Simla and the Cabinet Mission

The Viceroy, Wavell, released the Congress leaders in June 1945 and called them and the League to a conference at the Viceregal Lodge in Simla from 25 June to 14 July, to form an executive council of Indians. It broke down when Jinnah insisted that the League alone name every Muslim member. In the elections of that winter the Congress swept the general seats and the League won all 30 Muslim seats in the central assembly and most Muslim seats in the provinces.

Three British cabinet ministers, Pethick-Lawrence, Cripps and A. V. Alexander, arrived in March 1946, held a second round of talks at Simla in May, and on 16 May published their own plan: a union government for defence, foreign affairs and communications, and the provinces grouped into a Hindu-majority group and two Muslim-majority groups in the north-west and the east, each free to write its own constitution. The League accepted on 6 June. On 10 July Nehru, now Congress president, told a press conference that the Congress would be free to change the plan in the Constituent Assembly, and on 29 July the League withdrew its acceptance and called for direct action.

An interim government under Nehru took office on 2 September 1946, the League joined it in October, and the Constituent Assembly first met on 9 December without the League. Azad called Nehru's remark "one of those unfortunate events which changed the course of history"; others argue that the League's insistence on compulsory groups doomed the plan anyway.