Truth About the Split — Page 340
340 that section of the Community which recognised the necessity of Khilafat and believed in the Nubuwwat of the Promised Messiah as , held the opinion that they must not accept as Khalifa anybody who differed from them on these points. They feared that otherwise the whole Movement would come to a crash. On the contrary, I had come to the conclusion that unity was the supreme need of the hour, and that unity must not be sacrificed in consideration for personalities. I began to press for this view among my friends, and to tell them that if, on the death of Hadrat Khalifatul Masih ra a split was imminent, then we should pledge our Bai‘at to one of Maulawi Muhammad Ali’s party, in spite of the fact that the party was small in numbers. What I urged was that if we were to pledge our Bai‘at to one of our own views, then the others were sure to stand aloof, and a split in the Community therefore was bound to arise. On the other hand, if I should pledge my Bai‘at to one of them, then one could say that nearly all my friends would follow my example and enter into his Bai‘at and save the Community from the impending split. It thus happened that on a certain day when Maulawi Sayyid Sarwar Shah Sahib, one of the most learned theologians of the Community and myself were out for a walk after the ‘ Asr prayers, we remained