A Biographical Memoir by Mahadev Desai, 22
February 1942
This
very readable book not only gives information not generally known to the public
on the life and activities of the President of the Indian National Congress but
also throws a flood of light on those elements on his religious, intellectual
and political make-up which have placed him in the unique position he occupies
to-day in the public life of India.
The
first four chapters give an account of the rich heritage to which Maulana Abul
Kalam Azad was born and the way in which he developed his inborn powers. There
is next a quick transition to the social, economic and political education the
Maulana sought to impart to his brothers in faith by starting his deservedly
known “Al Hilal”. Uncompromising in his views and outspoken in given utterance
to them, the Maulana was interned but his activities did not in any way suffer
from the cause.
The chapters which will probably have the greatest appeal for the reader are those headed “A Declaration of Faith”, “Views on the Religion” and “Another Campaign”. A large part of the first of these consists of an English translation of the statement made by the Maulana in that polished Urdu of which he is such a great master when he was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for the prominent part he had taken in the non-co-operation movement when Congress declared a boycott of all functions arranged to give a reception to the Prince of Wales and Government in that connection declared Congress volunteers to be illegal. This statement lays down clearly and in the most eloquent of terms those eternal and immutable principles on which freedom has based itself everywhere and at all times. Part of it quoted below has a significance all its own even to-day, two decades after the ideas found expression from the eloquent pen of the Maulana:
“It
is my belief that liberty is the natural and God given right of man. No man and
no bureaucracy consisting of men has got the right to make the servants of God
its own slaves. However attractive be the euphemisms invented for ‘Subjugation’
and ‘Slavery’ still slavery is slavery, and it is opposed to the will and the
canons of God. I therefore consider it a bounden duty to liberate my country
from its yoke. The notorious fallacies of ‘reform’ and ‘gradual transference of
power’ can produce no illusion and pitfalls in my unequivocal and definite
faith. Liberty being the primary right to men, it is nobody’s personal
privilege to prescribe limits or apportion shares in the distribution of it. To
say that a nation should get its liberty in graduated stages is the same as
saying that an owner should by right receive his property only in bits and a
creditor his dues by instalments. What-ever philanthropic acts might be
performed by a man who by a man who as usurped our property, his usurpation
would still continue to be utterly illegal.
“Evil cannot be classified into good
and bad. All that is in fairness possible is to differentiate the varying
degree. For instance we can say very heinous robbery and less heinous robbery,
but who can speak of good robbery and bad robbery? I cannot, therefore, at all
conceive of any justification for such domination because by its very nature it
is an act of iniquity”.
Shree Mahadev has proved that with
all his learning and scholarship, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is intensely
practical. This rare combination of qualities is probably responsible for the
position he occupies in what even the most uncharitable of critics must admit
as our largest, most influential, non- communal oraganisation the doors of
which are wide open to admit members of every religious, social and economic
group. The reader should be thankful to Shree Mahadev for the exceedingly lucid
way in which he has explained this great qualification of the President of the
Indian National Congress.
In
Shree Mahadev’s biography we are given an opportunity of entering into the
Maulana’s inner sanctum. We get a picture of the man as he is, his religious
beliefs, his outlook on the very interesting and important political problems
of our motherland and his deep and abiding patriotism which has kept him in the
service of our motherland in adversity and prosperity and, most of all, which
has enabled him to meet with unflinching courage uncharitable criticism and
even downright obloquy. One feels as one goes through the book that India need
not despair so long as she has, as her children, men of the type of Maulana
Abul Kalam Azad. The services he has already rendered to us and which we are
certain he will continue to render so long as the breath of life is in him
rightly entitle him to be called as he has actually been called be Shree
Mahadev “The First Servant of the Nation”.
