Tag Archives: Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah

Profiles of Freedom Fighters from Aligarh Muslim University

Aligarh, UTTAR PRADESH :

It is well-timed and relevant to know that Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has produced many freedom fighters who fought for independence. While we are celebrating the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, present-day India is going through difficult and trying times, as hate speeches against Indian Muslims are often heard from every corner of India. It is believed that most of them are not patriotic and are supporters of Pakistan.

During the last eight years we have seen some incidents of mob lynchings of Muslims and Dalits and have also heard unfortunate calls for genocide of Muslims. Knowing about the contribution of AMU towards the national struggle of independence is relevant to dispel the myth that the founder of AMU, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, advocated that Muslims of India constituted a separate nation, qaum, or that the idea of Pakistan took birth among the intellectual class of Aligarh. Moreover, the study of AMU’s contribution to freedom movement will, it is believed, strengthen Hindu-Muslim Unity.

The Mohammado Anglo-Oriental College (MAO College), Aligarh, established in 1875 (which later became AMU in 1920), produced many freedom fighters, prominent among them are Ali brothers (Maulana Shaukat Ali and Mohammad Ali), Abdul Gaffar Khan (Frontier Gandhi), Maulana Hasarat Mohani, Raja Mahinder Pratap (President of 1st Indian Government established in exile at Kabul), S. M. Tonki, Saifuddin Kichloo Kitchlew (recipient of Lenin Peace Prize), Abdul Majeed Khwaja and Qazi Adeel Abbasi, Saith Yaqoob Hasan, Ali Sardar Jafri, Shafiqe-ur-Rehman Kidwai, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Raja Gulam Husain, Shoeb Qureshi, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Dr. Datu (Leader of African National Conference), Abdul Matin Chowdhry (Founder Member of Indian Civil Liberty Union), Mazharul Haque, Syed Ali Zaheer, Syed Hossain, Syed Mir Qasim, Syed Rauf Pasha, Tassauq Ahmad Khan Sherwani, Yaseen Noori Z Ahmad, and Zafar Ali Khan.

In the following pages we provide a brief profile of fifteen prominent freedom fighters who are alumni of AMU (Hakeem Ajmal Khan was not an alumni alumnus of AMU but was associated with it as a member of Trustee).

Khan Abdul Ghaffar (1890-1988)

Khan Abdul Ghaffar is one of the most important Muslim freedom fighters of India and he was also known as “Frontier Gandhi “. He started the famous Khudai Khidmatgar (“Servants of God”) movement in 1929 and it was a very successful freedom movement. The British were so infuriated by the success of the movement that they began a harsh crackdown on its supporters. The atrocities committed on Khudai Khidmatgar were one of the most severe repressions that the Indian independence Movement ever witnessed. He also opposed the All-India Muslim League’s demand for the partition of India. When the Congress Party did not consult him on partition, he felt very sad and told the Congress “you have thrown us to the wolves”. After the partition, he remained in Pakistan and started fighting for a separate Baloch province. He was jailed many times from 1948 to 1988 and most of the time was under house arrest. When he died in 1988, tens of thousands of mourners attended his funeral. At the same time heavy fighting was going on between Soviet forces and Afghan Rebel forces but both stopped their fight and paid tribute to the great leader.

Zakir Husain (1897-1969)

Dr. Zakir Husain served as 3rd President of India and he was also the first Muslim President of India. He was one of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. He was deeply influenced by Gandhi’s doctrine of Non-Violence and believed that India’s struggle for freedom would only be successful when Indian Society is educated with value-based education. He acted as the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia for 22 years (1926-48) and made it one of the finest educational institutes in India. He was awarded The Bharat Ratna, India’s highest National Honour.

Saifuddin Kitchlew (1888-1963)

Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew completed his studies in Europe and then returned to India to practice Law. He was appointed as Municipal Commissioner of Amritsar when the infamous Rowlatt Act was passed by the British Government. He soon left his law practice and took part in the Non-Cooperation Movement. He was arrested with Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Satyapal for leading a protest in Punjab and to protest the arrest of the trio, a public meeting gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh where Gen. Reginald Dyer and his troops fired mercilessly upon the unarmed civilian crowd. He was also the founding leader of the Indian Youth Congress. Kitchlew spends nearly fourteen years in jail for his revolutionary activities. He strongly opposed the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan and partition of India. India Post released a special commemorative stamp featuring him on his 100 Birth Anniversary.

Abdul Majeed Khwaja (1885-1962)

Khwaja Sahab, as Abdul Majeed Khwaja was affectionately known as, served – first as Vice Chancellor and then as Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia for the longest duration in its 100 years. Jamia’s history will remain incomplete without his mention.

He was educated at MAO College, Aligarh, after which he went to Cambridge and was called to the Bar. At Cambridge his contemporaries included Jawaharlal Nehru, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Syed Mahmud and T. A. K. Sherwani, all of whom joined India’s freedom movement.

Khwaja Sahab was a committed Congressman who had joined the party in 1915 and, despite ups and downs, remained with it till his last breath. He also remained associated with Jamiat Ulama-i- Hind almost from the beginning and was in the Khilafat delegation that went to England. He was Junior Law Professor at MAO College, had served as its Trustee and was also Secretary of the MAO Old Boys’ Association.

Khwaja Sahab was a distinguished lawyer, and was quite famous in Patna High Court. But, in response to the call for non-cooperation which included boycotting the British Government supported education, he gave up his legal practice, and got himself involved in the formation and building of Jamia.

Abdul Majeed Kwaja held high offices in the Khilafat Congress and was associated with Jamait- Ulamae-e-Hind from its inception. He was a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru and a great advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity. He took keen interest in the Khilafat movement and went to England as a member of the Khilafat delegation (1920), led by Dr. MA Ansari.

Hakeem Ajmal Khan (1868-1927)

Ajmal Khan was a prominent leader of India’s freedom struggle and was among the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia. He is also the sole person who has had the honour to be elected the President of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the All-India Khilafat Committee. He was a prominent freedom fighter, respected physician and academician of India. After beginning his practice, Khan was elected as the main physician to the Nawab of Rampur from the time period 1892 to 1902. Here, he was introduced to Sir Sayyid who chose him as the trustee of the MAO College.

His life changed its course from medicine towards politics after he started writing for an Urdu weekly ‘Akmal-ul-Akhbar’ that was launched during 1865-70. Khan was also heading the Muslim team, who met the Viceroy of India in Shimla in the year 1906 to give him a memorandum for creation of AMU.

At a time when many Muslim leaders were arrested, Ajmal Khan approached Mahatma Gandhi for help. As such, Gandhiji united with him and other Muslim leaders like Maulana Azad, Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali in the famous Khilafat movement. Ajmal Khan resigned from AMU as its trustee when the authorities refused to accept the non-cooperation movement waged by Gandhiji and the Congress against the British government. He was elected the president of the Indian National Congress in 1921.

Hasrat Mohani (1877-1951)

Syed Fazl-ul-Hasan, known by his pen-name Hasrat Mohani, co-founder of Communist Party of India, was an Indian political activist (as he was expelled from MAO College in 1903 due to his political activities), freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement and a noted poet of the Urdu language. He coined the notable slogan “Inquilab Zindabad” (translation of “Long live the revolution!”) in 1921. Together with Swami Kumaranand, he is regarded as the first person to demand complete independence for India in 1921 at the Ahmedabad Session of Congress. Maghfoor Ahmad Ajazi supported the complete independence motion demanded by Hasrat Mohani. The demand of “complete independence” was however not upheld by Mahatma Gandhi then as he believed that “it could not be incorporated in the Congress creed until the Hindu-Muslim unity is completely achieved which also meant that the idea was premature.

Mohani was opposed to the Nehru Committee Report and left Congress to become President of the Muslim League at Ahmedabad in 1921. As a member of the Constituent Assembly, he refused to sign the draft Constitution to protest partition and India’s membership of the Commonwealth.

While he was a devout Muslim, he didn’t find it odd to be inspired by Krishna, the Hindu deity. Makkah, Mathura and Moscow were Hasrat Mohani’s popular symbols. He did not find any conflict between them. A firm believer in religious integration, he repeatedly performed hajj pilgrim as well as attended the Sri-Krishna celebration fair held annually at Mathura.

Raja Mahendra Pratap (1886-1979)

Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh was an Indian freedom fighter, journalist, writer, revolutionary, President in the Provisional Government of India, which served as the Indian Government in exile during World War I from Kabul in 1915, and social reformist in the Republic of India. He also formed the Executive Board of India in Japan in 1940 during the Second World War. He also took part in the Balkan War in the year 1911 along with his fellow students of MAO college. He is popularly known as “Aryan Peshwa”. Government of U.P. established in 2021, Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh State University, at Aligarh, to cherish his memory and legacy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the University on 13 September 2021.

Maulana Shaukat Ali (1873-1938)

Shaukat Ali was the elder brother of the renowned political leader Mohammad Ali Jouhar. He helped his younger brother Mohammad Ali to publish the Urdu weekly, Hamdard, and the English weekly Comrade. In 1915 he published an article which said Turks were right to fight the British. These two weekly magazines played a key role in shaping the political policy of Muslim India back then. In 1919, while jailed for publishing what the British charged as seditious materials and organizing protests, he was elected as the last president of the Khilafat conference. He was re-arrested and imprisoned from 1921 to 1923 for his support to Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress during the Non-Cooperation Movement (1919–1922). His fans accorded him and his brother the title of Maulana. In March 1922, he was in Rajkot jail and was later released in 1923.

While still a supporter of Congress and its non-violent ethos, Ali even surpassed some of his colleagues in also providing support to the revolutionary independence movement. To this end, he supplied guns to Sachindranath Sanyal.

He opposed the 1928 Nehru Report. Instead, he demanded separate electorates for Muslims and finally the Khilafat Committee rejected the Nehru Report. Shaukat Ali attended the first and second Round Table Conferences (India) in London in 1930-31. Ali served as a member of the ‘Central Assembly’ in British India from 1934 to 1938. He travelled all over the Middle East, building support for India’s Muslims and the struggle for independence from British rule in India.

Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar (1878-1931)

Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar studied in MAO College and in Oxford University. He launched non-cooperation and Khilafat movement with Mahatma Gandhi. His regular writings in leading Indian and foreign newspapers like The Times, London, The Manchester Guardian and The Observer made him look like a visionary that the Indian Muslims and the general public was waiting for decades. Later, in the year 1911 he launched his well-received magazine The Comrade in Calcutta. But Kolkata didn’t suit him much and he shifted base to Delhi, from where he launched an Urdu daily, Hamdard, in 1913. Muhammad Ali was in the forefront in the war against British Raj. He wholeheartedly supported Mahatma Gandhi’s call for a national civil resistance movement, and inspired hundreds of protests and strikes all over India. He was arrested by British authorities and imprisoned for two years for what was termed as a seditious speech at one such meeting. He was one of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia and was its first Vice Chancellor.

He was elected the President of INC in 1923. The fearless Maulana, despite his ill-health, went to attend the first Round Table Conference in London in 1930. He told the British Government in a very clear tone that he would not return to India alive unless the country was set free. “I would prefer to die in a foreign country so long as it is a free country, and if you do not give us freedom in India, you will have to give me a grave here”, the Maulana said. The true freedom lover, Muhammad Ali died during the same journey in London on 4 January 1931. He was buried in Jerusalem in the proximity of the Dome of Rock. While speaking bluntly in the Round Table Conference, he said, “I have not come to ask for Dominion Status. I do not believe in the attainment of Dominion Status. The one thing to which I am committed is complete independence. In Madras in 1927, we passed a resolution making that our goal.”

Abdul Qaiyum Ansari (1905-1973) was a freedom fighter of India. He was known for his commitment to national integration, secularism and communal harmony. He fought against Jinnah’s two nation theory through the All-India Momin Conference of which he was the President. He vehemently opposed the very idea of Pakistan and spoke out openly to the extent of inviting attack by Muslim League supporters. While speaking in Patna during the Bihar Provincial Momin Conference on 21 April 1940, Abdul Qayyum said: “It is blasphemy to say that Islam is in danger here. It is tragedy to place orders for a Pakistan for the segregation of Islam. It is a defeat of Islam to run away from the battle of life in search of a privilege. It is a fantastic wavering of a fevered mind”.

He was impressed by Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad and Ali Brothers who were the leading lights of the freedom movement. His activism in the freedom movement and social causes can be gauged by the fact that he established a national school for the students who had boycotted government schools in response to the call of the Indian National Congress (INC). For this he was arrested and imprisoned at the young age of 16 since it amounted to participation in Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movements. Abdul Qaiyum Ansari was also a champion of weaker sections of the society. He was among the top leaders of the Momin Conference and used the forum to make every effort to beat Muslim League and its divisive agenda. Besides, he also stood firmly against divisive politics of other organizations. He worked closely with the INC throughout as a youth leader and even took part in the students’ agitation against the Simon Commission during its visit to Calcutta in 1928. He was also an accomplished journalist, writer and a poet.

Ali Sardar Jafri (1913-2000)

Sardar was a rebel, freedom fighter, pacifist, radical activist, story writer, critic and documentary filmmaker at once. But, above all, he was a poet endowed with exquisite imagination, one of the brightest stars on the firmament of 20th century Urdu poetry. Like all great poets he was a prophet engaged in unravelling the mysteries and ambiguity of human drama. The principal theme of his poetry was compassion, love, perseverance and sensitivity surviving amidst the callous inhumanity of our times. In his unique style, he depicted the exemplary survival of the human spirit in face of all- pervasive adversity and defeatism. In so doing he not only carried forward the traditions of Urdu poetry but enriched its treasure with new symbols and powerful imagery. Indeed, his poetry gradually evolved into a genre of its own kind whose influence is difficult to ignore among the present generation of Urdu poets.

Sardar’s early works reflected a restless yearning for India’s independence from the colonial yoke. Equally intense was his yearning for the freedom and dignity of the proletariat. This was because of the strong impact of the Progressive Writers’ Movement inspired by Marxism and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. As early as 1938, he joined the movement at its conference held in Calcutta and soon became one of its leading advocates. The influence of Marxism on his poetry was thus profound and everlasting.

AMU conferred a doctorate (D. Litt.) on him in 1986, fifty years after he was expelled from the university. He was the fourth person to receive this honour, his predecessors being the notable Dr. Allama Iqbal, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu and Jigar Moradabai. His works have been translated into many Indian and foreign languages.

K.M. Ashraf (1903-1962)

Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf was an eminent historian, scholar of Islamic studies, a communist leader and crusader of Hindu-Muslim unity. During the non-cooperation movement, he left MAO College to join recently created Jamia Millia. Later he rejoined AMU in 1923 to pursue M.A. (History) and LL.B. courses. He received a Ph.D. from SOAS, London University. After teaching at AMU for a year, he gave up his academic career due to his commitment to the national movement. Ashraf came under the influence of Professor Mohammad Habib and joined socialist movement. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, he joined the Congress Socialist Party formed in 1934. During 1933-34, he led the Meo peasant struggle against the Maharaja of Alwar’s oppression and the Government had to intervene to introduce reforms. Dr. Ashraf was a trusted associate of Jawaharlal Nehru and was a member of AICC from 1934-45. He headed the Muslim Mass Contacts Campaign Cell of Congress, 1937-39, formed to wean away the Muslims from the influence of Muslim League and propagate Congress’ nationalist programmes. Ashraf exhorted the Indian Muslims to participate in the freedom movement and staunchly opposed M.A, Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan. He served as the Secretary to Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad when they were Congress Presidents. In 1948 he edited Naya Daur, the daily newspaper that denounced communalism and was distributed by the CPI. He taught at the University of Delhi and joined the Humboldt University, Berlin as a Guest Professor (Medieval Indian History) in 1960. In 1962 he died and was buried in the ‘Cemetery of Socialists’ at Berlin.

Rafi Ahmad Kidwai (1894-1954)

An Indian independence activist and a socialist to the core, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai’s ceaseless efforts in making the country free from British rule have been nothing but praiseworthy. Although a graduate from MAO College, his skills of keen observation and learning from human nature took him beyond bookish knowledge. During the crisis situations that he had to deal with during his service to the nation, he showed distinct man management skills and an innovative approach to resolve human issues. And with Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru as his mentor, there was no stopping him further. His efforts in bringing out many reforms and fighting against the unjust with utmost conviction will always be remembered. A committed freedom fighter to the very end!

It was by 1920 that Kidwai’s political career officially began after he had become an active force behind the Khilafat Movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement and was even jailed for the same. In 1922, he moved to Allahabad after being released from jail and served as the private secretary to Motilal Nehru. In 1926, Kidwai was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly of British India and from there on it was his political and social insightfulness that made him the Chief Whip of the Congress Legislative Assembly from 1926 to 1929. He also held the secretary position of the United Provinces Congress Committee and organized a no-rent campaign to protect Ashraf came under the influence of Professor Mohammad Habib and joined socialist movement. The farmers of the Rae Bareli district from the ongoing economic depression. For this, he was even sentenced for six months.

The Government of India Act 1935 made him a minister-in-charge of managing the revenues and jail portfolios in Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant’s cabinet in the United Provinces when congress government was set up. He was second to Pant as home minister in the 1946 government and in the same year, he became the home minister of UP. Post-independence, Kidwai became India’s first minister for communication in Jawahar Lal Nehru’s cabinet. Kidwai, along with Abul Kalam Azad, were the two Muslims in Nehru’s central cabinet. The “own your telephone” service that he launched in 1948 still goes by the name of OYT; under which a new telephone may be obtained. In the same year, he also launched night air mail service as a minister for communications.

Saith Yaqoob Hasan (1875-1940)

Saith Yaqoob Hasan (Maulana Yakub Hasan Saith) was an Indian businessman, freedom- fighter and politician who served as a cabinet minister for Public Works in the Madras presidency, under Rajaji (1937-1939). In 1916, Saith was elected to the Madras Legislative Council by the South Indian Chamber of Commerce. He joined the INC and participated in the Khilafat agitations in 1919 and was imprisoned for six months. He was arrested and imprisoned once again in 1921 for his participation in the Non-Cooperation Movement. On his return from jail in 1923, he resigned from the Congress and founded the Madras Province Muslim League. This move was prompted by Saith’s preference for Dominion Status when the Congress declared independence as its primary goal. As a result, no Muslim leader from the Presidency participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement. Saith stood for the elections and was elected to the Assembly.

Before the 1937 elections, Saith, left the Madras Provincial Muslim League and joined the Indian National Congress. Soon, he became one of the top leaders of the provincial Congress. He condemned Mohammad Iqbal’s two-nation theory and supported a united India. However, he still supported most of the other policies of the Muslim League.

Shoeb Qureshi

Qureshi edited Harijan during the detention of Gandhiji.

(Abdulrahim P. Vijapur is currently Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya. Formerly he was Professor of Political Science at Aligarh Muslim University. He retired in 2020 after serving AMU for 37 years. He can be reached at: Email: arvijapur@gmail.com )

This article was first published in countercurrents.org on 26 August 2022

source: http://www.indoislamic.org / Indo Islamic Heritage Centre / Home> Article / by Abdulrahim P Vijapur / October 23rd, 2023

Muzaffar Hussain Baig: one of the top 9 India legal geniuses in politics has a tough beginning in life

Wahdina Village / Sringar, KASHMIR / JAMMU & KASHMIR :

Muzaffar Hussain Baig at his home

Muzaffar Hussain Baig is among nine top Indian legal luminaries who also took to politics. He figures in the book Courting Politics by Shweta Bansal, along with other well-known legal bigwigs like Ram Jethmalani, Shanti Bhushan, P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Arun Jaitley, Salman Khurshid, Ravi Shankar Prasad, and Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

Baig, a recipient of Padma Bhushan (2020), who held several top positions in the government – Advocate General of J&K, Deputy Chief Minister, Law Minister, a member of Lok sabha – has risen in life wading through extremely difficult circumstances and yet never allowed anything do diminish his thirst for knowledge and limit his genius.

Having studied Law at the Harvard in the USA after graduating from the Delhi University’s School of Law, he also practiced in the US and Supreme Court of India before shifting to Kashmir. He was keen to make a difference to society and contested Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate. However, with the onset of the Pakistan-backed insurgency in Kashmir in the summer of 1989, Baig jettisoned his dream of pursuing a political career.

Muzaffar Hussain Baig

Baig is credited with drafting the anti-defection law of the J&K and his legal genius is reflected through the important cases he won in the Supreme Court of India and the J&K High Court.

Baig, 78, was born as the second of eight siblings in Wahdina village near Baramulla in North Kashmir. Though the family had a rich and royal legacy, he lived a life of penury. Baig speaks of he footing two km distance to school barefoot.

At the school, he was seen as a determined and hard-working student. One of his teachers Mohammad Maqbool Shah encouraged him to participate in activities like drama and speech making. Baig also taught to younger students in the school.

He learned the English alphabet in his 6th standard as was the norm those days. Soon, he started speaking in the English language with a “thick Kashmiri accent”. He topped the Board examination of the State in the 8th standard (Middle).

He shifted to Baramulla town,15 km away from home, to study further.

There was no stopping for this genius from then onwards till he joined Delhi University for his LLB and topped the examination. He then joined Harvard, USA, for higher studies and again topped the examination.

“You will find all over the world that there is an inbuilt desire in the minds of people to join politics, not to become Government functionaries but to secure some change for the society”, Muzaffar Hussain Baig told Awaz-The Voice at his residence, overlooking Dal Lake in Srinagar.

The Cover of the Book Courting Politics

He said, “I wanted to see the welfare of people…. had this desire to represent society. I did not even charge anything from my clients for whom it was unaffordable”, he said. “Politics, for me, was not just a profession but a mission to represent my society”.

Baig’s maiden attempt in politics, and as a distinguished lawyer having practiced in the US and Supreme Court of India, brought him to the notice of several political leaders including the then Congress leader and a former Minister, Abdul Ghani Lone, and the National Conference leader and former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and also former union Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

Lone had later constituted the Peoples Conference in the 1970’s, after quitting Congress. “Abdul Ghani Lone, with the idea of some change in Jammu and Kashmir, had become important as a political leader”, with mass support in Kupwara. North Kashmir. Lone extended his support to Baig in a couple of subsequent Lok Sabha elections. Baramulla constituency, then comprising Baramulla district of the entire North Kashmir, now comprises three districts, Kupwara carved out in 1979 and Bandipore carved out in 2007.

Describing Abdul Ghani Lone a rebel, who was among several others after having been educated at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Baig said that he (Lone) enquired “about my interest in politics. I was already contesting as an independent candidate, he assured me of his support in Kupwara”, he said.

Muzaffar Hussain Baig as a student in Harvard

Baig added that both of them almost belonged to a similar “deprived background”, and had to suffer together for many years. Abdul Ghani Lone represented his home constituency of Handwara in 1967, 1971 (Cong), 1977 (JP), and Karnah, 1983 (Peoples Conference) both constituencies in the Kupwara district. Things changed with the eruption of militancy late in 1989, leading to a political vacuum. 

Having been at the forefront of political activities in Jammu and Kashmir since the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was launched by the former Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1999, Baig had “good relations” with top political figures including former PMs, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh. He opines that Vajpayee was “extraordinarily intelligent” and Dr. Manmohan Singh was the most “humble and efficient person”.

Baig equally holds the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in high esteem for his sincerity and clarity of approach. “A Statesman thinks about the next generation and a politician thinks for next elections.’ he said.

On his experiences in the Lok Sabha as a PDP MP from Baramulla between 2014 and 2019, Baig lays importance on the “substance and sincerity in speech” adding that one has to say “things openly for the (welfare of) people”. He hailed the high political qualities of former union Ministers, Ms Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley.

Muzaffar Hussain Baig in his younger days

Given his distinguished legal background, Baig’s association was sought by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to frame the Constitution of a new political party, which later took the shape of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 1999. There was a need to float a new party while the Congress and National Conference were the only two national and regional level active political parties in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. Mehbooba Mufti, elected from the home constituency of Beijbehara in Anantnag district in 1996, was the CLP leader in the State Assembly.

Apart from practicing in the US after his post-graduation in the Law, Baig, being a senior counsel practiced extensively in J&K High Court, Delhi High Court, and Supreme Court of India Some of the important cases he had dealt with include the case of Reliance Petrochemicals in the SC, while he was associated with Shardul and Pallavi Shroff & Co in Bombay.

The case about Compulsory Convertible Debentures was being opposed by the senior Advocate, Ram Jethmalani. Quoting a ruling from the House of Lords, London, Baig, appearing for Ambanis asserted on the plea that no person should appear in public in any case while it is sub-juidice.  The verdict was in favor of his plea, while the senior lawyer, Ram Jethmalani withdrew from the case. The legal luminaries present included N A Palkivala, Fali S Nariman, and Soli Sorabji.

He soon returned to Kashmir and decided to contest the elections as an independent to “work for the welfare” of the people. In J&K he is known for the Anti-Defection Law, following the new government formation by G M Shah in July 1984. A close associate of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his son-in-law, G M Shah formed the Government after some of the NC MLAs defected to him from the Chief Minister, Farooq Abdullah. Shah was the J&K Chief Minister from 1984 to November 1986, before Farooq Abdullah again took over after the Rajiv-Farooq Accord.

On the personal front, Baig got married to Safina in 2007, who is the first elected woman Chairperson of the J&K Haj Committee and also the DDC Chairperson of Baramulla.

source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Story / by Ehsan Fazili, Srinagar / August 23rd, 2024

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed : A Life In Full

Kashmir, JAMMU & KASHMIR :
The late bloomer Mufti Mohammad Sayeed (1936–2016) leaves behind a legacy of reconciliation. Make use of it
 

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed (Photo: SAJJAD HUSSAIN/GETTY IMAGES)
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed (Photo: SAJJAD HUSSAIN/GETTY IMAGES)

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the ‘Lion of Kashmir’, died in September 1982. He was three months short of seventy-seven. He had been ailing, especially since a heart attack in 1977. Sheikh Abdullah’s funeral procession was gigantic. It may have been the single largest ever seen in the Subcontinent. The mass outpouring of grief was a measure of the stature he commanded among his people even in the twilight of his life. He had, after all, been the dominant figure of Jammu & Kashmir’s politics for a full half-century.

A decade later, Abdullah’s grave—near Srinagar’s Hazratbal shrine, on numerous occasions his base and pulpit over that turbulent half-century—was under guard by Indian paramilitary forces to prevent its desecration by armed militants and angry mobs.

The apparent reversal in the Sheikh’s standing among his people was not as astounding as it might seem. The accord he made with Indira Gandhi’s Government in 1975 in return for his personal liberty and political restoration—after 22 years mostly spent in prison—was widely viewed among his popular base and in his own organisation as an abject surrender to and for power. The Abdullah of 1975-1982 was a lion in winter, a far cry from the leader who had long defied and dared New Delhi. In his last years, he even fell out with a lifelong loyalist like Mirza Afzal Beg, the only one of his four cabinet colleagues who had stood with him against the Delhi-sponsored palace putsch of 1953 that deposed him from power (Beg also signed the 1975 capitulation on his behalf). The grand farewell he got from his people on his death was in recognition of his decades of suffering in the cause of ‘self-determination’. The same sentiment, coupled with his party’s grassroots machine, propelled his resounding election victory in 1977 and his son’s equally emphatic win in 1983.

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who has died a few days short of eighty, is not comparable to Sheikh Abdullah. For all his faults and flaws, the Sheikh is in a league of his own in Kashmir’s political history—the leader who brought mass political mobilisation to the Valley in the 1940s, emancipated the peasant masses from generations of serfdom through land reforms in the early 1950s, and challenged New Delhi’s machinations and stooges in Kashmir for more than two decades after his removal from power. Abdullah’s political capital was his mass base. The Mufti, for most (over two-thirds) of his nearly six decades in politics, was distinguished by the reputation he gained as a Machiavellian schemer and operator; he had almost no standing among his people and was disliked, distrusted, and perhaps even detested by most of his fellow-Kashmiris.

While I have not seen a single proper obituary of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in the Indian (or specifically the Kashmiri) media, it has emerged in piecemeal life- sketches that he began his political life in the late 1950s in something called the ‘Democratic National Conference’. This was a dissident faction of a cabal that was installed in office in Srinagar after the 1953 coup, which was formally executed by the barely-adult Karan Singh in his Sadr-e- Riyasat capacity and was followed by the suppression through police and military action of massive protests against it, with dozens killed in firing and thousands arrested.

The cabal, which comprised many though not all of Abdullah’s former comrades (there were important exceptions like Afzal Beg and Maulana Masoodi), falsely appropriated the National Conference name. The real NC was reconstituted as the Jammu & Kashmir Plebiscite Front in 1955 with Beg as its first president and the incarcerated Abdullah as its ‘patron’, and existed under that name until 1975. But the cabal in power developed a schism in 1957 when Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, Abdullah’s successor as J&K’s Prime Minister, failed to appoint any members of the faction clustered around GM Sadiq to cabinet positions after the first elections to the J&K Legislative Assembly. The ruling pseudo-NC had ‘won’ 69 of the assembly’s 75 seats in these elections; of the Valley’s 43 seats, 35 had been won without any contest (‘elected unopposed’). After the rift, 15 of the 69 legislators joined the rebel group led by Sadiq. The rift was papered over in late 1960 through New Delhi’s intervention and the pseudo- NC entered the 1962 Assembly elections formally re-united.

The young, ambitious Mufti Sayeed entered the Assembly in 1962 from his hometown, Bijbehara. It was not difficult— the official NC ‘won’ 68 of the 74 seats, and 32 of the Valley’s 43 constituencies were won without any contest. It was after these elections that Prime Minister Nehru, worried by adverse international media coverage, famously wrote to Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad mildly rebuking him for not having ‘lost a few seats to bonafide opponents’.

Mufti retained his seat in 1967. It was again a cakewalk. By this time Bakshi was in the doghouse and the ruling party—led since 1964 by Sadiq (who made Mufti a deputy minister in his government)—had metamorphosed in 1965 into the Jammu & Kashmir Pradesh Congress. The Congress won a four-fifths majority— 60 of the 75 seats—in the J&K Assembly in 1967. Of the Valley’s 42 constituencies, 22 saw no contest, and 118 candidates who filed nominations were rejected, 55 because they had not taken the compulsory oath of allegiance to India and the rest with no reason given.

Only a very few undesirables got through this gauntlet. A young Plebiscite Front leader, Ali Mohammed Naik, took the oath of allegiance, managed to get his papers approved, and was elected to the Assembly as an independent from Tral, a southern Valley town fairly close to Bijbehara. Another successful opposition candidate was none other than Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, disgraced and sulking since his fall from power in late 1963. In 1967, J&K elected Lok Sabha members for the first time. The Congress won five of the six Lok Sabha seats, including two of the Valley’s three. The exception was Srinagar, where Bakshi stood on a platform of Kashmiri pride and won despite attempts by intelligence operatives sent from Delhi to ensure his defeat. When he turned chameleon and ran from Srinagar as a Congress candidate in the 1971 Lok Sabha elections, he lost badly to Shamim Ahmed Shamim, a journalist and Plebiscite Front supporter who contested as an independent.

The people’s interest and allegiance lay elsewhere, outside this ‘democratic process’. On 18 April 1964, Sheikh Abdullah arrived in Srinagar after being released from prison. The Central and J&K governments had decided to free him in a desperate bid to calm down the Valley, which had been in a state of uprising since end-1963, turmoil triggered by the temporary disappearance of Prophet Muhammad’s hair from the Hazratbal shrine but rooted in pent-up rage at the police-state repression and fraudulent governments since 1953. It was reported that Abdullah ‘entered Srinagar and was greeted by a delirious crowd of 250,000 people. Srinagar was a blaze of colour and everyone seemed out on the streets to give him a hero’s welcome… Addressing a gathering of 150,000 people on 20 April, Abdullah said that in 1947 he had challenged Pakistan’s authority to annex Kashmir on grounds of religion, and now he was challenging the Indian contention that the [Kashmir] question had been settled’. Abdullah remained at liberty until May 1965, when he was re-arrested under the Defence of India Rules, a colonial-era regulation used by the British against Indian freedom fighters.

In March 1968, during another, shorter spell out of prison, ‘almost the entire population of Srinagar turned out to greet him’ as he arrived in the city, The Times of India reported. It added that the hundreds of thousands were chanting: “Sher- e-Kashmir zindabad, Our demand plebiscite!” Days later, Abdullah told a 100,000-strong gathering in Anantnag that “repression will never suppress the Kashmiri people’s urge to be free”. In 1968, Abdullah also said: “The fact remains that Indian democracy stops short at Pathankot. Between Pathankot and the Banihal [Pass] you may have some measure of democracy, but beyond Banihal there is none. What we have in Kashmir bears some of the worst characteristics of colonial rule.”

Consistent with the normal pattern of progression of politicians, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed became a cabinet-rank minister in the J&K government after the 1972 state Assembly polls. The Congress had won a three-fourths majority, 57 of the 75 seats, under the leadership of Syed Mir Qasim, who became Chief Minister after Sadiq’s death in 1971. The 1972 election had a back-story. In 1969 the Plebiscite Front had run as independents in panchayat elections and swept the Valley. Then, in December 1970, the Front announced that it would contest both the Lok Sabha polls in March 1971 and the state polls in 1972. Qasim later wrote in his autobiography, My Life and Times (1992), that since its formation in the mid-1950s the Plebiscite Front had ‘reduced [the ruling group] to a non-entity in Kashmir’s politics’ and ‘if the elections were free and fair, the Front’s victory was a foregone conclusion’.

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Speaking in Jammu city on 23 December 1970, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi made it clear that she would not tolerate this scenario. Asked by journalists how it could be prevented, she replied cryptically: “Ways will be found.”

On 8 January 1971, ‘externment orders’ were served on senior Front leaders Afzal Beg and GM Shah (the Sheikh’s son-in- law), which required them to leave J&K. During the night of 8-9 January, 350 leading Front activists were arrested across the state under the J&K Preventive Detention Act. On 12 January, the Centre declared the Front illegal under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The only reason the Congress did not cross the four-fifths majority mark in 1972 was that five Valley seats were given to the Jama’at-i-Islami in an underhand deal. The fundamentalist pro-Pakistan fringe entered J&K’s legislature through the backdoor.

During the subsequent phase of Indira Gandhi’s wary accommodation of the Abdullahs—on her own terms—Mufti Sayeed emerged as her chief in-state henchman as J&K’s top Congress leader. The Congress-NC rapprochement famously broke down in 1983 and it is more than plausible that Mufti was a key player in the Delhi-sponsored conspiracy that brought down Farooq Abdullah’s democratically elected government in mid-1984. When Farooq’s brother-in-law GM Shah, the Congress-backed replacement, had outlived his usefulness and needed to be disposed of two years later, an episode of rioting targeting Pandits in villages around Bijbehara in March 1986 provided the pretext for his government’s dismissal under Article 356 and Governor Jagmohan took over. Mufti bitterly quit the Congress and joined VP Singh’s bandwagon after Rajiv Gandhi cut his own deal, with its well-known disastrous consequences, with Farooq Abdullah in end-1986.

During the political and human tragedy that engulfed Kashmir through the 1990s, the small town of Bijbehara became one of numerous sites of massacres of civilians. In October 1993, BSF troops fired on a march in the town taken out in solidarity with Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) militants besieged by the Army in Srinagar’s Hazratbal shrine. Some three dozen people were killed and double that number seriously injured.

The Mufti’s re-emergence at the end of that bloody decade in a brutalised Kashmir in a completely new political avatar alongside his campaigning daughter was nothing short of extraordinary. The platform and rhetoric—dignity, self-respect, rights, and ‘self-rule’—were reminiscent of the Sheikh Abdullah of yore, albeit expressed in a less confrontational, more measured tone. By standing—at last—with his distressed, traumatised people instead of serving the masters in New Delhi, Mufti was able to build a genuine popular following.

The metamorphosis can and does have different explanations, from the romantic to the cynical. Yet one thing is certain. The septuagenarian Sheikh Abdullah was a spent, defeated politician. The septuagenarian Mufti was not. He performed competently as Chief Minister from late 2002 to late 2005, as J&K struggled to move beyond the violence of insurgency and counter-insurgency, until he was compelled to prematurely step down. A decade later, he was able to negotiate, in a spirit of equality, an ‘agenda of alliance’ document with the BJP, which embodies a concrete vision of resolving the Kashmir conflict in its multi-dimensional totality. Because of his past, he retained credibility among Jammu Hindus and Ladakhi Buddhists even while seeking to give voice to the grievances and aspirations of the Valley’s Muslims.

The later political life of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed— 1999- 2015 —has left a genuinely valuable legacy. Jammu & Kashmir, and India, cannot afford to—and must not—lose this legacy.

source: http://www.openthemagazine.com / Open / Home> Open> Voices> Open Essays / by Sumantra Bose / January 15th, 2016

 SumantraMPOs02feb2016Sumantra Bose is Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His most recent book, Transforming India (2013), includes an analysis of contemporary Kashmir as one of Indian democracy’s unresolved challenges