With the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885 demands were made for greater association of Indians in the running of bodies such as the Provincial Councils, District Boards, Municipal Committees and Corporations etc. Indian National Congress leaders also demanded the holding of competitive examinations in India as that would help more Indians to take part in these examinations. Sir Sayed Ahmad Khan opposed these demands. He also advised his co-religionists not to join the Congress Party. Instead he asked the British rulers to provide for nomination of Muslims to various bodies and services. After his death, his successors carried on the campaign. In 1906, a Muslim delegation led by Sir Aga Khan called on Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, at Simla and specifically asked for : a) separate electorates, b) reservation in jobs including the judiciary; and c) the establishment of a Muslim University. The British rulers provided for the first two in the Minto - Morley reforms of 1909. Thus began the process of Muslim minority appeasement.

Gandhi became an unquestioned leader of the Congress with the disappearance of the old guards of the Congress - Bal, Pal, and Lal. In order to hasten the departure of the British from India, Gandhi thought that cooperation of the Muslim League was a must. League went on making demands and Gandhi went on surrendering to the Muslims.

The Muslims were not satisfied. In the election held in 1945/46, Muslims overwhelmingly voted for the creation of Pakistan. The Muslim League had not issued any Manifesto; its one point agenda was : Partition of India. The League won all Muslim seats in the Central Assembly and 446 out of a total of 495 Muslim seats in Provincial Assemblies. The results re-affirmed the Pakistan Resolution of 1940. Thereafter, the Muslim League demanded parity with the Congress. In other words, in any constitutional reform or formula, 80 percent would be divided equally between Hindus and Muslims and the remaining 20 percent would be distributed among the Scheduled Castes/Tribes, the Sikhs and the Christians. Accordingly, under the Bhulabhai Desai - Liaquat Pact of 1946, parity was given to Muslim League in the formation of the Interim Government. Even though the Muslim League got parity, it wrecked the Government from within. The League also did not participate in the Constituent Assembly.

By the beginning of 1947 communal riots were engulfing different parts of India. The Interim Government having failed to work and the Muslim League insisting on the creation of Pakistan, the Congress Party gave its approval to the Partition of the country. What is significant to note, however, is that all Muslims wanted separate homeland but it is the Muslims in U.P., Bihar and Bombay provinces who were in the forefront of the demand for Partition. 
Given below are excerpts from various publications which abundantly prove this point.
1. In a speech three days after the creation of the new State, Jinnah said : I recognize that it is the Muslim minority provinces in this sub-continent who were the pioneers and carried the banner aloft for the achievement of our cherished goal of PakistanThey were the pioneers in the vanguard of our historic struggle for the achievement of Pakistan (Liberty or Death by Patrick French).
2. The Muslims of Bombay, U.P. and Bihar were the first to respond to the call of Jinnah for Partition and enthusiastically supported the movement for Pakistan. They became its vanguard. (The Man Who Divided India by Rafiq Zakaria).
3. Some Professors at Aligarh, a seminary noted for its political inventiveness, conceived the plan of slicing India into three separate states. Two of them were to be dominated by Muslims, and Hindustan, the one non-Muslim state, was to be subjected to a further surgery which would carve out two autonomous provinces out of its heart and its southern extremities. Delhi, the old centre of Muslim power in north India and a somewhat improbable Muslim Malabar around the Moplahs. .The Aligarh professors justified the creation of two autonomous provinces inside Hindustan on the grounds that Muslims in minority provinces needed the full and effective support of the Muslim majority provinces. 

Muslims inside Hindustan were to be regarded as a nation in minority and part of a larger nation inhabiting Pakistan and Bengal.
(b) No Muslim politician in the Punjab, Bengal, Sind or the Frontier had any reason within their own provinces to fear Congress domination; so they had a narrower, and a rather different, angle of vision about their interests from that of a grand strategist at the centre. But as ever, Jinnah's line did have some support from Muslims in provinces where they were in a minority. Such Muslims, as Khaliquzzaman admitted, would gain little directly from Pakistan but indirectly they would gain something substantial. A Congress dominated Hindustan would have to treat its Muslim minorities well, since it could not afford to fall out with Pakistan, with hostage Hindus and Sikhs in its territories.
(c) One of the basic principles lying behind the Pakistan idea is that of keeping hostages in Muslim provinces as against the Muslims in the Hindu provinces. If we allow millions of Hindus to go out of our orbit of influence, the security of the Muslims in the Minority Provinces will greatly be minimised. 
(d) The experience of the first year after the resolution (Pakistan) was passed dashed Jinnah's hopes of redressing the balance in the League between the centre and its provinces. Not one of the Muslim majority provinces had fallen into line....... Significantly, Sikandar (of Punjab) admitted that the Muslim majority provinces wanted complete autonomy only because they are afraid that a communal oligarchy in power might undermine or altogether nullify the autonomy and freedom of the provinces.Haq (of Bengal) refused to bend to the dictates of the High Command and broke with the A.I.M.L. (All India Muslim League). Protesting against the manner in which the interests of the Muslims of Bengal and Punjab are being imperilled by Muslim leaders of the provinces where the Muslims are in a minority..Yet his (Jinnah's) most loyal supporters were not in the Punjab, or in Bengal, but in the minority. Local option gave them nothing. There was "no comfort" here to Muslims in the U.P. and Bihar. (The Sole Spokesman by Ayesha Jalal).
4. Would the Muslims ever agree to a minority status with their history in the land, with their enormous numbers, with their geographical position and with their own majority areas?.... And then what about Islam; would it not become poorer by a hundred million Muslims were they cut adrift from the Islamic party for ever, being only a territorial minority?...
(b) Democracy is the creature of numbers and the Muslims
in India had both numbers and geographical advantages. So far as I could see they would never be prepared to accept that status but would fight to the last man to avert it. The consequences would be perpetual bitterness, disturbances and fights within India. Then why should we not separate? (Pathway to Pakistan by Choudhry Khaliquzzaman).
5. Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of word, but are in fact different and distinct social orders, and it is only a dream that the Hindus and the Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality. (M.A. Jinnah's Presidential Address to Muslim League, March 1940).
6. The Muslim masses were behind the League; in fact, they supported the League more solidly where they were in a minority than in the Muslim majority provinces. The Congress had accepted the division of the country on two considerations. In the first place, it was clear from the unyielding attitude of the Muslim League that a united India would either be delayed or could only be won at the cost of a civil war. Secondly, it was hoped that the establishment of a separate Muslim state would finally settle the communal problem which had for so long bedevilled Indian provinces. (The Transfer of Power In India by V.P. Menon). 
7. When nationalism began to stir the hearts of the inhabitants of the sub-continent,it was expected of the Muslims that they would dutifully reconcile themselves to the role of a religious minority and would otherwise identify themselves completely with Indian nation. Such hopes were built upon the most deplorable ignorance of the psychology of the Muslim community, of the thinking of its leaders and masses, and of the history of its origin, development and integration. When history asserted itself and the Muslims claimed to be a nation, many were surprised and not a few even scandalized.. (The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Sub-continent : (610 - 1947) by Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi).
8. Syed Ahmad Khan was one of the original exponents of the two nation theory and believed that Hindus and Muslims could not have an equal share in powerBritish policy had consistently favoured the maintenance of India as a single administrative and political entity. The issue was put to test at the General Elections for the provincial and central legislatures in the winter of 1945-46. The results showed a decisive victory for the idea of Pakistan. The League won all Muslim seats in the central Assembly and 446 out of a total of 495 Muslim seats in provincial assemblies. (The Constitutional And Political History of Pakistan by Hamid Khan).
9. The party which demanded the creation of Pakistan, a separate homeland for the Indian Muslims, was the Muslim League. In the elections held early in 1946, which proved decisive, it secured 425 out of 492 seats reserved for Muslims in the central and the different provincial legislatures. It could be said, therefore, that Indian Muslims were overwhelmingly in favour of Pakistan. (Islamic Influence on Indian Society by Prof. M. Mujeeb).
10. Mahatma Gandhi began the Salt Satyagraha in March 1930.; At the All India Muslim Conference held in Bombay in April 1930, Maulana Muhammad Ali declared that the Muslims did not want British domination and also did not want Hindu domination, and that they could not join Mr. Gandhi's movement because its aim was not to achieve Independence for India but to make the 70 million Muslims of India dependents of the Hindu Mahasabha. (Indian Muslims by Professor M. Mujeeb).
11. Uttar Pradesh was the cultural home of the Muslims. Although they were in a minority in that state, if Uttar Pradesh had not gone over to the cause of separation, Pakistan would not have become a reality. (Roses In December by M.C. Chagla).
12. He (Jinnah) did not lead, but was led by the Muslim consensus. His role was that of a sincere and clear-headed lawyer who could formulate and articulate in precise term what his client really wanted. (Studies in Islamic Culture by Aziz Ahmad).
13. It was primarily the Indian Muslims who were responsible for the emergence of the new state (Pakistan) and therefore also for the consequent position of their community on the Indian side of the frontier. The Pakistanis followed and accepted, but the Indian Muslims led and created (Islam in Modern History by Wilfred Cantwell Smith).
14. Some historians tend to premise that Pakistan was somehow in the womb of history. Jinnah described in such terms when he asserted that Pakistan started the moment the first non-Muslim was converted to Islam in India long before the Muslims established their rule (Jinnah by Sharif Al Mujahid).
15. Who can assess the
effect on Arab nationalism of the existence of this American University of Beirut? Aligarh is no exception to this rule. But we may claim with pride that Aligarh was the product of our own efforts and of no outside benevolence; and surely it may also be claimed that the independent, sovereign nation of Pakistan was born in the Muslim University of Aligarh (The Memoirs of Aga Khan).
16. The Partition was a traumatic experience for everybody in India. The civil servants in Delhi were spared the horrors of the mass murder, rape, arson and other savageries which preceded it. But we were affected by the tension in the air. Most of the Muslims, men and women alike, were for Partition; most of the Hindus against it
(b) In Pakistan, it was decided that the saree itself was a kafir dress and was replaced by the salvar kameez. But then came the realization that this was the dress of all Punjabis, including those kafirs or infidels - the Hindus and Sikhs. Something distinctly Muslim had to be found. Rana Liaqat Ali, born into a high caste Brahmin family converted to Christianity, and herself converted to Islam on her marriage to Liaqat, set the fashion of wearing ghagras. (Nice Guys Finish Second : Memoirs of B.K. Nehru).
17. U.P. Muslims, on the other hand, were at the heart of Muslim separation. They mainly founded and, with the exception of Bombay based Jinnah, mainly led the organizations which represented the Muslim interest in Indian parties. Syed Ahmad Khan founded in 1875 the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, which directed much early Muslim political activity and nurtured many Muslim League politicians. He followed this with the establishment of the All India Muslim Educational Conference in 1886, which helped him impress his political will on Indian Muslims. In 1906, large number of Muslims from .P. flocked to Dacca to found the All India Muslim League. In this organization the Secretary-ship was the most powerful position; and between 1906 and 1910 it was held by
U.P. Muslims in Aligarh, and between 1910 and 1926 by U.P. Muslims in Lucknow. After World War One, Muslims from the
same province set up an association of Indian ulema and made the central khilafat committee, an organization of all India importance.
(b) Syed Ahmad Khan taught Muslims that government was the best protector of their interests and shepherded many of them away from the Congress. 
(c) Mohsin-ul-Mulk, his political heir, organized the Muslim deputation to the viceroy (Lord Minto in 1906) which gained government's recognition of the Muslim clan to separate representation on elected bodies in which the proportion of seats was to be worked out on the contentious basis of the country's political importance.
(d) Wazir Hasan of Lucknow, as Secretary of the All India Muslim League had managed the U.P. Muslim campaigns to ensure that Muslim claims were not ignored. His endeavours culminated in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 in which the Congress agreed to the same privileges for Muslims in future constitutional reforms as the government had agreed in 1906.
(e) In the League's year of glory from 1940 to Partition, U.P. Muslims were at the heart of the organization; they held the two most important posts after the President and dominated its committees. (Separatism Among Indian Muslims : The Problems of the United Provinces' Muslims - 1860 - 1923 by Francis Robinson).
18. It is true that the ground for Muslim separation was prepared when Islam entered the sub-continent, and all efforts to provide
a bridge between the Hindus and the Muslims failed. (Modern Muslim India And The Birth of Pakistan by Dr. S.M. Ikram).