The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 36
36 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN Khan : There is nothing much to it. The All India Muslim League was not a very active or forceful organization in those years. They held their annual sessions, elected a President, who continued as President for one year, and I was elected in December of 1931, as President of the League. The session was held in Delhi. I proceeded to Delhi and delivered my address, and presided over the Session. A number of resolutions were adopted. I cannot now recall details for the topics with which I dealt in my address, but I am sure I touched on the set of safeguards that we were working for in the Roundtable Conferences. During the remaining five or six months that I continued as President, that is till June of 1932, when I joined the Government of India, and could not continue my connection with any political party and thus had to resign the presidentship, I carried on the effort to bring the two Muslim organizations - the All Parties Muslim Conference and the All India Muslim League - together. There was no justification for two separate Muslim organizations which were pursuing the same ends and objectives. There was nothing on which they differed, so far as their objectives were concerned; only some of the personalities were more prominent in one organization than in the other, even though the personalities were more or less common to both. I had hopes that I would be able to put an end to this duality in our political representation, but my appointment to the Governor-General's Executive Council put an end to that effort. In the end, the League survived and the All Parties Muslim Conference sort of lost itself in the sands, but there was no amalgamation of the two. The League was then revived and revivified by Mr. Jinnah and became a very active political instrument under his leadership. Question : Mr. Ambassador, I would now like to ask you a little about the Viceroy's Executive Council and how you came to be a member of it, how it actually worked, what the personalities were like, how much of the business of the government of India was transacted there, how did the Viceroy use it, and so on. Khan : At this stage, perhaps I had better confine myself to my officiating period in the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1932, from June to October.