1. The poet and political thinker Mohammad Iqbal is thought to be the originator of the idea of a separate Muslim State for the Indian Muslims and is believed to have given the necessary emotional content to the movement.
2. Rahmat Ali visualized the Punjab, NWFP (North West Frontier Province, also called Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan as the national home of the Indian Muslims and he coined the word Pakistan in 1933.
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The word Pakistan was formed by taking the initials of the first four and the last of the fifth. Rahmat Ali maintained that the Hindus and Muslims were fundamentally distinct nations.
3. The most unequivocal declaration of the Hindus and Muslims as separate nationalities was made by M.A. Jinnah at the Lahore Session of the League in March 1940.
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Demanding the partition of India, the Muslim League passed the resolution in this regard. Lahore session of the Muslim League gave it an Ambition and a Programme.
The nationalist leaders, however, agreed to partition but they did not accept the two nation theory.
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The country was to be partitioned but not on the basis of Hinduism and Islam as demanded by Muslim League. As a consequence of partition the Muslim community in the subcontinent was split into two states in 1947 and into three states after 1971.
The emergence of Bangladesh, within a quarter of a century of the establishment of Pakistan, showed that religion by itself could not be a sufficient bond for nationhood.
The concept of ‘two-nation theory’ had a very short lifespan and it was buried with the emergence of Bangladesh.