The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 74
74 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN whether Zafrulla might go down and see him immediately?" Sir Eric brought back a message that Sir James was at his residence and was ready to receive me. So I went down to his residence. I thought the best thing was to make a direct approach, and I said, "Sir James, we have not met before. " He said, "No, I do not recall having met you before. " I said, "Well, you know nothing at all about me, and all that you can even now guess is that I choose to wear a beard in the Twentieth Century but that is my personal affair. What is it about me that you do not like?" He said, "I am glad to see that you talk quite frankly. I will tell you with the same frankness what is the trouble that I feel about you. " "I would be glad to hear it. " "I am told that you are Fazle Hussain's political protege. Fazle Hussain is a communalist, Railways are our most valuable asset, and frankly I do not want to see the railways committed to the care of a person who is a communalist and whose main preoccupation will be to appoint as many Muslims as he can to the railways and perhaps in the end ruin the whole business. " I said, "I am very glad to hear what your objection is. In the first place, it is true that Sir Fazle Hussain has been a very kind, generous, gracious, considerate friend, and in a sense you may say that I am both his political pupil and his protege. I absolutely repudiate the charge that he is a communalist; that he fights for getting better conditions for Muslims both for the purpose of getting more Muslims properly trained and also for their proper representation in the services does not mean that he is a communalist. As a matter of fact, one of the problems in this country is that the development in many directions is ill-balanced and it bodes ill for the future of the country as a whole that one section, and quite a large one, though a minority in the total population, should lag behind the other in many fields. But we will not enter into a discussion over that just now. "But let me tell you something about Sir Fazle Hussain. As you probably know, I officiated for him in 1932 when he went on sick leave, and when I took charge of the portfolio I asked him whether he wished to give me any directions, and he said to me, 'I cannot be standing over your shoulder all the time. You sink or swim on your own. You go ahead and do what you think is right. ' So if when he was going on leave he would not tell me anything about his own portfolio which I was to hold in his absence, do not have any fear that he will try to run my portfolio for me when I am Minister. What is more, I am not a person who lets somebody else do things for him, however much he might think he could do them