A man born in the Holy city, Mecca, in 1888 and migrated to Kolkata as a two year old boy with his parents, destined to be the revolutionary seeking freedom from the clutches of British in the initial years before joining M. K. Gandhi’s non-violent struggle. He became the President of Indian National Congress and even the first Education Minister of free India under the leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He was named Firoz Bakht at birth but was known in his youth as Muhiyuddin Ahmad and later adopted the pseudonym of “Abul Kalam Azad”. His political awakening was stimulated by the partition of Bengal in 1905 which was later annulled in 1911.He opposed the partition of British India tooth and nail like the Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, but was pained to face Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel accepting the partition design of Lord Mountbatten even before Nehru and Gandhiji accepted it! Maulana Azad(1888-1958) desperately tried to stall the partition of British India, even by sending a secret message to Mohammad Ali Jinnah who was hell bent on getting Pakistan through his Two Nation Theory.
The history has done so much injustice to Maulana Azad but his vision has proved to be right in both the cases that (a) the Partition would not solve the communal problem in India and (b) the Muslims in Pakistan would have to suffer in the years to come. Unfortunately, select quotes from the full-text of autobiography of Maulana, “India Wins Freedom”, brought out in 1988, incorporating those 30 pages “he left out some of his stronger indictments as he felt that their publication should be delayed in the national interest” when the first edition was brought out in 1959.
Now it is an accepted fact that “among Congressmen the greatest supporter of partition was Sardar Patel, but even he did not believe that partition was the best solution of the Indian problem. He threw his weight in the favour of partition out of irrational and injured vanity. He found himself frustrated at every step by the veto put on his proposals by Liaquat Ali Khan as Finance Minister. It was therefore in sheer anger that he decided that if there was no other alternative, partition should be accepted. He was also convinced that the new state of Pakistan was not viable and could not last.” These are the words of Azad quoted by Sitaram Sharma, Chairman, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies of the Government of India, in an article released by Press Information Bureau(PIB) on 10 November 2014 on the occasion of the 125th Birth Anniversary of Maulana. In the same article he is quoted blaming Nehru “for sabotaging possibilities of reconciliation between Congress and Muslim League on two occasions.”
Maulana writes in his autobiography : “When I became aware that Lord Mountbatten was thinking in terms of dividing India and had persuaded Jawaharlal and Patel, I was deeply distressed. I realized that the country was moving towards a great danger. Partition of India would be harmful not only to Muslims but to the whole country.” He did his best to persuade his two colleagues not to take the final step. To his utter shock, he found that “Patel was so much in favour of partition that he was hardly prepared even to listen to any other point of view.” “He was now convinced that Muslims and Hindus could not be united into one nation. There was no alternative except to recognize this fact. In this way alone could we end the quarrel between Hindus and Muslims.” Mualana adds : “Jinnah may have raised the flag of partition but now the real flag bearer was Patel.” When he met Jawaharlal, though Nehru did not speak in favour of partition, “he had however lost all hopes of joint action after his experience of the conduct of the League members of the Executive Council. They could not see eye to eye on any question.” Gandhiji was his last hope who was “helpless”. Bapu told him of his suggestion to Mountbatten to allow Jinnah to form the government. If the Congress accepted his suggestion, partition could still be saved. “Unfortunately, this move could make no progress as both Jawaharlal and Patel opposed it vehemently.”
Even before this situation cropped up in June 1947, Maulana gave an extensive interview to Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore based Urdu magazine “Chattan”, in April 1946. As Arif Mohammed Khan notes in his book “Text and Context”, “This interview has not been published in any book so far, neither in Azad centenary volumes nor in any other book comprising his writings or speeches- except for Kashmiri’s own book “Abul Kalam Azad” which was printed only once by Matbooaat Chattan Lahore, now a defunct publishing house.” (Covert, 15 November 2009). The visionary Indian leader had predicted: “I feel that right from its inception, Pakistan will face some very serious problems: 1.The incompetent political leadership will pave the way for military dictatorship as it has happened in many Muslim countries. 2. The heavy burden of foreign debt. 3. Absence of friendly relationship with neighbours and the possibility of armed conflict. 4. The internal unrest and regional conflicts. 5. The loot of national wealth by the neo-rich and industrialists of Pakistan. 6. The apprehension of class war as a result of exploitation by the neo-rich. 7. The dissatisfaction and alienation of the youth from religion and collapse of theory of Pakistan. 8. The conspiracies of the international powers to control Pakistan. All these predictions are proved to be true in Pakistan. Hence, the interview is being debated in Pakistan even today.
Not many people may be aware of Maulana as the President of Congress proposing the name of Nehru to succeed him in April 1946. At a later stage he conceded it as “greatest blunder of my political life”. He notes despite his reservations about Patel, “My second mistake was that when I decided not to stand myself I did not support Sardar Patel. We differed on many issues but I am convinced that if he had succeeded me as Congress President, he would have seen that the Cabinet Mission Plan was successfully implemented. He would have never committed the mistake of Jawaharlal which gave Mr. Jinnah the opportunity of sabotaging the plan. I cannot forgive myself when I think if I had not committed these mistakes, perhaps the history of the last ten years would have been different.”(He wrote in 1957.) Needless to say whoever was to succeed Azad as the President was to be the Prime Minister of free India.
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( The writer is a Socio-political Historian. E-mail : [email protected] )
