After prolonged discussions in New Delhi Cabinet Mission succeeded in bringing the Congress and the Muslim League together in conference at Simla.
There was a full exchange of views and both parties were prepared to make considerable concessions in order to try to reach a settlement, but it ultimately proved impossible to close the remainder of the gap between the parties and so no agreement could be concluded.
Since no agreement has been reached it rested on the British officials to decide the future of India. The question of a separate and fully independent sovereign state of Pakistan as claimed by the Muslim League was the main issue. Such a Pakistan would comprise two areas: one in the North-West consisting of the provinces of the Punjab, Sind, North-West Frontier, and British Baluchistan; the other in the
North-East consisting of the provinces of Bengal and Assam. The League were prepared to consider adjustment of boundaries at a later stage, but insisted that the principle of Pakistan should first be acknowledged. The argument for a separate state of Pakistan was based, first, upon the right of the Muslim majority to decide their method of government according to their wishes, and, secondly, upon the necessity to include substantial areas in which Muslims are in a minority in order to make Pakistan administratively and economically workable.
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The setting up of a separate sovereign state of Pakistan on the lines claimed by the Muslim League would not solve the communal minority problem; nor was it justified to include within a sovereign Pakistan those districts of the Punjab and of Bengal and Assam in which the population is predominantly non-Muslim.
Every argument that can be used in favour of Pakistan can equally, in our view, be used in favour of the exclusion of the on-Muslim areas from Pakistan. This point would particularly affect the position of the Sikhs. Cabinet Mission therefore, considered whether a smaller sovereign Pakistan confined to the Muslim majority areas alone might be a possible basis of compromise. Such a Pakistan is regarded by the Muslim League as quite impracticable because it would entail the exclusion from Pakistan of:
(a) The whole of the Ambala and Jullundur divisions in the Punjab;
(b) The whole of Assam except the district of Sylhet; and;
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(c) A large part of Western Bengal, including Calcutta, in which city the percentage of the Muslim population is 23.6 per cent.
Any solution which involves a radical partition of the Punjab and Bengal, as this would do, would be contrary to the wishes and interests of a very large proportion of the inhabitants of these provinces. Bengal and the Punjab each have its own common language and a long history and tradition.
Moreover, any division of the Punjab would of necessity divide the Sikhs, leaving substantial bodies of Sikhs on both sides of the boundary. Cabinet Mission has therefore been forced to the conclusion that neither a larger nor a smaller sovereign state of Pakistan would provide all acceptable solution for the communal problem.