The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 154
138 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN Congress, as there was agreement on all sides that India should be a dominion, the same as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the British should give effect to that aspiration by promulgating a Constitution which they deemed just and fair to all interests subject to the assurance that as soon as the two parties could arrive at a settlement between themselves, whatever they proposed would be substituted for the interim Constitution. The entire British Cabinet, with the exception only of Mr. Churchill, was present at the banquet. Mr. Ivision Macadam, Director-General of Chatham House, had himself urged me that I should take advantage of the great impression that had been created by the few words I had said during the afternoon to push this matter further at the banquet. He had pointed out that this would be an excellent opportunity as everybody who mattered was to be present with the exception only of Mr. Churchill whose duties as Prime Minister would prevent him from attending. Within a day or two, I was told that as the result of those two speeches Lord Wavell, who was then Viceroy of India, had been summoned for consultations to London. In this manner, apart from the contribution made by the Indian delegation through the discussions on each topic as it came up in the roundtables into which the conference was divided, we were at the very beginning able to give the principal topic on which India was interested, that is to say, to march as quickly as possible towards independence, a vigorous push forward. Later, in India, Mr. Asaf Ali, who was one of the leading members of the Congress, told me that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Mr. Asaf Ali and some of the other Congress leaders who were then in internment in the fort at Ahmadnagar in the Deccan, South India, had heard my opening speech over the radio. He described the scene to me: "We were all clustered around the receiver and we heard your speech with bated breath, especially the part beginning 'Statesman of the Empire, does it not strike you as an irony that while India maintains two-and-a-half million people in the field in defence of the liberties and freedom of the Commonwealth, it should itself be a suppliant for its own freedom. ' When your speech finished, we turned off the radio and Pandit Nehru, who had been leaning forward so as not to miss a single word, sat back and he said, 'My goodness, this man says these things with even greater courage and more plainly than we do!'"