Deliverance The Second World War broke out in and the Viceroy of India Linlithgow immediately announced that India was also at war. Since the declaration was made without any consultation with the Congress, it was greatly resented by it. The Congress Working Committee decided that all Congress ministries in the provinces would resign. After the resignation of Congress ministries, the provincial governors suspended the legislatures and took charge of the provincial administration.
The Muslim League celebrated the end of Congress rule as a day of deliverance on December . On that day, the League passed resolutions in various places against Congress for its alleged atrocities against Muslims. The demonstration of Nationalist Muslims was dubbed as anti-Islamic and denigrated. It was in this atmosphere that the League passed its resolution on March in Lahore demanding a separate nation for Muslims.
Though the idea of Pakistan came from the Muslim League platform in it had been conceived ten years earlier by the poet–scholar Mohammad Iqbal. At the League’s annual conference at Allahabad ( ), Iqbal expressed his wish to see a consolidated North-west Indian Muslim State. It was then articulated forcefully by Rahmat Ali, a Cambridge student. The basis of League’s demand was its “Two Nation Theory” which first came from Sir Wazir Hasan in his presidential address at Bombay session of League in .
He said, “the Hindus and Mussalmans inhabiting this vast continent are not two communities but should be considered two nations in many respects.” Neither Jinnah nor Nawab Zafrullah Khan then had considered creation of separate state for Muslims practicable. However, on March , , the Muslim League formally adopted The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R.S.S.) founded in was expanding and its volunteers had shot upto , , . K.B. Hedgewar, V.D.
Savarkar and M.S. Golwalker were attempting to elaborate on the concept of the Hindu Rashtra and openly advocated that ‘the non-Hindu people in Hindustan must adopt the Hindu culture and language... they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation claiming nothing.' V.D. Savarkar asserted that ‘We Hindus are a Nation by ourselves’.
Though the Congress had forbidden its members from joining the Mahasabha or the R.S.S. as early as , it was only in December that the Congress Working Committee declared Mahasabha membership to be a disqualification for remaining in the Congress.