The Pakistan Movement was a Muslim nationalist political and social movement, emerging in the early 20th century, that advocated the formation of Pakistan as a separate Muslim homeland in the Muslim-majority parts of what was then the British India. It was rooted in the two-nation theory, which asserted that Muslims were fundamentally and irreconcilably distinct from Hindus and would therefore require separate self-determination upon decolonisation. The idea was largely realised when the All-India Muslim League ratified the Lahore Resolution on 23 March 1940, calling for the Muslim-majority regions of the Indian subcontinent to be "grouped to constitute independent states" that would be "autonomous and sovereign" with the aim of securing Muslim socio-political interests vis-à-vis the Hindu majority. It was in the aftermath of the Lahore Resolution under the aegis of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, that the cause of "Pakistan" became widely popular among the Muslims of South Asia.