The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 156
140 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN here that when it came to partition later, I found that in the matter of preparation for putting our case before the Boundary Commission, Khwaja Abdur Rahim was the only one who had done any useful work at all by way of collecting and collaborating data on various important factors. Chaudhary Rahmat Ali and Khwaja Abdur Rahim came to London, and we spent some time together discussing Chaudhary Rahmat Ali's then-scheme of Pakistan. Chaudhary Rahmat Ali has the credit of having invented the name "Pakistan. " To my great surprise I found that, at that time he was looking only at the northwest of the subcontinent and was ignoring Bengal altogether. When I pointed out to him that in Bengal there were almost twice as many Muslims as there were in the Punjab, he was extremely surprised, and thought I was being very foolish. In a contemptuous tone he said, "Now, what is it you are saying? Punjab has 56 percent Muslims and Bengal only 54 percent Muslims. " I had to point out patiently, "That's true, Mr. Rahmat Ali, but percent means out of 100. Bengal has 54 Muslims out of each hundred of population. But how many hundreds are there in Bengal?" It took me ten minutes to explain this very elementary fact to him, that as the total population of Bengal was more than twice that of Punjab, 54 percent out of a population more than twice that of the Punjab, gave Bengal more Muslims than there were in the Punjab. It was then that he began to think of some modification of his scheme, so as to include Bengal as part of it. He was more of a visionary than a man of affairs and was not inclined to attach much significance to the practical aspects of a problem. His scheme involved separation and partition, but it was based on an exchange of populations, necessitating that the total Muslim population of the entire subcontinent of India should go into Pakistan. I enquired from him who would provide the cost of the transportation of the enormous number of people affected and of their movable goods, across the subcontinent. His answer was that we would have to organize ourselves and to club together to carry out the operation. My comment was, "Mr. Rahmat Ali, if our economic position were so good as to enable us to carry out this huge operation of an exchange of populations and to pay our share of the cost of the transportation of the Muslims, we would not be doing so badly that we would insist on partition. "