Muslims. For years the League was small and led by landowners and nobles. It was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who joined in 1913, who led it in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 with Congress, and who, from the late 1930s, remade it as a mass party that demanded Pakistan.¹²³⁴