The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 51
51 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State, his help was invaluable. But in the cut and thrust of debate, those of us who represented Muslim interests, had to do our share, and looking back upon it, it seems that I took the leading part. The main committee of the Conference which sat throughout, was known as the Federal Structure Committee, and as its name indicated, it concentrated on preparing a blueprint of the proposed Federal structure. The discussions in the Third Roundtable Conference, served as the basis of the proposals put out by His Majesty's Government in the shape of a White Paper. One of the difficult questions, for instance, that we had to deal with was that on behalf of the Punjab Hindus it was urged that a distinction should be made between the Punjab and the other provinces with respect to the transfer of responsibility for law and order. This was part of a bigger issue. The Muslim position had been that in the federal set up, the minimum unavoidable should be committed to the center and that everything else should be transferred to the autonomous provinces. The reason for that was obvious. Complete provincial autonomy in respect of matters which were declared provincial subjects - was one of the safeguards on which the Muslims had been insistent. The Muslims would be in a majority in the Punjab, Bengal, the Northwest Frontier Province, as it was then called, and Sind, and this would, to some degree, furnish them with a safeguard vis- a-vis the Federal Center and the other provinces where there would be a fixed, unalterable majority of Hindus. To have taken away law and order from the Muslim key province of the Punjab would have meant stultifying provincial autonomy in that province. The main attack proceeded from the Hindu representative from the Punjab, Pundit Nanak Chand, a lawyer from Lahore. Our personal relations were friendly. He put forth the suggestion not because he entertained any hope of its being accepted but only to be able to say when he went back that he had very valiantly upheld the non-Muslim cause in the Punjab. He delivered a long, passionate denunciation of the Unionist Party in the Punjab Legislature, which was composed of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. It was not a communal party and it had been organized under the leadership of Sir Fazle Hussain. A majority of its members were Muslims. Pundit Nanak Chand, in the course of his declamation against