The politics of provincialism was further strengthened by the Nehru Report. In response to the Simon Commission, the All-Parties Conference, held in Delhi in 1928, appointed a committee under Motilal Nehru to prepare a constitutional framework for India. The Nehru Report advocated a federal structure with provincial autonomy. However, the Muslim League objected particularly to its proposal that residuary powers should belong to the Centre rather than to the provinces, prompting Jinnah to present his own Fourteen Points. After a prolonged political struggle, the people of the NWFP were able to secure political reforms in 1932 in the context of the Round Table Conference process in London, while Sindh was separated from Bombay in 1936.

The Government of India Act of 1935 was particularly important because it abolished the system of provincial dyarchy and provided the provinces with their own governments and legislatures, with provincial departments placed under ministers responsible to the provincial legislatures. Thus, even before the Lahore Resolution, the provinces were already constitutionally established political units, and the central question was increasingly how much political authority should be vested in the provinces rather than in the Centre. Subsequently, the elections of 1937 and 1946, and their results, greatly affected the politics of Pakistan and the development of provincialism. 

These developments, and the growing political importance of the provinces, were recognised by the Muslim League. The emergence of the Muslim-majority provinces as the territorial basis of the proposed Muslim state also brought about a significant shift in the social and class orientation of Muslim politics. The political focus increasingly moved away from the salariat and urban middle classes of the Muslim-minority provinces towards the agriculturist classes of the Muslim-majority provinces, encompassing both landlords and peasants. This shift was accompanied by an expanding process of communal mobilisation, through which class interests and communal identities increasingly became intertwined in the political mobilisation of the masses. The Muslim League consequently sought to build a broader political base among the agriculturist classes, while incorporating the landed interests and other dominant social groups within its political structure and mobilising the wider peasant population around the communal question. Thus, the changing territorial basis of Muslim politics........

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