creation of Pakistan, seeing in it their deliverance. Sindhi support for the Pakistan Movement arose from the desire of the Sindhi Muslim business class to drive out their Hindu competitors. The Muslim League’s rise to becoming the party with the strongest support in Sind was in large part linked to its winning over of the religious pir families. Although the Muslim League had previously fared poorly in the 1937 elections in Sind, when local Sindhi Muslim parties won more seats, the Muslim League’s cultivation of support from the pirs and saiyids of Sind in 1946 helped it gain a foothold in the province. North-West Frontier Province The Muslim League had little support in North-West Frontier Province. Here the Congress and Pashtun nationalist leader Abdul Ghaffar Khan had considerable support for the cause of a united India. During the Independence period there was a Congress-led ministry in the province, which was led by secular Pashtun leaders, including Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who preferred joining India instead of Pakistan. The secular Pashtun leadership was also of the view that if joining India was not an option then they should espouse the cause of an independent ethnic Pashtun state rather than Pakistan. The secular stance of Abdul Ghaffar Khan had driven a wedge between the Jamiyatul Ulama Sarhad (JUS) and the otherwise pro-Congress (and pro-Indian unity) Jamiat Ulema Hind, as well as Abdul Ghaffar Khan's Khudai Khidmatgars, who also espoused Hindu-Muslim unity. Unlike the centre JUH, the directives of the JUS in the province began to take on communal tones. The JUS ulama saw the Hindus in the province as a 'threat' to Muslims. Accusations of molesting Muslim women were leveled at Hindu shopkeepers in Nowshera, a town where anti-Hindu sermons were delivered by mullas. Tensions also rose in 1936 over the abduction of a Hindu girl in Bannu. Such controversies stirred up anti-Hindu sentiments amongst the province's Muslim population. By 1947 the majority of the JUS ulama in the province began supporting the Muslim League's idea of Pakistan. Immediately prior to Pakistani independence from Britain in 1947, the British held a referendum in the NWFP to allow voters to choose between joining Pakistan or India. The referendum was held on 2 July 1947 while polling began on 6 July 1947 and the referendum results were made public on 20 July 1947. According to the official results, there were 572,798 registered voters out of