On July 18th, 2011, the defendants replied to the Requisition and statement of issues served by the Plaintiff's Counsel in March.

Although the Plaintiff party has implied that they want the proceedings to end, the Plaintiff's counsel is continually showering the defendants with proceedings. They continue to insist for a private discovery apart from the reference that was ordered.

Since the reference pertains only to an accounting of any profits (if applicable), and since the distributed books were not ordered to be returned, there is no need for further inquiry into any names or other information.

Statements of Issue

Plaintiff's Requisition and Statement of issues, March 29, 2011

Tajdin's Statement of Issues in Reply, July 18, 2011

Jiwa's Statement of issues in Reply, July 18, 2011

Letters to the Court: ( section is updated regularly)

Plaintiff's Letter demanding discovery, July 21, 2011

Tajdin's Letter in response, showing discovery is unnecessary, July 27, 2011

Letter from Plaintiff's lawyer saying Aga Khan has changed His mind and now wants payments and costs, dated July 29, 2011

Tajdin's letter in response, showing discrepancies in Mr Gray's above letter, August 1, 2011
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All Comments on the case

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REPLY TO PLAINTIFF’S STATEMENT OF ISSUES
(of the defendant Alnaz Jiwa)

In response to the Plaintiff’s Statement of Issues dated March 29, 2011, the Defendant, Alnaz Jiwa, states as following:

1. This defendant has not been involved in the collection, recording, transcribing, or publishing the Golden Edition.

2. This defendant states that he bought 96 Golden Edition books at $50.00 each and the ones sold by him were sold at $50.00.

3. This defendant states that he shipped only one book to a lady in Chicago who paid the sum of $50.00 plus actual shipping charges. The rest of the books were distributed to his family and friends: some of which were given as gifts; some were purchased for the sum of $50.00 each for the books; and others have not paid for the books and may not pay for the books. This defendant has not sought to collect from those who have not paid for the books.

4. This defendant’s activities were of a voluntary nature and undertaken in a spirit of encouraging the followers of the Aga Khan to become serious about their faith and to obey the guidance given by their spiritual leader and as such often the books were just given away and left to the recipients to pay or not to pay.

5. This defendant has undertaken the distribution of these books as a community service and not to make any profits or even to sell the books.

6. This defendant picked up and delivered all of the books personally except for one book which was sent by courier to an individual in Chicago. Those who paid for the books usually paid by cash and some (about three or four) paid by cheque which was cashed by this defendant.

7. This defendant did not issue any receipts or receive any receipts for the collection or payment of the books.

8. This defendant states that even if he had sold all books with all purchasers paying him the asking price, the resulting sales would not have resulted in even one dollar of profits. This defendant has not charged anyone one dollar more that what he paid for the books.

9. This defendant has never dealt with the printer, or the publisher, nor is aware as to how many total books were published or at what cost.

10. This defendant states that Justice Harrington refused to order the return of the books already sold or distributed and that the identities of the individuals who received the books is thus unnecessary to be revealed as the only issue for the reference is the accounting for profits.

11. This defendant has not made or expects to make even one dollar of profits.

July 18, 2011
____________________
Alnaz Jiwa

===========================================
REPLY TO PLAINTIFF’S STATEMENT OF ISSUES
(of the defendant Nagib Tajdin)

In response to the Plaintiff’s Statement of Issues dated March 29, 2011, the Defendant, Nagib Tajdin (“Tajdin”) states as follows:

1. This copyright lawsuit is about a book entitled “Farmans 1957-2009 - Golden Edition Kalam-E Imam-E-Zaman” (the “Golden Edition”) and an mp3 audio bookmark (the “MP3”), collectively (the “Infringing Materials”).

2. The Golden Edition is a book of Biblical proportions containing most of the general pronouncements made by the Aga Khan as Imam of the Ismailis from 1957 to 2009. These pronouncements of divine nature called “Farmans” are made in various countries across the world and are binding to all Ismailis unless stated otherwise within the Farman.

3. The MP3 is an audio bookmark preloaded with 14 short audio extracts of recording of Farmans read in the Aga Khan’s own voice. Each extract is about 30 seconds in length.

4. In his Reasons for Judgment dated January 7, 2011, and amended January 13, 2011 (the “Reasons for Judgment” and his Judgment dated March 4, 2011 (the “Judgment”) the Honourable Mr. Justice Harrington declared the Plaintiff to be the owner of the copyright in the Farmans and Talikas and held that the Defendants had infringed the Plaintiff’s copyright.

5. By Notices of Appeal dated February 7, 2011, the Defendants appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal the Judgment, and on June 16, 2011, the Defendants perfected their appeal. The Plaintiff’s counsel served and filed their responding Memorandum of Fact and Law on the Defendants on July 14, 2011.

6. The named Plaintiff, His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan (“Imam”), is the spiritual leader of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. There are approximately 15 million Ismailis worldwide, located in over 25 countries across the world. The Imam succeeded his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, to become the 49th hereditary Imam on July 11, 1957.

7. The Aga Khan is not just a religious leader in the ordinary sense, but is the bearer of the “Noor”, a word which means “The Light”, and the Noor has been handed down in direct descent from the Prophet. As Imam of the Ismailis, the Aga Khan has an absolute authority in interpreting the faith of the Ismailis to practice according to the Time and Age, and such guidance is given by the Imam through His Farmans.

8. According to the traditions of the Ismaili faith, the Imam’s word on matters of faith is “taken as an absolute rule,” and the Ismailis are expected to unconditionally abide by their Imam’s Farmans with respect to religious matters. The Aga Khan, when responding to questions posed by the Sunday Times reporter on December 12, 1965, stated:

Q: Are you, for all believing Ismailis, a symbol of their Faith?
A: "Yes. Since My grand-father, the last Aga Khan, died, I have been the bearer of the "NOOR" a word which means "The Light". The NOOR has been handed down in direct descent from the Prophet. But My work and responsibilities overflow into the practical side of life."

Q: You have been compared to the Pope. Is your word, like his infallible?
A: "The Imam’s word on the Faith is taken as an absolute rule. Every Ismaili is expected to accept it. The Community always follows very closely the personal way of thinking of the Imam. It’s one of the particularities of Ismailis. An Ismaili who did not obey My word in matters of Faith, would not be excommunicated, he would still be a Muslim. He simply would no longer be a member of the Jamath – The Community of Ismaili Muslims. “One has to make a very careful distinction here between worldly and religious matters. An Ismaili may ask My advice on a worldly problem, then not accept it. Bit if he were to ignore the Imam’s decision on matters of Faith, the Community pressures on him would be very strong.”

9. All Ismailis give their oath of allegiance to the Aga Khan, and the Aga Khan in return promises to guide and protect His followers, and therefore, all Ismailis have an inherent right to the Farmans of the Aga Khan.

10. Tajdin is a loyal follower of the Imam and has sworn allegiance and obedience to Him. All of Tajdin's Farman book publication projects were done out of his love and affection for the Imam and His followers. The Imam encourages all within his community to give generous voluntary services in various capacities to the Ismailis and to the local communities. Accordingly, the publication of the Farman books were undertaken by Tajdin in the spirit of service in the same manner as Christians would spread the Good Word without any ulterior motive of making profit. Publishing these books has been a labour of love for Tajdin.

11. The Golden Edition is the last of a series of 10 books of Farmans of the Aga Khan published by Tajdin. The Golden Edition (published in late December 2009) is a consolidation of the previous Farman books published by Tajdin since 1992, along with new Farmans made by the Imam. These publications were undertaken after the Imam expressly gave His consent and authorization in Montreal, on August 15, 1992.

12. The Golden Edition contains 1,513 pages and weight about 2.5 kg. It has a comprehensive index of more than 200 pages. It is a hard binding with separations within and comes in a decorative box with the MP3. It is presented respectably as a precious book of divine nature made as a service to the community without regards to costs, expenses, work, difficulty or time investment. The module in the shape of a bookmark is an invention of the publisher and contains 3 batteries instead of one for long life duration. Tajdin has never tried to cut the cost and make profit. On the contrary all effort have been made to present the highest quality of book sold at the lowest possible subsidised price. A similar book on the market, without the MP3 and the decorative box, is being sold for about $120.00 to $200.00 per book, in a for-profit market.

13. Tajdin ordered 5,000 books, but the printer published 5,500 copies of the Golden Edition on December 13, 2009 (the birthday of the Imam), and copies were either sold or distributed free to Ismailis and delivered to various countries to Ismailis (followers of the Imam) only. By November 2010, Tajdin was left with 193 copies, which were delivered as a gift to ITREB of Kenya (religious organization of the Ismailis) for their use. This is the same organization to which Justice Harrington later ordered all remaining Golden Edition books to be delivered.

14. There is no profit made by Tajdin in this matter. The evidence shows that for each of the publications, about 33% of the Farman books were given away free. Tajdin is a loyal follower of the Aga Khan, and he and his family are "Major Donors" to all the Aga Khan’s Institutions. In fact, in January of 2010, before this lawsuit started, Tajdin offered to donate one book free for each of the 5,000 to 7,000 existing Jamatkhanas in the world, a gift based on a number given by Shafik Sachedina and estimated to be of $300,000 in value.

15. Tajdin is in the process of seeking witnesses from across the world from who are willing to sign affidavits to confirm that they received Golden Edition free of all charges, including shipping costs.

16. On March 29, 2011, plaintiff's counsel submitted a Requisition to the Court reference to conduct "discovery" for accounting for damages as ordered by Justice Harrington, including discovering the identities of the persons to whom the books were sold, and for all of the Farman books sold or distributed as from 1992 (see paragraph 24(a)), when Justice Harrington’s order extends to damages or profit for the publication of the Golden Edition only (published in December 2009).

17. The previous publications are not subject of the lawsuit, and yet the plaintiff's counsel seems to be seeking damages for all Farman books published by Tajdin between 1992 and December 2009, even though the pleadings specifically identified only the Golden Edition (published in December 2009) as the infringing material

18. No harm has been done to the Aga Khan by this publication. On the contrary, Tajdin has obeyed Him. In His Farmans, the Aga Khan encourages His followers to share and disseminate His Word within the community as has traditionally been done for centuries. The previous Imam has even said that by distributing His Farman, Ismailis are helping in keeping them alive. According to Ismaili Constitution and belief, Farmans of previous Imams are valid up to the time the Farman has been specifically revoked by a subsequent Imam, not by any other person. This Farman is still valid for the community.

19. Tajdin’s work in collecting, transcribing, publishing, and even distributing the various Farman books published over the past two decades, has been undertaken in the nature of service and donation to his community not only without expectation of profits, but at enormous personal costs, both time and monetary, incurred by Tajdin. Since this undertaking is a voluntary religious undertaking to the community without any expectation of profits and not undertaken as a profit making project nor as a business, Tajdin did not keep records of same.

20. The Golden Edition, which is a labour of love, is a compilation of most of the Farmans collected during Nagib’s trips to over 52 destinations. [See Schedule A]

21. All of the Farmans, which have been attended in person during these trips have descriptions either at the top of the page or within the text testifying information such as the mood of the community, the number of people who attended; etc For example, on page 914 of the Golden Edition, we read as heading to a Farman made in Dushanbe in 1995:

"The morning was cloudy with mild temperature. The Jamat started arriving just after 6:00 A.M. The gathering of around 8,000 Ismailis was expected. The soccer field itself was wet with morning dew and the people kept standing. Plastic bags were provided and the Jamat was encouraged to sit down. Madhos (religious poems) with musical instruments were sung, some mentioned "Sultan Mohamed Shah." Sermons were made with mentions of Aby Ali Ibn Sina, Nasir-Khusraw, al-Kirmani etc. Explanation of Salwat and how to recite Salwat should be recited with loud voice

Mowlana Hazar Imam entered the Stadium at exactly 9:00 A.M. in full regalia: white Sherwani, ceremonial Khitat and astrakhan cap. He walked slowly, on the carpet for about 5 minutes, turned right before climbing the stage to sit on the chair. Behind the chair was the Imam Crest. Seated behind and to the left of Hazar Imam were six Khalifahs of Tajikistan Jamats. Sura Noor was first recited in Arabic then the translation was recited by a girl in Farsi. She bowed from afar. Then two men recited a Madho."

22. As a devoted Ismaili, Tajdin has never had any reservation whatsoever in practicing the long standing tradition of voluntary service in time or resources to help the community and please the Imam. Beside giving free copies to fellow believers, Tajdin absorbed most of the shipping expenses, which were substantial in view of the weight of the book and the remoteness of the many countries, where the Ismailis were sent the Farmans books. Rarely a token shipping charge was asked. Only about 300 books had been paid though Paypal had shipping charges to them as mostly they were from Ismailis in affluent countries that could afford to pay the cost.

23. Five thousand (5,000) copies of the Golden Edition were ordered by Tajdin in December of 2009, but 5,500 were delivered and paid by him. In relation to the 15 million Ismailis worldwide, this was a very small publication, and most of the books were either distributed free or sold at $50, and within six months only 193 copies were remaining with Tajdin in Nairobi which were delivered and given free to the ITREB Nairobi, (an organizations belonging to the Ismaili Community), before the hearing of the motions for summary judgment in December 2010.

24. All documents have been given to Plaintiff's counsel with Tajdin's Affidavit of Documents, sworn October 2, 2010, and served on Plaintiff's counsel, Mr. Gray, on October 4, 2010. In fact, the only documents that were not produced are the expenses incurred during the past 15 years because those were not kept, as this was a deficit project of religious nature.

25. In the case at bar, Justice Harrington refused to order the return of the Golden Edition from all individuals who bought these from the Appellants despite being sought by the Plaintiff. Divulging any names or contact information of the people who now have the books would be detrimental to them, as they would also be targeted and harassed and would breach their privacy and cause irreparable harm.

26. Harassment, ostracism in the community, threats of harm, and even death threats and physical attacks against Tajdin and Jiwa are on record. Evidence was also provided that people whose name we have given up to now have been subjected to harassment and ostracized in the community, therefore, the purchasers’ privacy rights must be protected.

27. The reference is strictly to resolve the issues of monetary nature (profits, interest, etc..) not to extract information about defendants or others who they have come in contact with. No breach of privacy should be allowed. And no additional documents containing any names should be divulged.

28. The Plaintiff party should not be permitted to pursue further open-ended discovery, such as discovering the names and addresses of the purchasers. On February 8, 2011, in its motion for judgment, the Plaintiff party asked for:

"....and the Defendants are ordered to attend for discovery to answer all relevant questions relating thereto. The Plaintiff may in his sole discretion choose not to proceed with the reference for damages or profits at any time, in which case all further steps in the reference shall cease and the reference shall be discontinued with no costs of the reference to either party."

29. On March 4, 2011, Justice Harrington did not award such a discovery, and wrote that "The declaration sought is broader in scope than the injunctive relief sought ".

30. With respect to paragraph 25 of the Plaintiff's Statement of Issues, attached is a copy of the cheque showing that the Defendants had complied with the costs order. [See Schedule C]. The Defendants complied with the costs order as well and on May 27, 2011, sent a cheque for 19,000, British Pounds, equalling C$30,300, payable to the Aga Khan, but seven weeks later (to date), although a stay pending appeal was refused by the Plaintiff and a requisition is being actively pursued, the cheque still has not been cashed. The reference and discovery should not be pursued in order to get information rather than money.

31. With respect to paragraph 24 of the Plaintiff's Statement of Issues, Tajdin states as follows:

a. What is the total number of books and mp3 audios that were printed and produced?
- the total number of books ordered is 5,000; the total number of books printed and charged by the printer is 5,500.

b. What sales did the Defendants make of the Farmans and Talikas and the MP3 audio bookmark by the reproduction and distribution of the Golden Edition and the Farmans and Talikas contained therein (the "Impugned Sales")?
- A spreadsheet is attached with the sales numbers and the expenses associated. The book was either sold for $50CDN in Canada, $50USD in the US or given away for free. There was no other price. [See Schedule B]

c. What revenues were made by the Defendants from the Impugned Sales?
- A spreadsheet is attached with the sales numbers and the expenses associated.
- Shipping Costs: Only the Paypal orders paid a subsidised rate for part of the shipping cost (average $9/book which weighs 2.5kg and which was sometimes sent overseas where shipping can cost close to $50 per book) None of the books ordered in person or distributed in person was charged for shipping. All other books were shipped at no cost to the purchaser according to the Fedex published rates. Receipts were not kept.

d. What costs are properly deductible by the Defendants from the revenues made in respect of the Infringed Sales?
- Total cost = Shipping costs + Printing Cost + Cost of designing and formatting + Cost of data processing and automation + Cost of transcribing, proofreading, travel for meeting, meeting arrangements over 15 years + Cost of hardware over 15 years dedicated to this project + Cost of Travels (52 trips around the world) to collect material over many years, these trips only covers material not in the other books published by Tajdin.

- Looking at the calibre and quantity of work done over 15 years to bring this book to light, even without any documents, a realistic estimate would puts the costs at $500,000.

e. What award of pre-judgment and judgment interest under section 36 and 37 of the Federal Courts Act are applicable?
- This does not apply because there is no profit

32. In Reply to Paragraph 26 of the Plaintiff's Statement of Issues, Tajdin states that the documents produced show enormous costs and deficit of this project; therefore, oral discovery of the Defendants is not necessary, and the matter proceed to a hearing, if the named Plaintiff’s still desires to pursue to recover non-existing profits.

July 18, 2011
_____________________
Nagib Tajdin

====================

[Added July 28, 2011]

July 27, 2011

Ref: Federal Court File T-514-10

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please bring this to the attention of Madam Prothonotary Milczynski.

This is in response to Mr Gray's letter dated July 21st 2011 which I have just received.

Mr Gray has titled his letter as Reference for Damages while previously he has said he was rather looking for profit. He has written that my Affidavit of Document is incomplete, has sought further discoveries and said that I may not be available for many months after our scheduled meeting on August 26th 2011 which he has restricted somehow to only one subject, that of the document production.

I would like to reply to Mr Gray’s attempt to confuse the issues as follow:

1) The Case Management Conference held on June 16th 2011 was the first time since October 2010 that Mr Gray has indicated that he was not satisfied with the completeness of the Affidavit of Documents. In fact his acceptance of my Affidavit of Documents sworn on October 2nd, 2010 as satisfactory for the October 15, 2010 Discovery itself contradicts his new stance.

2) I have agreed on June 16, 2011, to provide a more complete affidavit of documents, and to search for more documents for the expenses incurred for the publication of the book in the last 15 years. Whatever supplementary documents I can find in Montreal in my forthcoming travel will be added to my affidavit of documents which will be served on Mr Gray by August 22, 2011. There are also few more documents which I have found on printing cost and selling price that will be included in the new Affidavit of document.

3) The title in Mr Gray’s letter says Damages Reference. We would definitely like Mr Gray to be clear on whether he has now changed his mind or is he really seeking Damages instead of Profit, now that he has realised that there has not been any profit?

4) My scheduled trip to Canada has been designed around the dates set during the Case Management Conference and the remaining days have been assigned for other family and business work.

5) A requisition for Hearing of the Appeal has been filed and I will be coming back to Canada after August as soon as a date will be assigned.

6) There are no issues which can not be discussed on 26th August during the scheduled meeting.

7) There is no information which I seek to hide from the Referee. The name of the printing press and all available information necessary for “Accounting” will be made available freely and in trust to the Referee. There are reasons why the same information should be restricted to the Referee because any such disclosed information will be impossible to reverse bearing in mind the pattern for Counsel to misuse any information provided up to now. The name of the Printing Press in the statement remitted to Mr Gray has been covered in this spirit, but the original is available for the referee. I will also explain in the 26th August meeting all of the individual items mentioned in my summary spreadsheet of the revenue and expenses already submitted.

8) The extent of the expenses in view of the size of the book and the length of time necessary to prepare the book is such that any reasonable person could see that there was neither possibility nor aim for profit and therefore the whole aim of asking for information covering 15 years or so of expenses is not “accounting” but only harassment. A simple request can be made to an independent publisher and it would convincingly prove that the project has been heavy deficit project.

9) Justice Harrington did not order examination for discovery and did not include, in His Judgment, the following passage that Mr Gray had included in his draft judgment at paragraph 7: "... and the Defendants are ordered to attend for discovery to answer all relevant questions relating thereto. The Plaintiff may in his sole discretion choose not to proceed with the reference for damages or profits at any time, in which case all further steps in the reference shall cease and the reference shall be discontinued with no costs of the reference to either party.." The above passage again shows that counsel is more interested in extracting information than in any actual accounting or restitution of funds. The Reference should not now be used for such a purpose.

10) Mr Gray has been trying to get a private Discovery since the Judgement and it was evident that he would try to circumvent proper process through the Referee. A Stay of the Order of Justice Harrington was therefore requested and though not granted, Justice Mainville said “The Appellant Tajdin’s fear that these reference proceedings will be used by his opponents as a means of harassing him are ill founded, since the judge or other person designated by the Chief Justice of the Federal Court who will conduct the reference can take appropriate measures that there is no such abuse of the proceedings.”

11) The Aga Khan has not cashed the $30,000 paid on May 27, 2011 as cost. Mr Gray has even confirmed to me, at various occasions, in particular in writing in May 2010 and again verbally on 15 October 2010, that The Aga Khan does not want either damages or profit or cost. Apart from this, I have many reasons to mistrust opposing counsel as it has been obvious at many occasions that persons other than the Aga Khan are directing the proceeding of this case, and contradicting the Aga Khan, and that they have their own agenda in pursuing forcefully such a futile exercise.

12) I want to reiterate that my allegiance and obedience to the Aga Khan is unconditional and unlimited. All of my Farman book publication projects were done out of my love and affection for the Imam, and all were deficit projects. My relation with the Aga Khan is the same as would be that of a most devoted Christian with the Christ. I also continue to donate, as always, to The Aga Khan's Institutions. In fact, as recently as this morning in Nairobi, I attended a small private function were I was invited by the Aga Khan, as a major donor to the Aga Khan Institutions, and where He was Himself present with the Prime Minister of Kenya.

Respectfully Yours,
______________
Nagib Tajdin

====================

July 31, 2011

Ref: Federal Court File T-514-10

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please bring this to the attention of Madam Prothonotary Milczynski.

I am the defendant in T-514-10, I reside in Kenya and I am self represented.

This is in response to Mr Gray's letter dated July 29th 2011. Mr Gray is attempting to derail the orderly progression of the Reference and to influence the Court by an avalanche of letters full of unwarranted speculations and insinuations bordering defamation.

I would like to show however, by giving a few specific facts how Mr Gray has tried to mislead the Referee by his letter:

1) Mr Gray is saying that we are wrong in having paid the cost of $30,000 to the named Plaintiff. But in his Judgment dated March 4th 2011, Justice Harrington says: “The cost of the proceedings to date, including the cost of the motion under Rule 394 of the Federal Courts Rules are fixed at C$30,000.00, all inclusive, payable to the plaintiff forthwith.” And Justice Mainville in paragraph 2 of his judgement dated 19th May 2011 only stayed this order for 15 days in which the Appellant had the choice to pay this amount to the Registry else following the expiry of the 15 days Stay, that amount had anyway to be paid to the plaintiff “forthwith”.

On May 25, 2011, a cheque in the amount of 19,000GBP (~$30,300CDN) was paid to the attention of His Highness The Aga Khan as per the original Order. The cheque was accompanied by a letter stating that the funds do not need to be returned in the event that the appeal succeeds and may be used by the Imam for any activities Imam so wishes. On June 3rd, 2011, the stay of the original order was lifted, the amount was due to be paid to the Aga Khan "forthwith", and the Aga Khan had a valid cheque as per the original order for the correct amount plus incidentals for currency conversion. But the Aga Khan did not cash this cheque.

2) Mr Gray is suggesting in his letter at paragraph 7, that he does not believe that at times I have been traveling accompanied by 2 other people for the purpose of collecting the Farmans. But he knows since at least a year that the collection of Farmans has some times necessitated travels of up to 3 people at a time. This was admitted by his own affiant. All that he doesn't know is who these individuals are, and for the purpose of this reference, their identity is irrelevant. For example, in his Cross Examination, Mr Gray’s Affiant said as follows, referring to one instance when The Aga Khan went to make Farmans in Syria:

Cross-Examination of Sachedina pp.78-79: #328:
Q. In fact, in the plane ride you were going to and coming back from Syria in 2001, you know there were two other individuals with Mr. Tajdin?
A. I'll tell you now I have no recollection of who these individuals are or what they do. I have to tell you that. Because I did not look at them from that view. Because my relationship with Nagib has always been maintained on a real cooperative and in a manner of not adversarial at all.
MR. GRAY: Until now.

3) If Mr Gray cannot believe my sworn statements in my Affidavit of Document, there is no reason why he would believe me when I say the same things verbally in a Discovery. In any case, I will be providing the revised Affidavit of Document on 22nd August and a meeting is already scheduled 4 days later (in less then 4 weeks

I do not oppose neutral oversight by the courts, but I do seek the court's cooperation in keeping the unredacted documents confidential, as they are not required to be revealed to opposing counsel for the purpose of the reference.

A current letter from the printing press, which I will bring to the Referee without hiding the name of the Printing Press, and which certifies that only 5,500 copies have been printed and that there has never been any other orders, will prove Mr Gray decisively wrong in his unsubstantiated speculations.

4) It has been a feature of this case that, although I have made my mistrust of Mr Gray amply evident, Mr Gray keeps bringing additional purported “facts” as an "officer of the courts" without backing it up with any factual evidence. In fact, there is even no direct evidence or Affidavit from the Aga Khan on the record.

For example, in the matter of costs, in June 2010 and in October 2010, Mr Gray said to me that the Aga Khan did not want any costs or damages. In the Plaintiff's motion for judgment in February 2011, it was again indicated that costs or damages would be waived. So according to Paragraph 11 of Mr Gray's letter, some time after that motion, once the Order and the Injunction were in place, The Aga Khan indicated to him that he now wants to pursue all costs and remedies because we did not "stop"? But all purported “infringing” activities had stopped well before the injunction. The only thing we did not stop is to defend ourselves. This indicates that the remedies are being pursued as a punishment for defending ourselves, and we believe this is a misuse of justice. And this is not consistent with the Aga Khan’s character, both public and as our spiritual leader.

Respectfully Yours,
______________
Nagib Tajdin

====================

On June 16th 2011, The Defendants filed, in the Federal Court of Appeal of Canada, the Memorandum of Fact and Law for the Appeal against the Summary Judgment.

Inexplicably, on June 14th, immediately after the defendants served him with the document, the Plaintiff's Lawyer, Mr Gray, leaked the information to a newspaper dedicated to demeaning the defendants, two days before it was filed in court.

You may download the Full Memorandum of Fact and Law in printable pdf format, or Keep reading it online below. Note that the Defendants are referred as the 'Apellants', and the Plaintiff is referred to as the 'Respondent'.

APPELLANTS’ MEMORANDUM OF FACT AND LAW

PART I - OVERVIEW

1. This is an appeal by the defendants from the Judgement of The Honourable Justice
Harrington dated March 4, 2011. In that Judgment Justice Harrington granted summary
judgment in favour of the plaintiff, while simultaneously denying the defendants’ motion for
summary judgment.

2. The plaintiff commenced this action by Statement of Claim dated April 6, 2010. By this
action, the plaintiff seeks: (a) a declaration that copyright subsists in the Aga Khan’s literary
work; (b) a declaration that the defendants have infringed the plaintiff’s copyright and moral
rights; (c) injunctive relief; and (d) damages. The infringing material is defined as the
Golden Edition Book (“Golden Edition”) accompanied by its mp3 bookmark.

3. The named plaintiff, His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan (hereinafter the "Imam" or the
“Aga Khan”), is the spiritual leader of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. There are
approximately 15 million Ismailis worldwide, located in over 25 countries. The Imam
succeeded his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, to become the 49th
hereditary Imam on July 11, 1957

4. In this action, it is asserted that the appellants have infringed the Aga Khan’s copyright by
distributing His works, known as "Farmans" which are oral Guidance made by Him as Imam
(spiritual leader) when He blesses His Jamats (congregation, "Ismailis").

5. As Ismailis, the appellants are expected to guide their lives according to the Farmans made
by their Imam, who has said that He makes Farmans for the Ismailis, and He has also said
that not abiding by His Farmans can have very serious consequences to the individual.

6. Although the appellants defended this action on the grounds that the litigation has been
commenced and prosecuted by Shafik Sachedina ("Sachedina"), who was appointed as Head
of the Imam's Secretariat in or about December 1996, their main defence is that on August
15, 1992, during His visit to Montreal, the Imam gave His personal consent and authorization
(with blessings for the success of the "work") to publish and distribute His Farmans during
a ceremony known as Mehmani (a religious ceremony when the Imam personally meets His
followers), and, in any event, by virtue of having given an oath of allegiance to the Imam,
thereby becoming His Spiritual Children, the appellants also have an implied consent and
authorization to the Farmans (the Ismaili Constitution which governs all aspects of an Ismaili
life also does not prohibit the activities complained of), and as a result, the activities
complained of are not infringing the Aga Khan's copyrights. The appellants also relied on the
legal concepts of Detrimental Reliance and Latches.

7. The appellant Nagib Tajdin (“Tajdin”) has published about 10 books after the Imam gave His
personal consent, authorization and encouragement on August 15, 1992, to “continue”
publishing His Farmans, The last publication, “Golden Edition” (the publication subject of
this action) contains all of the Farmans previously published by Tajdin with new ones added
after the date of the previous publication. All of the work undertaken by Tajdin was on a
voluntary basis out of love for the Imam and was undertaken without any motivation for
making profits. He invested his time and money and sold the books at nominal prices without
recovering his investments (all projects were deficit projects.)

8. The appellants note that no evidence has been filed denying the giving of consent,
authorization or encouragement in 1992, or any evidence explaining away the words spoken
by the Aga Khan on August 15, 1992, to either deny what was said or to explain what He
might have meant when He said “continue doing what you are doing” while placing His hand
on the Farman Book, which clearly indicated that it was Volume 1 of His Farmans between
1957 to 1991, nor is there any evidence to place limitations or conditions on the words
spoken. Yet, inexplicably, the motions judge speculated about what the Aga Khan might
have meant by the words spoken and also speculated about restrictions on the words spoken
by the Aga Khan in coming to a decision that no consent was given by the Imam in 1992.
The motions judge also held that he would require expert evidence to determine the issue,
but then nonetheless granted judgment.

PART II - STATEMENT OF FACTS

9. The Aga Khan is the spiritual father or “Imam” of the appellants. Farmans are given orally
by the Aga Khan as Imam to His followers (Ismailis) when He grants them an audience, and
the Farmans immediately become binding upon all Ismailis across the world whether or not
they were present to hear the Farman in person.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p.132, paras. 3, 4; Tab 13, p. 195, paras 2, 4

10. One of the most important tradition of the Ismaili faith is that all Ismailis give their Oath of
Allegiance to their Imam before they are accepted into the Ismaili faith, and in return, the
Imam also reciprocates by giving His promise to protect and to guide them through the
making of Farmans, in their worldly and spiritual lives. The appellants have given their Oath
of Allegiance to the Imam and He in return promised to guide them through the making of
Farmans. The appellants note that there is no evidence at all contradicting or challenging this
issue and as such implied consent could be established by this evidence standing on its own.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p. 132, paras. 3, 4; Tab 13, p. 195, paras. 2, 4

11. One of the essential obligations of Ismailis is to abide by the Farmans, which are generally delivered
by the Aga Khan orally, or occasionally, He might send a brief written message to the Jamats or
individual Ismailis, which is known as Talika. A Farman remains valid until and unless superceded
by a new Farman.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p. 132, para. 5, 6; Tab 13, p. 195, para. 3, 4;
Tab 14, p. 209, para. 14

12. As Imam of the Ismailis, the Aga Khan has absolute authority in interpreting the faith for the
Ismailis to practice according to the Time and Age, and accordingly, it is incumbent upon
Ismailis to follow closely every word of every Farman delivered by their Imam, and non
obedience of Farmans with respect to religious matters have serious consequences to an
Ismaili. The Aga Khan has said in this regard:

The Imam’s word on matters of faith is taken as an absolute rule. ... The Community
always follows very closely the personal way of thinking of the Imam. ... An Ismaili
who did not obey My word in matters of faith, would not be excommunicated, he
would still be a Muslim. He simply would no longer be a member of the Jamath [His
followers].
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 13, p. 200, para. 21

13. The Imam Himself has often acknowledged that the Farmans are made for the Jamats (His
followers). On November 29, 1964, the Imam said:

I have given you Farmans which I urge you to follow, because these Farmans I make
are made for My Jamats.

On March 4, 1981, the Imam said:
I have a feeling I may have been speaking at a level which is difficult for some of you
to comprehend. If this is the case, I simply ask you to listen to this Farman at your
own time more peacefully, and try to understand what I have been saying to you.
This is a complex Farman. ... think about it, discuss it with your children, discuss it
with your grandchildren, if they are old enough to think in these terms, and prepare
them to see the way ahead, wisely and properly.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 13, p.199, para. 19

14. Despite the above, Farmans have not been available for personal study through any official
channel in at least three decades (previously there were printed and distributed to the Jamats).
Cross examinations of Sachedina have established that over 80% of Ismailis have no access
to Farmans. Evidence by Tajdin, confirmed on cross-examination, has established that many
other Ismailis maintain personal collections, and publish Farmans and circulate them
amongst themselves, or to their friends and other Ismailis in accordance with a longstanding
Ismaili tradition.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p. 133, para. 7, 8,11; Tab 15, p. 215, para. 18-22;
p. 222, para. 57;
Appeal Book, Vol III, Tab 33, p. 668, Q. 633-637; Tab 34, p. 893, Q. 606-614,
Exhibits E, F;

15. In searching for Farmans, the appellant Alnaz Jiwa (“Jiwa”) came across co-appellant Nagib
Tajdin (hereinafter “Tajdin”) who provided Jiwa with Farmans, copies of which he could not
obtain from any institutional body. The first books were obtained by Jiwa in 1993 for his
personal use. Shortly thereafter, Jiwa obtained more Farman books to distribute to friends
and family members and has been distributing the Farman books as they were periodically
published by Tajdin since 1993. Tajdin asked Jiwa to put the monies received from the sale
of the books to be delivered to the Jamat Khana for the benefit of the Aga Khan.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 6, p. 71, para 40; Tab 13, p. 196, para. 6-10

16. Jiwa undertook the distribution of the Farman books to enable other Ismailis to become
better acquainted with their faith and to enable them to abide by the Farmans, and distributed
these Farman books at the same price he paid for them to his family and friends. Tajdin has
also undertaken these publications as a volunteer of the Aga Khan - not only without the
intention of making profits, but also by investing his own money knowingly that it will not
be recovered, essentially knowingly entering into deficit projects by selling the books at cost,
by giving many books away for free, by cashing his insurance monies, etc. Overall, Tajdin
has lost a huge amount of money all in the name of voluntary spirit, to enable the Ismailis
to have Farmans to enrich their spiritual lives due to love and affection for the Imam and the
Ismailis.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p. 139, paras. 36, 37; Tab 13, p. 196, paras. 7-9

17. Jiwa states that in distributing Farman books obtained from Tajdin to his families, friends,
and other Ismailis, Jiwa (as well as Tajdin) in loose format (pages) or in book formats over
the years, he has not violated either the Ismaili Constitution or any Farmans of the Imam, the
two primary sources that all Ismailis are obliged to abide by. Farmans made after ordaining of
the New Ismaili Constitution can supercede the Ismaili Constitution in the case of any
inconsistency between the provisions of the Constitution and the Farman.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 13, p. 196, paras. 11-18
Vol III, Tab 33M, p. 721, Article 2.6

18. The first Farman book was published by Tajdin in August 1992 when the Imam visited
Canada to grant an audience to the Canadian Ismailis. The Imam agreed to personally grant
an audience to approximately 20% of Canadian Ismaili families, and they were to be chosen
alphabetically, and as such Tajdin was unable to personally meet the Imam. Accordingly,
he asked a very good friend of his, Karim Alibhay (“Alibhay”) to present the Farman book
to the Imam and to seek His Guidance.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p.134, paras. 13-16;
Tab 14, p. 208, paras. 6-9; Tab 15, p. 213, para. 11

19. Alibhay, in Montreal on August 15, 1992, presented the Imam with the first book published by
Tajdin during a personal attendance before Him. The first Farman book clearly indicated on the
cover page that it contained the Aga Khan’s Farmans made to the Western World between 1957 to
1991, and that it was a Volume 1.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 14, p. 208A, paras. 9-10

20. Alibhay gave evidence that after posing a question to the Imam, the Imam placed His right hand on
his shoulder, His left hand on the book of Farmans and responded in French: “Continuez ce que vous
faites (continue what you are doing), réussissez ce que vous faites (succeed in what you are doing),
et ensuite nous allons voir ce qu'on peut faire ensemble (and then we will see what we can do
together)”. Since then Tajdin has been publishing Farmans (openly to the knowledge of the Imam
and the Institutional leaders) for distribution on a non-profit basis to the followers of the Imam.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 14, p. 209, para. 6-12

21. Most important, the presenting of the Farman Book to the Imam has been recorded on video and
despite asking for same, has not been produced to the appellants or to the court, and its existence has
not been denied. This would have been the best evidence concerning the presentation of the Farman
book to the Imam and his response. An adverse inference could and should have been drawn due
to the failure to produce this best evidence that goes to the heart of the issues raised in defence. As
noted above, there is no evidence tendered at all to dispute Alibhay’s evidence and he was not cross-
examined.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 13, p. 201, para. 25, 26; Tab 14, p. 209, para. 15, 16;
Tab 15, p. 214, para. 14-18

22. Based on the Imam’s direction and encouragement to “continue” the work, with blessings for
success, Tajdin has been publishing and openly distributing Farmans as from August of 1992 to his
family, friends, and other Ismailis on a non-profit basis since the year 1993. The last book
(Golden Edition) was published in December 2009.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 7, p. 89, para. 30-35; Tab 11, p. 132, para. 18-21, 36;
Tab 13, p. 195, paras. 6-9;Tab 15, p. 214, paras. 12,13,36, 52, 54;

23. The appellants state that they cannot be said to be infringing the Copyright of the Imam when
they acted on the Imam’s personal authorization and encouragement to “continue the work”
which has not been revoked by Him. The two letters and the Affirmation purported to have
been signed by the Aga Khan is the only evidence which could be said to have revoked the
1992 consent. The appellants’ expert has made a finding that these documents are not signed
by the Aga Khan.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 12B, 12E, p.169, 189; Vol II, Tab 26J, p. 443
Tab 18B,18C,18D, p.308, 322, 333

24. However, even if the documents were authentic, they were signed in the year 2010, well after
the Golden Edition was published and distributed, which raises the issues of whether it is an
infringement to publishing of the books before the consent is revoked, and whether once
published an injunction can issue prohibiting the books published during the consent period.

PART III - STATEMENT OF ISSUES

25. The appellants raise the following issues for determination:

(a) Whether the motions judge erred in law when, contrary to Rule 216(1), he failed to
consider whether there was a genuine issue for trial but instead proceeded as though
he were the trial judge;

(b) Whether the motions judge erred in law in admitting and relying on hearsay evidence
(the two letters and the Affirmation purportedly signed by the Aga Khan) to ground
his judgement;

(c) Whether the motions judge erred in law in relying on the evidence of the
respondent’s expert after finding that the experts’ evidence was contradictory;

(d) Whether the motions judge erred in finding that the experts’ evidence was
contradictory;

(e) Whether the motions judge erred in law by drawing inferences without the necessary
facts on the record, and/or on drawing inferences on contested facts;

(f) Whether the motions judge erred in rejecting the unchallenged evidence of Alibhay
who was not cross-examined, and in relying on the evidence of Sachedina when his
evidence not only was contradicted by Tajdin but also by Mohamed Tajdin’s
(“Mohamed”) evidence (who was not cross-examined);

(g) Whether the motions judge erred in speculating what the Aga Khan might have meant
when he said, “Continuing doing what you are doing”when there was no evidence at
all on this issue to either contest the evidence of Alibhay, or to explain away the words
spoken;

(h) Whether the motions judge misapprehended evidence of the words spoken “continue
the work” by the Aga Khan in 1992 when he concluded that the Aga Khan never gave
consent to the publication of the Farmans, despite jurisprudence on the issue (that
consent can be implied from relationship, conduct, including indifference);

(i) Whether the motions judge erred in granting a judgement after acknowledging that he
had no expert evidence on the issue of religious gestures relating to the issue of the
personal consent and authorization given by the Aga Khan on August 15, 1992;

(j) Whether the motions judge erred in making a determination on the issue of
authorization and consent and implied consent without a factual underpinning on the
complex issues;

(k) Even if the consent and authorization given by the Aga Khan on August 15, 1992, to
“continue the work” was revoked after the date of the publication of the Golden
Edition, whether the appellants could be found to have infringed on the Aga Khan’s
Copyright, and whether an injunction could issue restraining the further distribution of
the Golden Edition without being liable for the damages suffered by the appellants for
same?

(l) Whether a party responding to a motion for summary judgment is required to file all
evidence as if they were conducting a trial and in failing to do so, the party risks having
an adverse inference drawn against them, and judgment granted?

(m) Whether the motions judge erred in speculating what the impact of the discoveries were
when there was no evidence on the record, and erred in stating that the attendance was
proof positive that the consent, if given, was revoked;

(n) Whether the motions Judge erred in interpreting the Ismaili Constitution and its impact
on the issue of implied consent in the issue of Copyright infringement;

(o) Whether the motions Judge erred in holding that the onus is on the appellants to prove
consent contrary to the holding made by the Federal Court of Appeal in Positive
Attitude Safety System Inc. v. Albian Sands Energy Inc., 2005 CarswellNat 3575 (Tab
13), which held that the plaintiff had the onus of proof of no consent;

(p) Whether the entered order goes beyond what is sought for in the Statement of Claim
(infringing materials is defined as the Golden Edition), but the Judgment granted is
much broader in that regard;

(q) Whether the motions judge erred in his assessment and his finding on the issue of
Latches;

(r) Whether the issue of Detrimental Reliance applies, given the fact that appellants had
changed their position after the Aga Khan had said in 1992 to “continue doing what
you are doing”?

(s) Whether the motions judge had jurisdiction and /or whether he erred on the issue of
Ordering Costs be payable to the plaintiff when the Notice of Motion did not seek that
relief.

PART IV - LAW AND ARGUMENT

Standard of Review

26. In determining what the standard of review is from an appeal from a judge's decision, the
Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Divisional Court) referred to the decision in Housen v.
Nikolaisen, [2002] 2 S.C.R. 235, 211 D.L.R. (4th) 577, [2002] S.C.J. No. 31 (S.C.C.) (cited
to Q.L.), and summarized the law as follows:
“The standard of review on a motion for summary judgment does not require an
analysis of whether a palpable and overriding error has been made by the judge hearing
the motion. It is strictly one of correctness.”
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce v. F-1 Holdings & Investments Inc., 2007
CarswellOnt 8012, at paras 5-8; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 3

27. Justice Himel in B. (F.) v. G. (S.) (2001), 199 D.L.R. (4th) 554 (Ont. S.C.J.), explains why the
appropriate standard of review of a summary judgment should be one of correctness as follows:
“In a motion for summary judgment, the judge hearing the motion is not finding facts
but, rather, is determining whether or not there is a genuine issue for trial. ... On an
appeal of an order of summary judgment, the appellate court must determine whether
the judge applied the appropriate test and whether there was any error in its application.
... The standard of appellate review is, therefore, a standard of correctness, not a
standard of deference applied to findings of fact in a trial.
B. (F.) v. G. (S.), 2001 CarswellOnt 1413, (O.S.C.J), at para. 10
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 4

28. Accordingly, the appellants submit that the appropriate standard of review for reviewing the
decision of a motion judge’s hearing motions for summary judgment is a standard of
correctness, in so far as he is assessing whether there is a genuine issue for trial, and when he
is exercising his discretion in determining the issue of granting judgment pursuant to Rule
216(3), then the standard is whether the judge gave sufficient weight to all relevant
considerations.
MacNeil Estate v. Canada (Department of Indian & Northern Affairs), 2004 FCA
50, [2004] 3 F.C.R. 3 (F.C.A.) at para 28
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 6

Role of the Motions Judge / Appropriateness of Summary Motion

29. The motions judge started his reasons for decision by stating that the “only issue in these cross-
motions for summary judgment is whether the Aga Khan gave the appellants his consent to
publish his literary works known as Farmans and Talikas.” [Emphasis added]. However, as
noted in paragraph 9 above, the appellants are not only relying on the issue of consent as
articulated by the motions judge.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 3, p..23, para. 1

30. The motions judge erred in focusing on the merits of the action as opposed to the more limited
question of “genuine issue” which is the cornerstone of a motion for summary judgment.
Having made that error, the motions judge then proceeded to analyze the evidence as a trial
judge as opposed to a motions judge. The motions judge erred in failing to determine properly
the import of the following issues:

a. issue of the oath of allegiance given by the appellants to their Imam and in exchange
the promise by the Imam to guide His flock which would mean that an individual who
is the Imam’s follower is entitled as of right to the Guidance issued by his spiritual
guide and to distribute them to his families and fellow Ismailis;
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p.132, paras. 3, 4; Tab 13, p. 195, para. 2
Tab 33M, p. 706, Articles D-F

b. issue of whether the Ismaili Constitution is a complete code of conduct and whether
the Ismaili Constitution supercedes the provisions of Copyright Act in that it could be
considered as an implied consent, consent by conduct and/or relationship;
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 13, p. 196, para. 11-23

c. issue of the Farmans made by the Imam wherein He urges His followers to abide by
every word of His, that He makes Farmans for His followers, and many other such
Guidance which could be deemed to be implied consent;
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 13, p. 199, paras. 18 -22

d. issue of the continuous publication of Farmans from 1992 with the knowledge of the
Imam and his institutional leaders thus precluding the granting of an injunction on the
legal consent of “Latches”, and or “Detrimental Reliance”; and
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 13, p. 196, para. 6,10; Tab 15, p. 216, paras. 26, 36
Vol II, Tab 26, p. 395, para. 14; Vol III, Tab 34, p. 750, Q. 468-470

e if this litigation or the letters purportedly written by the Aga Khan is deemed to revoke
the consent given by Him in 1992, then can it retroactively prohibit the publication of
the Golden Edition which was published within the period the consent was effective.

31. The motions judge identified (at para. 60) numerous questions that remained unanswered, and
in light of such fundamental questions remaining in doubt, the motions judge erred in granting
summary judgment. In the case of Garford Pty Ltd., Justice James Russell sternly drew the
distinction between hearing a motion for summary and trials at para. 9 as follows:
"A motion for summary judgment is not intended, and should not be treated, as a
substitute for a trial. In determining whether a trial is unnecessary and would serve
no purpose, the motions judge must guard against assuming the role of a trial judge and
deciding the issues" and at paragraph 10, he states that, "... [summary judgment] should
not be granted where, on the whole of the evidence, the judge cannot find the
necessary facts or it would be unjust to do so. If there are serious factual or legal
issues that must be resolved, the case is not appropriate for summary judgment."
[Emphasis added]
Garford Pty Ltd. v. Dywidag Systems International Canada Ltd., 2010 FC 996
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 5, paras. 6-9

32. The motions judge’s decision relying on inadmissible hearsay evidence (paras. 18, 20, 23, 30,
44), drawing an adverse inference (paras. 58-65), preferring one version of evidence when
faced with contradictory evidence (para. 19), drawing inferences from contested evidence
(para. 44), without explaining why the contradictory evidence between Bhaloo and Sachedina
against Tajdin and Mohamed (who was not even cross-examined) did not raise a serious
credibility issue when the evidence they contradicted on was on material issues, ignoring
evidence that was not challenged and in speculating (without any underlying evidence) on what
might have been meant when the Imam said, “continue doing what you are doing” (paras. 39-
46), drawing an adverse inference (paras. 25, 59, 60, 63 67) because evidence was not led on
all of the issues are all indications of the motions judge misapprehending his role as a trial
judge as opposed to being a motions judge.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 3

33. Rule 216(3) permits a judge on a motion for summary judgment, after finding that a "genuine
issue" exists, to conduct a trial on the affidavit evidence with a view to determining the issues
in the action. However, this is not always possible, particularly where there are conflicts in the
evidence, where the case turns on the drawing of inferences or where serious issues of
credibility are raised (MacNeil Estate), and a motions judge can only make findings of fact or
law provided the relevant evidence is available on the record and does not involve a "serious"
question of fact or law which turns on the drawing of inferences (para. 33 of MacNeil Estate).
A respondent to a motion for summary judgment does not have the onus as they would if they
were plaintiffs at trial, and do not have the burden of proving all of the facts of their case.
Rule 216(3), Appellant’s Brief of Authorities, Tab 2
MacNeil Estate, supra, at paras 25, 36, 37, 38; Appellants’ Authorities, Tab 6

Petrillo v. Allmax Nutrition Inc., 2006 CarswellNat 3328, 300 F.T.R. 262.
paras. 40, 41, 42, 45, 49; Appellant’s Authorities, Tab 26
34. The Federal Court of Appeal in the case of Pyrrha held that when significant consequences
flow from a summary judgment decision on an issue [under Copyright Act] which had not
previously been litigated in Canada and that difficult issue should not be decided in a summary
way without have more evidence at trial on the issues.
Pyrrha Design Inc. v. 623735 Saskatchewa Ltd., 2004 Carswellnat 4660, 2004
FCA 423, at para 13; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 27

Admissibility of Evidence

35. The respondent’s evidence consists of five affidavits: by Sachedina; by Aziz Bhaloo
("Bhaloo"); by Jennifer Colman ("Colman"); by Daniel Gleason ("Gleason"); and by Brian
Lindblom ("Lindblom") an expert witness. All of the evidence filed primarily consists of
hearsay and/or double hearsay evidence, or documents attached to Exhibits to their affidavits,
which documents are in the nature of hearsay. Such evidence can only be admitted if the
grounds of necessity and reliability (Merck Frosst Canada Inc.) are satisfied. The motions
judge erred in law in admitting (and in relying) on the impugned evidence, and also founding
his judgment almost entirely on the impugned evidence, evidence which was materially
contradicted by the appellants’ evidence, some of which was not even cross-examined.
Appeal Book, Vol II, Tabs 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, p. 392-489

36. Sachedina’s affidavit and Bhaloo's affidavit were entirely based on hearsay or double hearsay
evidence, and Sachedina attached two letters purportedly written by the Aga Khan as exhibits
to his affidavit. Gleason and Colman attached an Affirmation purportedly signed by the Aga
Khan as an exhibit to their affidavit, all without tendering any evidence of necessity and
reliability to make these attachments admissible.
Appeal Book, Vol II, Tab 26 & 27; Tab 28A; Tab 29A.
Vol I, Tab 18B,18C,18D, pp.308, 322, 333

37. Sachedina confirmed on cross-examinations that the Aga Khan did not instruct them or ask
them to file evidence on his behalf or at all, and that they did not consult with the Aga Khan
nor did they review the contents of their affidavits with the Aga Khan, essentially confirming
the appellants’ evidence that they are the instructing minds in this litigation.
Appeal Book, Vol III, Tab 34, p. 750, Q. 25,26,28-33; Tab 35, p.1040, Q. 6

38. Associate Justice K. Sharlow of the Federal Court of Appeal in the case of Candrug Health
Solutions Inc., allowed the appeal and reversed the motion’s judge’s order after reviewing
thirteen affidavits and finding that many affidavits did not contain admissible evidence and/or
evidence capable of supporting the evidence required to support the issue in question, and said
that: “It is not clear from the judge's reasons whether and to what extent he relied on any of this
evidence, but I must conclude with respect that any such reliance would have been misplaced.”
Candrug Health Solutions Inc. v. Thorkelson, 2008 CarswellNat 663, 2008 FCA
100, at para. 14; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 8

39. Additionally, the court in Merck & Co. stated:
“In my opinion the evidence in question is clearly hearsay and is precluded from
admission unless it be admissible by some exception to the hearsay rule. That rule, as
defined by Sopinka, Lederman and Bryant in The Law of Evidence in Canada, (1992,
Butterworths, Toronto) p. 156, may be stated as follows:
“Written or oral statements, or communicative conduct made by persons
otherwise than in testimony at the proceeding in which it is offered, are
inadmissible, if such statements or conduct are tendered either as proof of their
truth or as proof of assertions implicit therein.”
Merck & Co. v. Apotex Inc. 1998 CarswellNat 560, 79 C.P.R. (3d) 501, 146 F.T.R.
148, at para. 7; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 9

40. A comprehensive analysis on the issue of hearsay is set out in Rees.
Rees v. Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2005 CarswellNfld 83, 2005 NLCA 15
at paras 71-73; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 10.

41. The Court in the case of T.E.A.M. sternly reminded the importance of requiring parties to bring
forth “best evidence” as follows:
“The court should afford little or no weight to hearsay evidence ... Reliance on hearsay
evidence should be particularly discouraged in the context of a summary judgment
motion. Parties are urged to put their best evidence before the court in a direct fashion
when they seek a summary judgment in their favour: Podkriznik v. Schwede,[1990]
M.J. No. 179, 64 Man. R. (2d) 199 (Man. C.A.).” [Emphasis added]
T.E.A.M. v. Manitoba Telecom Services Inc., 2005 CarswellMan 446, 206 Man. R.
(2d) 39, para. 10; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 11

42. Justice Gibson in the case of American Cyanamid Co. said as follows:
“I conclude that it would be quite inappropriate to allow the defendant to rely on this
motion for summary judgment on evidence, whether or not it is "other evidence", that
it would not be entitled to rely on at trial.
American Cyanamid Co. v. Bio Agri Mix Ltd., 1997 CarswellNat 636, 73 C.P.R.
(3d) 277, 127 F.T.R. 274, at para 10; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 7,
Voltige Inc. v. Cirque X Inc., 2006 FC 686, 2006 CarswellNat 2808, paras. 13, 14
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 29

43. Justice Pelletier, in Canadian Memorial Services, held that “One cannot create a credibility
issue by tendering inadmissable evidence” and said that the case raised a credibility issue
making the disposition inappropriate by summary proceedings.
Canadian Memorial Services v. Personal Funeral Services Ltd., 182 F.T.R. 28, 2000
CarswellNat 149, paras 11, 12; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 30

Conflicting Evidence

44. Jurisprudence has consistently held that assessment of credibility should be decided at a trial
where the witnesses are cross-examined before a trial judge who must observe the witnesses
give viva voce evidence before deciding the question of credibility, which witness’ testimony
be accepted or rejected.

45. The motions judge held (at para. 19) that the “experts’ reports are contradictory”, but then
accepted the respondent’s expert’s opinion (or non-opnion) and rejecting the appellants’
expert’s finding to ground his decision. The issue of contradictory expert’s findings was an
issue in a motion for summary judgment before Justice Hugessen, who referred to a decision
of the Federal Court of Appeal as follows:
“Clearly the two experts conflict. Both were cross-examined at some length. Neither
resiled from his opinion. That seems to me is the classic circumstance in which the
Court ought not to grant summary judgment and I would cite Trojan Technologies Inc.
v. Suntec Environmental Inc. ( 2004), 31 C.P.R. (4th) 241 (F.C.A.) as a sufficient
authority for that proposition.”
Rivard Instruments Inc. v. Ideal Instruments Inc., 2007 CarswellNat 2695, 2007 FC
870, at para 9; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 12

46. However, the evidence does not support the finding made by the motions judge that the
experts’ reports were contradictory. The appellants’ expert conclusively made a finding that
the Aga Khan did not sign the two letters and the Affirmation. The respondent’s expert did not
contradict this finding at all. In his report, the respondent’s expert stated that he could not
make a determination of the question that the Aga Khan had signed the questioned documents
because the quality of the documents given to him was of poor quality. On cross-examination
he admitted that he asked respondent’s counsel, Mr. Gray, “repeatedly” for original documents
which were alleged not to have been signed by the Aga Khan and some contemporary
signatures of the Aga Khan for his review to determine if the appellants’ expert’s findings
could be impeached. Although the respondent’s counsel purportedly said that he had three
original copies of the Affirmation, he did not give even one of the three original copies for
examination by his own expert, nor give contemporary sample signatures of the Aga Khan to
his expert for review.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 18B,18C,18D, pp. 308, 322, 333
Vol IV, Tab 37, p. 1220, Q. 228-231

47. The respondent’s expert admitted on cross-examination that he was not retained to make a
determination of whether the documents in question were signed by the Aga Khan but that he
was retained to critique the appellants’ expert. He also admitted that he had in the past made
positive determination on the authenticity of a questioned signature on a facsimile copy, and
also admitted that he had undertaken a study which had found that 183 experts out of 186 got
their assessment of the authenticity of signatures correct from reviewing photocopies.
Appeal Book, Vol IV, Tab 37, p. 1220, Q. 100-103, 216-233; Tab 37E

48. Notably though, the respondent’s expert did not contradict the findings made by the appellants’
expert, yet the motions judge inexplicably dismissed entirely the appellants’ expert’s
uncontradicted evidence that the two letters and the Affirmation were not signed by the Aga
Khan.

49. Similarly, Justice Harrington also erred in preferring the evidence of Sachedina and Bhaloo
when their evidence was materially contradicted by Tajdin’s and Mohamed’s evidence (who
was not cross-examined). Sachedina‘s evidence was that since late 90s (after his appointment
in late 1996 and early 1997 at the Imam’s secretariat), the Imam frequently informed him (a
classic hearsay statement) that he was concerned about Tajdin publishing Farman books.
However, his evidence was self-serving and he could not give any details of the information,
when, where, how, etc., the alleged statements were made by the Aga Khan. Sachedina also
declared in his affidavit that he traveled with Bhaloo to Montreal in 1998 inform Tajdin of the
Imam’s position. Justice Harrington relied on this evidence (para. 44) to found his decision
despite the fact that Mohamed and Tajdin materially contradicted their evidence that Sachedina
and Bhaloo did not come to visit Tajdin as deposed by them but that both of them attended a
National fund raising as Guests of Honour (photos enclosed) for the Focus Humanitarian
Group. at the invitation of Mohamed who organized the fund raising event.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 15, paras. 12-17, 24-39; Tab 17, p. 282, paras. 13-14

50. Mohamed also testified that the meeting with Sachedina and Bhaloo (both of whom were
invited as guests) was organized at the request of Tajdin. Both gave evidence that Sachedina
did not convey any message concerning the ceasing the distribution of the Farman books, and
instead had brought a special message from the Aga Khan to Tajdin family with special
Blessings for their services to the community. Mohamed was not cross-examined on his
affidavit (he has served the Imam and his institutions for three continuous decades in various
voluntary capacity, and currently he (an engineer) and his wife (a physician) are serving the
Imam in senior positions in a voluntary capacity (without any pay or remuneration) for several
years at the Aga Khan Hospital in Kenya as their gift to the Imam for his Golden Jubilee.)
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 17, p. 282, paras. 5-9, 19,22
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 15, p. 212, paras. 35-38

51. Sachedina’s evidence is further eroded in light of the fact that Bhaloo was the Vice President
of the National Council for Canada from 1987 to 1993 and was the organizer for the Aga
Khan’s visit to Montreal in 1992 when the first Farman book was presented to the Aga Khan
and he would have the video of that event but has not produced it. He was also then appointed
as President from 1993 to 1999 during which time Tajdin printed most of the Farman books.
As the most senior leader of Canada, he agreed that he frequently met the Aga Khan during the
relevant period, and yet the Aga Khan never told him that he wanted Tajdin to cease the work
complained off. It is not a coincident that the complaints alleged to be from the Aga Khan
commenced after Sachedina came on board, and who is responsible for the forged letters to be
sent to Tajdin after Tajdin responded to him that he would abide by the Aga Khan’s
instructions.
Appeal Book, Vol I, Tab 16, p. 242, paras.25, 30-31; Tab 15, p. 218, paras. 35, 36;
Vol II, Tab 27, paras. 2-4

52. Justice Harrington made findings of fact despite the seriously contested evidence that goes to
the heart of the dispute contrary to MacNeil Estate and Garford mentioned above. (Sachedina
was contradicted by Tajdin and by Mohamed, who was not even cross-examined. The motions
judge did not even explain why he relied on Sachedina’s evidence to ground his judgment
(although hearsay) and more importantly, why he rejected the evidence of Tajdin (who did not
resile on cross-examination) and Mohamed (who was not cross-examined)). It is submitted
that the Ismaili Constitution, the Ismaili traditions and the Aga Khan’s Farmans all are
contradictory to Sachedina’s evidence in addition to being contradicted by Tajdin and
Mohamed’s evidence.

Onus to Prove Consent

53. The Motions Judge erred in holding (at para. 46) "I am unable to accept the defendants'
tortuous, convoluted reasoning" on the issue of onus of proof. In doing so, he rejected the
appellants’ reliance on a Federal Court of Appeal ruling on point in Positive Attitude Safety
System Inc. held as follows:
“However, even if one assumes that the motion judge was right to consider the
question, the difficulty is that copyright is defined in terms of the absence of the
consent of the owner of the copyright.”
“Consequently, proof of copyright infringement requires proof of lack of consent. It
is therefore illogical to conclude that there has been infringement, subject to the effect
of a purported license. It may be that a party has done something which, by the terms
of the Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42, only the owner of the copyright may do.
But, before that conduct can be defined as infringement, the judge must find that the
owner of the copyright did not consent to that conduct.” [Emphasis added]
Positive Attitude Safety System Inc. v. Albian Sands Energy Inc., 2005 CarswellNat
3575, 2005 FCA 332, paras 39, 40; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 13

54. The above case has approvingly cited in the Canadian Law of Copyright & Industrial Design,
4th Edition (Carswell), at page 21-7:
"In order to show infringement the plaintiff must provide proof of lack of consent".
Justice Russel W. Zinn of this Court in the recent case of Atomic Energy of Canada
Ltd. v. Areva NP Canada Ltd., 2009 FC 980, also held that a plaintiff must prove, on
a balance of probabilities "that there has been a copying from that work without its
consent."
Canadian Law of Copyright & Industrial Design, 4th Edition (Carswell), p. 21-7
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 14

55. The motions judge erred in law in not applying the law on onus with respect to the proof of
consent. There is no evidence led on this point at all to prove lack of consent, particularly a
important point in light of Alibhay’s evidence of presenting the book to the Aga Khan in 1992.

Express Consent, Authorization and Instruction

56. The motions judge held that the Aga Khan did not consent to the publication of any Farmans,
and also speculated as to what the Imam might have meant when he said the words, “continue
doing what you are doing” or that He might have wanted only Alibhay to publish, or just that
first book to be published. The motions judge also opined that he would need expert evidence
to be able to understand the “gestures” during the ceremony of Mehmani when Alibhay
presented the Farman book to the Imam in Montreal on August 15, 1992, to help understand
the words spoken by the Aga Khan at that time. In Robertson, the Court held that “a
freelancer who knows the uses to be made of a work and expresses no limitations can arguably
be said to impliedly licence the publisher to make use of the work within those contemplated
uses.”
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 3. p. 35, paras. 41, 45, 46; Tab 14, p. 208, paras. 11, 12
Robertson v. Thomson Corp. 2001 CarswellOnt 3467, 15 C.P.R.(4th) 147
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 23, para. 158

57. Alibhay gave evidence (he was not cross-examined) that Tajdin gave him a copy of the first
Farman book to present to the Imam (as people were chosen by their last name to present their
offerings to the Imam and Tajdin was not chosen as part of the group of people who could
present themselves personally before the Imam). On August 15, 1992, Alibhay presented the
first Farman prominently titled, “Farmans to the Western World, 1957-1991, Volume 1,” to
the Imam. The Imam first blessed Alibhay and his family and thereafter, the Imam looked at
the Farman book when Alibhay asked the Imam what else could they do to serve the Imam.
The Imam after placing His hand on the Farman book said: "continue doing what you are
doing" in response to the question. The Imam then said, “Succeed in what you do”.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 14, p. 208a, paras. 8-12

58. It is after this event that Tajdin commenced distributing the first Farman book and published
(continuously) about 9 more books between 1992 and 2009, when the last book (Golden
Edition) was published by him.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p. 134, paras. 13, 19 -29

59. It is noteworthy that no evidence at all was led on behalf of the Aga Khan denying speaking
the words as described by Alibhay, nor seeking either to explain away what He meant, or to
try to restrict what he said as speculated by the motions judge. The sole evidence on this issue
is the evidence of Alibhay. Yes, inexplicably, the motions judge speculated what the Imam
might have meant and came to a decision that the Aga Khan never consented to the publication
of His works.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 14, page 208, para. 11-12

60. In the case of Concept Developments Ltd., the Court explained the matter of authorization as
follows:
“The issue of (c) the question of "authorization" is both legally and factually complex.
It is best described in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1
S.C.R. 339, at para 38:
"Authorize" means to "sanction, approve and countenance": Muzak Corp. v.
Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada, Ltd., [1953] 2 S.C.R. 182,
at p. 193; De Tervagne v. Beloeil (Town), [1993] 3 F.C. 227 (T.D.). Countenance in the
context of authorizing copyright infringement must be understood in its strongest
dictionary meaning, namely, "[g]ive approval to; sanction, permit; favour, encourage":
see The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993), vol. 1, at p. 526. Authorization
is a question of fact that depends on the circumstances of each particular case and can
be inferred from acts that are less than direct and positive, including a sufficient degree
of indifference ... These are determinations best left to a trial judge to weigh in the
context of all of the evidence.”
Concept Developments Ltd. v. Webb, 2010 CarswellNat 4906, 2010 FC 1315
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 15, para. 11

61. Justice Joyal in the case of de Tervagne v. Beloeil (Town), held (at Para. 45) that a factor to
determine this issue is whether a reasonable person is led to conclude that consent has been
given. He then said:
"... it is possible to establish that a person has sanctioned, approved or countenanced
an actual infringing activity ... if it is shown that certain relationships existed between
the alleged authorizer and the actual infringer, or that the alleged authorizer conducted
himself in a certain manner." [Emphasis added]. In the case of BMG Canada, the
Court held that authorization can be inferred from less than direct acts including a
sufficient degree of indifference.
de Tervagne v. Beloeil (Town), [1993] 3 F.C. 227, Tab 16, paras. 42, 44, 45, 49
BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe, 2004 FC 488, Tab 11, para 24

62. The Court in Concept also reminds the limits of summary procedures as follows:
“However, these summary procedures have their limits. Trials are the ways by which
true disputes are resolved. People have a right to their day in court to deal with
legitimate claims. Courts must be mindful that the effect of a summary judgment
motion can deprive a party of that right.”
Concept Developments Ltd. v. Webb, supra, at para 15
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 15

63. The appellants’ state that the relationship between the parties, the Ismaili Constitution, the
Oath of Allegiance, the various public Farmans encouraging the reading of the Farmans, the
saying that He makes Farmans for the Jamats, the words spoken by the Aga Khan during the
Mehmani are complex matters, and these types of “complex” issues are best left for a trial
judge to determine. It has been held that a licence to use may be implied from the conduct of
the parties and need not be in writing.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 15, p. 212 para. 17; Vol III, Tab 34, p. 750 Q. 195-197

64. It is submitted that the motions judge erred when he made findings of fact (at para 11) in his
reasons for decision: "I declare that the Aga Khan has never given the defendants permission
to publish any Farman, much less the Golden Edition", in face of Alibhay's unchallenged and
uncontradicted evidence, and the motions judge's admission that he might have needed expert
evidence to determine the issues which were of religious nature. The conflicting and/or the
missing evidence, as held by the motions judge, in respect of authorization and/or consent, the
interpretation of the Ismaili Constitution, the interpretation of Farmans and the issue of
relationship are all complex matters and presented genuine issues for trial. It is noteworthy that
the Ismaili Constitution governs all aspects of an Ismaili’s life, and publishing Farmans is no
longer prohibited under the new 1986 Ismaili Constitution, and it raises an issue of whether
the Copyright Act is superceded by the Ismaili Constitution.

65. The motions judge made findings in regard to the provisions and import of the Ismaili
Constitution on the issues before him. In this regard, Snider J. held:
“there is a significant gap in the evidence required to determine the proper
interpretation of the provisions (of the Regulations). That missing evidence relates to
the intent and object of both the regulations at issue and the underlying statutory
framework. It consists of further evidence from Merck, third party evidence and
evidence from government officials, as described below.” ... “the context of
legislation is critical to understanding it. Expert evidence on statutory interpretation
or, in particular, the evolution of the provisions in dispute in this action will be helpful
to the judge. ... The Regulations were the subject of extensive consultation prior to their
enactment in 1993 and their amendment in 1998. The understanding of the parties to
this action may well be relevant in establishing the contextual framework. ... The
conduct of all parties to this litigation may be relevant.”
Apotex Inc. v. Merck & Co., 2004 CarswellNat 584, 2004 FC 314, 248 F.T.R. 8
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 17, at paras. 28, 35, 36, 37

66. After stating the above, Snider J. concluded that, “In my view, all of this evidence is relevant
to the determination of the issues in this matter. Further, much of this evidence will be
contested and, thus, is properly dealt with at trial. Apotex should not be precluded, through
summary judgment, from leading this evidence.” Accordingly, the motions judge erred in
holding on the issue of interpreting the Ismaili Constitution contrary to jurisprudence.
Apotex Inc. v. Merck & Co., supra, at para. 36
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 17

67. In considering the issues relating to Libel and Slander Act, the Ontario Court of Appeal in
Romano v. D'Onofrio stated that, "This was not a case where the law was settled and could be
applied to admitted facts." The Court said: "Matters of law which have not been settled fully
in our jurisprudence should not be disposed of at this [interlocutory] stage of the proceedings.
The Court went on to hold that; "That type of interpretive analysis should only be done in the
context of a full factual record, possibly including appropriate expert evidence”
Romano v. D'Onofrio, 2005 CarswellOnt 6725, (O.C.A.), paras. 7, 9
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 22

68. In the case at bar, the issues are complicated and not previously litigated, and the interpretation
of the Ismaili Constitution and the religious nature of the issues are the type for which
interpretative analysis would require a trial and possibly expert evidence to properly understand
and deal with the matter.

69. The motions judge also misapprehended evidence when he held that at para. 2: "They say that
if the Aga Khan is not pleased with what they are doing, all he has to do is amend the Ismaili
Constitution, or simply issue a Farman, as a new Farman has the effect of overriding the
Ismaili Constitution. However, it is not up to the defendants to dictate to the Aga Khan. He
tried the religious route, without success." By holding as he did, the Motions Judge failed to
appreciate the arguments made by the defendants that none of the official pronouncements
made by the Imam, including the Ismaili Constitution, Farmans or Talikas, indicate that the
activities complained of are not desired by Him, and the only evidence that purports to be from
the Aga Khan concerning these activities is forged. The defendants were not seeking to dictate
to the Aga Khan, but are pointing to evidence that establishes that the Aga Khan's official
pronouncements as set out in the Ismaili Constitution and all of his public Farmans support the
defendants' activities, and that instead of prohibiting such activity, He actually encouraged
them. The defendants' evidence is that they have abided by what was expected of them, that
in abiding with their Constitution and Farmans (which provides implied consent, authorization
based on relationship, etc.) they are not in breach of their Constitution or any Farmans.

70. According to the Federal Court of Appeal in the MacNeil Estate, parties responding to a
motion for summary judgment do not have the burden of proving all of the facts in their case;
rather, they have only an evidentiary burden to put forward evidence showing that there is a
genuine issue for trial.

Adequacy of Record (Adverse Inference)

71. The motions judge drew an adverse inference against the appellants for not filing transcripts
of the discoveries. However, in a motion for summary judgment, drawing an adverse inference
against a responding party is not available at law.
Appeal Book, Vol I, Tab 3, paras. 59-67

72. The motion records were filed, cross-examinations conducted, and the motions were essentially
ready for argument by the time the discoveries took place. Prothonotary Tabib directed on
November 2, 2010, with respect to the discovery, as follows:
“To the extent any party were to attempt to raise, at the hearing of the motion for
summary judgment, anything of what occurred at the attendance on discovery, they
would be precluded from doing so unless admissible evidence of those facts were put
before the court. The motions for summary judgement are now fully briefed. No
further evidence may be filed for use at the hearing of the motions without leave of the
court, to be sought by way of motion.”

73. Both parties had an option: either one could have brought a motion for filing further evidence.
Neither did that, and were content to and argued the motions on the briefs filed. Yet the
motions judge drew an adverse inference against the appellants for failing to file evidence. It
is trite law that adverse inference cannot be drawn if both parties have access to that evidence -
it is only available when that evidence is exclusively in one party’s control. Furthermore, the
motions judge inferred without any evidence on the issue of what the Aga Khan might have
said at the discoveries. Had the Aga Khan said what is speculated by the motions judge, then
respondents’ counsel, Mr. Gray, would have without doubt sought to file evidence of same.

74. Respecting this issue, the Federal Court of Appeal in MacNeil Estate held:
"Nowhere in the Rules is a responding party required to bring forward sufficient
evidence so that genuine issues for trial may be resolved on a motion for summary
judgment."

MacNeil Estate v. Canada (Department of Indian & Northern Affairs), Supra
Appellant’s Authorities, Tab 6, para. 37

75. In Apotex, it was alleged that Apotex had not put its "best foot" forward when it did not file
certain evidence in response to a motion for summary judgment, and the moving party sought
that an adverse inference should be drawn for Apotex’ failure to file that evidence which was
in its possession. Snider J. reviewed case law and held:
“In my view, Merck carries the obligation on Apotex in this motion too far. If Merck
is correct, any responding party on a motion for summary judgment would be required
to bring forward all the evidence necessary to allow the motions judge to resolve the
issues in dispute. In respect of Rule 216(1), this ignores the first step-that the judge be
satisfied that there is no genuine issue for trial. To my mind, the first obligation on a
responding party is to put its "best foot" forward in convincing the motions judge that
a genuine issue for trial exists. As discussed elsewhere in these reasons, that can be
done by identifying "gaps" in the evidence before the motions judge that can only be
addressed through evidence led at trial. [Emphasis added].
Apotex Inc. v. Merck & Co., supra, at Tab 17, paras. 27, 28

76. Furthermore, the Federal Court of Appeal in MacNeil said that, “I think that the Motions Judge
erred by simply rejecting the appellant's arguments without apparently considering whether
they raised a genuine issue for trial.” In the case at bar, the motions judge also erred by not
determining the issue of genuine issue.
MacNeil Estate, supra, at para 40; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 6

77. The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in the case Bank of Nova Scotia said the following with
respect to the obligation of a party responding to a motion for summary judgment:
“As I see it there is no explicit obligation either within the Rules or in case authorities
that requires the defendant to raise every arguable issue for trial in response to the
plaintiff's application for summary judgment or even most of the defendant's arguable
issues for trial. To fend off an application he merely needs to raise one,
notwithstanding some others may be known to him, or become apparent through the
course of the litigation.” [Emphasis added].
Bank of Nova Scotia v. A. MacKenzie's Auto Mart Inc., 2010 CarswellNS 654, 2010
NSCA 81, para 32; Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 18

78. The motions judge’s reasons indicate that he conducted a trial on affidavits by drawing an
adverse inference against the appellants. However, the legal requirement of putting the best
foot forward does not “entail turning a summary judgment motion into the trial itself by
requiring all the trial evidence. A motion for summary judgment must be judged on the basis
of the pleadings and materials actually before the judge...” The jurisprudence on Rule 216 is
clear that a motions judge should refrain from issuing summary judgment where the relevant
evidence is unavailable on the record and involves a serious question of fact which turns on
the drawing of inferences, and finished by saying that the trial judge would benefit from having
more evidence on the intentions of going into contractual relations.
AMR Technology Inc. v. Novopharm Ltd., 2008 CarswellNat 2986, 2008 FC 970,
70 C.P.R. (4th) 177, 169 A.C.W.S. (3d) 76, para 22, Tab 19
Society of Composers, Authors & Music Publishers of Canada v. Maple Leaf
Sports & Entertainment, 2010 CarswellNat 2101, FC 731, para 17 Tab 28

79. The appellants submit that Justice Harrington erred in drawing an adverse inference against
the appellants on the issue of the transcripts of discovery, on the grounds that a responding
party need not call all evidence to defend the motion for summary judgment. Furthermore,
it is trite law that it is not appropriate to draw an adverse inference where the witness in
question was available to both parties as in this case, the witness is the party who could have
given the necessary evidence. On the contrary, the motions judge ought to have drawn an
adverse inference against the respondent for not filing His personal affidavit as would be
expected in the circumstances in a Copyright case due to the fact that the evidence about lack
of consent can only be given by the Copyright holder.

80. The motions judge misapprehended evidence when he held that, "However, it is not up to the
defendants to dictate to the Aga Khan. He tried the religious route, without success. This is a
finding of fact on inadmissible hearsay evidence, and evidence that is shown to be forged
(forged signatures). By holding as he did, the motions judge failed to appreciate the arguments
made by the appellants that none of the official pronouncements made by the Imam, including
the Ismaili Constitution, Farmans or Talikas, indicate that the activities complained of are not
desired by Him, and that these materially support the appellants’ evidence instead of defeating
their evidence.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 3, para. 22

81. The Motions Judge misapprehended evidence when he held at para. 12, "..in their devotion to
him all he has to do is say the word and they will cease and desist. However they have placed
so many conditions on this word that this lawsuit was taken in frustration." The only condition
placed by the Appellants is that the communication from the Aga Khan be authentic, and there
is nothing else on evidence on this point. Justice Harrington has speculated on this matter
without any evidence to support his findings.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 3, para. 12

Detrimental Reliance/Latches

82. Evidence has established that Tajdin has been publishing Farman books (as other individuals
also do across the world) and published ten books as from 1992 to 2009, and that distribution
of same was undertaken publically to the knowledge of the Aga Khan and His institutional
leaders. Alibhay’s evidence, which was not contradicted, was that the Aga Khan knew of the
publication in 1992, when He encouraged the ‘work”, and Sachedina confirmed that the Aga
Khan knew of the publications at least as of mid-nineties of the various publications by Tajdin.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p. 132, para. 22

83. Accordingly, the legal concept of Latches and the law of Detrimental Reliance is relied upon
by the appellants. Although the appellants’ presented case law for consideration, the motions
judge essentially ignored this line of defence and granted judgment against the appellants. The
appellants submit that it is unjust to grant judgment against them without consideration of all
of their defences and evidence filed by them based on Garford: [summary judgment] should
not be granted where, on the whole of the evidence, the judge cannot find the necessary facts
or it would be unjust to do so.

84. The Court in Paul v. Vancouver International Airport Authority, stated as follows: (i) Estoppel
by Representation operates over a wide field of common law and equity. The basic principle
is that a person who makes an unambiguous representation, by words, or conduct, or by
silence, of an existing fact, and causes another party to act to his detriment in reliance on the
representation will not be permitted subsequently to act inconsistently with that representation.
Paul v. Vancouver International Airport Authority, 2000 CarswellBC 561, 2000
BCSC 341, 5 B.L.R. (3d) 135, at para. 74, Tab 20

85. The Ontario Superior Court states as follows about latches and acquiescence:
“In determining whether there has been such delay as to amount to laches the chief points to
be considered are (1) acquiescence on the plaintiff's part, and (2) any change of position that
has occurred on the defendant's part. Acquiescence in this sense does not mean standing by
while the violation of a right is in progress, but assent after the violation has been completed
and the plaintiff has become aware of it. It is unjust to give the plaintiff a remedy where he has
by his conduct done that which might fairly be regarded as equivalent to a waiver of it; or
where by his conduct and neglect he has, though not waiving the remedy, put the other party
in a position in which it would not be reasonable to place him if the remedy were afterwards
to be asserted. In such cases lapse of time and delay are most material. Upon these conditions
rests the doctrine of laches: Lindsay Petroleum Co. v. Hurd (1874), L.R. 5 P.C. 221 at 239, per
Lord Selborne.”
Egnatios v. Leon Estate, 1990 CarswellOnt 502, paras. 63, 68, 70
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 21

86. The appellants state that as from 1992 the Aga Khan knew of the publications, and encouraged
it, His institutional leaders also knew of the publications and the appellants have changed their
position by publishing books at enormous expenses and it is unjust to suddenly hold the
appellants liable for infringement.
Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 11, p. 132, paras. 11, 22, 36

87. The Statement of Claim identifies the Golden Edition as the infringing material and sought an
injunction restraining the distribution of the Golden Edition. The Injunction granted by the
motions judge is much broader: “.. restraining the defendants... from infringing the plaintiff’s
copyright in the literary works…” which has been defined as Farmans and Talikas. The
previous editions published by Tajdin cannot be restrained by an injunction due to the
Limitations period (of three years) set out in the Copyright Act. The only evidence against this
point is the evidence of Sachedina who said that Tajdin ceased (denied by Tajdin and Jiwa)
distributing the books in 1998 and he just discovered after the publication of the Golden
Edition. Appeal Book, Vol 1, Tab 5, p. 55, paras. 1(a)(i) and 3

88. However, his evidence is materially contracted by the appellants (documentary evidence has
been given to prove that distribution of the books were ongoing and not ceased after 1998), and
by Mohamed. Accordingly, the evidence on this issue is contradictory and it is an error for the
motions judge’s judgment applying to the previous publications without considering the
Limitations period pleaded by the appellants. The motions judge’s judgment ought to be
reversed on this ground as well.
Appeal Book, Vol I, Tab 11, p.135, paras. 19-23; Tab 16, 3-5

89. The Manitoba Court of Appeal held in the case of Shell v. Barnsley, where the issue was
whether the plaintiff could found his claim in contract and negligence as well as on negligent-
misrepresentation. The Court states that “Matters of law which have not been fully settled in
our jurisprudence should not be disposed of at this [interlocutory] stage of the proceedings”,
and then continued, “My view is strengthened by the fact that motion was premised on
assumptions concerning the pleadings and the facts. ... My conclusion ... highlight the
importance for counsel, and the judge, to address the appropriateness of proceeding by way of
summary judgment where issues concern the developing areas of law.”
Shell v. Barnsley, 2006 CarswellMan 394, 2006 MBCA 133, paras. 16, 17, 18
Appellants’ Brief of Authorities, Tab 25

90. On the issues of credibility the only thing the motions judge said is: “Although there are
credibility issues in the motions as pleaded before me, they are not, in my opinion germane.”
With respect, it is trite law that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done and it is
a dereliction of duty for a judge to casually dismiss the credibility issues raised without
explaining at all why certain witnesses’ evidence was found to lack credibility or why he
dismissed entirely the appellants’ expert’s unchallenged finding, or why he discarded evidence
of Mohamed when he was not even cross-examined. The resolving of the credibility issue,
even cursorily, evidences that serious credibility issues were raised but not adequately
addressed by the motions judge.

91. It is submitted that Justice Harrington erred as follows: (a) in not ruling the impugned evidence
as inadmissible; (b) in relying on the inadmissible hearsay evidence to ground his decision
on; (c) in casually dismissing the credibility contest between the evidence of Sachedina and
Bhaloo and Tajdin and Mohamed (who was not cross-examined and has served the Imam and
his institutions for three decades in various capacity, and currently he, an engineer, and his
wife, a physician, are serving the Imam in senior positions in voluntary capacity, without any
pay or remuneration, for several years at the Aga Khan Hospital in Kenya as their gift to the
Imam for his Golden Jubilee); (d) in finding that the expert’s evidence was contradictory; (e)
in accepting the evidence of one expert and entirely rejecting the other evidence; (f) in
dismissing the Latches argument on inadmissible evidence and contested evidence; (g) in
misapprehending the importance and interpretation of the Ismaili Constitution; (h) in not
dealing with the issue of Detrimental Reliance.

Costs

92. The Notice of Motion sought that costs of $30,000.00 be made payable to the Aga Khan
Development Network, or such other charitable institution as may be designated. Tajdin and
his family are major donors to the AKDN and other community institutions. Based on the
Notice of Motion, the appellants’ consented without making any submissions against the costs
award, but then at the time of settling the Order, the motions judge went beyond what was
asked for in the Motion and made an Order that costs be payable to the respondent personally,
without jurisdiction in doing so.
Appeal Book, Vol I, Tab 2, para. 9; Vol II, Tab 24, p. 372, para. 1(f)

PART V - ORDER SOUGHT

93. The appellants respectfully request that the appeal be allowed and the Judgment of Justice
Harrington dated March 4, 2011, be set aside.

Date: June 13, 2011 Respectfully submitted,
____________ ______________
Alnaz I. Jiwa Nagib Tajdin

.....

All Comments on the case

Background information:

The Federal Court in canada ordered Mr Jiwa and Tajdin (Defendants in the Copyright Case) to pay $30,000 in Cost to H.H. Tthe Aga Khan. A cheque was sent by a well-wisher from London, UK, which the defendant had never met nor did they know at that time who was Chatur,. The Imam never cashed the cheque. Sachedina tried to convince Chatur to take back his cheque. The fact that the cheque was never cashed by the Aga Khan was a blow to the face of those pretending that the Imam had sued his Murids (followers) and that the lawyer was acting on behalf of the Imam in asking those costs. The non-cashing of that cheque was instrumental in convincing the Jamat (community) that Gray may have been hired by Sachedina and not by the Imam.

The following was written by Mahebub Chatur:

27th May 2011

President Amin Mawji and Mukhi Saheb Alnashir Rehmu (West London)
Shia Imami Ismaili council for UK
Ismaili Center
Cromwell Road
London SW7 By email and hand

Dear President Saheb and Mukhi Saheb,

In accordance with our policy of communicating with Hazar Imam (Aga Khan), I request you to forward this letter urgently to Hazar Imam personally, with the enclosed Cheque of Canadian $30000 in favour of “H H The Aga Khan”. I look forward to your confirmation as normal that you have forwarded them. (The cheque is pursuant to the Judgment of Justice Harrington, of the Federal Court of Canada, under file No. T-514-10 whereby he ordered costs of $30,000.00 to be paid by Nagib Tajdin and Alnaz Jiwa.)

On June 6th, 2011 Nagib (not verified) says:

His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan
The Aga Khan Secretariat
Aiglemont, France

May it please Khudavand,

Your Highness;

It is an honour and a privilege for me to forward a cheque in favour of “ H H The Aga Khan “ for GBP £ 19000, which is equivalent to Canadian $30000. This includes an additional sum of $300 in case of any bank or conversion costs. (The sum is pursuant to the Judgment of Justice Harrington, of the Federal Court of Canada, under file No. T-514-10 , and order for costs of $30,000.00 to be paid by the 2 murids, namely Nagib Tajdin and Alnaz Jiwa.)

Unfortunately this lawsuit has not ended based on Imam’s guidance and interaction with Aitmadi Sachedina, and the Leadership by me and many others. The court ordered the sum to be paid, pending the outcome of an appeal which has been filed.

I am making this payment from my own personal funds, and on behalf of my two spiritual brothers, out of love, brotherhood and affection. I do not know Alnaz Jiwa or Nagib Tajdin personally nor have I ever met them. I shall look forward to meeting them.

My reasons for making this payment are as follows;

1 I have studied all the court documentation and thousands of comments by many Murids I have personally discussed with hundreds of Ismaili Murids, and Leaders around the world regarding the 2 murids and this Lawsuit.. I have communicated with the Leaders generally and the leaders involved. I have verified the ground realities. I have the requisite professional qualifications, experience and expertise to enalble me to do so professionally , fairly and objectively.

2 I am convinced that the 2 murids (and their families) are loyal and devoted followers (muirds) and are my true spiritual brothers (They are truly Farmanbardari and Sevadari momeens)

3 They have in the past, and continue to serve the Jamat selflessly, with sharing considerable amounts of time, money, resources, and knowledge.

4 Resources and farmans which they have made available to the Jamat for over 20 years have been invaluable to Leaders, scholars and Al Waezeens around the world. In fact most Al Waez’s in most parts of the world use them because they cannot access them institutionally.

5 After the meeting with Hazar Imam on 15th October 2010, the 2 murids signed a consent order which they sincerely believe was as directed by Hazar Imam.

6 Nagib Tajdin has handed to ITREB Kenya the remaining 193 books as directed by Hazar Imam on 15th October 2010

7 Preservation and understanding by the Jamat of the The sanctity of Mehmani’s.

8 My conversation on 6th December 2010 and related communication with Aitmadi Shafik Sachedina (memorandum attached - annexure 1).

9 Alnaz has suffered professionally and lost business and clients as a result of this lawsuit. The business of Nagib has also suffered similarly.

10 If the lawsuit is not settled and the appeal is not allowed, then the 2 murids will have to pay additional costs.

11 The Lawyers are now seeking assessment hearing to determine the profits that might have been made by these two murids.

12 I am happy to assist and contribute in the interest of the Jamat, as a spiritual brother and a member of the Jamat.

13 I feel a compelling duty to support and assist under the circumstances.

14 As a result of this lawsuit the 2 murids, and their family are facing extreme emotional and socio economic challenges.

15 Hazar Imam has confirmed and directly clearly that all Farmans and guidance are to be made available to all murids, in all locations and in remote locations. Leaders have been limiting and restricting access to Farmans and Imams guidance.

16 I have discussed this with my wife and we are both in agreement.

17 I Informed the 2 murids that I wish to make this payment and requested their permission. They inform me the have considered and agreed.

If the appeal is allowed by the court, It is my wish for Hazar Imam to use the sum of $30000 for any activities Imam so wishes (without any limitation whatsoever)

I seek guidance, and pray for good health, for unity, for brotherhood, for peace and happiness for my family, all our leaders and Jamat. I also seek forgiveness for my shortcomings.

I am sending a copy of this letter to the 2 murids.

Yours truly

Mahebub Alam Chatur

Memorandum - conversation with Aitmadi Shafik Sachedina (SS) 6 December 2010

Dr Shafik called me. He said he was on route to Brussels and will be meeting Bapa today. SS said since he knows me personally he felt he wanted to speak with me to clarify some of the matters in the Lawsuit. The following is a summary of our conversation.

1 SS said, Gray had drafted the Consent after 15 Oct 2010. Alnaz and Nagib did not agree to it. Gray drafted a second one. They signed and sent a different one. Mawla saw and annotated the drafts. The main issue is an admission of infringement

2 SS said Mawla personally picked the legal advisers and appointed Mr Gray. He had not met Gray before the start of the lawsuit and that Firm has not done any work for us (SS – institutions) before the lawsuit. and has not used him. That Firm was recommended to Bapa by the Lawyers in France.

3 SS said Mawla approved and wrote the letters to Nagib, and there was no forgeries of the signatures, by him or by anyone else.

4 SS said it was Mawla who first instructed Gray, and not him. I said that will not be an issue if the case is settled since only one issue remaining. That of an admission of Infringement – He agreed.

5 SS said he does not have anything to do with case as Mawla is handling it direct with the Lawyers and the lawyers in France. I said surely Mawla is sharing with the top leadership and keeping him informed on such an important Jamati matter.

6 I requested him to please speak to the top 5 leaders and then say to the Mawla that there is only one small issue separating us and the 2 murids which is an admission of Infringement. I requested SS to give Mawla the 7 reasons I gave why we need to preserve the sanctity of Mehmani and end this case with honour and respect. I said he can say to Mawla, we as leaders would like one opportunity to meet the 2 murids as leaders in a group to agree the infringement issue, and conclude this case by consent. By doing so we can also legally achieve the objective and the santity of our mehmani, rites and ceremonies will also be protected. I said Mawla would be very happy. If for some reason Mawla does not Mawla will tell the leaders why and you will have tried your best to end the case.

7 SS said Mawla is very angry and wants to proceed all the way, and neither he nor other leaders can go against Mawla’s wishes. It is Mawla who is handling the case.

8 I said that he speaks to Mawla every day and I know decisions are made on for example budgets which are then presented. Then there is new information or a reconsideration. There are then changes and we have seen changes with new suggestions and Ideas . I said this is in the same spirit. I said Mawla is Rehman and Rahim and Karim and wishes us to work together. I said Mawla I feel Mawla will be happy if all his top Mawla leaders come to him through SS and speak with one mind and are working together and in this case as directed on 15th October. I asked why there has been no meeting and Alnaz was never contacted.

9 He said he tried very hard before the lawsuit, and after lawsuit they did not ask for a meeting and it is up to them to ask. I said they did ask for meetings but did not trust him so a meeting with other leaders or local Mukhi’s would have done the trick, I said in this case it is also up to leaders to take the initiative and the first step if needed.

10 He said that for 45 minutes in London Mawla spoke to all the Leaders recently about the lawsuit too. I said my info from some who attended say this was not discussed by Mawla, and they are also as concerned and as confused as I am. He assured my Mawla did speak about this. I said maybe my info is incorrect and I would love to speak to a few of our leaders on this so we are all on the same page

11 He said there was a leaders meeting in Toronto and leaders agreed to proceed. I said but he is saying Mawla decided Mawla is controlling. So why can SS not now also have a discussion with Azim, Mohammed, MM, AK and Presidents of Canada, UK and Kenya,. Then say to Mawla we have considered and if it pleases Mawla we would like to meet the 2 murids and close this case as the only issue remaining is an admission of Infringement. I said if mawla is approached by them Mawla will re consider if they speak with one voice, and Mawla is remided of the Directions and given a copy of the consent signed by Alnaz and Nagib.

12 I said I can assure him that this consent is legally possible and the result can be such that “lathi bi na toote ane samp bi na mare” I said I am sure Mawla would very happy to see conciliation and agreement with all speaking with one voice, rather than to continue the lawsuit.

13 He said we have agreed that there should be no damages or costs. We are only asking for $30000. I said in this case money is not an issue and money means nothing. They have given more and would give all their money to Mawla if that was an issue, and if Mawla asked. I said so would I too and so would you Shafik. I said they are loyal and sevadari’s.

14 He said he has tried hard before the lawsuit was filed by Mawla. I urged him not to stop now. He should have continued after the lawsuit was filed. I urged him to meet them now with other leaders since they do not trust him. I remined him that I had offered this to him in April 2010. He with other leaders should have met them. SS said they have not asked for a meeting. I said according to their comments in the net, they had and I feel he should have arranged for other leaders to meet them to understand and agree. I said Mawla wishes that and it would make Mawla very happy.

15 I urged him to rise above all this and speak to the leaders and to MHI and try his best to settle the case before the hearing tomorrow. He is our top leaders and this is the least he should do and he should expect this from himself for himself. I expect this from him and passionately urged him to do so.

16 He promised to discuss with Mawla and “flag ” this to Hazar Mawla. He said he was meeting Mawla later today. He said he will let me know. I urged him before now and his meeting can he please speak to other leaders and get their agreement so he can say all leaders agree.

17 I said if he wishes I will fly out today to be in that meeting and or if I can see the 3 drafts I will be happy to facilitate a meeting with the 2 murids who as he knows I have never met or knew before the lawsuit.

18 I said am in touch with Nagib, and have also asked searching questions, and I see no reason why they will not agree if Mawla says so since there is one issue on the table and to reinstate confidence and trust. I added that If you resolve this then the issue of mehmani and all other issues will all be preserved and settled. I said to continue the lawsuit will have an impact on the external geo political dynamics which can be significant if and when someone decided to take pot shots at Ismailes or Mawlaat in future.

19 He said he is personally taking so much flak and it was Mawla who decided to take Action. I said I appreciated this and It is in his hands to speak to leaders and Mawla to end this case. I said I hope this lawsuit can be ended before the hearing tomorrow. He said he will flag Mawla and let me know.

The only remaining issue is an admission of Infringement by Alnaz and Nagib and preserving the sanctity of our Mehmani, and related rites and ceremony. Our Tariquah, I said can be easily and legally addressed for the purposes of a settlement. I f it is agreed that there was consent in that Mehmani, which by agreement has been withdrawn. Copyright has never been an issue in this lawsuit. Thus preserving the sanctity of Mehmani.

Alnaz and Nagib will be happy to give undertakings and we can all work together going forward as directed by Hazar Mawla. There is no reason to distrust Alnaz and Nagib (who are loyal sevadaris)

.....

All Comments on the case

Toward the Future

ALL MY LIFE I have looked forward. Large-scale prophecy, however, is as dangerous as it is easy, and true prophetic vision is rare indeed. It is a rarity more than ever marked in an epoch such as ours, in which science has placed in our reach material and natural powers undreamed of fifty short years ago. But since the human mind and the human imagination are as yet by no means fully equipped to master the immense forces which human ingenuity has discovered and unleashed, it is not too difficult to foresee at least some of the political and social reactions of nations as well as individuals to this enormous scientific and technical revolution and all its accompanying phenomena.

India, the country of my birth and upbringing, has been for centuries a land of extreme poverty, misery and want, where millions are born, live and work and die at a level far below the margin of subsistence. A tropical climate, aeons of soil erosion, and primitive and unskilled methods of agriculture have all taken their toll of suffering, patient, gentle but ignorant mankind. The Indian peasant has survived and multiplied but in face of the most ferocious and formidable handicaps. Many years ago, in my first book, India in Transition, I gave this account of the day-to-day life of the ordinary Indian peasant under British rule.

A typical rural scene on an average day in an average year is essentially the same now as it was half a century ago. A breeze, alternately warm and chilly, sweeps over the monotonous landscape as it is lightened by a rapid dawn, to be followed quickly by a heavy molten sun appearing on the horizon. The ill-clad villagers, men, women, and children, thin and weak, and made old beyond their years by a life of underfeeding and overwork, have been astir before daybreak, and have partaken of a scanty meal, consisting of some kind or other of cold porridge, of course without sugar or milk. With bare and hardened feet they reach the fields and immediately begin to furrow the soil with their lean cattle, of a poor and hybrid breed, usually sterile and milkless. A short rest at midday, and a handful of dried corn or beans for food, is followed by a continuance till dusk of the same laborious scratching of the soil. Then the weary way homeward in the chilly evening, every member of the family shaking with malaria or fatigue. A drink of water, probably contaminated, the munching of a piece of hard black or green chaupati, a little gossip round the peepul tree, and then the day ends with heavy, unrefreshing sleep in dwellings so insanitary that no decent European farmer would house his cattle in them.

The Raj has gone, but in essentials the life and lot of the humble villager of rural India have scarcely changed since I wrote these words. Education, hygiene, welfare schemes, plans for village "uplift" have but scratched the surface of the problem, hardly more deeply or more efficiently than the peasant's own wooden plough scratches the sunbaked soil of India. Nor is the lot of his urban kinsman, working in one of the great and ever-growing industrial cities like Bombay or Calcutta, much better. At his factory, in his home, the Indian industrial worker endures, and takes for granted, utterly appalling conditions. From steamy, overcrowded mill or factory he trudges to the shanty or tenement, equally overcrowded, equally unhealthy, which serves him as his home. His diet, though more varied than that of his cousin in the country, is pitifully meager by any Western standard. Around him are the increasing distractions of a great city, but they have little meaning for him. His amenities are few, his luxuries nonexistent.

During the years of British rule it was relatively easy to shrug off responsibility for the economic malaise of India, to put all the blame on imperialist exploitation, and to say, "When we get our independence, then we shall put economic conditions right." The imperialists have gone; the period of alien exploitation is over. But can economic injustice be so easily righted? India's population is stead ily and rapidly increasing, yet at the present rate -- and in spite of all manner of schemes for soil conservation, irrigation, better use of land, intensive and planned industrialization -- it is unlikely that more than half the natural increase in population can be economically absorbed. India's problem, like China's, is one of economic absorptive capacity. Pakistan's problem, since she has the empty but potentially rich acres of Baluchistan to fill with her surplus population, is less pressing. Doubtless in India, as in China, the extension of education and growing familiarity with the use of the vote and the processes of democracy will give rise to eager and energetic efforts to find political solutions to the gravest economic problems. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions of human beings in India and in China live out their lives in conditions of extreme misery. How long will these vast masses of humanity accept such conditions? May they not -- as realization dawns of their own political power -- insist on an extreme form of socialism, indeed on communism, though not on Soviet Russian lines and not under Soviet leadership? And may not that insistence be revolutionary in its expression and in its manifestations?

Yet in India, as well as in China, if every "have" in the population were stripped of wealth and reduced to the level of the lowest "have not," of the poorest sweeper or coolie, the effect on the general standard of living -- the general ill-being -- would be negligible. There are far too few "haves," far too many "have nots," in both countries for even the most wholesale redistribution of wealth as it now stands. Reform, to be real and effective, must strike much deeper. These are thoughts grim enough to depress anyone who possesses more than the most superficial knowledge of Asia's problems and difficulties.

There is one major political step forward which should be taken by the Governments of India and Pakistan, which would have a significant and beneficial effect on the life and welfare of their peoples. This is the establishment of a genuine and lasting entente cordiale between the two countries, such as subsisted between Britain and France from 1905 to 1914. Even more pertinent analogies are offered by Belgium and Holland, and Sweden and Norway. Here are two pairs of neighboring sovereign states, once joined and now separated. The separation of the Low Countries offers the nearest parallel since this was effected on the specific grounds of religious difference. I have earlier likened the Hindu and Muslim communities of the old Indian Empire to Siamese twins; as such they were, before they were parted, hardly able to move; now separate, surely they ought to be able to go along together as companions and friends, to their mutual benefit and support.

Here however it is for India with its far greater population, resources, and developed industries to show the same political judgment as Sweden showed toward Norway after their separation -- that is to say -- a final and sincere acceptance of the partition as desirable and in itself as at last opening the door to a real understanding between the two culturally different peoples of the subcontinent.

Even a small minority can make great mischief if it keeps up and repeats the political slogans of unity which may have had a sense at one time but which today can only prevent that good neighborly relation on which future co-operation in international politics depends.

In problems such as water, both east and west between the two republics of India and Pakistan, refugee property and other financial claims and counterclaims should be settled now in a way that the weaker country of the two shall not feel that it has been browbeaten and unjustly treated by its vast and powerful neighbor.

The problem of Kashmir should also be faced as an honest attempt to bring about by plebiscite, under international auspices, a final settlement on the basis of the triumph of the popular will. Were India to adopt consistently toward Pakistan the policy adopted by Sweden toward Norway, by Holland toward Belgium, not only for years but for decades, not only peace in Southern Asia but the full weight for international peace and good will will necessarily increase to an extent of which we at present can have little idea. The great role to be played as bridge between West and East beyond the frontiers of Pakistan and India can only be accomplished if and when these two neighbors are themselves capable of co-operation and such fair dealing toward each other as will con vince the rest of the world that they have a claim to be listened to and seriously considered.

The alternative to an Indian policy of understanding and the encouragement of water and other economic needs of Pakistan, not only justly, but with free comprehension, can be that the neighbor will turn in other directions for alliances and friendships -- the result of which must lead to these two neighborly powers, instead of looking outward and working for world peace, watching each other, ever on the look-out for danger and discord rather than for peaceful and economic independence and development.

I do not think that the countries of the Near East, with the possible exception of Egypt, face any population problems which, granted courage, resolution and ingenuity, should prove insuperable.

All that the people of countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, the Lebanon, Yemen and even Saudi Arabia, need is knowledge -- knowledge of new techniques, knowledge of engineering, knowledge of agriculture. They have room and resources enough. Science properly applied can repopulate their empty lands and make their barren spaces flourish; can plant cities, fertilize crops; can set up industries and develop their immensely rich mineral and raw material potentialities. Here there was once the Garden of Eden; historians and archaeologists have shown that this region was at one time fertile, rich and populous. So it can be again, if the powers and the resources available to mankind now are properly employed. The Arab lands have been devastated by centuries of folly, by waste and extravagance due to ignorance; the pitiful condition of their peoples today is a condemnation of their past. There is no need to look further than Israel to realize what courage and determination, allied to skill and urgent need, can achieve. The Arabs are no whit inferior to any race in the world in intelligence and potential capacity. A single generation's concentrated and devoted attention to the real needs of education for all, of scientific and technical as well as academic teaching, training and discipline, could revolutionize the Arab world. Self-help is better by far than grants in aid, and better than perpetual outpouring by the United States of its surplus pro duction. The Arabs' only danger lies in continued apathy and ignorance in a swiftly changing world, and in a social and economic outlook and practices unadapted to the challenging realities of our time.

I have little fear about the impact of the future of the British Crown Colonies in Africa. We have seen the noble work of Great Britain in West Africa. In East and Central Africa the problem is at present complicated by the presence of a European settler population. I believe that there can be a healthy and satisfactory adjustment, provided all sections in these multiracial communities -- indigenous Africans and immigrant Europeans and Asians -- face the simple, fundamental fact that they are all dependent upon each other. No one section can dismiss any other from its calculations, either about contributions to past development or about plans for the future. The immigrant, be he European or Asian, has no hope of prosperity without the Africans; the African cannot do without the European farmer or the Asian trader, unless he wants to see his standard of living fall steeply, and with it all hope of exploiting and enhancing the natural wealth of the land in which all three have their homes and must earn their bread.

To a Muslim there is one quietly but forcibly encouraging element in this situation. Wherever the indigenous population is Muslim, there is remarkably little racial antagonism or sense of bitterness against the European, in spite of the European's obvious economic superiority. Islam, after all, is a soil in which sentiments of this sort do not take root or flourish easily. This is not a shallow and fatalistic resignation; it is something much more profound in the essence of the teaching of Islam -- a basic conviction that in the eyes of God all men, regardless of color or class or economic condition, are equal. From this belief there springs an unshakable self-respect, whose deepest effects are in the subconscious, preventing the growth of bitterness or any sense of inferiority or jealousy by one man of another's economic advantage.

Islam in all these countries has within it, I earnestly believe, the capacity to be a moral and spiritual force of enormous significance, both stabilizing and energizing the communities among whom it is preached and practiced. To ignore Islam's potential influence for good, Islam's healing and creative power for societies as for individuals, is to ignore one of the most genuinely hopeful factors that exist in the world today.

But what of the recurrent, intractable issue of peace or war? Few epochs in recent history have been more devastating and disastrous than (to quote a phrase of Sir Winston Churchill's) "this tormented half-century." Is the long torment at last over?

I can only hope fervently, with all my being, that this is so; that the nations and their leaders are sincerely and actively convinced not only of the negative proposition that a Third World War would effect the destruction of civilization, perhaps indeed of humanity, but of its positive corollary that it now lies within men's power enormously and rapidly to enhance and increase civilization and to promote the material well-being of millions who now rank as "have nots." The only chance of nations and individuals alike among the "have nots" lies in the preservation of peace. Europe needs a century or more of recuperation after the agony and havoc that its peoples have endured, and recuperation means peace. The industrial and productive capacity of North America -- the United States and Canada -- already vaster than anything the world has ever seen, is increasing fast; North America needs markets; and markets mean peace. The underdeveloped countries, in Africa, Asia and South America, need over the years a vast and steady inflow of capital investment -- to build and develop their communications, to exploit their resources, to raise their standard of living -- and investment on this scale and to this end calls for peace. War, in face of such circumstances and so numerous and so imperative a series of needs, would be madness. But I must admit that if we look back at the history of the past fifty years, this has not been a consideration that has deflected the nations and their leaders from catastrophic courses. All the hardly won prosperity and security, all the splendid and beckoning hopes of the last quarter of the nineteenth century counted for nothing when the crucial test came. Pride and folly swayed men's hearts. The world's state today is the result of pride and folly.

As Germany did for so long, Russia now supplies the civilized world's great enigma, the riddle to which there seems no sensible or satisfactory answer. One factor in Russia's perplexing equation is obvious and known -- the factor whose results can only be happy, peaceful and prosperous. The other -- the perpetual "x" -- is grim and incalculable. Long ago Lord Palmerston said that Russian history taught this lesson: the Russians must expand, and they will go on expanding until they encounter some force -- a nation or a combination of nations -- powerful enough to stop them. From its beginnings in the Grand Duchy of Moscow Russia has expanded steadily and remorselessly. Is expansion still the dominant motive in Russian policy? There are some somber indications that this is one of the many characteristics which Communist Russia possesses in common with Czarist Russia and that her appetite for expansion is still not glutted.

Yet why should this be so? Are there not other more peaceful factors at work? Russia's empty lands, within her own borders, are greater by far than those that opened up, decade after decade, in front of the pioneers who extended the United States from small, precarious beginnings along the Atlantic seaboard. Russia has no need of overseas colonies, no need, now that aerial communications have developed so swiftly and so powerfully, for those "windows on warm seas" which once mattered so much. Inside her own frontiers, if her leaders can be genuinely convinced that no one menaces the Soviet Union, that no one harbors aggressive, imperialist designs against her, her people may live at peace for centuries. Will these realistic and wholesome considerations carry the day, or will suspicion, blind hatred, pride and folly wreak new and more terrible havoc? As in the German people before the Second World War there was the dreadful, Wagnerian death-wish, driving a great and superbly talented nation to self-immolation, so is there in the heart of all men some dark, satanic evil still lusting for destruction? These are the stern riddles of our time, and each of us seeks his own answers to them.

But these issues and questions concern men in the aggregate, great bodies of men in national and racial groups. The biggest group, however, is only composed of the number of individuals in it. If it is possible to bring happiness to one individual, in him at least the dark and evil impulses may be conquered. And in the end may not the power of good in the individual prevail against the power of evil in the many?

I can only say to everyone who reads this book that it is my profound conviction that man must never ignore and leave untended and undeveloped that spark of the Divine which is in him. The way to personal fulfillment, to individual reconciliation with the Universe that is about us, is comparatively easy for anyone who firmly and sincerely believes, as I do, that Divine Grace has given man in his own heart the possibilities of illumination and of union with Reality. It is, however, far more important to attempt to offer some hope of spiritual sustenance to those many who, in this age in which the capacity of faith is nonexistent in the majority, long for something beyond themselves, even if it seems second-best. For them there is the possibility of finding strength of the spirit, comfort and happiness in contemplation of the infinite variety and beauty of the Universe.

Life in the ultimate analysis has taught me one enduring lesson. The subject should always disappear in the object. In our ordinary affections one for another, in our daily work with hand or brain, most of us discover soon enough that any lasting satisfaction, any contentment that we can achieve, is the result of forgetting self, of merging subject with object in a harmony that is of body, mind and spirit. And in the highest realms of consciousness all who believe in a Higher Being are liberated from all the clogging and hampering bonds of the subjective self in prayer, in rapt meditation upon and in the face of the glorious radiance of eternity, in which all temporal and earthly consciousness is swallowed up and itself becomes the eternal.

People I Have Known

THE PEOPLE whom I have met and known throughout my life stand out in my recollection more vividly and sharply than the dogmas that I have heard preached, the theories that I have heard argued, the policies that I have known to be propounded and abandoned. I have enjoyed the friendship of beautiful and accomplished women, of brilliant and famous men, who throng the corridors of my memory.

The most beautiful woman whom I ever knew was without doubt Lady D'Abernon -- formerly Lady Helen Vincent -- the wife of Britain's great Ambassador in Berlin. The brilliance of her beauty was marvelous to behold: the radiance of her coloring, the perfection of her figure, the exquisite modeling of her limbs, the classic quality of her features, and the vivacity and charm of her expression. I knew her for more than forty years; and when she was seventy the moment she came into a room, however many attractive or lovely young women might be assembled there, every eye was for her alone. Nor was her beauty merely physical; she was utterly unspoiled, simple, selfless, gay, brave and kind.

If Lady D'Abernon was pre-eminent, there were many, many others whose loveliness it is a joy to recall: Lady Curzon, now Countess Howe; Mme. Letelier, Swedish by origin, and almost from childhood a leading social figure; Princess Kutusov; the American, Mrs. Spottiswoode, who took London by storm during the Edwardian era, who married Baron Eugene de Rothschild, and -- alas -died young, still in the pride of her beauty and her charm.

The most brilliant conversationalist of my acquaintance was Augustine Birrell, now -- I am told -- an almost legendary figure in an epoch which has largely forgotten the art of conversation. Oscar Wilde I never met, for his tragic downfall had overwhelmed him before I first came to Europe. Strangely enough I had one chance of making his acquaintance after he came out of prison. My friend Lady Ripon was one of those who stood loyally by him after his disgrace. One day in 1899 I encountered her in the hall of the Ritz in Paris, and she invited me to dine with her and one or two others in a private room at the Café Voisins to meet Wilde; but unluckily an important previous engagement prevented me from accepting her invitation.

I have referred to my friend Walter Berry. He was one who could more than hold his own in any society however brilliant or accomplished. Another of a different epoch and from a profoundly different background was Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the German financial wizard, who every time that I met him held a whole table enthralled.

I have known many women who allied great social and conversational talent to their beauty; notable among them were Mrs. Edwin Montagu and Lady Diana Duff Cooper (now Lady Norwich). My friend, Lady Cunard, was unique -- the most complete personality that I have ever encountered. Another figure of legend whom I knew well was the Comtesse de Chevigny who was, as is well known, the original -- or shall I say the chief original? -- of Proust's Duchesse de Guermont. One of the most striking and memorable of the novelist's descriptions of her is at a great party in, I think, 1900. She looked worried and preoccupied, and when asked what was the matter, replied, "La Chine m'inquiete." And I reflect that more than once, in those far-off, seemingly carefree days before the First World War, I met the Comtesse de Chevigny and saw, across the dinner table, amidst all that brilliance and gaiety, that same sad and haunted expression. Had I asked her, would she have answered, I wonder, "L'Allemagne m'inquiete" or "Agadir m'inquiete..."?

Only recently, in the summer of 1953, I made the acquaintance of one of the most remarkable men of our time, an agreeable, shrewd and courtly old gentleman, the Sheikh of Kuweit, who is the personal embodiment of a truly astonishing romance -- the romance of a sudden, dazzling rise to almost incalculable wealth. Kuweit's oil resources have only lately been tapped, but they are of tremendous richness. The royalties which the Sheikh derives from them suffice, at present, to enrich him and his little principality something like fifty million pounds a year. This sudden flood of wealth has come to what, until recently, was a small, frugal Arab state (though nominally under British protection it has always preserved its independence, and therefore its ruler ought to be designated as Sultan, not as Sheikh), whose population, through many centuries, had pursued their changeless callings as fishermen, tillers of the soil or nomad shepherds. Suddenly industrial need, with its accompanying exploitation and expansion, has enveloped them, bringing a swift and total revolution in their way of life and outlook.

It is particularly fortunate therefore that the Sheikh himself is a man of great wisdom, who allies an incredibly clear-sighted understanding of what this industrial and technical revolution means to a profound awareness of his own responsibilities. I especially delighted in his company because I found a kindred spirit, one whose mind had its full store of Arab and Islamic history and culture, and a steadfast appreciation of the spiritual unity of the Arab world which underlies its present divisions and miseries.

There is, I have often thought, a curious resemblance between the Arabia of today and the Germany of 1830: the many political divisions and subdivisions, minorities far dispersed and under foreign rule, the jumble of monarchies and republics, and withal the drive of a common language, a common culture and a common faith -- and that common faith being Islam is sufficiently tolerant to embrace the Christian minority in its midst and admit them to a full share in Arab traditions, culture and aspirations. How will the Arab world evolve? Who can tell? But who, at the time of the Congress of Vienna, could have foretold the astonishing course of German history over the subsequent century?

The core of the Arab world is the high, central plateau of the Arabian Peninsula itself. Here Islam was born. Hence its vast tide of expansion poured out in the centuries after the death of the Prophet, that tide which carried Arab and Muslim culture across enormous area of the world -- to India and China and Southeast Asia, to Byzantium, down the length of Africa, and deep into Europe, being stemmed only at Roncesvalles. Hence in succeeding centuries has come every great wave of Arab resurgence. Is the whole drive ended now? Few would dare say so with confidence. But given the conditions of today, and the domination of the world by science and technology, the Arab's future greatness must be spiritual and cultural. This is far more in keeping with Islam whose very meaning is "Peace."

For in Arabia vast and portentous processes of change are at work. After a series of violent and vigorous campaigns, during the years of the final decline and the Ottoman Empire's suzerainty over these regions, Ibn Saud consolidated his authority over a large part of the peninsula. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is his creation, and there can be no doubt that His Majesty King Abdul Aziz was one of the outstanding Arab personalities of recent centuries. The veteran Ibn Saud has sired a splendid brood of sons, numbering nearly forty, all tall, handsome, virile men -- the modern counterparts of those bearded gallants who swagger through the pages of the Arabian Nights, causing strong men to tremble and maidens to swoon. Yet they cannot be dismissed as simple storybook characters; many of Ibn Saud's sons possess his redoubtable characteristics -- whether in glamorous Arab dress or in European clothes -for they are as much at home in committee rooms, conference halls and the saloons of luxury hotels in London or in Washington as they are in their father's tents at Nejd.

For to Saudi Arabia the West has lately come, with the same allembracing compulsive vigor as to Kuweit; the oil resources of the former are believed to be among the richest in the world. American enterprise is revolutionizing its economic existence. But the enormous power that this development brings is being used in a most enlightened and skillful manner, and it makes nonsense of the shallow propagandist allegations about the crushing effects of "economic imperialism." The United States is creating, in its dealings with Saudi Arabia, a new and profoundly significant pattern of relationships between so-called "backward" and "advanced" countries. There is the maximum of economic assistance and support, and exploitation of natural resources, with a complete absence of political interference. This outlook expresses itself in personal relations as well; it is a firm rule that if any American working in Saudi Arabia is discovered to have failed in courtesy toward the poorest Arab, he is at once sent home and forbidden to come back. There is thus being built up a sense of confidence, of good will and of mutual respect between the two peoples -- and between individuals -- which is of immense value both in itself and as an example to other nations who, whether under Point Four schemes or the Colombo Plan or any other of these world-wide arrangements, come into similar contact.

Whenever the state of my health has permitted, I have traveled widely since the end of the war. I have visited the two new independent nations that have succeeded the Indian Empire which I knew from my childhood; I have been to Egypt and East Africa, to Iran and to Burma.

Before the end of British rule in India one of the curious and erroneous opinions widely canvassed was that Indians lacked the capacity to govern themselves, manage their own affairs and play their full part in the councils of the world. Recent years have demonstrated the glaring falsity of this idea. Both countries have been particularly well served by their statesmen, high officials and diplomats; and their contributions to the work of the Commonwealth and of the United Nations have been many and valuable.

Bharat -- though an assassin's hand struck down Mahatma Gandhi at a time when his country still badly needed him -- has been devotedly served by many brilliant and patriotic men and women, notably Sardar Patel, Mr. Nehru and his talented sister, Mrs. Pandit. My own contacts with the new regime in Delhi are close and cordial, and I have been received there with great kindness and hospitality. We are all constantly aware of the immensely important part India plays, with increasing sureness and felicity of touch, in international affairs, seeking to provide a bridge of understanding between the West and a resurgent Asia in a fashion that is both courageous and sensible.

Pakistan faced at the outset a far harder task than her neighbor. In Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and other cities there existed both the traditions of a strong and stable administration and the facilities -the staff, the buildings and the equipment -- to maintain it. In Pakistan, however, everything, literally everything, had to be built from the very beginning. Typewriters, pens and paper and file covers hardly existed. Hundreds of miles separated East and West Pakistan. Neither had, in the ordinary sense, a capital city. Karachi and Dacca doubled and redoubled their size overnight; everything had to be built from the foundations up, and every ordinary facility of administration and government had to be established anew.

This vast task was undertaken with extraordinary skill and pertinacity. Pakistan was a going concern from the outset. Part of the genius of the Quaid-i-Azam was that, like the Prophet himself, he attracted into his orbit able and devoted people, and Pakistan has been served, throughout her brief existence, by men and women of the highest moral and intellectual caliber. They came from the ranks, not only of his previous followers, but of those who had been severely critical of his policy in earlier days. Their achievements have given the lie to all the croaking prophets who could foresee nothing but disaster for the young state.

First and foremost, of course, was the Quaid-i-Azam's sister, Miss Fatima Jinnah, who had been his companion, friend and helper for many years, who presided over his homes in London and Bombay, and later in his palace in Karachi and his summer home at the hill station of Ziarat. Miss Jinnah has much of the strength of character of her famous brother, much of his manner, voice, resolute bearing and appearance. Now, after his death, she is still prominent in public life, with a large and faithful following; and she acts as a zealous and vigilant guardian of the moral and political independence of her brother's God-given realm.

Ghulam Mohammed, the present Governor General, universally admired and respected, is a former industrialist and a learned and devoted student of the history of Islam, its magnificent rise, its gradual decline and its present hope and chance of rising, phoenixlike, from the ashes of the past. A former distinguished colleague of mine at the Round Table Conference and the committees which followed, Zafrullah Khan, is at present Foreign Minister; and he brings to his herculean responsibilities sagacity, forensic ability and great experience in the field of international affairs.

There was too the Quaid-i-Azam's faithful and skilled henchman, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was another tragic victim of the wave of violence and assassination which for some years swept the East. He is survived by his wife, in her own field of work and interests hardly less able and certainly no less devoted than her staunch and beloved husband. But Liaquat will long be missed; for surely if the Quaid had asked for an Abu Bakr, for a Peter, he could not have been granted a better one than Liaquat Ali Khan, whose qualities were not bright or showy but whose strength of character was solid, durable and of the utmost fidelity. He proved his worth in Pakistan's second stern testing. The Quaid's death, so soon after the foundation of Pakistan, strikingly resembled that of the Prophet himself who was received into the "Companionship-on-High" very soon after the triumph and consolidation of his temporal conquests. Similarly the Quaid did not live to preside long over the growth of the mighty child that he had fathered.

But Liaquat was in every way a worthy successor. Yet he who had been so near to the Quaid was himself soon to be struck down. Truly it may be said that he gave his soul to God. As life ebbed from him, his last words were: "No God but God, and Mohammed his messenger."

That is the stamp of a man whose achievement is the Pakistan of today. I think gladly of others: of Habib Rabimtoola, the brilliant son of a brilliant father, who had, as High Commissioner in London immediately after the formation of the State, a post of especial responsibility; of Mr. Isphani who, at the same critical period, represented his young country in Washington; of the present Prime Minister, formerly a very successful High Commis sioner in Ottawa, who is the grandson of Nawab Ali Chowdry, a colleague of mine in the early days of the Muslim League; of Amjid Ali, for many years my honorary secretary who has rendered great service in the most onerous of charges; and of the other Mohammed Ali, a brilliant expert on economics and finance.

Most of these men are comparatively young in years, and they come from families with industrial and commercial rather than political or official traditions. Their zeal, their efficiency and their success in their new tasks have all been notable. Is not the explanation that they have been sustained by their patriotism, by their devotion to a great cause, and, above all, by their Muslim faith and their consciousness of immediate and permanent responsibility to the Divine?

My most recent, postwar visit to Burma was a particularly happy experience. As I have pointed out earlier, I took the step of advising my followers in Burma, a good many years ago, to identify themselves in every possible way with the outlook, customs, aspirations, and way of life of the people among whom they dwelt -to give up their Indo-Saracenic names, for example, and to take Burman names; to adopt Burman dress, habits and clothing, and apart from their religion and its accompanying practices, to assimilate themselves as much as possible in the country of their adoption. Now that the people of Burma have regained their independence, this advice of mine, and the full and faithful way in which my followers have carried it out, have borne fruit. My wife and I were received in Burma by the President and the Prime Minister and many other leading and notable personalities with the utmost kindness and friendliness. Burma is a beautiful country; her people unite a deep piety (in few other countries does the Prime Minister have to be begged not to retire from office and -- as he longs to do -- assume the saffron robe and the begging bowl of the mendicant monk) to gaiety, gentleness and intensely hospitable generosity.

They were especially happy days that we spent in Rangoon. The climax of the hospitality which we received was reached, perhaps, on the night that we were bidden to dine, in our own apartments, on Burman food specially prepared for us in the President's palace. At eight o'clock sharp two aides de camp and several servants arrived with an array which marshaled in all something like thirty courses. The Burmans are by no means vegetarians nor are they particularly ascetic in their diet. Most of the dishes were very, very rich and very, very nourishing. When they were laid out, we asked the aides de camp to join us. After a few courses we announced that we had finished.

"Oh, no," said the aides de camp, smiling in the friendliest fashion. "We have been specially sent to see that you try every dish."

Such hospitality was irresistible. On we battled as bravely as we could, on and on to the puddings, the bonbons and the sugared fruit. After all, I had lived in Victorian London and had attended the long, rich and stately banquets of that era, but never in all my life have I known a meal which in variety and subtlety of taste and flavor could rival that dinner so kindly given to us by the President of Burma.

Iran, the home of my ancestors for many centuries, I first visited in February, 1951, to be present at the wedding of His Imperial Majesty the Shah. Although the circumstances and the duties of an active and busy life had, by chance, prevented me from going to Iran until I was well past seventy, I have always taken great pride in my Iranian origin. Both my father and my mother, it will be recalled, were grandchildren of Fateh Ali Shah, who was a pure Kajar of Turkish descent, and the outlook and way of life of the home in which I was brought up was almost entirely Iranian.

Therefore to go to Iran was in a real sense a homecoming. It was made especially precious by the graciousness and the kindness we received as personal guests of the Emperor, and in the beautiful palace which Her Imperial Highness, Princess Shams, most graciously put at our disposal.

In Mahalat, which was long my ancestors' home, I was received by thousands of Ismailis from all over Persia. It was good to see that their womenfolk had all given up the chaddur, the Persian equivalent of the Indian purdah. Isfahan, which we also visited, is more old-fashioned. There we saw the chaddur frequently worn, and we encountered a good number of men wearing the long, high-buttoned coat that was customary under the rule of the Kajar dynasty. In Tehran the effects of Reza Shah's policy of modernization are numerous and visible. Iranians in general do not resemble any neighboring Asiatic people; in ordinary appearance many of them might be mistaken for southern Caucasians. And nowadays in the cities their adaptation of European -- or allegedly European -dress and a somewhat forlorn appearance of poverty give them the down-at-heel look that one has seen in moving pictures about Russia.

Some of these appearances are, I think, misleading -- especially the appearance of poverty. Weight for weight, man for man, the masses of Iran are certainly better off than the masses of India or China; and although their standard of living is obviously not comparable with that of Western European countries or America, they are in matters particularly of diet better off than the people of many Asiatic nations, living distinctly above, not below, the margin of subsistence.

One fact is clear above the welter of Iran's problems and difficulties: if the present Emperor now has, after all the stirring vicissitudes through which he has lately passed, a free hand and is able to choose his own ministers and advisers and is not hampered by conservatism on the one hand and individualism on the other, Iran will be able greatly to raise her economic and social standards and to support in far better conditions a considerably increased population.

I must not close this brief record of my recent doings and experiences without some reference to an incident a good deal less agreeable than most that have lately come my way. One morning in August, 1949, my wife and I left our villa near Cannes to drive to the Nice airport to catch a plane to Deauville. Our heavy town luggage had gone on by road in our own two cars with our servants. My wife and I and her personal maid, Mlle. Frieda Meyer, were therefore in a car hired from a local garage. I was beside the driver, my wife and her maid in back. About two hundred yards from the gate of our villa the mountain road takes a sharp turn and another small road comes in at the side.

As we reached the intersection we saw another car drawn up across it, so that we could neither pass nor take the by-road. Three men, masked and hooded and extremely heavily armed -- they had no fewer than ten guns among the three of them -- jumped out and closed in on us. One of them slashed one of our back tires. The muzzles of their guns thrust into the car, one a few inches from my wife, another close to my chest. Fear, as one ordinarily understands it, did not bother any of us. I remember that I saw the hands of the man who was covering me trembling violently, and I thought with complete detachment: "That gun is quite likely to go off." My wife's maid, as she has often told me since, thought -again quite without agitation -- "When is he going to kill the Prince?" And my wife at her side had no sensation of alarm or fear at all.

I said, in my normal tone of voice, "We won't resist; we'll give you what you want."

One of them snatched my wife's jewel box which she held in her lap. As they backed away toward their car he said, "Please be kind. Let us get away."

Then when they were just about to jump back into their car, I found my voice and my sense of humor.

"Hi, come back!" I shouted. "You've forgotten your pourboire!"

One of them ran back and I gave him the handful of francs which I had in my pocket.

"Voilà le pourboire," said I.

"Merci, merci," he said again and again, as he ran back to the other car.

We went home and telephoned the police at Lloyd's. Lloyd's dealt with our claim completely and generously. After almost four years had passed, six men were brought to trial in 1953, and three were convicted and sentenced. And that, I think, is all that need be said about an episode as unpleasant as, in my long experience, it was unprecedented.

Postwar Years with Friends and Family

NEVER in my long life -- I may say with complete honesty -- have I for an instant been bored. Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love that time for me has fled on far too swift a wing. A mind that is occupied, in health or in sickness, with things outside itself and its own concerns is, I believe, a perpetual source of true happiness. In ordinary prayer, as we in Islam conceive it, adoration of the beloved fills up every nook and cranny of the human consciousness; and in the rare, supreme moments of spiritual ecstasy, the light of Heaven blinds mind and spirit to all other lights and blots out every other sense and perception.

In recent years, since the end of the Second World War, I have had a great deal of illness -- enough, I suppose, in its content as in its prolongation in time to have depressed me. I have undergone three major internal operations, two of them with what is ordinarily considered a fifty-fifty chance of survival. I have been laid low for months with severe heart trouble. Yet I have never been depressed. I can honestly say that my mind has constantly been occupied with things outside myself. There has been, for example, a great increase in Ismaili activities throughout the Islamic world with a swirl of new ideas and new schemes, with which I have been closely and actively associated. I have read a great deal; I have voyaged in my reading eagerly into the exciting new realms opened up by scientific discovery. The moment that I was well enough I went back to my old love -- golf; and golf has brought me a renewal and an extension of the friendships and acquaintances that have meant much to me over the years. I think in this connection of the golfers whom I have known: the genial, warmhearted, openhanded Castlerosse, for example, with whom I played often in the years before the war -an able journalist, a witty and intensely entertaining conversationalist, at all times and on all occasions a boon companion; or my good and wise old friend, J. H. Taylor, who used sometimes to travel with me, who was often my guest at my home, whose pupil I was over many weeks and months -- what a wonderful personality his is, with a mind ever open to delight in life and to curiosity about it -- it is good to know that he is in excellent health and enjoying his well-earned retirement in his home at his native Westward Ho! I shall, incidentally, always be glad that among the game's professionals I came to know many men like J. H. Taylor, who were of sterling worth and in every way examples to all who met them.

Travel is another pursuit which, since the end of the Second World War, my wife and I have resumed with especial zest and joy -- all the keener perhaps because it was denied to us in those dark years. We have returned to familiar places, discovering fresh charm and fresh beauties in them; and we have found delights hitherto unexplored. In Egypt we have tasted again the pleasure of Cairo that united, under its bright and limpid sky, so many civilizations, so many worlds; Luxor with its monuments; Aswan with its especial beauties of air and light; and Alexandria, the ancient and seductive, where memories of Greek and of Ptolemaic civilizations mingle in and alongside a big bustling modern Eypto-Levantine city and port. In India we have rediscovered the infinite beauty and wonder of that immense land -- the high hill station of Darjeeling, for example, with its incredible sunsets and sunrises of rose and pink over the immense snowclad peaks of the Himalayas. And there is Lahore, whose mosques and other buildings are often so curiously ignored in favor of Delhi and Agra, even by those who know a great deal about Moghul and Indo-Saracenic history and art. In Europe, Rome the majestic and Venice the elegant and sophisticated, though they are both cities that I have long known and loved, have of late revealed to me new secrets and new enchantments in light, color and architecture.

All my life I have been a constant theatergoer, and, as I remarked in an earlier chapter, a devoted lover of the opera. Whenever I can, wherever I am, I go to every good opera within reach. One ray of light illumined for me the long, dark years of the war when I was confined in Switzerland and deprived of almost all contact with the outside world: the Municipal Theater in Zurich had a series of wonderful operatic seasons. Every year Kirsten Flagstad -- the supreme singer among women as Caruso, to my mind, was the supreme singer among men -- came to give her magnificent renderings of her great Wagnerian roles. Some of the best Italian singers too -- Gigli and others -- came each year to Zurich. There was an almost unique pleasure about these memorable seasons: the concentration of talent and genius in one city, the sensation of this beauty's enduring and surviving in the midst of so much that was barbarous and horrible, and the contrast of this intellectual and sensuous feast with our deprivations.

There are friends of mine, old and new, with whom I share this zest for life, this complete freedom from boredom. There is Elsa Maxwell, the mention of whose name brings a bubbling sense of happiness. Hers is a friendship, hers is a kindness, which I profoundly appreciate, for which I am ever grateful. She possesses a true exuberance, a boundless joy in living; to others she gives perpetual pleasure, and she is happy because she makes them happy. Elsa Maxwell, the best of friends and the most forgiving to her enemies -- if such there be -- stands out as an example and an encouragement to all who believe that social intercourse should be accepted and appreciated as one of God's good gifts to mankind, and not as a dreary obligation to be shuffled through when necessity arises.

A couple of friends whom I cannot forbear to mention here -since they have come so much closer to us since the war -- have been my old racing trainer, Frank Butters, and his delightful, courageous wife. Their annual visit to us in the south of France was something to which, every autumn, we grew to look forward as one of the chief pleasures of next year's spring. Now alas, his health has so completely broken down that, though we go on repeating our annual invitations, Mrs. Butters has to refuse them. Greatly do we miss them both, but this sadness has not impaired our affection for two of the best human beings we have ever known.

A new good, kind friend made in the years since the war is Mr. Charles Grey, a member of the staff of the United States Embassy in Paris, a man of sweet and sunny temperament, gay, gentle and ever helpful. He is the embodiment of the French saying "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner." No one could be a better companion in joy or sorrow than Charles Grey, for he is another who realizes that friendship and social life are God-given, and that we ought to be thankful for them and accept them with joy and gusto and not with resignation or boredom. Elsa Maxwell, Charles Grey and I share one quality which I sincerely believe to be enviable: we don't know what boredom is.

During the 1953 Cannes Film Festival I met Miss Olivia de Havilland, the distinguished actress, a woman of subtle and interesting personality who seems to me to be in her own way, if I may say so, a seeker after truth. I believe that she is one of those fortunately gifted people who have an artistic and personal life of their own, full, busy and successful, and who are yet -- in and through this active day-to-day life -- sharply and constantly aware of the fundamental issue and problem of our world today, the enormous power that man has attained over physical nature contrasted with the still somewhat primitive limitations of his emotional and spiritual existence.

Another new friend -- one of the few truly great individual and creative artists of our time -- who is in his fashion a similar seeker after truth and a pilgrim in search of a reconciling wisdom amid the contradictions of today is Mr. Charles Chaplin, whom I first came to know in 1953. He and I have talked long and far into the night -- of the dreams that lie near our hearts, of the puzzles that afflict and sadden us. That Chaplin is a rebel goes without saying -- a rebel against the folly of modern society's impotence in the midst of such overwhelming material aggregations of power.

I will cite an example of the sort of thing which drives a mind like Chaplin's to distraction. A recent report of the World Food and Agriculture Organization stated, without equivocation, that the vast majority of human beings still live far below the hunger line, with consequences in waste, suffering, reduced productive capacity and shortened expectation of life too enormous to measure; and, as the report pointed out, at the same time the world's present ratio of food production (let alone the results of any improvements that would follow better methods of soil conservation, fertilization and farming) is sufficient to ensure a perfectly adequate diet for every human being alive if it were properly distributed.

Now if only some of the enormous capital investment all over the world which every year goes into totally unproductive and potentially violently destructive armaments could be expended in a single major productive project -- let us say water conservation, in building dams and artificial lakes and providing irrigation schemes for the huge empty and desert areas of the world -- the over-all agricultural output would be vastly and rapidly increased and the ordinary standard of living be raised thereby. This, which is a topic about which I have thought a great deal, I drew to Mr. Chaplin's attention, to discover that his views on it were just the same as mine.

His detractors have in the most unmeasured terms accused Mr. Chaplin of being sympathetic to communism. I discovered one aspect of communism which horrified him. Communist propaganda, as we all know, proclaims loudly from time to time Moscow's view that our two worlds, our two economic and social systems, can live peaceably side by side and maintain a system of exchange, not only economic but intellectual and cultural. Yet, as Chaplin argued fiercely, the communists have established the Iron Curtain, which prevents any real free exchange of ideas between the two worlds, banning utterly as it does a free interchange in writing and the other arts, unimpeded free and uncontrolled travel by students and tourists, and all the ordinary ways by which the people of one country or civilization get to know and comprehend the people of another. The only method, said Chaplin, by which the co-existence of our two systems would be possible, or could offer a natural and healthy solution of humanity's troubles and problems, would be to open all frontiers to travelers, with the minimum of passports, currency control and restrictions and with a free and full interchange of literature -- academic, journalistic and popular as well as technical and scientific -- from one end of the world to another, such as existed in the far-off, happy days before 1914.

Mr. Chaplin is interested in certain psychical and nonphysical phenomena, such as telepathy and its various derivatives. He quoted to me Einstein's demand that ten scientists should witness at the same time, and under precisely similar conditions, every case of this kind submitted before he would consider these manifestations proved. He and I agreed that the imposition of this kind of test would make all psychical research and experiment impossible, for these phenomena -- and the laws under which they occur -- are simply not at the beck and call of human beings.

I consider it a real privilege and pleasure to have met Mr. Chaplin and his beautiful and accomplished young wife. She comprehends and fully sympathizes with his ideals, with his mental and spiritual aspirations and satisfactions, and with the real suffering that the contradictions of our time cause him. I, who by the grace of God's greatest gift, am myself blessed with a wife who fully understands the joys and the sorrows of my mind and my spirit, can well appreciate the happiness which he finds in a domestic life very similar to my own.

For a time a famous and beautiful young star of the screen was my daughter-in-law -- Miss Rita Hayworth, my son Aly's second wife. She is the mother of my granddaughter -- whom I have seen only when she was a new-born baby.

Aly's first marriage -- to Mrs. Loel Guinness, a young Englishwoman of beauty, charm, wit and breeding, born Joan Yarde-Buller, the daughter of Lord Churston -- had had my full and affectionate approval. They were married in 1936, when Aly was twenty-five; I took my daughter-in-law, Joan, to my heart; and I had, and still have, a great affection for her. She bore Aly two fine sons, my grandchildren; these boys are now at school and in due course they will go to universities in America -- the elder, Karim, who shows promise in mathematics, to M.I.T., we hope, and Amyn, probably to the Harvard Law School.

Their marriage remained perfectly happy until the end of the war. They were both in the Middle East, first in Egypt and then in Syria; Aly was in the Army and Joan was one of the many officers' wives who, at that time, were grass widows in Cairo. After the war they returned to Europe and Joan spent a year or two in East Africa with the children. However -- and to my real sorrow -- they drifted apart. Differences developed between them and they separated.

Not long after this, Aly went to the United States on business and there met Miss Hayworth. They were seen about a good deal together -- and a blaze of sensational publicity enveloped them, with endless gossip and speculation. They came to see me at Cannes, and I asked them if they were really devoted to each other; they both said that they were, so I advised them to get married as soon as possible.

As soon as their respective divorce formalities were completed, they were married -- but in circumstances of clamorous publicity such as we had never before experienced in our family. My own first wedding in India had been elaborate, yet its festivities were simple and unostentatious, but this was a very different matter. This was a fantastic, semiroyal, semi-Hollywood affair; my wife and I played our part in the ceremony, much as we disapproved of the atmosphere with which it was surrounded.

I thought Miss Hayworth charming and beautiful, but it was not long before I saw, I am afraid, that they were not a well-assorted couple. My son Aly is an extremely warmhearted person who loves entertaining, who loves to be surrounded by friends to whom he gives hospitality with both hands. Miss Hayworth was obviously someone who was emotionally exhausted with the strain of her work, which had absorbed her almost from childhood, and she therefore looked upon her marriage as a haven of peace and rest. Certainly for two people whose ways of life were thus dramatically opposed the collapse of their marriage was inevitable.

However, I must say that instead of tackling the matter frankly and openly, Miss Hayworth somehow got it into her head that either Aly or I myself might try to take her daughter away from her, indeed kidnap the child. Therefore taking the child with her, she ran away from my son in rather extraordinary circumstances.

Had Miss Hayworth taken a little care and trouble, she could have found out what in fact are the Ismaili religious laws and the code which governs all my followers and my family in these matters. Under this code the custody of young children of either sex rests absolutely with their mother, no matter what the circumstances of the divorce. Unless we were criminals, therefore, we could not even have contemplated taking the baby, Yasmin, from her mother. When they are seven, boys pass into their father's custody, girls into their mother's until puberty when they are free to choose. This code surely offered Miss Hayworth ample protection.

I was in India and Pakistan when the final crisis in my son's domestic life was developing. The moment I got back to Cannes -that very same night -- Miss Hayworth, without having let me even see the baby, took her and ran away to Paris and then from Paris back to the United States. She has since, I understand, come back to Europe; but she has not brought the child to show her to her father's family.

The day that she was leaving with the child, a busybody in my employ telephoned to tell me what was happening and to ask what she should do about it. I answered at once that it was no affair of ours and that Miss Hayworth was fully entitled to take the child wherever she wished. She could surely have delayed her departure for Paris from Cannes and have let me see the baby.

Friends of mine and my lawyers have always maintained that I might have made a trust settlement or taken out an insurance for my small granddaughter's future. Their arguments, though wellintentioned, are mistaken. They have not realized that under Islamic law the custody of a female child, until puberty, rests absolutely with her mother. They have also forgotten that there is no way under Islamic law by which a child can possibly be disinherited by his or her father. Were my son Aly to die, he is not allowed to will away from his legal heirs more than one third of his property; two-thirds must go to his heirs, of whom his daughter Yasmin is one, and he cannot interfere with this provision in any way. Nor does Muslim law allow a testator to benefit one legal heir at the expense of another. Therefore, whatever happens to my son Aly, the child Yasmin is bound to get her proper share of any estate which he leaves. So long as capitalism and any system of private property survive, it is unlikely that Aly will die penniless; consequently, there is no particular urgency about making financial provision for his daughter.

A system of dowries and of marriage settlements is, I understand, developing in the United States, and doubtless when the child is of an age to contemplate marriage, either my son or I will arrange a reasonable dowry for her, in relation to the circumstances of the man she marries.

In conclusion, I can only hope that when next Miss Hayworth comes to Europe, she will bring her small daughter with her so that her father's family can see her and have the pleasure of making her acquaintance.

The Second World War

THE OUTBREAK of the Second World War meant for me the shattering of the hopes of a lifetime. The great Palace of the League of Nations at Geneva, which I had opened, was deserted and shuttered. Its emptiness and its silence were sharply symbolic. However, it was in Switzerland that I found myself in those late summer and early autumn days of 1939 when Hitler's armies swept over Poland, and Britain and France, for the second time in a generation, went to war against an aggressive and conquest-hungry Germany.

Although later in the war, when I was permanently resident in Switzerland, the Swiss Government -- in the difficult and delicate conditions of the time -- had to ask me to refrain from political activity of any kind, that provision was not in force in September, 1939. I was able therefore to address manifestoes to my followers everywhere bidding them give all the support and help of which they were capable to Britain and the British cause. There was, however, no occasion for diplomatic or political activity on my part such as I had undertaken in the First World War. No great Muslim Power was involved, as the Ottoman Empire bad been involved. There was no Khalif; there was no proclamation of a jehad. My duties and my responsibilities were no more and no less than those of any other private citizen.

I had at that time a considerable number of horses in training and at stud. In the belligerent countries racing on any scale was obviously off for the duration and probably for a long time afterward. However, in 1939 Italy was not a belligerent. It occurred to me that I might be able to negotiate a deal which would not be unhelpful to the Italian Government and -- if I made a profit, as I hoped to do -- would supply me with a considerable sum to invest in British War Loans. With my wife I went to Florence, and offered to sell all my horses to the Italian Government. I found that my offer had considerable support among people of standing, particularly those who wanted Italy to stay out of the war; Ciano himself, I have since discovered, was in favor of it. However, at the highest level, and on the edge of completion, the deal was forbidden by Mussolini himself.

To me this was a clear indication of Mussolini's intentions, for in addition to the large sum which I asked, I imposed two conditions, the money was to be paid immediately, but the horses were not to be delivered in Italy until after the end of hostilities.

Before I made this approach to the Italian Government, I had offered my stallions and mares to the British National Stud. In those days, I ought perhaps to point out, my son Aly had no share in the ownership of my stables, and I was therefore at liberty to do exactly what I liked without consulting anyone else. My terms in this offer were however very different from those which I later proposed to the Italian Government. For my whole stable, including Bahram, Mahmoud, and every race horse I had, I asked not one tenth of their real value, and less than a fifth of the price which I was on the verge of getting from the Italian Government. The Ministry of Agriculture however, for reasons best known to themselves, rejected an offer which I believe to have been unique and one which would also have been of enormous benefit to agriculture, one of Britain's most vital industries in peace and in war. To this day I have never understood this decision. They did not even bother to look in the gift horse's mouth.

In the winter of 1939-1940 I went to India, spending some months there seeing and staying in Delhi with the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow. I gave him an account of the failure of my negotiations with the Italian Government. In April I went with my wife and my young son to my villa at Antibes in the south of France, as I had been accustomed to do for years. The cataclysmic events of May and June, 1940, took me, like so many others, utterly by surprise. During my years at Geneva I had come to know many French statesmen, and always their confidence in the French Army's strength was so supreme and so unshakable that when French resistance collapsed along almost the whole front from the Rhine to the Channel, and the Nazi motorized divisions swept south and west across France, I was shocked and appalled beyond belief. When Italy declared war on the Allies, and the French Government, abandoning Paris as an open city, took refuge in Bordeaux, I saw that we were in peril of being trapped in a totally vanquished country. With my wife and my son I made my way as quickly as I could to Switzerland, by almost the last remaining door out of France before the end. My elder son Aly had taken a commission in a British Yeomanry Regiment and with official approval had been attached to the French, and he was at this time with their forces in Syria. My daughter-in-law, with her small boys, was in Cairo.

Neutral Switzerland was a haven, but for several years it was an isolated and solitary haven. I was barred from political activity; I was cut off from most of my contacts with the outside world; and these years saw the beginning of my series of grave illnesses. From the British Consul General in Geneva, Mr. Henry Livingston, and from his colleague in Zurich, I received a great deal of kindness and help in times that were difficult and trying enough for us all.

The origins of my illness lay several years back. From about 1935 I had been aware of certain troublesome internal symptoms, but various doctors whom I consulted did not take a particularly serious view of them. In Switzerland in 1940 I took the advice of a number of eminent surgeons; I underwent examination after examination, and the doctors' view grew graver and graver, with more than a hint that the tumor, which was the cause of the trouble, might be malignant. Its position was such, however, that they considered it dangerous to operate. Hemorrhages were an almost daily experience; I lost strength steadily and in consequence was greatly depressed. Only after the war, when I was able to go to Paris, did the great French surgeon, Professor François de Gaudard d'Allaines, operate on me and, removing the tumor, discover that it was non malignant. This however did not entirely end my trouble; of my subsequent bouts of illness I shall have something to say later.

Meanwhile during my enforced stay in Switzerland there was one profoundly important change in my private life. I have referred before to the differences between the Christian and the Muslim view of marriage and to the misunderstandings which arise. Whereas those brought up in the Christian tradition, with its sacramental concept of marriage, find it hard to understand the practical and contractual basis of the Islamic idea of marriage, for Muslims it is just as difficult to comprehend the laws in the West which compel the continuance of an unhappy marriage and insist on the artificial and arranged sin of adultery in order to bring to an end an association that has become insupportable and to permit both partners to make a fresh start in life.

Maritally my third wife, Princess Andrée, and I drifted apart, although our affection, our respect and our true friendship for each other were in no way impaired. In these circumstances by mutual consent we were divorced in a civil court in Geneva in 1943.

Thirteen months later I married my present wife, whom I had first met in Cairo and whom I had known for many years. I can only say that if a perfectly happy marriage be one in which there is a genuine and complete union and understanding, on the spiritual, mental and emotional planes, ours is such.

As a good Muslim I have never asked a Christian to change her religion in order to marry me, for the Islamic belief is that Christians, Jews -- and, according to some tenets, Zoroastrians and reformed Hindu unitarians -- may marry Muslims and retain their own religion. With no attempt on my part at influencing her mind, my present wife had already been converted to Islam while she lived in Cairo. Perhaps each of several motives and impulses played its part in her conversion: the quiet fervor of Muslim believers in their Friday prayers; the complete absence of snobbery, prejudice and racial pride that is fundamental to Islam's practice and preaching; and no doubt the serene, consolatory beauty -- a beauty that seems spiritual as well as physical -- of a mosque like that of Sultan Hassan in Cairo.

Our marriage came then at a time when I badly needed my wife's support and understanding. She has been my strong and gentle help and comforter through all my serious illnesses of recent years. I have at last been granted the real and wonderful haven of finding in and with my wife a true union of mind and soul.

My only political activity of any importance in the war years concerned the Allies' entry into Persia in 1941, with the double intention of opening up a less vulnerable line of communication with the Soviet Union than the route taken by the Arctic convoys to Murmansk and Archangel, and of preventing Persia's being used as a base for Axis intrigue and espionage against the Allies' position in the Middle East. This action, strategically necessary as it doubtless was, involved the deposition of that remarkable monarch, Reza Shah, and precipitated a long period of unrest, resentment and frustration in relations between Persia and the West which only reached (let us hope) its end in the events of August, 1953.

It may be timely, therefore, if I give a brief character sketch of Reza Shah, whom I knew well, before I describe the steps by which I attempted to ameliorate, on his behalf, the Allies' action in respect to his country. Reza Shah, although he had had his military education and training under Russian officers, was of pure Iranian descent, from the north of the country, a region whose peoples have not mingled their blood with the tribes of the south, nor with the Turkish tribes that settled in Persia in the epoch of the great migrations. The family name which he took, Pahlevi, indicates that he fully realized that his origin was pure Aryan Iranian.

I myself, as I have said, am closely related on both sides of my family to the preceding Kajar dynasty, whose beginnings were Turkish but whose blood, through the generations, had of course mingled extensively with that of the Iranians whom members of the dynasty married.

Reza Shah Pahlevi was a man of great stature, whose strength in his prime was moral as well as physical. A cavalry man by training, he rose rapidly -- like Nadir Shah before him -- by sheer ability, strength of character and superior intelligence, and became at length Minister of War under Ahmed Shah, the last Kajar emperor. With Ahmed Shah's encouragement he became Prime Minister and virtual dictator of Iran. His ambition was to make Iran a truly independent country, free of all de facto if not de jure suzerainty imposed from without, and free of constant Russian and British pressure and the clash of interests of these two countries. From all that I know of him I have long been convinced that he would have had no desire to seize the throne had Ahmed Shah shown even an ordinary interest in his country and in his duties as its sovereign.

Ahmed Shah's story was sad and not unfamiliar. He was an extremely intelligent young man, highly educated, with a wide knowledge of both Eastern and Western culture, and well read in history, politics and economic theory. But his intellect and his talents were corroded by a profound and pervasive pessimism. He did not believe that by effort, by intelligence and application -- all qualities which he possessed -- he could make his throne and his dynasty prosperous and stable. An indication of his strange indifference to the normal impulses of life was that, although he had children, he allowed his brother to remain heir apparent to his throne. I knew him well, both as a near relative and as a friend. We were on excellent terms and we met often. It was obvious, however, that he did not care about his crown, or rather he lacked any belief that he could achieve anything constructive with his destiny or do anything to improve conditions in his own country. He concentrated on providing for his children and his mother, and to a certain extent for his brother; he made shrewd investments in the United States, and carefully and steadily built up his private fortune. Adroit as he was in administering his personal affairs, he was equally despondent about his duties as Shah.

His end was untimely. He was enormously fat, and he determined to reduce his weight. He went to extremes, cut his weight down by half, and did his health irreparable harm. He was still quite a young man when he died in the American Hospital in Paris. But before that he had lost his throne. Again and again he was urged to go back to Persia; he disregarded every summons from his government and ignored the anxious advice of friends such as myself, and flatly refused to resume his duties. In these circumstances Reza Shah Pahlevi was fully justified, historically and constitutionally, in assuming the crown and the responsibilities which had been abandoned by the man in whose charge they had been set. And I therefore was one of the first to send him my homage and my prayers for a felicitous and prosperous reign.

Reza Shah was an able ruler, a patriot who suffered real torture to see his country perhaps the most backward of all the world's independent and sovereign nations. He was a shrewd and courageous modernizer. First, he set out to free Islam, as it was practiced in Iran, from the many superstitions and from the many semiidolatrous ideas and practices which -- contrary to the true tenets of our faith -- had been fostered in Iran by the ecclesiastical lawyers, who thus kept the people ignorant, their own interests secure, and their power supreme. The Kajar dynasty, in order to conserve its own position, had allied itself with this bigoted semipriesthood, and together they had discouraged the younger generation in Persia from going to Europe and America in order to equip themselves intellectually and technically in all that the industrial and scientific revolution had brought about. Reza Shah broke away from this, opened the doors of his country to the study of modern science and sent large numbers of Persian students to universities in Europe and America. He encouraged the education and emancipation of women and ended the horrible custom of purdah. He strove to foster national industries, especially carpet making which he restored to a high standard equal to the best traditions of the Saffevi period. In fact he was Iran's equivalent of Kemal Ataturk. But the long, deliberate obscuration, which had been the work of the Kajar dynasty and of their allies, made his task far more difficult than Ataturk's.

He passionately resented any attempt at interference in the internal affairs of his country by any foreign Power. No doubt in his dealings with both Britain and Russia he was helped by a number of factors: that the First World War had gravely weakened them both; that Britain's imperialist and expansionist ambitions and policies had dwindled almost to the vanishing point; and that Russia, absorbed in the consolidation of the new regime, in the Five Year Plan and the vast tasks of reconstruction allied to it, had no desire, for the moment, to resume the Czarist policy of expansion in Western Asia.

Therefore when the Second World War broke out, Reza Shah sought to keep Persia out of the conflict to the end, as did the rulers of other countries absorbed in their own internal problems. However, man proposes, but God disposes.

Until Germany attacked Russia in the summer of 1941, neutrality was not impossible for Persia. Thereafter however her position became increasingly vulnerable as its strategic importance grew. Even before the outbreak of war in the Far East and America's fullscale participation in the conflict, United States aid to the Allies was constantly growing in volume, and Lend-Lease untapped a vast source of vital military and other supplies, a proportion of which it was agreed to divert as soon as possible to Russia.

Access to Russia by any European route was, however, impossible. The Germans straddled every sea and land route. A certain number of ocean convoys were sent by the Arctic route, at an enormous sacrifice of British and American lives, and the cargo they gave so much to bring was received by the Russians grudgingly and without a word of thanks. The Chiefs of Staff were therefore determined to open up a less menaced and less costly road through Persia.

Reza Shah, proudly jealous of his country's hard-held independence, misled by the hitherto placatory attitude which he had encountered in both British and Russians and by the apparent depth and magnitude of Germany's military success, was totally uncooperative about offering to the Allies the facilities which they asked. In his view they implied the abandonment of Iranian neutrality.

The Allies at this juncture in the war were extremely hardpressed. They could and did however assemble a sufficient show of military strength to overpower any Persian chance of effective re sistance to their demands. A small force, sent from India, entered Persia; and I, far away in Switzerland, at once appreciated how gravely Reza Shah had jeopardized his own position. Through His Majesty's Consul General in Geneva, I therefore sought the Foreign Office's permission to communicate with him. I had some hope that, since our relations had always been very friendly not only at the time of his accession but consistently thereafter, he might listen to my advice. In a long telegram I implored him to realize that his throne was in danger and that if he persisted in this attitude of non-co-operation his own abdication would be compelled and Iran, instead of entering the war as an honored ally, would be forced in as a satellite. Alas, I do not know whether my telegram reached him soon enough to give him any time to reflect. I had had to wait for Foreign Office permission to send it. The pace of events in this crisis was rapid, and I fear that in all probability my telegram reached him too late, and his abdication had by then become inevitable. However, there is some consolation in the fact that -- as I have subsequently been told by the man who was then his Court Minister, wielding great power -- the second part of my cable, in which I begged him to come into the war on the side of the Allies, did have some effect. With the departure of the Shah, the people of Iran themselves could speak, the dynasty was saved and the present Emperor, Reza Shah's son, acceded peacefully. Reza Shah was sent into exile, first to Mauritius and thence to Johannesburg, where very soon afterward he died -- doubtless of a broken heart.

The war years passed. Facilities for communication between Switzerland and the outside world were extremely restricted for a long time. I was able to send a rare telegram by courtesy of the Ambassador on great occasions, such as the substitute Derby, for example. Private telegrams to England took a fortnight or longer, and were often never received at all. I managed to hear that two of my horses had finished second and third in the Derby; and I also got the news that Tehran, which my son Aly had leased to me, was second in the 1944 Derby. Later in 1944, with the liberation of the greater part of France, news came through much more easily, and I heard at once of Tehran's victory in the St. Leger. Throughout the war these interests of mine had been in efficient hands; the father of my present agent, Mr. Nesbit Waddington, looked after my stud, and all my racing interests were supervised by Mr. Frank Butters in Newmarket. Gradually after the war I resumed my own day-to-day control of my stud and my race horses in training, and by 1947 the administration of them all was back in my hands.

Early in 1945 my long seclusion ended. The British Ambassador in Paris, now Lord Norwich, secured special French police protection for me; and my wife and I -- in spite of the fact that a large part of the countryside was still fairly lawless, with German soldiers at large and armed bands marauding -- got through to Marseilles without mishap. In Marseilles we were for a time the guests of the U.S. Army and of the commanding officer, General John B. Ratayo. From Marseilles we made our way in a British military aircraft to Cairo.

Although British G.H.Q. had been established in Cairo for all the Middle East campaigns from 1940 on and although a vast assemblage of British troops was in and around the city, it had been scarcely scarred by the war. Its social life as always was diverse, polyglot and many-sided. At the British Embassy there presided the last of the proconsuls, Lord Killearn, formerly Sir Miles Lampson, the man who earlier in his career had been primarily responsible for the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. In and around the big houses, the hotels, the great new blocks of apartments in Gezira and the Garden City, a busy and exuberant social life ebbed and flowed. Anglo-Egyptian relations were in a phase of superficial correctness and amiability, overlying an increasing tension.

In Egyptian Court and political circles I had countless friends and acquaintances, including many members of the Royal Family. Three at least deserve, in my view, more than passing mention: KingFarouk, whom I now met for the first time as a grown man; his Prime Minister, Nahas Pasha, and his Heir Apparent, Prince Mohammed Ali.

Prince Mohammed Ali and I have been friends for fifty-five years. When I first went to London in 1898, he and I stayed at the same hotel, the old Albemarle in Piccadilly. He dined at Windsor Castle as Queen Victoria's guest either shortly before or after I had the same honor. By a curious and delightful coincidence, fifty-five years later, in Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Year, he and I, who had been Queen Victoria's guests at dinner, in the same summer were her young great-great-granddaughter's guests at tea. Across this great stretch of time Prince Mohammed Ali and I have been firm and fast friends.

His is a fascinating and many-sided personality. A younger brother of the Khedive, he exerted for long a quiet, soothing but very powerful influence, largely behind the scenes, in Egyptian life and politics. He never married, since his view is (it has always been said) that his health has not been robust enough for him to feel justified in founding a family. Yet his energy and vivacity are as great as his spirit is sensitive and his intellect powerful. All his life he has been a devout Muslim; he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca; he is steeped in Islamic culture. Not long ago he wrote a series of pamphlets on Islam, its meaning and its spiritual message for mankind, many copies of which he asked me to circulate in Europe. He speaks several languages, ranging from Arabic and Turkish, through English, French and German and one or two more. His detailed historical knowledge of Egypt, whether in the time of the Mamelukes or in the era of his own great-grandfather, the conqueror Mohammed Ali, is truly phenomenal. His friends and admirers are legion, not only among his fellow countrymen and co-religionists but in Egypt's numerous foreign colonies and minority communities -- British, French, Jews and Greeks and Copts. Outside Egypt he has earned respect throughout the Muslim East, in Europe and in the United States. All his life he has been a great admirer of Britain and of the British character and way of life, and a staunch supporter of AngloEgyptian friendship and understanding through many vicissitudes and disappointments. With the end of the monarchy and the establishment of the new regime in Egypt, he went into voluntary exile, without bitterness or resentment, wishing Egypt and her people un der their new rulers continued and increasing prosperity, but feeling that he himself -- being far advanced in years -- lacked the strength to contribute his share. His palace, his famed and beautiful botanical gardens and his princely collection of objets d'art he has left in trust, to become after his death a national museum. Now in a green and tranquil old age he spends his summers in Switzerland and his winters on the French or the Italian Riviera. Long may he enjoy a peaceful retirement.

Nahas Pasha I first met when Egypt entered the League of Nations; he came to Geneva and I, as India's representative, entertained him. Much of his long-established success as a politician was due to his powers of oratory, to the spell of authority which he could exert over the masses of his fellow countrymen; these qualities however are scarcely visible when you first encounter him. By an odd irony, while he is likely to be remembered in history as a statesman who came into serious conflict with the sovereign whom he served, he is in fact an out-and-out monarchist. Madame Nahas has told me of the depth of the devotion which her husband felt for King Farouk, and with that devotion a strong conviction that the King would be best served by being constantly reminded of the limitations which hedged his power as a constitutional monarch. Now this is without doubt one of the legitimate duties of a Minister; but even in Britain -- as Mr. Gladstone found in his long but severely formal association with Queen Victoria -- an adviser who is forever telling a monarch what he or she must not do is not likely to be as popular with his sovereign as those who do not take quite so rigid or comfortless a view of their responsibilities. In Nahas Pasha this was not merely a superficial trait, but a fundamental principle on which he acted resolutely and without deviation. I myself have heard him say more than once: "Le roi regne, mais il ne gouverne pas."

Doubtless to a young and energetic sovereign like King Farouk it must have been irksome to have to accept advice so frequently. The King extended to his Prime Minister all the accustomed courtesies -I have often, for example, seen the two of them sitting side by side in the Royal box at the opera -- but always one felt that behind the polite formalities there was a gulf which could not be bridged, with the King on his side nourishing a deep but unspoken resentment, and Nahas Pasha on his, a regret that his loyalty and his devotion were not appreciated.

And King Farouk himself? To me as to many others there will always, I think, be something enigmatic in this sad yet remarkable man's character. There are many baffling contradictions about him; yet back of them all there is great charm and a genuine and compelling simplicity. His father died when he was still a boy. His mother went abroad almost immediately and the young Farouk was deprived of the influence and the love of both parents. He was sent to England to be educated; yet he lived to all intents and purposes a prisoner in a vast country house, forbidden to go out and about and mingle freely with the people among whom he lived, under orders given by his father in the jealous fear that the boy might not grow up along the lines which he had laid down. He had no proper schooling, never went to a university, and spent only a few months attending the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. There can, however, be no doubt as to his natural abilities. Like his uncle, Prince Mohammed Ali, he is an excellent and versatile linguist. But he has, I think, always felt hampered by the lack of the education which both his station and his talents merited. This developed in him an inferiority complex when he constantly found himself, as he was bound to do, in the company of highly educated as well as accomplished men of all nationalities; in compensation therefore he turned to a small coterie of inferior and ill-educated flatterers. Loveless in childhood and solitary, he grew almost morbidly afraid to be alone or in the dark or with time on his hands.

In this unfortunate background, I believe, lie the real reasons for the habits which have earned him criticism at home and notoriety abroad, for the gambling that has been so harshly reprobated and for the long, aimless hours wasted in seeking distraction in cabarets and night clubs. That they were wasted it is, alas, impossible to deny. Their sad and purposeless vacuity can be explained, if not excused, by his lack of discipline in childhood, and by the fact that nobody bothered to teach him that a man's chief capital is time, and that if he wastes time, he wastes his greatest asset which can never be recouped.

Against his defects I prefer to set his good qualities: his piety; as a good Muslim his aversion to alcohol (and this in spite of all that hostile critics have said of him); his courtesy and kindness especially to the poor, to humble fellahin and servants; and his patriotism and his pride in his country. This last I know to be a major trait in his personality. He is an Egyptian from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, resenting hotly any suggestion, from any source, that Egypt and the Egyptians are or ever have been inferior to any country or people in the world; longing to recapture his nation's greatness at the time of Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim Pasha; and intensely proud of the farsighted ideals and achievements of his grandfather, the Khedive Ismail.

Each of us, it is said, is composed of many diverse and conflicting elements; seldom in one human being has the mingling been more complex and more contradictory than in this ill-starred yet amiable and talented King. Until late in his reign, when the worst of the damage had already been done, the uncertainties about the possibilities of the succession created in and around his Court an unhealthy atmosphere of stealthiness, intrigue and suspicion. His father occupied a throne left vacant because his cousin, the Khedive Abbas Hilmi, had been barred from it and because the other obvious claimant, the Sultan Hosein's eldest son, was not considered suitable by the Protecting Powers. He himself was an only son; until his second marriage, he had no son. There was a guarded uneasiness about the safety of his person, which in its way was just as insidious as direct and open fear of assassination.

His contests with his Ministers were protracted and stubborn. He himself believed, as his father had done before him, that Egypt's prime need was for firm and authoritative rule and guidance from the King. The Wafd, by far the biggest and most influential political party, strongly nationalist in sentiment but representative of big vested capitalist and industrialist interests, wanted to make him a rubber-stamp sovereign. They came into conflict again and again on numerous issues. There grew up as the King's instrument, or instruments, a group of politicians who looked to the King for their power and their promotion. At the times when the King and the Wafd could not get along together, it was one or another from this group, the King's Free Political party -- as it was known -- who would be called in to form a government which would last until the next major crises. In the Army too, it was said, the King used the same tactics, giving his favorites promotion, and thus incurring the unforgiving resentment of the officer class.

The Wafd's last sweeping electoral victory brought Nahas and his friends back into office, when the last possible permutation of politicians had been shuffled together against them and had failed. The King was deeply discouraged and took refuge in a sad and shoulder-shrugging pessimism. I met him on his last visit to Europe before his abdication, and I was immediately aware of a great change in him. He was enveloped in a mood of depressed fatalism, an atmosphere of "I cannot do what I wish -- very well, let them do what they want," which in the long run was bound to contribute to his defeat and downfall. He had tried in his own way to help his people and improve their lot, and now he felt that he had failed. I was strongly reminded of Ahmed Shah, the last of the Kajar dynasty in Iran. King Farouk, like Ahmed Shah, had embraced a profound and defeatist resignation and had lost faith in his power to fulfill his duties and serve his people. Like the House of Kajar, the dynasty established by Mohammed Ali fell; and in both countries the power passed, not to the politicians, but to the military.

There is a forlorn and pitiable sadness about King Farouk now. Unlike his uncle and former heir, Prince Mohammed Ali, he must in the course of nature face a long life. What are to be his occupations? Where and how will he be able to build for himself a new existence in which he can find some self-respect and some usefulness to his fellow men? At present it is most distressing to see him on his course from European city to European city, rootless and without purpose; and the distress is sharpened by the knowledge that he had it in him -- if he had had a proper education and proper guidance in his youth -- to be a good and patriotic, perhaps a great, King of Egypt.

The sixtieth anniversary of my inheriting my Imamat and ascending the gadi fell in 1945. But in the troubled conditions at the end of the Second World War it was neither possible nor suitable to arrange any elaborate celebrations of my Diamond Jubilee. We decided to have two ceremonies: one, including the weighing against diamonds, in Bombay in March, 1946, and another five months later, in Dar-es-Salaam, using the same diamonds.

When the time came, world conditions were only just beginning to improve and travel becoming a little less difficult than it had been in the last months of the war. However, a magnificently representative assemblage of my followers gathered for a wonderful and -- to me at least -- quite unforgettable occasion. There were Ismailis present from all over the Near and Middle East; from Central Asia and China; from Syria and Egypt; and from Burma and Malaya, as well as thousands of my Indian followers. Many of the Ruling Princes of India honored me with their presence, as did senior British officials in this stormy twilight of the Raj. Telegrams and letters of congratulation showered in on me from all over the Islamic world, from the heads of all the independent Muslim nations, and from the Viceroy. I was a proud and happy man to be thus reunited with those for whom across the years my affection and my responsibility have been so deep and so constant.

I hope and believe that this ceremony, in its timing and setting, was in itself a completely effective refutation of a mischievous and trouble-making but minor story which a handful of evil people have recently put in circulation. Some busybodies have ferreted out the fact that in the 1930's I approached the Government of India and suggested that I might be given a territorial state and join the company of Ruling Princes. From the refusal of this request they have drawn the quite erroneous and absurd conclusion that I was offended, and that in resentment I abandoned all the principles and ideals which I had cherished throughout my life. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is what really happened: it had long been felt among the Ismaili community that it would be desirable to possess a national home -- not a big, powerful state, but something on the lines of Tangier or the Vatican -- a scrap of earth of their own which all Ismailis, all over the world, could call theirs in perpetuity where they could practice all their customs, establish their own laws, and (on the material side) build up their own financial center, with its own banks, investment trusts, insurance schemes and welfare and provident arrangements. The idea of a territorial state made no particular appeal to me, but in view of the strength of Ismaili sentiment on the matter I made my approach to the Government of India. For reasons which I am sure were perfectly just and fair, the Government of India could not see their way to granting our request. The idea that they disapproved of me for having made it, or that I was hurt and disappointed by their refusal, is fantastic.

So far as I was concerned, the practical proof surely lay in the support, financial as well as in every other way open to me, that I gave to Britain's war effort from 1939 on; every penny that I could save or raise in London was invested in various war loans; and I know that neither the Bank of England nor the Treasury was unaware of the extent of such help as I was able to give.

So far as Britain and the British authorities in India were concerned, their help, their kindness and their consideration at the time of my Diamond Jubilee were unstinted. I am certain that we could never have held the celebrations at all if it had not been for the assistance and interest of Sir Stafford Cripps, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. All the authorities from the Chancellor down gave us every possible facility for the transport of the diamonds -- accompanied as it had to be with vigilant security precautions -- first to India and then from India to Africa. The Viceroy's personal message of congratulation was notable among the hundreds that I received, and it was exactly the same story a few months later in East Africa. There the weighing ceremony was honored by the presence of the Resident of Zanzibar, the Governors of Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda, and no less important a person than the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Creech-Jones himself; and the whole time that I was in Africa I was most hospitably and graciously received and entertained by the Governors and by all senior British officials with whom I came in contact. I trust that this disposes of a false canard.

To the celebrations in India there was an extremely serious side. An amount equal to the value of the diamonds -- more than half a million pounds -- had been collected and was offered to me as an unconditional gift. I wanted this enormous amount to be used for the welfare of the Ismaili community throughout what was then undivided India. The specific scheme which I had in mind was a trust, along the lines which Ismailis have built up in Africa, of which I have already given some account, which is in essence not unlike the Friendly Societies that have made so valuable a contribution to British life. I hold that for a trading and agricultural community such as the great majority of Ismailis are an organization of this character, combining welfare with prudent financial advice, assistance, loans, mortgages and so forth, is much more important and much more suitable than an ordinary charity fund.

However, other opinions prevailed in India. Having handed back the money, with my advice as to its disposal, to the representatives of those who had subscribed it, I did not like to use my authority as Imam to make my advice mandatory. It was decided to set up a conventional charitable trust -- a decision, I must emphasize, in which I had no share and no responsibility -- and there was the outcome which I had feared and foreseen, for it is not unfamiliar in the East. Before the trust could get into its stride there was protracted and disastrously costly litigation between various parties among the Ismallis in Bombay. I still hope, however, that when the suits are settled, at least half the original sum subscribed will not have been spent on costs and will be available for charity among the Ismailis.

I myself have sometimes been criticized for not supporting and encouraging ordinary charities on a large scale -- hospitals and dispensaries, schools and scholarships, and the usual run of charitable institutions and organizations. I am convinced that the Ismaili communities compose a special case. Many Ismailis are traders and middlemen; others are yeomen farmers, of the order of society known in Russian history as kulaks. Theirs is an intensely individualist outlook, acquired and fostered over many centuries. Welfare imposed from without is not in the pattern of their society. I am convinced that their first need is to learn to co-operate in their thrift and self-help, to extend what they practice in their families and as individuals to the community as a whole. This will not be achieved by the ordinary so-called charitable and welfare systems that are part of the fabric of existence in many European countries. Co-operation in banking and commerce, in the raising and lending of money, in building and in farming is, I sincerely believe, their path toward economic, social and cultural uplift, toward that better life for themselves and for their children which their talents and their virtues can secure.

The foundations have been well and truly laid in British East Africa and in Madagascar, and it is my earnest hope that by 1900 at least we shall have reached fruition in what I may call my worldly and material effort on behalf of my followers. In Egypt and Syria, in Pakistan, in India, Malaya and Portuguese East Africa the task will be more difficult. I am still at it however, and my Platinum Jubilee -- to be celebrated in 1954-1955-offers, in my opinion, a superb opportunity to repeat in these areas the efforts which we have so successfully inaugurated in British East Africa.

India in 1946 demonstrated every symptom -- in a critical and advanced stage -- of that malady whose course it had been possible to foresee from the day of the promulgation of the MontaguChelmsford reforms almost thirty years earlier.

That sense of spiritual unity and of continuity, which in my youth and long before had sustained British rule in India and had given it its moral fiber and backbone as well as its outward manifestations of efficiency and thoroughness, was now finally sapped. That almost schizophrenic contradiction, which from 1917 on had eaten into the solidity and firmness of Britain's moral and practical position in India, was now exacting its inevitable and final toll. "Quit India," those two words so often chalked on walls in Calcutta, in Delhi and Bombay and every other big city, were no longer an agitator's scrawl; they now expressed a desire and intention. The British were going from India. Now the chief problem was the rate of departure -- fast or slow. The only questions were when and how. Only a handful of Englishmen -- well under two thousand in all -were now left in the Indian Civil Service; but power was still concentrated in their hands; and so long as they were responsible, not to the people of India, but to the Parliament and people of the United Kingdom, India was not free and self-governing.

The Second World War affected India far more closely and far more profoundly than its predecessor. The whole of Southeast Asia, including Burma, fell to Japanese conquest in the first six months of 1942; the tide of invasion lapped at India's borders; and Japanese bombers appeared -- with remarkably little effect -- over Calcutta. India raised and sent into battle, on the Allied side, forces numbering some two million, the largest volunteer army in history. The curious and false British theory about the martial and nonmartial races of India broke down utterly, and men from many regions in Bengal and the South served gallantly in combatant units. In the Middle East, in East Africa and in Italy, Indian Divisions were for years an integral part of the fighting forces of Britain and the Commonwealth. The enormous value of their contribution to ultimate victory, from the Battle of Keren to Marshal Kesselring's final withdrawal in northern Italy four years later, is written imperishably into the military history of the war. Indian officers, holding the King's commission, had demonstrated again and again their gallantry, their sagacity, their leadership, and their capacity to exercise high command. In the later phases of the war India was the essential base for the Southeast Asian campaigns of 1944-1945, under Lord Mountbatten's supreme command, which drove the Japanese in disastrous retreat down the length of Burma and which were a major contributory factor in Japan's ultimate defeat.

Yet in the whole conduct and strategy of the war India, as India, had no say at all. Many of her most distinguished political leaders languished long years in political detention. At the height of the war, in the spring of 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps headed a British mission to India to try to work out -- against the background of the titanic problems of the time -- a feasible scheme for realizing India's aspirations. The Cripps Mission failed, breaking itself against the harshest rock of all -- the fact that although British and Hindu representatives alike hoped to preserve the unity of the subcontinent (not least so far as the British were concerned, in the conditions of 1942, the unity of the Indian Defense Forces), the price of achieving that unity was one which no Muslim could accept, and Muslim opinion by now had consolidated itself formidably under the leadership of Mr. M. A. Jinnah, the Quaid-i-Azam. He made it perfectly clear to Cripps that no constitution for a united India which did not satisfy nearly one hundred million Muslims would be accepted, and that their opposition to it would be broken only by killing them; when they said "Death or Freedom," that was what they meant.

After the failure of the Cripps Mission there followed more than three years of political stalemate. The Bengal famine of 1943 revealed how slender and how fragile were the bases of India's economy. Lord Linlithgow was succeeded as Viceroy by Field Marshal Lord Wavell. With the end of the war the political temperature soared swiftly all over India. Throughout the whole of Asia there was a surging tide of nationalist sentiment, an eager and insistent desire to throw off the shackles of colonialism. Japan's conquests, however detestable many of their military and social effects, had achieved one momentous result: they had demonstrated, to millions all over Southeast Asia, that their European masters were far from invincible. Millions had seen an Asiatic nation challenge and hold at bay for more than three years -- in a huge area extending from Korea to New Guinea and from the Assam border to the Central Pacific -- the combined might of the United States, Britain and the Commonwealth, France and Holland. The lesson was too glaring and too emphatic to be missed.

In India there was no talk now of a five -- or ten -- year period of transition. The struggle would be real, immediate and bloody unless self-government were granted, not in the future and on terms laid down by Britain, but at once and on conditions largely imposed by the people of India themselves. The most obvious symptom of the depth and magnitude of this feeling, visible to someone like myself returning after years abroad, was the hostility that had developed, not simply to Britain's political suzerainty, but to everything British -- to the English language, to English habits and customs, to pipes and whisky-and-soda, to European suits and collars and ties, so that even Indians who had adopted these habits were in some areas in real danger. As the saying goes, this brought the situation home to one.

Britain for her part had no longer either the desire or the capacity to hold India against her will. Vastly weakened by the long strain of the war, her overseas investments expended, Britain, once the creditor nation of the world, seemed now to be in almost everyone's debt. Victory had been secured, but at the price of world leadership. At home her people faced a long period of economic stringency, of shortages, austerity and rationing; and even before the end of the Far Eastern conflict the Coalition Government, which had led the nation to victory, had broken up, and the Labor party had -- for the first time in its history -- attained power, with a big Parliamentary majority as well as office. Mr. Attlee, the new Prime Minister, had taken a close interest in India's problems since his membership of the Simon Commission fifteen or sixteen years earlier. In addition to its program of social and economic reform at home, the Labor party had pledged itself to end British imperialism overseas wherever it was able to do so. Independence for India had been one of the main planks in its platform for years. Where the wartime Coalition Government had failed, its successor, in the flush of vigorous optimism of its earlier years of office was determined to succeed. A Cabinet Mission, headed by Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the Secretary of State for India, and Mr. A. V. Alexander, * the Minister of Defense, set out for Delhi to consult with the Viceroy, the Commander in Chief and the Indian political leaders on the way in which power should be transferred.

* Now Lord Alexander of Hillsborough.

The political leaders, with whom ultimately decision and authority rested, were four in number: on the Congress-Hindu side, Mahatma Gandhi, Mr. Nehru and Sardar Patel; on the Muslim side, Mr. Jinnah -- the Quaid-i-Azam. On their agreement or disagreement, translated into economic and political facts, depended the future of the subcontinent.

The Quaid-i-Azam's brilliant and epoch-making career, so untimely ended, reached its summit in these momentous years of 1946 and 1947. Now he belongs to history; and his memory, I am certain, is imperishable. Of all the statesmen that I have known in my life -- Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Churchill, Curzon, Mussolini, Mahatma Gandhi -- Jinnah is the most remarkable. None of these men in my view outshone him in strength of character, and in that almost uncanny combination of prescience and resolution which is statecraft. It may be argued that he was luckier than some -- far luckier for example, than Mussolini, who perished miserably in utter failure and disgrace. But was Jinnah's success all good luck, and was Mussolini's failure all bad luck? What about the factors of good and bad judgment?

I knew Jinnah for years, from the time he came back from England to Bombay to build up his legal practice until his death. Mussolini, I met once only; and a memorable occasion it was -- an afternoon in his box at the racecourse in Rome, when he harangued me for the best part of three hours, in very good English and curiously, for one who was such a "loudspeaker" in public, in a soft and gentle voice, but never once looking at the races or the people in the stands or on the course and never allowing me either to watch a race or open my mouth to argue with him. Yet between these two I detect one important similarity.

Each of them between his youth and his prime traveled from one pole of political opinion to the other. Mussolini made his pilgrimage from a socialism that was near-communism to the creation of fascism, from Marx to Nietzsche and Sorel. Jinnah in his earlier phases was the strongest supporter, among all Muslim political leaders, of Indian nationalism along Congress lines, with a unified Indian state as its goal; yet, in the final analysis, he was the man primarily responsible for the partition of the Indian Empire into the separate states of Pakistan and Bharat. He who had so long cham pioned Indian unity was the man who, in full accordance with international law, cut every possible link between India's two halves and -- in the teeth of bitter British opposition -- divided the Indian Army.

Different in many superficial characteristics, different (above all) in the success which attended the one and the failure, the other, these two, Mussolini and Jinnah, both apparently inconsistent in many things, shared one impressive, lifelong quality of consistency. Each had one guiding light; whatever the policy, whatever the political philosophy underlying it, it would be successful and it would be morally justified so long as he was at the head of it and directing it. In neither of them can this be dismissed as mere ambition; each had a profound and unshakable conviction that he was superior to other men and that if the conduct of affairs was in his hands, and the last word on all matters his, everything would be all right, regardless of any abstract theory (or lack of it) behind political action.

This belief was not pretentious conceit; it was not self-glorification or shallow vanity. In each man its root was an absolute certainty of his own merit, an absolute certainty that, being endowed with greater wisdom than others, he owed it to his people, indeed to all mankind, to be free to do what he thought best on others' behalf. Was this not the same sort of supremely confident faith which guided and upheld the prophets of Israel and reformers like Luther and Calvin? In our own epoch we have seen at least two other men who were animated by the same dynamic faith which shakes the nations, and each -- one for good and one for terrible evil -- was conscious of a cause outside himself: Hitler who dreamed of a German-imposed New Order that was to last a thousand years; and Mahatma Gandhi whose vision was of an India whose society, economy and whole life would be based on certain pacifist, moral principles, the objective existence of which meant much more to the Mahatma than anything in himself. Britain's two leaders in the two world wars were also men sustained by an irresistible and buoyant self-confidence, but both Lloyd George and Churchill were incapable of transgressing the limitations on the exercise of execu tive authority which are set by British life and by British civic, parliamentary, ethical and religious traditions and beliefs.

In the view of both Mussolini and Jinnah, opposition was not an opinion to be conciliated by compromise or negotiation; it was a challenge to be obliterated by their superior strength and sagacity. Each seemed opportunist, because his self-confidence and his inflexible will made him believe, at every new turn he took, that he alone was right and supremely right. Neither bothered to confide in others or to be explicit.

Mussolini traveled the long road from Marxism, not because of doctrinal doubts and disagreements, but because, in the world of Socialist politicians and theorists in which he spent his stormy youth as an exile in Lausanne, doctrines and theories were constant obstacles across the only path of practical achievement which mattered to him -- practical achievement in which Benito Mussolini was the leader. When fascism first emerged as a political force in Italy, nobody knew what it was, nobody could define its principles or its program, for it had none. Mussolini simply said: "Let us have a party, let us call it fascist" -- which meant anything or nothing. The party's only principle, its sole duty, was to do what its leader told it to do. And its leader believed implicitly -- and went on believing for a long time -- that everything the party did would be excellent, because everything was conceived and executed by Mussolini.

Throughout his career Jinnah displayed a similar characteristic. He would admit no superior to himself in intellect, authority or moral stature. He knew no limitations of theory or doctrine. The determined and able young barrister, who -- against all the omens, without influence and without inherited wealth -- triumphed within a few years despite entrenched opposition, became an Indian nationalist when he turned to politics. He joined Congress because he, like the Congress politicians, wanted to liberate India from British colonial and imperialist domination and because he believed that he himself could do it if he had a free hand. Yet in association with Congress he was a fish out of water. He worked to be the champion of Indian liberty, but his ideas of championship differed sharply from those of Congress' other leaders. He came back and rejoined those to whom he was linked by ties of race and religion. Nominally in the Muslim League of those days he was one leader among others, but he was unable to impose his beliefs and his policy, for the general tenor of Muslim thought ran strongly contrary to the convictions which he had held when he was in the Congress camp. He had worked hard and energetically for Congress; but, from his point of view, he was dogged by failure after failure. There was too deep a gulf between his concept of the duties and responsibilities of a political leader in a free society and those of the people with whom he worked. The instruments which he took up broke every time in his hands because it was impossible to reconcile policy as he conceived it with policy hammered out by compromise and negotiation in the committees and the councils of which he found himself a member. He met barrier after barrier and his frustration and his dissatisfaction deepened. His "point of no return" was, of course, the critical Congress meeting in Calcutta in December, 1928, dominated by the Nehrus, father and son. His disillusionment and disappointment there led him to the conviction that Muslims had no chance of fair and equitable treatment in a united India.

I here reaffirm that at the Round Table Conferences Jinnah played a loyal and honorable part as a member of the Muslim delegation. His work there, however, had not shaken his faith in his own means to his own end. The Muslims' sense of their own political needs and aspirations had been fortified and developed by years of discussion and negotiation with British officials and Congress representatives, and the Muslims very rightly followed and gave their full confidence to Jinnah.

In an era in which "no compromise" was coming to be the mood of something like a hundred million Muslims, Jinnah, the man who did not know the meaning of the word "compromise," was there to seize -- not only on his own behalf but on behalf of those whom he was destined to lead -- the chance of a lifetime, the chance perhaps of centuries. He embodied, as no one else could do, the beliefs and sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Muslims all over India.

Boldly therefore he came out and said: "We want a Muslim party. We want a unified Muslim organization, every member of which is ready to lay down his life for the survival of his race, his faith and his civilization."

But what program this organization should have, what specific and detailed proposals it should lay before its supporters, how its campaign should be timed and what form it should take, he would never say. What he intended, though he never said so publicly, was that all these matters be reserved for his own decision when the time came -- or rather, when he thought the time came.

The Muslim League, as it emerged under Jinnah's leadership, was an organization whose members were pledged to instant resistance -- to the point of death -- if Indian independence came about without full and proper safeguards for Muslim individuality or unity, or without due regard for all the differences between Islamic culture, society, faith and civilization and their Hindu counterparts.

Jinnah gave always the same order to his Muslim followers: "Organize yourselves on the lines I have laid down. Follow me, be ready -- if need be -- to die at the supreme moment. And I will tell you when the time comes."

A few intellectuals who could not sustain this unwavering faith in Jinnah fell away, and their criticisms of him were a reiteration of the cry, "What, how, where and when?"

I myself am convinced that even as late as 1946 Jinnah had no clear and final idea of his goal, no awareness that he would, within a twelvemonth, be the founder of a new nation, a Muslim Great Power such as the world had not seen for centuries. Neither he nor anyone else could have imagined that fate was to put so magnificent, so incredible an opportunity into his hands as that which occurred in the crucial phases of the negotiations with the British Cabinet Mission, and gave him the initiative when Lord Mountbatten arrived. Pakistan was born: a new nation, with the fifth largest population in the world, of whom ninety per cent are Muslims. And it was the creation of an organization which had only one guiding principle: "Follow the leader."

Jinnah, as I shall shortly relate, made the right choice at the right moment. How different might Mussolini's end have been, had he, when the supreme moment came, chosen right instead of wrong. For him there waited a criminal's end, humiliation and ignominy. Jinnah, on the other hand, attained immortal fame as the man who, without an army, navy or air force, created, by a lifetime's faith in himself crystallized into a single bold decision, a great empire of upwards of a hundred million people.

When I reached India in 1946 these mighty events were in train. Although the principle of conceding to India immediate and total independence had now won universal acceptance in Britain, there still remained the great questions: was it to be a united India, with a single army, navy and air force, or was the subcontinent to be divided, and how complete was the division to be? There was still a faint hope too that some sort of understanding might yet be possible between the Muslim League and Congress, or -- in terms of personalities -- between the Quaid-i-Azam and the Mahatma. In such an understanding lay, of course, the answers to the questions which I have just enumerated.

The Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, my old and dear friend, the Nawab of Bhopal, went with me to see Mahatma Gandhi, to explore the possibilities of reaching an understanding. There were also one or two other outstanding problems to discuss: for the Nawab, the future of the Ruling Princes and their states in a free India; for myself, the question of the Indian community in South Africa. In our two long conversations with him (the second of which terminated with the Mahatma's remarks on communism which I have quoted elsewhere) we came to the conclusion that there was no hope of a settlement between him and Jinnah. The Mahatma still firmly believed in a uninational India; Jinnah even more firmly held that there were two nations. I pointed out to the Mahatma that, having accepted the principle of the separation of Burma from India, he ought really to see that there was no reason why the Muslim lands of the Northwest and the Northeast should not be similarly separated, since they -- like Burma -- had only be come part of a united India as a result of British conquest, and therefore the idea of their union with the rest of India was artificial and transient. However, I made no impression on the Mahatma; and I went away, leaving Bhopal to tackle the problem of the princes.

From Poona I went to New Delhi. I had conversations both with the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, and the Commander in Chief, Sir Claude Auchinleck. Both were fully convinced of the justice, as well as the necessity, of conceding Indian independence at once. Both, however, held firmly to the idea of Indian unity, doubtless because in the end the military facts meant more to them than the political facts. And the major military fact of 1946, in the vast region extending from the Persian Gulf to Java and Sumatra, was the existence of the Indian defense forces, above all of the Indian Army. It happened that both Lord Wavell and General Auchinleck * had had a great part, as Commanders in Chief in succession to -- indeed in alteration with -- each other, in building up the Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force to their magnificent and powerful condition at the end of the Second World War. They were especially aware of the value to Britain and the Commonwealth, to the Western Allies and to the United Nations, of the continued and unified existence of these superbly disciplined and well-equipped forces. They appreciated too the dangers that would loom if the Indian Army were divided. Not merely might the two armies of the successor-states watch each other across the frontier with jealousy and suspicion, but a perilous strategic vacuum would be created in a huge and important part of the world's surface. They endeavored therefore to find some solution which would preserve unimpaired the unity of the Indian Army. That they failed, and that all who strove with the same end in view failed, is a measure of the magnitude and resolution of the Muslims' determination, against every argument however powerful, every obstacle however stubborn, to achieve their just rights and full political, religious and cultural independence and sovereignty.

* Now Field Marshal.

My Diamond Jubilee celebrations accomplished, I returned to Europe. Physically, however, I was now in poor shape; my health broke down badly and put me out of action for many months. The successful operation carried out in Paris by Professor Francois de Gaudard d'Allaines relieved me of at least one cause of great anxiety; but it was many months before I was even partially able to resume my ordinary activities.

Meanwhile 1947 was India's year of destiny. The British Cabinet Mission made what turned out to be Britain's final offer and final proposal for a unified India. It was ingenious and -- had unity on any terms been possible -- it was constructive. It was a three-tiered constitution, combining the highest possible degree of sovereignty in the three great regions into which British India would have been divided -- the Northwest and Northeastern areas predominantly Hindu -- with an extremely limited concentration of essential power at the center, covering foreign affairs, defense and major communications.

Now Jinnah saw his chance and took it resolutely and unerringly. He announced his unconditional acceptance of the British scheme. In that one decision, combining as it did sagacity, shrewdness and unequaled political flair, he justified -- I am convinced -- my claim that he was the most remarkable of all the great statesmen that I have known. It put him on a level with Bismarck.

At this critical juncture when Jinnah stood rocklike, the Congress leaders wavered. With incredible folly they rejected the British proposals; or rather they put forward dubious and equivocal alternative suggestions, which so watered down the scheme that it would have lost its meaning and effectiveness.

However in Britain, as more than once at high moments in her history, there was found statesmanship of the highest quality to respond to Jinnah's statesmanship. Mr. Attlee had from the outset closely interested himself in the efforts to achieve a solution of India's problems. Now with a boldness almost equaling Jinnah's he accepted the basic principles for which we Muslims had striven so long. The long-ignored yet fundamental difference between the two Indias was recognized, and the recognition acted upon, quickly and resolutely. It was decided that India should be partitioned. One swift stroke of the pen, and two different but great nations were born. Lord Wavell, who had borne the heat of the day with modesty and magnanimity, resigned. The brilliant, still youthful, energetic and supremely self-confident Lord Mountbatten of Burma was appointed to succeed him, with a clear directive to accomplish, within a strictly limited period of time, the end of British rule and responsibility in India and the handing over of authority to the two successor states of Pakistan and Bharat.

Lord Mountbatten himself shortened the period of demission and devolution. August 15, 1947, was set as the date for the final and total transference of power. On every senior official's desk in New Delhi and Simla the calendars stood, in those last months, with the fateful day warningly marked. And on that day power was transferred; the two new nations took over the functions of government, and stood forth as independent, sovereign members of the Commonwealth.

The birth pangs which accompanied this tremendous process were, some of them, grim and painful. On these it is not my desire nor my purpose to dwell, nor on some of the consequent inevitable problems. About one great and far-reaching effect of the British withdrawal I must however make some comment. Rapid and virtually unconditional as the transference of power was, it left one major problem, one bad debt for Britain, for Bharat and, in a smaller degree, for Pakistan. Although the whole subcontinent of India, from the Northwest Frontier to Cape Comorin, used to be colored red in any ordinary little atlas, by no means was the whole of this vast area in fact British. Dotted about it were scores and scores of independent and individual states, governed by hereditary Ruling Princes, ranging in size from big countries like Kashmir, Hyderabad or Travancore to a few square miles and a township. With the consolidation of the British Raj their relations with it had been settled by treaty, under which Britain, as the Paramount Power, guaranteed their independent and autonomous status. An elaborate and carefully constructed protocol had been worked out between the Princes and the Raj. In the long and splendid reign of Queen Victoria and in its aftermath in the opening years of this century, these complex and delicate arrangements had their own fittingness. In Britain and in India alike, a century ago, society was hierarchic. In the view of generations of able British administrators in India, the Princely Order corresponded not inexactly with the higher nobility in Britain. If in Britain the landowning and titled aristocracy had learned that their privileges and their possessions conferred on them special duties and responsibilities, a similar lesson and the practice that flowed from it were not impossible in India. Democracy on a basis of universal suffrage was only beginning to develop in Britain in those days; in India it was hardly the glimmer of a distant dream. In the vigorous moral climate of Victorian opinion, who could seem better suited to bear responsibility than those who were by inheritance endowed with privilege and power? In the high noon of Victorian liberalism therefore the relations between British officials and administrators and the Princely Order stood on a comprehensible and healthy foundation, and had about them much that was good and valuable.

Now that the whole remarkable phenomenon -- illogical and anachronistic as it appeared in its later years -- has vanished and is a part of history, it is both agreeable and salutary to recall some of its best facets, and some of its greater personalities. In my youth I was inevitably brought into contact with many Ruling Princes, and several of them -- over and above those whose names have occurred from time to time in this narrative -- became my lifelong friends.

The most eminent by far was the Maharajah Gaekwar of Baroda. I first met him in my earliest childhood, when my father was still alive; and during my adolescence I saw him whenever he came to Bombay. When I reached manhood we formed a friendship which lasted until his death, and was extended to his remarkable and talented Maharani, who, happily, is still alive. *

* Vivid portraits of them both, thinly disguised as fiction, are to be found in Louis Bromfield's novel The Rains Came, of which there was a cinema version some years ago.

He possessed a sturdy independence of character, and the awareness that the honor and the dignity which he had inherited were not only his own personal right but attributes indissociable from the race and nation to which he belonged. For him India always came first. Neither family nor class nor creed mattered more than this simple, spontaneous and all-embracing loyalty.

A little over forty-five years ago, in the summer of 1908, he and I were the guests of the then Governor of Bombay, Sir George Clark, in Poona. One night, when everyone else had gone to bed, the Maharajah and I sat up talking to a very late hour. I have the clearest recollection of all that he said.

"British rule in India," he said, "will never be ended merely by the struggle of the Indian people. But world conditions are bound to change so fundamentally that nothing will then be able to prevent its total disappearance."

Then he added something very striking: "The first thing you'll have to do when the English are gone is to get rid of all these rubbishy states. I tell you, there'll never be an Indian nation until this so-called Princely Order disappears. Its disappearance will be the best thing that can happen to India -- the best possible thing. There'll never be an Indian nation so long as there's a Princely Order. If Lord Dalhousie hadn't taken over half of India, abolishing or diminishing the sovereignty or territorial authority of scores of principalities, then perhaps something could have evolved along the lines of the German Empire, with considerable decentralization and local courts and capitals. But Dalhousie destroyed the possibility of the principalities ever becoming useful, federal, constitutional monarchies."

In view of what subsequently happened, was my old friend not as farsighted as he was eloquent?

Another of my good friends among the Princes was the great Maharajah of Kapurthala. His outstanding quality was his magnanimity. During his minority an uncle of his had been an active rival claimant to his titles and estates. When he came of age and was fully confirmed in his inheritance, the Maharajah was reconciled with this formidable opponent, not merely superficially or formally but with the utmost warmth and sincerity, inviting him frequently to his capital and entertaining him with as much affection as deference. I recall one cheerful little anecdote which he told me about himself. In 1893 when he was quite a young man first visiting Europe, he stayed for a time in Rome. One day King Umberto of Italy called on him, unannounced. The King's manners were bluff, abrupt and soldierly. As they entered the Maharajah's sitting room, the King saw a number of photographs of beautiful women displayed about the room.

The King barked gruffly, "Who are these women?"

"They, sir, are my wives."

The King swung round at him. "Well, I too have got as many women as you. But there's this difference between us. I don't keep 'em together. I keep 'em in different houses. You keep all yours in your palace."

Take him all in all, his culture, his impeccable taste, his sane and balanced judgment, his vigorous and colourful personality, I believe that the Maharajah of Kapurthala was, next to the Maharajah of Baroda, the outstanding Ruling Prince of my generation. They both, I think, possessed the political vision to have appreciated the historical reasons for the disappearance of the Princely Order and to have accepted it without bitterness or rancor. I do not think that this would have been so easy for two other friends of mine, both in their way admirable, talented and distinguished men: Ranjitsinhji, the Maharajah of Jamnagar, that magnificent and lovable sportsman, one of the greatest cricketers of all time, a superb and generous host, but a man very conscious of his inherited rights and duties; and the Maharajah of Bikaner, a Rajput of the Rajputs, with a high and burning pride in his ancestry, for whom the passing of the Princely Order would have been very hard to bear.

But pass it did, in a series of swift and comprehensive decisions. Pakistan -- in the immediate attainment of independence faced with countless momentous decisions -- solved this particular problem swiftly and well. Again it was the Quaid-i-Azam's achievement. He who had had himself instantly proclaimed Governor General of his new Dominion, was able, with his almost incredible clarity of vision, his statecraft, and his practical, Bismarckian sense of "the best possible," to effect on his own initiative an arrangement which was not unsatisfactory to the Princes and made them a source of strength to Pakistan.

India found the task more complicated and more difficult. Paramountcy was at an end. The treaties which the Princes had negotiated, first with the East India Company, then with the Crown, lapsed with the withdrawal of the Paramount Power. Legally the states reverted at once to being sovereign, independent countries. But they were islands in the surrounding sea of the enormous new nation of India. Lord Mountbatten, who at the invitation of India's provisional Government remained as first Governor General during a brief transitional period, wrestled to bring about a solution, deploying all his tact and persuasiveness. As Minister of the State Department, Sardar Patel was massively determined that that solution should be satisfactory to the new India.

The situation which faced the Princes was not without its sadness, but it was inevitable. Few had governed badly or tyrannously; taxation was usually lighter within their domains than in neighboring British India; yet their subjects secured, at this lower cost, many of the benefits for which the taxpayers of British India supplied the revenue. By far the greater majority of the Princes were amiable, honest, well-intentioned and gentle; but few of them had been educated on modern lines to face the harsh and complex problems of the contemporary world. Feudal in their outlook -- often in the best sense -- but mentally and spiritually unadapted to the swift transition from the bullock cart to the jet aircraft which is our age, they were doomed by their estimable qualities as much as by their limitations. Above all, the long years of paramountcy had rendered them politically irresponsible. They were no more dependent on their own good behavior and good administration in order to maintain their rule and their dynasties. In the background stood always the Paramount Power. Extravagant and wasteful administration at the worst meant a few years of supervision by an official sent down from Delhi; even scandalous misbehavior entailed only the delinquent Prince's abdication, on pension, and the immediate succession of his heir. Secure in their privileges, yet without proper outlets for their abilities and ambitions, they tended to lose the self-confidence and the capacity required for leadership, and their prestige dwindled in the eyes of their subjects.

When the moment of crisis came, when they found themselves without the Paramount Power, without its guarantees and without its limitations, they had -- the vast majority of them -- no alternative but to accept the terms which the Indian Union offered them. These on the whole were not ungenerous, provided each Prince took two important steps: first, authorized the immediate accession of his State to the Indian Union; and second, handed over political power. These done, they were assured of a great deal -- large, taxfree emoluments; the retention of their private fortunes, their lands and their palaces, their honors and dignities. Almost all the Princes accepted with good grace; their States became part of the new India, and many, big and small alike, were merged to form great new provinces.

The exceptions were few but troublesome. Kashmir is an outstanding special case, in which a Hindu Prince, the vast proportion of whose subjects were Muslim, made a precipitate act of accession to India against the very first principles agreed at the time of partition. In Travancore the Maharajah and his Ministers made a brief stand on their legal and constitutional rights, but surrendered to pressure by the people of the State themselves. The Hyderabad issue was far less happily settled. The Nizam had the great good fortune to have as his adviser a man of the quality of Sir Walter Monckton. However, a fatal combination of weakness and obstinacy prompted him to refuse the settlement which was proposed by Lord Mountbatten on terms negotiated by Sir Walter, which would have ensured Hyderabad the last ounce of advantage in a helpless position. The results of this stubborn folly were disastrous. India took swift, stern police action, and disaster enveloped all Hyderabad's hopes and chances.

As the years pass, the immense effects of Britain's withdrawal from India -- moral and spiritual hardly less than directly political -- become more and more apparent. The decision and the act together constitute one of the most remarkable events in modern history. Beside Britain's voluntary and total transference of sovereignty to the successor states of Pakistan and Bharat, even Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's generous action in respect of South Africa pales into insignificance. Nothing on this scale has ever happened before, yet it is the culmination and the fulfillment of years of growth and struggle.

Much more remains to be accomplished, especially in the field of relations between Pakistan and Bharat. In the years since partition relations have inevitably often been strained and difficult; yet even the severest tension has been kept within bounds, and neither nation -- however much sentiments may have become inflamed -- has proceeded to extremes. Forbearance and reconciliation are not transient moods; they are qualities which have to be exercised, developed and strengthened.

When partition was imminent the veteran Madrassi statesman, Mr. C. R. Rajagopalachari, "Rajaji," who was later Governor General of India, made this wise and timely pronouncement: "If the Muslims really want to go, well, let them go and take all that belongs to them." There is the temper which ought to inform relations between the two peoples.

It proved impossible to sustain by compulsion an artificial unity. In separation there is a chance for understanding and magnanimity to grow. They are at first delicate plants; but if they are fostered carefully and wisely, and if their roots are deep, they will flourish. Membership of the Commonwealth supplies one intangible but important link between the peoples of Bharat and Pakistan. It is profoundly to be hoped that there will develop a neighborly understanding which may in time grow into an alliance. Peace, a shared prosperity, a shared and steady improvement in the standard of living for millions, are entirely in the interest of both. In the long run, as I firmly believe, the workings of fate on the Indian subcontinent will prove to have been beneficial, not evil. A relationship of mutual respect and good will between the two countries can -and let us hope and pray that it will -- secure many years of happy and peaceful development and progress for millions in a vast and important region. Then the strivings of so many of us, Muslim, Hindu and British, through years of arduous toil, through periods of misunderstanding and bitterness, through difficulties now forgotten and crises long resolved, will in the end have had their abundant justification.