The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 97
97 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN would signify their acceptance of the invitation to serve on the panel. He wanted to know whether the panel was only for show that Government were consulting non-official opinion also, or whether it would be consulted on everything and full advantage would be taken of the advice it gave. I was able to reassure him completely. I must say we worked very happily together, and they were a great help. They gave me realistic advice and I was able to make full use of it. Towards the end of 1938 I happened to be on tour in Bombay. Sir Parshotam Das Thakar Das gave a lunch in my honour in the Taj Mahal Hotel, to which he asked prominent people from the industrial and commercial sections in Bombay. Towards the end of the lunch he got up and related the whole of this story, how they were invited to serve on the panel, and his two colleagues had asked him to go and talk to me, and what assurances I had given them, and concluded, "I want to state publicly that he carried out those assurances one hundred percent. We worked very happily together. " The Board of Trade also set up a delegation to carry on discussions with us. Their delegation was led by Sir Frederick White, who had been the first President of the Indian Legislative Assembly. He was an extremely formal gentleman, and, I hope I am not being unfair to him, slightly pompous. I remember one occasion when we were discussing spices and we got to the item of cardamoms. He enquired in a very lofty tone, "What are cardamoms?" I put my hand in my vest pocket, brought out a couple of cardamoms, and placing them in the middle of my palm, said, "These. " The effect on those round the table was exactly as if he had asked, "What is a white elephant?" and I had produced one, as it were, out of the air, and all this in the Committee Room of the Board of Trade in Whitehall. In fact, it was a coincidence that I had them in my pocket. Kasturbhai Lalbhai used to have cardamoms and betel nuts with him as he was in the habit of chewing them, and he had given me a few cardamoms the day before which I had put in my pocket. We soon found that that method of negotiation was not getting us very far; it was too slow, too ponderous, too formal. So after a few days' experience of this procedure the Permanent Undersecretary of State of the Board of Trade, Mr. Brown and I, arranged that he and I would carry on the deal discussions; then he could consult his colleagues and his ministers, the President of the Board of Trade, who