'BUCHMAN KI JAI!'

One of these students remembered, years later, the impression Buchman made on him: 'The first time I saw him it was winter in Delhi. He was wearing a tweed suit and a red and black striped tie. He was walking with a stick and had a flabby, round face, and I thought he was a total dud and wondered how the hell he got these people to do all these things for him. The second time I saw him was after a meeting. I didn't know he was there - he was sitting at the back. "Oh, I remember you," he said - and there was something in his eyes which was challenging and penetrating and straight. Then I went to see him off from the airport. He took hold of my hand and said, "India is a great country. Keep at it. You will be greatly used. God bless you." And I knew that man was trying to convey something to me, and almost praying that it would penetrate into my heart. He was not a man of words - that left a deep impression on me - but a man who wanted to go beyond words to something far deeper in my soul and spirit.'

The visit to Pakistan was in fulfilment of the promise which Buchman had made to Mohammed Ali Jinnah in December 1946. The London talks over Independence had deadlocked. Jinnah and all his delegation went to see The Forgotten Factor. The portrayal of the tough employer as a man who 'would not budge' tickled him and he laughed loudly - the first time, his companions commented, that they had even seen him smile since arriving in London. At supper afterwards he urged Buchman to bring the play to Pakistan as soon as the nation was created. 'It shows the answer to the hates of the world,' he said. 'Honest apology - that is the golden key.' 'But who will put that key into the lock of history and open the gates of the future?' commented Buchman later. Neither Jinnah, Nehru, nor the British did so on this occasion. The Scotland Yard man attached to Jinnah told Buchman, 'The Viceroy, Nehru and Jinnah should have seen this play the first night they were in London!'19

Standing now in front of Jinnah's tomb, Buchman repeated Jinnah's words to him in London seven years before and recalled their first meeting in 1924 at Belgaum. 'May Pakistan rise and live as an answer,' was his prayer. Later, dining with the Cabinet, he found himself seated next to a son-in-law of another of his Belgaum acquaintances, one of the Ali brothers, and told him of his conversation with Lord Reading about them.

Buchman went on to Teheran, leaving the plays to be shown in Karachi. He had been invited there by another earlier guest at Caux, Dr Matine-Daftary, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Mossadegh. More than half of Buchman's party were British, and tension over Mossadegh's nationalization of the Persian oilfields was high between the two countries; but an assurance was given that, if they came with Buchman, the British would be welcomed as government guests. Mossadegh and Buchman met, both in high spirits, each surprised and relieved to find the other unlike the press reports. Buchman told a series of stories of difficult people who had become different and, with Mossadegh's son standing by, included among them tales of difficult fathers and sons.

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