Buried in the sands of time
Azad had no roots in the masses and might have ended as an insignificant member of the Congress
if Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, who was show-cased as the “Muslim face” of the Congress had not died in 1937
“I refuse to discuss with you by correspondence or otherwise as you have completely forfeited the confidence of Muslim India. Cannot you realise that you are made a Muslim show-boy Congress president to give it colour that it is national and to deceive foreign countries? You represent neither Muslims nor Hindus. If you have self-respect, resign at once. You have done your worst. You have hopelessly failed. Give it up.” This was a bitter reply of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, when the latter sent a telegram to the former, in his capacity as the president of the Congress, to explain a resolution passed by the Congress at its Delhi session in July 1940. It was a virulent criticism of Azad, who was an informed editor of the British-banned journals “Al-Hilal” and “Al-Balagh;” a recognised scholar of hadith, fiqh and Islamic history with the translation and exposition of the Quran to his credit and an accomplished litterateur in Arabic, Persian and Urdu languages. Jinnah was not critical of the religious scholar in Azad who had mastered the works of Islamic thinkers such as Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida, Syed Ahmad Khan, Shibli Nomani and Jamaluddin Afghani or the Azad, who desired but failed to achieve the coveted title of “Imamul Hind” or the Azad whose father aspired his son to become a “pir.” Similarly, Jinnah had no issues with that Azad who had formed the “Hizbullah” organisation which could be joined only by those who believed in the fundamentals of Islam or the Azad who was impressed by Gandhi’s ideals of ahimsa, styagraha, communal harmony and humanism.
If Jinnah had problems, it were with Azad, the politician and in particular in his capacity as a leader and president of the Indian National Congress. Let it be on the record that initially, Azad, too, like Jinnah, believed that that the Indian Muslims were a distinct nation, however, he converted to Congress’s concept of composite Indian nationalism after coming under the influence of Gandhi and by joining the Congress. He was against the creation of Pakistan and insisted upon the Muslims to merge their political identity with the Hindus. Jinnah knew that Congress badly needed Muslim figures like Azad to present a “soft image”, to tell the world that it represented all communities and to counter League’s Muslim nationalism.
Azad had no roots in the masses and might have ended as an insignificant member of the Congress if Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, who was show-cased as the “Muslim face” of the Congress had not died in 1937. Congress was desperately in need of another Muslim “show-boy”, so, writes Dr Farooq Ahmad Dar, a professor of history in his comparative analysis of Azad and Jinnah that though Nehru admits in his autobiography that the “nationalist Muslims had lost their hold on masses by 1934 and only non-dynamic and non-popular middle class Muslims were left in the Congress” yet Congress picked up Azad, got him elected first as a member of the Working Committee, later on, as a member of the Parliamentary Board and eventually had him elected as the president of the party for six consecutive years breaking the Congress’s tradition of electing a new president almost every year, all this was managed because they had to keep a Muslim face in the limelight.
Azad was used by the Congress during the Cripps proposals and the Simla conference just to thwart Jinnah’s claim that politically only a Muslim Leaguer could represent the interests of the Muslim community. After its bad performance in the Muslim constituencies during the provincial elections of 1937, the Congress decided to pit the Muslims against the Muslims by appointing Azad as the head of the Muslim Mass Contact Campaign in the important Muslim provinces but it ended in a fiasco.
Although president on paper, the “Maulana” was not “azad” in the making of the party policies. He was overruled by Jawaharlal Nehru on several issues including the crucial formation of the Congress-League coalition ministry in the United Provinces. On top of it was the iron hold of the “Mahatma”, who despite being not even the “four anna” member of the Congress, actually called the shots and Azad had to meekly submit to every order of Gandhi because he knew that if he would show recalcitrance, he would be shown the door just like the past disagreeing Congress presidents were such as Nariman, CR Das and Subhas Chandra Bose. Gandhi gave short shrift to Azad when the latter pleaded the former not to indulge in direct negotiations with Jinnah in 1944 and when the next year Azad presented his power-sharing formula of having a Hindu and a Muslim as an alternate head of the Indian Federation to Gandhi, the “Mahatma” told him “to keep mum and consult and coordinate with the inner voices of the Congress Working Committee.”
The Congress exploited the person of Azad well in their bargaining with Jinnah, however, when the time came to negotiate the transfer of power with the British, Nehru argued that not Azad but a sub-committee of the Congress Working Committee should negotiate with the Cabinet Mission. Even then Azad did not resign until Gandhi booted him out in a communique to Nehru in which he said, “I do not understand him, nor does he understand me. We are drifting apart on the Hindu-Muslim question as well as on other questions. Therefore, I suggest that the Maulana should relinquish Presidentship,” and so Nehru replaced Azad as the party’s president in July 1946.
How prescient did Jinnah prove in his scathing assessment of Azad is borne by history. The Maulana allowed himself to be (ab)used as a “show-boy” to deceive the world; today, he is neither owned by the Muslims nor the Hindus.