Date: 16 September 1931
Location: London
Speaker: Aga Khan III
Source: Speeches of Aga Khan III – K K Aziz
Full Text
India and the world-wide desire for peace – difficulties before the Round Table Conference – grounds for optimism.
In a statement to The Times the Aga Khan said that he came to the Conference, at which all Indian political parties were now represented, in a hopeful spirit.
India, he continued, must make her contribution to the world was wide desire for peace. When so large a part of the globe unsettled and disturbed, the peace and prosperity of the whole world were injured. He knew only too well that the Conference had formidable difficulties to face; but much depended on the settlement of some of the more complicated and intractable questions. Human experience showed that when, in a many sided problem, two or three outstanding points were settled the adjustment of the many others calling for solution was greatly facilitated. These were among the grounds on which he based his hopes.
Asked if he was more hopeful than he was when the Confer ence assembled late last autumn, his Highness replied, “I am always an optimist.”
Source: The Times, London, 17 September 1931.
The statement was given at the Victoria Railway Station in London in the late evening of 16 September on his arrival in Britain. As he was at this time chairman of the British-Indian Delegation to the forthcoming Round Table Conference, he was received at the station by a number of delegates and officials of the Conference. Among those present on the platform were the Nawab of Bhopal, the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, who left a meeting of the States’ Delegation to greet him, Mian Sir Muhammad Shafi, Sir Sultan Ahmad, Sir Geoffrey Corbett, Sir Umar Hayat Khan, Sir Manecltji Dadabhoy, Dr Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, Mr Bajpai, Alma Latifi, Dr Ambedkar, Chaudhri Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, the Imam of the London Mosque, P. K. Dutt, Mr Qureshi, and John Coatman, who conveyed a message of welcome from Lord Reading.