The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 155
139 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN The difference between those who were fighters in the field, as it were, for independence and those like me, who were doing the same thing through co-operation with the British, was not on the objective; on that we were all agreed. The difference was one of method; and both methods were necessary; in fact they were complementary. It was not as if we thought that the co-operative method alone should have been pursued, and I doubt whether even the most extreme Congress leadership could have thought that it was not worthwhile to continue the co-operative method also. Both were necessary and were complemen- tary to each other, though, of course, the method of fighting in the field, if I might so describe it, was much the more spectacular of the two and also involved greater sacrifices. They went to jail; they had to suffer privations, and I do not mean to imply at all that our part was in any sense as hard and as much beset with difficulties as theirs; but I do maintain that those of us who worked in co-operation, with the British, towards the same objective, did help in some ways to push the matter forward. The Commonwealth Relations Conference in February-March of 1945 was one of those occasions on which we were able to give the matter a push. The journey to England and back on that occasion, in contrast with the journey mentioned earlier, to Mont Tremblant and then on to England and back, was a perfectly straightforward affair. By that time the Germans had been pushed back far enough to make the regular air route operable. So we went directly from Karachi, via Cairo, over the Mediterranean, on to England and back by the same route. There was no trouble at all. Question : Sir, would you tell us something about Chaudhary Rahmat Ali and his attitude towards Pakistan ? Khan : I knew Chaudhary Rahmat Ali very well when he was a student in the Islamia College at Lahore, and later when he was a student in the Law College at Lahore. At that time, I was a part-time lecturer in our University Law College. Later, I knew him when he was a student in Cambridge, in the early 1930s when the Roundtable Conferences were being held in London. He used to come up to London and discuss things with some of the delegates. He had associated with him Khwaja Abdur Rahim, who was also at Cambridge at that time. The latter subsequently went into the Civil Service and rose to be Commissioner of Rawalpindi, and then resigned. He is now practising at the Bar and is also interested in industry. I might take this opportunity to mention