Let me go back to the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms [of 1919]. Those reforms, introduced by the British in India resulted in what they called dyarchy, a system which meant that certain subjects were controlled in the provinces by the British and certain were given over to Indians who were introduced in the body politics of the provincial governments. I will mainly concentrate on the Punjab Province because that's my province and I know it better than any other part of India, although I have lived in other parts of India during my many years before us [Pakistan] became separate from India.

Now in the dyarchy which was introduced due to the Montagu Chelmsford Reforms, the Education Minister was an Indian, the Revenue Minister was an Indian, and I believe the local self-government interest Minister was an Indian. Law and Order was not transferred to the Indians, that was the responsibility of the British Governor of the Province. The British Government sent the Constitutional Commission which was to draw up a Constitution for India led by Lord Simon, the Simon Commission which came in 1928 if I remember correctly.

I happened to hear the debates, which took place in the Indian Legislative Assembly for 3 days where the opposition, which was led by the Congress Party and other patriots like Mr. Jinnah or Quaid-e-Azam [Father of he Nation, as he is known in Pakistan], who was leader of the Indian party. The Resolution was introduced that this House should non-cooperate with the Simon Commission. It was introduced curiously enough by a Punjabi Hindu who was the headmaster of a school at that time and became a very prominent Congress leader by the name of Lala Rajpat Rai. He introduced the Resolution, which was supported by the Congress Party. I attended the debate and never heard such a galaxy of Indian leaders as then. Pandit Malaviya was there, who spoke, then Pandit Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru's father was there, Diwan Chaman Lal from Punjab, Mr. T.C. Goswami from Bengal and Mr. Srivastava from Madras and many others, [including] Mr. Jinnah from Bombay and Mr. Jayakar who was also a Hindu leader, a very fine speaker, and also from Bombay. The Amendment was introduced by another Punjabi whose name was Zulfikar Ali Khan and who originally came from Maleer Kotla [a feudal state in East Punjab]. The amendment was that this House non-cooperates with the Simon Commission.

The upshot of all this that I remember very vividly is that Chaman Lal and T.C. Goswami who were then very young were very vociferous in their speeches and extremely bright. Later on, Diwan Chaman Lal became my colleague in the Punjab Legislative Assembly when it started in 1937. The result was that the Opposition won, the resolution was carried that they should not cooperate with the Simon Commission. The general consensus was that the two best speeches for three days were from Bombay, one by Mr. Jinnah and the other by Mr. Jayakar. The Simon Commission then went back and reported to the British Government. The British later prepared for the Round Table conferences which met in 1930, then again in 1931 at the Second Round Table. Then, at the end of 1932 a much smaller body than the first or the second [met for the Third Round Table Conference]. From these the Joint Select Committee [was formed] of both Houses of Parliament in which Indians were of course included and where the British Government gave the Communal Award because the Indians could not amongst themselves agree on what should be the proportion of the various [religious] communities [in elections], to the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay McDonald. The Communal Award was made in 1932 if I remember correctly. All this culminated in the Government of India Act [of 1935].

I had some part to play with the Round Tables, because when the second Round Table met in 1931 I happened to be in London. The leader of the Muslim delegation to the Round Table was His Highness the Aga Khan, who also was the leader of Indian delegation. The Muslim delegation wanted someone to work honourarily, and I became Joint Secretary of the Muslim delegation to the Round Table in 1931 and attended the sessions in St. James Palace. Mr. Gandhi also attended the Second Round Table Conference. He was a member of the minority committee which tried to settle the differences and come up with an agreed formula of how the representation of the different [religious] communities of India should be apportioned in the new set-up that the British were envisaging. I also attended the Third Round Table Conference, which as I said was much smaller. [Sir Mohammed] Iqbal the great poet was a member. He was a member of this and Second Round Table because I used to meet him in London as well. We traveled together from Lahore to London and on the way we stopped for three or four days in Paris. Then I became the Secretary of the of Muslim Delegation, and at the Joint Select Committee, I was Joint Secretary of the Indian delegation. I attended all the meetings of the Joint Select Committee, and then came the Government of India Act 1935 under which the elections took place for the Provincial Assembly at the end of 1936. I was also Member of Indian Legislature.

Q: Tell me about Sir Sikander as a man. What was he like? Did he have the intellect of Sir Fazli Hussain?

These were two different personalities. Sir Fazli Hussain had everything chalked out. For instance, he would get up at five in the morning and would write down what he was going to do during the day. Everything was written and he followed that program very rigidly. Second, he was not a charmer. He was rather a person who didn't want to waste his time, he didn't have any other side kind of attractions. Whereas Sir Sikander who also went to England for a short time - and curiously enough wanted to study medicine, but after a year or so he came back - Sir Sikander was a very genial personality.

I had mentioned Diwan Chaman Lal. I remember the first meeting of the new Punjab Legislative Assembly was in the old hall where the Punjab Legislative Council used to meet. The Council was [established] under the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, whereas the Punjab Assembly was [established] under the Government of India Act 1935, and there were a lot of differences because now the entire government was run by the Indians. There were only certain subjects which were reserved [for the British], but everything else, law and order, education, industry, roads, anything you can think of was a transfer subject, which was dealt with by the Indians.

Now I remember the second or third sitting of the Punjab Legislative Assembly took place in that building [on the Mall]. A bill was introduced about the salaries of the Ministers and the Premier. That was very strongly opposed by the opposition and Diwan Chaman Lal. He was a Member of the opposition and he was a member of the Congress Party. The Congress Party was comprised largely composed of Hindus, there were some Sikhs in it, perhaps one or two Muslims, but no more.

Diwan Chaman Lal had made a fantastic speech, and after he had finished I was wondering how Sir Sikander could ever rise up to the occasion to reply to a speech of that very high standard. For example, talking about the house allowance of the Premier of the Punjab, he [Diwan Chaman Lal] said that he wants a house something like the White House in Washington. But later on, after three years or four years he [Sir Sikander] became almost as a good speaker as Chaman Lal was, and in certain ways he even scored points over Chaman Lal's opposition. This is how his stature rose.

He was a very effective Premier of the Punjab. When the war broke out in 1940, the Punjab had a very large contingent of troops in the Indian Army, whether they were Sikhs, whether they were Jats, or whether they were Muslims. So to go and see the Punjab troops, he went to the front of the 8th Indian Army deployed on the Coast of North Africa. I think the 8th Army was commanded by Lord Auchinleck at that time. So he went there, and there is a photograph of his sitting with Churchill and Smuts who met at that time in Egypt. So when he came back, I remember I arranged, on a big lawn, a reception where all the members of the Legislature were present. Sir Sikander spoke and gave his experiences of what he had seen and the valour and how the Army had acquitted itself, particularly the Punjabis. He was very proud of that.

Another aspect I will tell you, I remember he had a tea garden in Kangra [hill district in the Punjab], which is now on the Indian side. This belonged to his family. He took us, me and one or two others with him, and then we spent two three evenings there together. Now this kind of thing one could not expect from Sir Fazli Husain. Similarly, one day he said, well let's have a cooking party, and myself and the Nawab of Mamdot, Ahmad Yar Khan Daultana, somebody else, five, six or so [got together]. Someone was peeling the onions and someone was doing this, and he sat on the charcoal sigris as they were called and dinner was cooked by all of us. Similarly, we attended a music party for instance when we went to Bombay. Two nights we went and heard the best singer at that time, a woman called Akhtar Bai Faizabadi, at a dinner given by the Nawab of Surat and then somebody else gave a party where she also sang. He was much more of a socially attractive person than Sir Fazli Hussain. I may add that when Sir Fazli Hussain died, we all went to Batala, where he came from, and where he was buried in his family graveyard.

The accomplishment of Unionist Party was largely the resurgence of the agriculturist classes of the Punjab. Sir Chotu Ram played a very pivotal role in bringing agrarian reforms, wide reforms to help the agriculturists. For instance, the Indebtedness Bill was introduced which setup debt conciliation boards in each district. The debt conciliation board function was for the petty zamindars, small landholders, who were not rich, so that instead of going to the courts of law, the debt conciliation board would meet and decide on their debts. For example, if the borrower had already repaid the principal and some interest, then the debt would be liquidated or very little [additional] interest paid. This greatly helped the indebtedness of the agriculturists that was one. The Marketing Bill was another. All this was tooth and nail opposed by the Congress, which was largely Hindu, and some Sikhs who were not Jats, they opposed it.

Having given this background let me start by saying that Mian Sir Fazli Hussain, who was an Education Minister in the dyarchy system following the Montagu Chelmsford Reforms, was a very eminent Muslim. During my experience of meeting politicians I would place him very high because he had an extraordinarily good mind, and was a very staunch nationalist as well as a very strong advocate of Muslim rights. As Education Minister I remember attending a meeting of the Punjab Legislative Council. The opposition brought a vote of no confidence against Sir Fazli Hussain. He stood up to defend himself. I very vividly remember, this was roundabout 1924 or 1925, by saying that I am glad of the opportunity to defend my acts through this vote of no-confidence which has been moved against me, so it gives me an opportunity to tell this House what I have been doing as Minister of Education.

Before his time, the Muslims were backward in education. The enrollment until then in all Government institutions was entirely through merit, but he introduced a system where a certain percentage was reserved for the Muslims who would be able to get into these Government institutions not entirely through merit but also through a quota. Later on he became a member of the Executive Council of the Viceroy and there again he was a very powerful figure and he was able - in the Imperial Services, which were the Indian Civil Service, Indian Accounts Service, Indian Medical Service, Indian Postal Service, and Indian Railway Service - in all these cases he introduced a quota system which enabled the Muslims to get into these services. Otherwise to my knowledge out of a few hundred Muslims who were members of the Indian Civil Service I can think of only three or four who came just through merit. The others came through the quota system which Mian Fazli Hussain introduced. So when he retired from Government service after his five years in the Executive Council, he came and settled down in Lahore. He had a legal practice in Lahore and was a very good lawyer. He also at one time became a member of the Indian National Congress. He was a [an Indian] nationalist, there was no doubt about that although he tried to promote and safeguard the interests of the Indian Muslims.

He thought that the Punjab being an agriculturalists [farmers] province, where the majority of Muslims was marginal, not more than 54% at that time, meant that you could not form a government purely on a religious basis. That would not give you [a sufficient] majority. So you had to coalesce with other members so as to form the government. He thought a coalition would always be a weak Government so he started the Unionist Party, that was the basis of the Unionist Party, which he started - he was thinking probably earlier in 1935 - but he actually came out with it in 1936. This was to safeguard the interests of Muslims and particularly the agriculturalists class, which was largely Muslim. Most of the agriculturists in the Punjab [were Muslim], although there were also very large landowners [who were Muslim], but barring four or five Muslim landowners, they were all indebted as well.

He started it [the Unionist Party] in 1936. Unfortunately his health had been very delicate from 1934 onwards, so when he launched it in 1936 he was a sick man. He also wanted to ensure that the party would continue and have a leader who was capable of taking this party to the polls and making it a success. At that time Sir Sikander Hayat Khan had been Revenue Minister after Mian Fazli Hussain left for the Government of India. Being Senior Minister, Sir Sikander had officiated as the first or second Indian Governor in the whole of India [when the British Governor was temporarily absent]. So he sent for Sir Sikander who was then Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, which had started a year earlier. He called Sir Sikander and told him that I know you have a higher salary and your position is higher and you will probably be the first [Indian] Governor of the Reserve Bank. But you owe something to Punjab, the province from where you became all these things. It was the Punjab, which promoted you as Revenue Member, as acting Governor of the province and now as Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank. He showed him the doctor's reports [on his own health]. So he got him to come back [to Punjab]. After this conversation took place, Sir Fazli Hussain passed away. So Sir Sikander who had decided to come back to the Punjab at the end of 1936 came even earlier.

I again had a role to play with the Unionist Party. Sir Fazli Hussain was a friend of my father. After completing my studies at Government College [in Lahore in 1927] I wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge and then study for the Bar. My father and my uncle were partners in the business and I being the eldest child, they did not want me to go abroad as a student or even qualify as one [but rather] be initiated in business to carry on because they were becoming old. So I was deprived of that opportunity. Because of my father's friendship with Sir Fazli Hussain, when I pressed both my uncle and father finally they agreed [to] go and consult Sir Fazli Hussain. So he asked me this question: why do you want to go and study Bar? Will you practice law?

I said no Sir, I don't want to practice Law, but the Bar and legal knowledge would give me the knowledge to be a good politician. So he said that is not necessary. He said [when] I went to England and qualified for the Bar, I had to practice. When I started my practice in Sialkot, if I earned 100 Rupees, I thought I was doing well in that time. It took me twenty-five years to establish myself as a lawyer before the door opened for me in politics. If you are a good businessman - and he named a few businessmen from Bombay who were politicians - he said that if you are a good businessman, then the doors can and also do open for you to enter politics.

[Later], when he started the Unionist Party he called for me and said you wanted to enter politics, now this is your chance. I have started this party and if you agree I will appoint you the Resident Secretary. So I became the Resident Secretary of the Unionist Party. When Sir Sikander came, he took over the leadership. The deputy leader was Sir Chotu Ram, who was a [Hindu] Jat from Rohtak [district in eastern Punjab].

Now the Hindu Jats were also agriculturists. Sikh Jats were agriculturists and the Muslim majority was agriculturists. Now all these agriculturists in the Punjab were somehow or the other indebted to the moneylender and this moneylender was largely the Hindu, the non-Jat Hindu. And as I mentioned, I will be repeating again that barring four or five names and I can name those four or five who were not indebted, the rest, even those who had incomes of two or three lakhs [hundred thousand] a year, they were all indebted to the Hindu moneylender. So the Unionists Party's main aim was to protect the agriculturist community of the Punjab, whether they are Hindus, whether they are Sikhs, whether they are Muslims. During the tenure of the Unionist Party, which started in 1937, I was returned [in elections] from district of Ferozpur where my grandfather started business. I became a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly in 1937 and was appointed as the Private Secretary of the Premier of Punjab.

Q: Tell me about Sir Sikander as a man. What was he like? Did he have the intellect of Sir Fazli Hussain?

A: Well, they were two different personalities. Sir Fazli Hussain as I said was a giant in politics. But for Sir Fazli Hussain, the Indians which one saw in the Imperial Services wouldn't have had Muslims at all. It was Sir Fazli Hussain who had ensured the quota. Number two, I know on good authority that the major portion of the Communal Award which was announced by Mr. Ramsey McDonalds was initiated in India when Lord Willingdon was the Viceroy and Sir Fazli Hussain was a member of the Executive Council of the Viceroy. So Sir Fazli Hussain had very much to do with the recommendation that went from the Government of India for the Communal Award which was finally announced by the British Prime Minister. Sir Fazli Hussain was a giant as far as his political acumen was concerned, as far as the way he put his point-of-view. He carried out whatever he had in mind, what he wanted to do. He was able to get a quota for the Muslims in the Punjab, and similarly when he was Executive Councilor to the Government of India. He also had a legal background, so he had all the constituents that were necessary for a good politician. He was a good speaker being a good lawyer. He was a man who did take [some] interest in social affairs - Sir Fazli Hussain at one time was the President of the Anjuman Himayat e Islam [an educational foundation]. But as a person, when I knew him, he was first of all getting old and he was in a very high position so that the rapport I could have had with him was not the same as I had with Sir Sikander.

These were two different personalities. Sir Fazli Hussain had everything chalked out. For instance, he would get up at five in the morning and would write down what he was going to do during the day. Everything was written and he followed that program very rigidly. Second, he was not a charmer. He was rather a person who didn't want to waste his time, he didn't have any other side kind of attractions. Whereas Sir Sikander who also went to England for a short time - and curiously enough wanted to study medicine, but after a year or so he came back - Sir Sikander was a very genial personality.

I had mentioned Diwan Chaman Lal. I remember the first meeting of the new Punjab Legislative Assembly was in the old hall where the Punjab Legislative Council used to meet. The Council was [established] under the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, whereas the Punjab Assembly was [established] under the Government of India Act 1935, and there were a lot of differences because now the entire government was run by the Indians. There were only certain subjects which were reserved [for the British], but everything else, law and order, education, industry, roads, anything you can think of was a transfer subject, which was dealt with by the Indians.

Now I remember the second or third sitting of the Punjab Legislative Assembly took place in that building [on the Mall]. A bill was introduced about the salaries of the Ministers and the Premier. That was very strongly opposed by the opposition and Diwan Chaman Lal. He was a Member of the opposition and he was a member of the Congress Party. The Congress Party was comprised largely composed of Hindus, there were some Sikhs in it, perhaps one or two Muslims, but no more.

Diwan Chaman Lal had made a fantastic speech, and after he had finished I was wondering how Sir Sikander could ever rise up to the occasion to reply to a speech of that very high standard. For example, talking about the house allowance of the Premier of the Punjab, he [Diwan Chaman Lal] said that he wants a house something like the White House in Washington. But later on, after three years or four years he [Sir Sikander] became almost as a good speaker as Chaman Lal was, and in certain ways he even scored points over Chaman Lal's opposition. This is how his stature rose.

He was a very effective Premier of the Punjab. When the war broke out in 1940, the Punjab had a very large contingent of troops in the Indian Army, whether they were Sikhs, whether they were Jats, or whether they were Muslims. So to go and see the Punjab troops, he went to the front of the 8th Indian Army deployed on the Coast of North Africa. I think the 8th Army was commanded by Lord Auchinleck at that time. So he went there, and there is a photograph of his sitting with Churchill and Smuts who met at that time in Egypt. So when he came back, I remember I arranged, on a big lawn, a reception where all the members of the Legislature were present. Sir Sikander spoke and gave his experiences of what he had seen and the valour and how the Army had acquitted itself, particularly the Punjabis. He was very proud of that.

Another aspect I will tell you, I remember he had a tea garden in Kangra [hill district in the Punjab], which is now on the Indian side. This belonged to his family. He took us, me and one or two others with him, and then we spent two three evenings there together. Now this kind of thing one could not expect from Sir Fazli Husain. Similarly, one day he said, well let's have a cooking party, and myself and the Nawab of Mamdot, Ahmad Yar Khan Daultana, somebody else, five, six or so [got together]. Someone was peeling the onions and someone was doing this, and he sat on the charcoal sigris as they were called and dinner was cooked by all of us. Similarly, we attended a music party for instance when we went to Bombay. Two nights we went and heard the best singer at that time, a woman called Akhtar Bai Faizabadi, at a dinner given by the Nawab of Surat and then somebody else gave a party where she also sang. He was much more of a socially attractive person than Sir Fazli Hussain. I may add that when Sir Fazli Hussain died, we all went to Batala, where he came from, and where he was buried in his family graveyard.

The accomplishment of Unionist Party was largely the resurgence of the agriculturist classes of the Punjab. Sir Chotu Ram played a very pivotal role in bringing agrarian reforms, wide reforms to help the agriculturists. For instance, the Indebtedness Bill was introduced which setup debt conciliation boards in each district. The debt conciliation board function was for the petty zamindars, small landholders, who were not rich, so that instead of going to the courts of law, the debt conciliation board would meet and decide on their debts. For example, if the borrower had already repaid the principal and some interest, then the debt would be liquidated or very little [additional] interest paid. This greatly helped the indebtedness of the agriculturists that was one. The Marketing Bill was another. All this was tooth and nail opposed by the Congress, which was largely Hindu, and some Sikhs who were not Jats, they opposed it.

Q: What about business in general all over India? Were there any prominent Muslims?

Yes, Sir Abdullah Haroon of the Haroon family was a businessman in Karachi, but nothing very big. He did have a sugar mill somewhere in Bihar with someone else, but there were no outstanding Muslim business leaders. Curiously enough, only in the Kathiawar states [in Gujarat], you had multi-millionaire Muslims, like Sir Haji Kasim Dada who was the sole agent for Lever Brothers, and this [famous] brand of theirs, which is called Dalda, and the "l" in it came from Levers. Their main money came from this distribution. Similarly, there were [a few] others who were multi-millionaires. The Adamjees, the big name in Pakistan, they had a match factory in Burmah, from there they started, then they came to Calcutta and had a jute mill, on a small scale, not very large. In Bombay, there was one family of Chinoys who were businessmen, car dealers; Sultan Chinoy was the top man. Again, fairly good but nothing very big.

Q: Did Muslim businessmen at that time feel excluded because they were Muslim by a Hindu - dominated elite?

Yes, but it depended on the province. In UP, the rich Muslims were talukadars [large feudal landholders]. The Muslim kingdom of Awadh lasted for two hundred or one hundred fifty years, and at that time most of the land owners were Muslims and estates belonged to them. The largest was a Hindu, Raja of Balrampur, but the number two was Mahmudabad, the Raja of Mahmudabad. Mahmudabad's income in those days, in 1935, was no less than seven to ten lakhs [hundred thousand] rupees [per year], which was a very large sum at that time. The Raja of Jehangirabad was, after Balrampur, supposed to be the wealthiest. Mahmudabad had the largest estate, but he spent money; Jehangirabad on the other hand kept his money. At that time it was said that he was worth a crore of rupees, which then was something fantastic. In the United Provinces, the landholding class had money, the talukadars. By and large, they were eighty percent Muslims.

Now these were the people who were hardest by hit the independence of India [and creation of Pakistan]. They lost everything. Mahmudabad had kept part of his estate, but it was nothing like before.

Q: So why did they fight for the creation of Pakistan?

A: My own interpretation was that it was largely the civil servants of UP, who saw no future [in a united India], for then their numbers would have been reduced to their actual percentage in the population, whatever it was. The weightage they had enjoyed through the Fazli Husain reforms was to be lost to them, so they were very aggressively promoting Pakistan and most of them came to Pakistan at the time of partition.

Q: Let us go back to the businessmen again. Muslim businessmen - people like Haroon for instance supported the Muslim League it seems pretty sincerely from early times - why? What was in their interests as business people that they saw the Muslim League giving them more of than say Congress?

A: Dealing with Congress probably made them feel that the Hindus would never give them their due share. I will give you one example. The Lahore Electric Supply Company was a private concern, managed by a man called Rai Bahadur Sohan Lal, who was the descendant of the owner of a printing firm. There were two very large printing firms in Lahore. One was Ghulab Singh's, and Sohan Lal was the grandson of Ghulab Singh who started the firm. The other one was [owned by] Attar Chand Kapur, who was also Hindu. Rai Bahadur Sohan Lal was a Member of the Punjab Assembly, which is why I knew him well. I got a man, a Muslim, recruited in the Lahore Electric Supply Company, and you will be surprised to hear that he was the only Muslim clerk there. Perhaps there were a few coolies, taking ladders and doing artisan work, but even then at the clerk level there was only one Muslim although Lahore had a majority population of Muslims. This gives you an idea.

When I started an industry in Bahawalpur State, we were the first pioneers to set up a textile mill in Rahimyar Khan. I brought Lever Brothers to Rahimyar Khan. At that time there was no industry which belonged to the Muslims [in this area], we were the first.

When the Congress became very dominant through the elections [of 1937], Muslims felt that they were nowhere. The Quaid's [Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Muslim League] position was very weak in Muslim majority provinces, he had his base in the minority Muslim provinces like UP, or Central Provinces, or Bombay. So we went to Lucknow, where the Jinnah Sikander pact was signed, an agreement where we all [Muslim Unionist members from the Punjab] became members of the Muslim League [on the all-India level].

Q: Why did Sikander compromise then?

He felt that eventually there would be some kind of set up at the center, ultimately. If in the center the Muslims had no one to represent them - Jinnah was an all-India leader, whereas Sikander was only a provincial leader - he wanted the all-India position of the Muslims to be safeguarded and the only person who could do that was the Quaid [Jinnah].

Q: How widely do you think Pakistan finally did catch on in the Punjab. In 1946 the League swept the polls. What was the driving forces?

The driving force, I think again at that time, was the attitude of the Hindu. You take the Cabinet Mission Plan, which the League accepted [this plan called for India remaining united, with a weak center and strong provinces and with a referendum in ten years where provinces could reevaluate which groups they belonged to.]

I remember very vividly going to a meeting of the All India Muslim League Board. Now the smaller body was the Working Committee of the Muslim League The Working Committee had ten or so members, while the Board had seventy or up to one hundred members. I was one of them. There was a meeting in New Delhi, in the Metropole Hotel, and the Quaid presided. He put forward that the Working Committee had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan, because it was a step towards the ultimate goal of Pakistan and that we would get the majority in the Northern and Eastern side.

I remember Maulana Hasrat Mohani, he was a Congressite, and he jeered at the Quaid "Sir, where is your Pakistan, you have accepted this?" He was speaking in Urdu. We tried to pacify him. At every step, throughout the conflict, at every step, the Hindus were not ready to compromise.

Q: Did the Quaid want Pakistan as bargaining chip or as a reality?

In the beginning - I knew him fairly well and my brother knew him much better than I did, because we had business in Bombay and all over India, and he was for four or five years in Bombay and he used to see the Quaid every third day - the Quaid used to tell my brother that it was Gandhi who introduced Hindu politics in India. Before Gandhi's arrival there were nationalists, whether they were Muslims, Parsees, Hindus or Christians. He [Jinnah] said that Dadabhai Naoroji, and I am quoting here, "I sat at his feet and learned politics, and if people like Naoroji had been the leaders of India we would not have had this religious stance which was introduced by Gandhi when he came into politics."

Coming back to your question, you see, the Quaid throughout was a [an Indian] nationalist. For example, he opposed Simon Commission because he was a nationalist. The British did not want to give power to the Indians and the Quaid from the very beginning was a nationalist and he supported any national movement, which would give India power. I am sorry to say that some Muslims who charge that the Quaid was working with the British - that is simply not true.

Q: A man who could be so perceptive about Gandhi's introducing religion into politics brought the Muslim religion into politics too ...

Yes, because when he failed as a nationalist, he wanted an India in which the Muslims would play a role, and this could only be if the Muslims were given weightage [a fixed proportion of legislative seats and jobs] in those places where they were not a majority. At every step, whenever there was a question of constitutional reforms, Jinnah's main thrust was nationalism. He wanted India to remain one unit, an independent India. It was not in his mind to have a Pakistan, but an India in which the Muslims would play a role, and a role, which was an effective one. And an effective role could only come about if the Muslims were given weightage in those places where they were not in a majority, as it happened in the UP where the Muslims did play a role, where you people like Chatari and many others. Now this did not happen. When Gandhi came in, slowly the Indian National Congress, though its name remained the same as in the time of Dadabhai Naoroji, it slowly became Hinduized and whenever there was a question of protection or safeguards for minorities, the Congress always [went against them]. Now if you look at the Nehru Report, which was published before 1929, you will see that what the Muslims are offered is nowhere near protecting the Muslim interests.

Q: Why didn't the Hindus understand that, when they had so much to lose by not compromising?

I can only explain this in the Hindu psyche. If you go back into history you would find that when the Hindus were the dominant power, what did they do with this society? They created four classes. There were no Muslims at that time. The Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, Vaishiyas, and at the bottom the Shudras, the untouchables. An elite would rule in their social thinking, and that was the Brahmins before the Muslims came here. When the Muslims came here, they then ruled. When the British came here, they wanted to put the Muslims who had been the rulers in their place.

See how Mahatma Gandhi, how clever he was. When the Khilafat Movement started in India [in 1919] by Maulana Mohammed Ali, whom I knew, his brother Shaukat Ali, Maulana Shafi Daudi and others, Gandhi said yes, he joined them although this was a lost cause. What could the Muslims do to support the Khilafat - it was the Turks who had set aside the Khalifa. What pull did the Indian Muslims, or for that matter the Indian Congress have, on the Turks? Gandhi was a very shrewd person, and he knew that it was a lost cause. But to gain their support [he did so] - and then these [Mohammed Ali et. al] were the people who became front-ranking Congressites till they parted company.

The Quaid, by accepting the Cabinet Mission Plan, had made the last attempt to keep India together. If you read [Maulana Abul Kalam] Azad ['s biography, President of the Congress party at independence], these last ten pages which have now been published [around 1990], you will see how much Azad tried to keep India together. He was a true Indian nationalist, there is no doubt about that, but even he was looked at with suspicion by [Sardar Villabhai] Patel. I think it was the decision of Patel in the end, which forced partition. He wanted to get rid [of the Muslims] because he thought, they will always be a thorn in our flesh.

Q: Going back to the Khilafat Movement, I am finding that however strange and absurd it may have seemed in its goals, it was still a very popular movement.

Yes, certainly. I remember as a boy, I was twelve years old, and there were songs in Punjabi that I even remember sung in the streets of Lahore. I remember a delegation of Turks passing through Lahore on their way to Afghanistan. In those days there were no aeroplanes, so they landed in Bombay and came by train. Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, who was then the editor of the Zamindar and a great political figure, also a very learned man and very fine person, he wrote article after article that the Turks were coming. I remember posters put on by the Zamindar quoting [the Urdu poet] Ghalib. I was then in college and we as students went to the railway station to receive these Turks. Being young we were strong and we managed to be right in front. When the train steamed in, the people in the back started pushing and we were yelling at the top of our voice for we would have been thrown in front of the engine. We just stopped. I remember some of the leaders going to meet these Turks, [Sir Mohammed] Iqbal was there I think. But I was rather disappointed you see, for I thought, being Turks that they would be wearing headcaps and all that, but they looked just like ordinary Europeans. I was not very much impressed.

But this was a genuine feeling [and was reflected in the local press]. Lahore was a center of Urdu publication. You will be surprised to hear that there were three Urdu newspapers of Lahore, which were owned by Hindus: Partab, Mehrab, and Vi Bharat. All three were Hindu newspapers. They probably still come out in Amballa. Many famous magazines came out from Lahore. This was the cultural center for the whole of India.

Q: I have seen a piece of film of [Khilafat leader] Mohammed Ali film footage visiting Lahore in the early twenties -

I was there. It was about 1920. I will tell you a story. I think it was 1920 or 1921, somewhere about there. In those days there were very few cars in Lahore. I think no more than about ten. We had one. My cousin and I were getting some harmonium lessons, and when we went to get a harmonium, somebody told us that the Ali brothers were coming. So we decided that we should go to the railway station and see the Ali brothers. As it happened when we reached the railway station and stopped the car, the Ali brothers came out and there were people following them. The only car there was ours. So they brought them towards this car and we couldn't say no. So they sat down. With them was Maulana Abdul Bari, also a leader. They had been jailed together, the three of them and come out together. So I sat on the harmonium and these three gentlemen sat in the back. I remember when we went through the bazaar, people asked them to stand up, so they stood up. We used to live near Branner Hall, near the central railway college where they spoke that night.

Q: What did you think of Mohammed Ali? What kind of a man was he?

I'm afraid I didn't know Mohammed Ali. I was told he was a great scholar, having started this newspaper [The Comrade] and he wrote English very well. Shaukat Ali was just a kind of reflection of him, he did not have much in him except that he was really just a fine figure of a man. It was the reflected glory of Mohammed Ali which came to Shaukat Ali.

They played an important role in the Congress, there is no doubt about that. I remember clearly, I was in the first year or second year [of college] when they were imprisoned in Chinwara jail in the Central provinces and Mohammed Ali was elected as President of the Indian National Congress in Kokannada in the south of India. I liked Urdu poetry very much. He started his address - they were in prison for about four years, and he went straight from prison to Kokannada to make his Presidential address to the Congress. He started with a famous Urdu verse which was absolutely apt and that meant that the turn of the goblet was as long as a century and the moment that I came out of the tavern, I saw that the world had changed. This is what he said. His English was very fluent, but I missed him because unfortunately I didn't attend the first Round Table Conference in 1930. I didn't go to Europe till 1931. He was a member of the Round Table in 1930, Shaukat Ali was there in 1931 when I was there. But he [Mohammed Ali] was a personality. But unfortunately all these people were lost in the Khilafat Movement, completely, because they supported a cause which Gandhi saw [as limited] but which they did not. It was more emotional than hard thinking. Quaid, for instance, never paid any attention to the Khilafat Movement because he had a much clearer sense that it was futile.

Q: What was Maulana Zafar Ali Khan like?

He had a very extraordinary talent. I think he was the father of Urdu journalism, although [Maulana Abul Kalam] Azad was a much more learned man than Zafar Ali Khan. The Zamindar newspaper, when Zafar Ali Khan was the proprietor and editor, was the Urdu paper for the Muslims. But unfortunately it had limited circulation. The Muslims had no industry, so that the advertisements were very meager. Sometimes he couldn't pay his staff. My father, I remember, helped him two three times. I also remember at Branner Hall, what the occasion was I do not remember, when he came to the stage and started speaking and he was hooted down. He was trying to quote something and he was taking his spectacles out and in the process a few people started yelling at him. After he found his spectacles he started speaking again, and then the same people who hooted him applauded him, he had such command of the language. I have never seen anyone who had the gift of rhyme as Zafar Ali Khan had. Fantastic gift of rhyme. A man of extraordinary ability. But unfortunately, the Muslims never supported him sufficiently. The Punjab zamindar (feudal land owner) was by and large uneducated - I am sorry to say this - someone who had very little time for culture. The Punjab zamindar, compared to the talukdars of Awadh who had a great deal of culture in them, the Punjab zamindar did not have culture. If he was rich, he would have falcons or gray hounds or horses, but very little culture. They did not support him, Zafar Ali Khan was one instance where they could have easily. Umar Hayat Khan Tiwana, who had an estate at that time of four lakh rupees [per annum], could easily have helped him.

Q: If Sir Sikander had lived, what would have happened in the Punjab?

If Sir Sikander had lived, you would most probably have had a different Punjab than what you have today. He would have managed to take the agriculturists seats, may be even the Hindu Jats with him into Pakistan.

Q: So you may still have had Pakistan, but not the minorities switching sides [as refugees]?

Yes, but it is a very big if. One doesn't know. But let me end this by telling you this my own very strong conviction that if the Quaid had died in March 1947, there would have been no Pakistan. It was pure willpower, sheer willpower of the man.

Q: Some people I have talked to have said that if he had died, Pakistan would not have happened in 1947, but it would have happened by 1957.

No sir, no. Today you see [look at what we have]. If Quaid had died in March 1947 there would have been no Pakistan. It was the sheer willpower of the man. After he died, Liaquat Ali Khan was there, and he was killed in 1951 I think. He had enough time to frame a Constitution. That is the elementary thing. The Indians produced one in two years. We didn't. When I was a member of the Cabinet in 1956, I was Minister of Finance in 1955 from October, and we had the first Constitution in 1956. The delay was the result in having so many different - to this day we do not have a [proper] Constitution.

Q: Why was the Muslim League after Jinnah so weak?

That is why I am telling you that if Jinnah had died in March 1947 [there would have been no Pakistan] for the simple reason that the Muslims could not throw up a man of that stature.

Q: What do you think the benefit has been of having Pakistan?

There is no doubt about this, that economically the Muslims today are much better off than they would have been [in a united India]. If the entrepreneurial system had continued unchecked, if the entrepreneurial talent that had developed from 1947 to let us say 1970 [had continued], and with the Arab money coming in later, Pakistan would have gone up quite far. I'll give you two examples.

Our business was largely in India. This was with the British Army. When we came to Pakistan I started this textile mill in 1945, before partition in Rahimyar Khan. I was also going to start a flour mill. We bought a razor blade plant, which we set up in Hyderabad [Sindh]. In Karachi we had an assembly plant, assembling Ford products, cars, trucks, tractors. When it was nationalized we were producing twenty-seven percent of the [Ford] Cortina car as local content. We also had an engineering concern, in which we were making bridges for the Army, pontoon bridges. We had a Lambretta plant for bicycles, we were producing forty-five percent local content and we had asked the Lambrettas that we wanted to do more. They went out of business, and they said yes, you can keep this but you have to change the name. So we had given the name Tiger, and our program was that after two years it would be ninety percent local content. This was the situation. I can only tell you about my own concern. When it was nationalized, for twenty years there has been no manufacture. We had built [so many things] all knocked down, we used to build the bodies of the trucks and vans, but now [there is nothing being made indigenously].

Economically the Muslims today are much better than they would have been, and if entrepreneurial system had continued unchecked, as it developed from 1947 till 1970, Pakistan would be a far better place now.