The Pakistan movement originated as a political bargaining tactic, not an anti-imperial agenda.

Evidence

For many Pakistan proponents – certainly for its ultimate leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah – separatism represented less an anti-imperial and anti-Hindu agenda than a political threat to obtain minority concessions from the British-led government and Hindu-dominated Congress Party. Indeed, once the endgame had played out and the sought concessions failed to materialize, Jinnah steered the movement into close alliance with the British during the Second World War in order to best obtain his objectives even as Gandhi and the rest of the Congress leadership sat imprisoned for their wartime efforts to undermine British rule. — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to partition historiography and the broader debate over Jinnah’s intentions vs. anti-colonial nationalism.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how far did Jinnah’s wartime alliance with Britain affect the actual shape of the 1947 partition settlement?