My Mother — Page 108
108 is not prepared to acknowledge in practice that the non-white is as much a creature of God as the Boer is, and that God desires the physical, material, moral, and spiritual welfare of the non-white to the same degree as of the Boer. The Judges elected in the triennial election of 1969 having joined the Court in February 1970, the question of the Presidency of the Court began to be canvassed. Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice’s name and mine were mentioned. It was felt that the contest was likely to be a close one. Then a third judge’s name came up. In a three-cornered contest everything became uncertain, except that the process of election would be prolonged, and so it proved. Ballot after ballot continued inconclusive. Late on the second day of balloting a shift took place and I was elected and became the first Asian President of the Court. Thus was ’s dream of more than a third of a century earlier fulfilled, not as the result of any human planning or in accordance with human expectation, but obviously by Divine design. Consider the bird’s-eye view of my career and activities from 1934 to 1970 set out in the preceding pages. In the spring of 1934 Sir Shadi Lal was ready to recommend my appointment to the High Court Bench. I was then forty-one years of age. I could have reasonably expected to become Chief Justice of the High Court before my retirement at the age of sixty. This applied even more to Sir Douglas Young’s offer made a few week’s later to recommend me for appointment to the first permanent vacancy on the High Court Bench, which would have put me ahead of five additional judges. In 1941, when I chose to go to the Federal Court, my friends thought I had acted unwisely. Left to myself I would have