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 set-up 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.