The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 158
142 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN were then in power, and through them a scheme of partition would be worked out. When I heard that announcement I felt very uncomfortable because at that time in the Punjab the administration was in the hands of the Unionist Party. Sir Khizr Hayat Khan was Prime Minister, but the majority of his followers, that is to say, members of the Unionist Party, were Hindus and Sikhs, and only a minority were Muslims. By that time, the majority of the Muslim representatives in the Punjab Legislative Assembly were members of the Muslim League, and they were in opposition. So I began to worry over what would happen under Prime Minister Attlee's scheme with regard to the Punjab, in which I was most interested both because I belonged there, and also because, as everybody knew the Punjab was the heart of the scheme of Pakistan. I knew that the Qaid-i-Azam, Mr. Jinnah, had tried to persuade Sir Khizr Hayat Khan to come to some understanding with the Muslim League, and had failed. Sir Khizr Hayat Khan's stand had been that he supported the idea of and the demand for Pakistan, but that that related to the centre. So far as the Province was concerned, he stood by the policy and principles of the Unionist Party, as indeed Sir Sikander Hayat Khan had done before him, and he wanted to carry on the same sort of understanding which had been reached between Mr. Jinnah and Sir Sikander Hayat Khan. Now through this announcement of Prime Minister Attlee, that distinction between the provincial sphere and the centre was wiped out. The provincial governments had become, as it were, the centre of interest. I was then in Delhi as Judge of the Federal Court of India and was not directly in politics. But I had continued to take a keen interest in the constitutional advances of India towards independence, and could not now at this last moment dissociate myself from what was going on. I certainly could not disinterest myself in the pivotal question on which the future of my people turned and in which we were all vitally concerned. So I revolved the matter in my mind through the whole night, which was most unusual with me, because when my time for sleep comes, I put aside all affairs with which I have been concerned during the day until the following morning. But that night I kept puzzling my mind over what was to be done. By the morning I came to the decision that I had better write to Sir Khizr Hayat Khan and offer him whatever advice I could in the matter. I was by no means certain