India Misses Maulana Azad’s Wise Counsel in 2019 Lok Sabha Polls

A default political visionary in 2019 polls, Maulana’s entry came by way of Shatrughan Sinha’s faux pas at a rally.

A ‘default’ political visionary, Maulana’s entry in 2019 elections happened Shatrughan Sinha’s faux pas in a rally.

(Photo: The Quint/Kamran Akhter)

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Maulana Abul Kalam Azad made a default entry in India’s savagely polarised polls of 2019, because the irrepressible Shatrughan Sinha made an awful faux pas at an election rally.

“The Congress family ranges from Mahatma Gandhi to Sardar Patel to Mohammad Ali Jinnah to Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi to Netaji Subhah Chandra Bose. This party belongs to them.”

Shatrughan Sinha, Congress leader

Sinha had to beat a hasty retreat, saying it was a “slip of the tongue”. He had mistakenly said Jinnah, when he meant Maulana Azad.

But it’s almost impossible to confuse Jinnah with Azad, for they were diametrically opposite politicians.

In fact, Maulana Azad was so trenchantly anti-Pakistan that Prime Minister Modi should have appropriated him as well (oh heck, I forget that he was a Muslim, and therefore a religious outlaw for the BJP/RSS, however much they may have agreed with him on the folly of creating Pakistan)!.

I came across this fascinating interview he gave to Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore-based Urdu magazine, Chattan. Remember, this was in April 1946, before India was partitioned. But even then, Maulana Azad had the almost brutal prescience to predict ethnic bloodshed, Indo-Pak wars, and the eventual creation of Bangladesh.

Here are his words, without any garnishing at my end (and again, remember, this was said when West and East Pakistan had not been carved out of United India):

Sarojini Naidu, using her sharp wit, complimented Maulana’s wisdom and erudition, saying, "Maulana was 50 years old when he was born." Nehru added that “he has Plato and Aristotle on his fingertips and is perfectly at home at Cordoba of Arab Spain.”

Historians have often argued about Maulana’s inexplicable silence on 3 June 1947, when Mountbatten presented his plan to divide India along religious lines. In his piece for IANS, Saeed Naqvi writes:

“The Congress Working Committee (CWC) swallowed the plan hook, line and sinker. Of the two Muslim leaders present at the CWC, Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan wailed: “You have thrown us to the wolves.” Maulana Azad smoked a box of cigarettes and said nothing.”

Although in his autobiography ‘India Wins Freedom’, Maulana Azad talks about warning Nehru:

“We were becoming greater supporters of Partition than Jinnah. I warned Jawaharlal that the verdict would be that India was divided not by the Muslim League, but by the Congress.”

Maulana Azad also shattered another myth that is artfully being propagated today, viz that Sardar Patel could have kept India united, but Nehru caved in.

“Sardar Patel was fifty percent in favour of partition even before Lord Mountbatten appeared on the scene. He was convinced that he could not work with the Muslim League. He was prepared to have a part of India if only he could get rid of the Muslim League. It would not perhaps be unfair to say that Vallabhbhai Patel was the founder of Indian partition.”

It's such a pity that leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad have faded from India’s political conscience. The country needs the Maulana’s wise counsel today, more than ever.