Ahmadiyyat - The Renaissance of Islam — Page 245
THE RENAISSANCE OF ISLAM 245 Lord Wavell, sent for Mr Gandhi and Mr Nehru and tried hard to obtain from them the assurance that would satisfy Mr Jinnah that the Congress would work the Plan according to its plain meaning; but Mr Gandhi and Mr Nehru took up the position that it was for them to interpret the Plan and their interpretation must be accepted and given effect to. The situation again became deadlocked, and Prime Minister Att- lee summoned Mr Nehru and Mr Jinnah to London towards the end of 1946 in the hope that he might be able to resolve the deadlock. But his hope proved vain and it became necess- ary to have recourse to some other device for the purpose of resolving the situation. On 20 February 1947 Prime Minister Attlee announced that His Majesty's Government had decided to transfer power into Indian hands at the latest by the end of June 1948, and that a scheme would be worked out whereunder power might be transferred to the Central Government of India and that if this did not prove feasible all over, power might be vested in some cases in the Provincial Governments. This created a very embarrassing situation for the Muslim League in respect of the Punjab where the Unionist Party, and not the Muslim League, was in power. Fortunately, under Ahmadi advice, Malik Sir Khizar Hayat Khan was convinced of the wisdom of resigning his office of chief Minister of Punjab so as to open the way for the formation of a Muslim League Government in the Punjab and failing that for Gov- ernor's rule. In the western districts of the United Provinces of India a large section of the rural population which had at one time accepted Islam was Muslim in name but was not distinguish- able from the Hindus in the cultural pattern of their lives. Many of them even bore Hindu names. They were Rajputs by caste and were known as Malkanas. The Arya Samaj. which was a militant arm of the Hindus and favoured, contrary to the thinking of the mass of orthodox Hindus, the conversion of non-Hindus to Hinduism, devised a large-scale