The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 153
137 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN International Affairs. In fact, I was the first and only President as the Institute was transferred to Pakistan on partition and India set up its Council on World Affairs. After its transference to Pakistan, I became President of the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, which position I continued to occupy until 1954, when I went to the International Court of Justice. Thus, during the years that the Institute operated in India, I was its President and in that capacity I led the Indian delegation to the Commonwealth Relations Conference in London in February and March, 1945. Except for the Secretary of the Institute, Khwaja Sarwar Hassan, who was also with us as a delegate, I believe all the other delegates were non-Muslims. We were a good delegation. One of the members was Sir Maharaj Singh, who had for a short time been Agent-General of India in South Africa. He had been in the Civil Service of the United Provinces and rose to great eminence. The other delegates also were very keen and active members of the Indian Institute. I think we made a significant contribution to the deliberations of the conference. In the opening session, the leader of each delegation made a brief speech, reviewing the war effort of his country and making general observations on the objectives and ideals of the Commonwealth. I took advantage of the opportunity thus afforded, after summarizing India's war effort, to draw attention to the fact that while India had two and a half million people in the field in defence of the freedom of the Commonwealth, it was a great irony that India should still be a suppliant for its own freedom. I made a strong appeal to the assembled statesmen of the Empire that India should, as soon as possible, become independent. It so happened that the juxtaposition presented by me struck the imagination of those present and also of the press. By the time we came out of Chatham House, about a couple of hours later, we found that that part of my speech had been printed verbatim in bold letters in the evening papers. That created a great stir. Finding that my plea had struck such a chord of sympathy both in the conference and outside, I then took advantage of the fact that I had been nominated as one of the two guests to respond to the toast of the guests at the banquet that was given on behalf of the Royal Institute that evening in Claridge's Hotel, in honour of the members of the Conference, to develop that theme at greater length. In that speech, I appealed to the British Government to do something positive and concrete in that behalf. I made a suggestion that even pending a settlement between the Muslim League and the