The Simla Conference opened on 25th June, a day after Wavell met and talked with Gandhi, Jinnah and Azad separately. In these talks, the caste complexion of Hindu representation in the Executive Council was removed and it was agreed that the composite Central Cabinet would comprise fourteen Indian Councillors, five each to be selected by the Congress and the League and four viceregal nominees. Among the last group would be a Sikh, two Harijans and Sir Khizr Hayat Khan, leader of the Unionist Party of the Punjab.
The Congress proposed at the conference that its panel consist of two Hindus, a Muslim, a Christian and a Parsee. As the League had already been accorded parity with the Congress, this should have pleased Jinnah. Further, the fact that seven of the fourteen Council lors would be Muslims should have won him over completely. The League Council favoured acceptance of the Wavell plan, and the Congress Working Committee got down to the task of preparing a panel of names for the Viceroy’s approval.
But on 11th July, to the amazement and disappointment of all who had set great store by these proposals to end the political deadlock, Wavell announced that his private confabulations with Jinnah had failed. Three days later, the world was told that the conference had foundered on the rock of Jinnah’s insistence that all the Muslim Councillors be nominated exclusively by the League. This was a condition the Congress would under no circumstances accept, for it would have reduced it to the status of a body representing only the Hindus and the smaller minorities while subscribing to Jinnah’s claim that the League was the sole spokesman of the Muslims.
Why, in the hour of the League’s triumph, having won parity with the Congress, should Jinnah have dragged it back from the threshold of power? On the face of it, his recalcitrance seemed pointless. But his real aim was known to a few insiders. He was expected to announce his final decision on the Viceroy’s proposals to the Press at his hotel lounge. A few moments earlier, he had, however, received a message from the “cell” of British Civil Servants in Simla, which was in tune with the diehards in London, that if Jinnah stepped out of the talks he would be rewarded with Pakistan.
As Jinnah emerged from his meeting with the Press and entered the lift to go upstairs to his suite, I joined him. I asked him why he had spurned the Wavell plan when he had won his point of parity for the League with the Congress. His reply stunned me for a moment: “Am I a fool to accept this when I am offered Pakistan on a platter ?” After painstaking inquiries, I learned from high official and political sources that a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council had sent a secret message to Jinnah through the League contacts he had formed.