My Mother — Page 89
Fulfilment of Dream (A) 89 Things began to move fast. In July Mr. M. A. Jinnah (the Quaid-i-Azam) called me to Delhi and asked me to present the Muslim League case to the Punjab Boundary Commission at Lahore, which I did. In the beginning of September he called me to Karachi and asked me to lead the Pakistan delegation to the Annual Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. On my return, he insisted that I should move to Pakistan. I was given the choice between Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court and the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. I chose the latter. His Highness very kindly agreed to release me, and I took the oath of my new office on December 24, 1947. For more than five years I rode on the rising crest of the wave of popular esteem. In the meantime, two stark tragedies had overtaken Pakistan. The Quaid-i-Azam died in September 1948, and Prime Minister Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in October 1951. Khwaja Nazimuddin, Chief Minister of East Pakistan, became Governor-General of Pakistan in succession to the Quaid-i- Azam, and in October 1951 he succeeded Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan as Prime Minister of Pakistan. He was a kindly, pious, religious-minded man who lent ear too readily to the orthodox divines who now found opportunities of influencing policies and insinuating themselves into a position of power. The Governor- General, Malik Ghulam Muhammad was a strong minded person fond of power, and a clash became inevitable between him and the Prime Minister in which the latter was worsted and set aside in the spring of 1953. By then I had become persona non grata to the extreme section of the orthodox divines. They made me the principal target of their hostility. The new Prime Minister, Mr. Muhammad Ali Bogra and my