The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 99
99 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN utmost they can do, you may be sure he cannot get anything more out of them. We have enough trouble outside the Commonwealth; I do not want to have more trouble inside, if I can help it. In this matter, we are the bigger partner, and we should be generous. I think we should accept these proposals. " That closed the first round of discussions. I think I had better finish with the Trade Agreement before we come back to the Coronation, and the Imperial Conference. The next question was: What is it that Lancashire wants from us? For this we had to go back to England in 1938. We discussed things with the Lancashire Delegation, and we could not get to an agreement. We went back and asked them to send a delegation to India. Their delegation came to India, we had a series of talks and we could not come to any agreement. I had to go back to England a second time in 1938, and in the end we were able to fix things up. An amusing incident occurred among my non-official advisers, not worth mentioning, perhaps, for its own sake, but significant as revealing a certain type of attitude which also affected the political future of India. On some particular aspect we had pushed the matter as far as it could go and, having arrived at a point which I considered satisfactory, I put it to the panel that we might agree. But Mr. Birla stood out and said no. So I asked Parshotam Das Thakar Das and Kusturbhai Lalbhai to try to convince him and bring him into line. We could have gone on without him but this was the first occasion when the non-official advisers were not unanimous in their support of what I proposed to do and I was anxious to maintain that unanimity. So they talked to him and in the end Birla came out with, "All right. I shall go along with this, provided you leave me the right to interpret this when the time comes for its implementation. " I pointed out that we were engaged upon working out an agreement between two governments and that nobody outside the two governments would be concerned with its interpretation and implementation. Our effort was that the language should be so clear that both sides should understand quite clearly what the meaning was so that there should be no room for any misunderstanding. In any case the agreement would provide how any difference in interpretation and so forth would be settled. How could the interpretation of any part be left to him?