itle PARTITION: tape 3 Writer 255MODEM Mod Date & Time St 255MODEM Dec 17 09:48 R* TAPE 3 Danial LATIFI - interviewed Delhi, 22/9/95 A20 Niti Bagh: tel - 666937; o - 338 2806 Born 1917. Educated at Oxford and Gray's Inn and a lawyer by profession. Joined CPI cl940, and Punjab Muslim League cl944. Drafted Muslim League manifesto. In 1947 was in Bombay. Dropped CP links in early 60s. [Khushwant Singh says he had Danial Latifi in mind when devising the Communist character in 'Train to Pakistan' - and comments in notes of Khushwant interview] Side A AUDIO QUALITY POOR - voice muffled, building work in b'ground 4 > first person met in CPGB was Ben Bradley; 'I was then not close to the party - it was many years earlier'; a some reminiscences; Nehru and another had come to London with a letter from P.C. Joshi, re Soviet visas 97 > reminiscences of Palme Dutt, met in 39 and 63; liked him, 'I found him intellectually a very stimulating person' 109 > 'if I had been recruited in London, there wd have been all kind of complications' 116 - joined CPI about 1940, a year after return from London, party at that time 'dead against the war'; 'I went to jail in 40 for opposing the war effort and calling on the armed forces to revolt ... at that time we were in the Congress, but we were party members ... the British govt was dead after us because we were the only people they feared; Congress, these chaps were talkers, while we were does, more serious' 134 > CP members included 'the cream of the intelligentsia, in which I count myself, very modestly, I think it was a v v brilliant lot' 140 - in 1944 asked by CPI to go into ML 'because the party had then got some info that there was a plan being brewed in Westminster ... that the British govt wd retreat from what is now India and B'desh but wd establish an Ulster in the NW; the party felt that wd be something very dangerous; the party did not have the same misgivings about ML that most of the Congress men had, namely that they were Br stooges; P.C. Joshi and these people were mature enough to u'stand that men like Jinnah were no more stooges than men like Gandhi and Nehru' 158 - CPI's thinking re a possible Ulster in NW 166 - 'you may call me a leader [of the ML in Punjab] in the sense that I was a catalyst, cos I got togther a lot of sections, who wd have got together anyway, but they wd have taken probably longer if I’d not been there, and I had personal reins with some of the big landlords ... one had been my colleague at Oxford ... ... and I told them that look, if we are to stand up to this enormous wave of aggression ... you jolly well have to make sacrifices, and you people may not