THE establishment of the All-India Muslim League was not merely the birth of a political party; it marked the formal awakening of Muslim political consciousness in the Indian subcontinent.

Founded on December 30, 1906, in Dhaka, the Muslim League emerged as an institutional response to the growing realization among Indian Muslims that their religious, cultural, economic and political rights could not be safeguarded under an unchecked majoritarian system. At a time when Muslims were steadily losing influence in administration, education and representative politics, the League provided a constitutional, organized and collective platform through which Muslims could articulate their aspirations and determine their future. In this sense, the Muslim League laid the ideological and practical foundation of the Pakistan Movement.

The intellectual spirit behind this political awakening was most powerfully articulated by Allama Muhammad Iqbal. Far more than a poet, Iqbal was a philosopher of history and a visionary political thinker who understood that cultural survival without political authority was neither possible nor sustainable. Through his writings and, most notably, his Allahabad Address of 1930, Iqbal presented the idea of a separate Muslim state in the northwestern regions of the subcontinent. This vision was not rooted in exclusion but in self-preservation, dignity and civilizational continuity. Iqbal’s call awakened self-belief, collective purpose and political clarity among Muslims—elements that later........

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