 A large number of Islamic political parties, religious schools, and organizations opposed the partition of India and advocated a composite nationalism of all the people of the country in opposition to British rule in colonial India (especially the All India Azad Muslim Conference).The North West Frontier Province, a Muslim majority unit in British India, elected a government run by the Indian National Congress in both 1937 and 1946.Historians such as Shashi Tharoor maintain that Britain's divide-and-rule policy aimed at spreading communal discord between Hindus and Muslims after they united together to fight against British rule in India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.