Freedom struggle: Raja Mohammad family and the independence movement’
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‘My family and the independence movement’
By Raja Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan (Sulaiman)
The involvement of my family with the freedom movement began in the nineteenth century, when my great grandfather, Raja Mohammad Amir Hasan Khan, also known as Amir-ud-Daula, came of age after the death of his father, Muqeem-ud-Daula Raja Nawab Ali Khan. As a nine year old child he had seen the agonizing death of his father who succumbed to his wounds before his eyes in a village called Seota, on the banks of the river Chowka some twenty miles to the north-east of Mahmudabad. Muqeem-ud-Daula had led the forces of the Taluqdars of Awadh and had fought valiantly against the British until nothing remained of his army.
He had then accompanied Begum Hazrat Mahal and her family to the border of Nepal where she sought refuge. These events were etched on his memory and were inherited by his progeny. The British spared the young Amir Hasan Khan, arranged for him to be educated in Benares and Calcutta from where he graduated. They even restored the title of ‘Raja’ and of some of the lands and estates that had belonged to his father. A substantial part of the lands were confiscated as a punitive and deterrent measure.
As the calamitous events of 1857 and the appalling brutality of the British forces in that period became more distant, the participants in the uprising pondered on the causes which had led to their defeat. It was in this period that Syed Ahmed Khan, wrote his analysis of the debacle. He concluded that one of the most important lessons of this humiliating defeat was the lack of Western education among the Muslims of India. This led to the foundation of the Mohammaden Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh in 1875. Raja Amir Hasan Khan too realized the importance of education for the Muslim community partly as a result of his own experience in college at Calcutta.
Although he was much younger than Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, he wrote to him and offered his services and all other possible assistance to him in his noble endeavour. After the foundation of the Mohammedan Educational Conference in 1886, Raja Amir Hasan Khan participated in its programmes and funded and founded a school in Mahmudabad which was named “Colvin College”, after Sir Auckland Colvin Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Province as Avadh was known at that time. Colvin College continues to provide education for the people of Mahmudabad and the neighbouring areas.
Surendranath Banerji was one of the great patriots and leaders of India in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
It is noteworthy that Mr. Jinnah considered Surendranath Bannerji his leader and in a speech said “…I learnt my first lessons in politics at the feet of Bannerji. I was associated with him as one of his followers and I looked upon him as a leader.” Bannerji embarked on nationwide tours to obtain support for representative institutions for the people of India, the separation of executive and judicial powers, admission of Indians to the civil service and military, and for permission to hold competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service in India as well, which were held only in England.
Moved by the righteousness of these demands, Raja Amir Hasan Khan invited Surendranath Banerji to speak to the British India Association in 1886 of which the Raja was the President. The British India Association of Avadh (Oudh), an organization of the Taluqdars of Avadh played an important role in legislative and administrative matters in Avadh through its members who were the Taluqdars of Avadh.
In his short, but full life, Raja Amir Hasan Khan was associated with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Syed Karamat Husain, Viqar-ul-Mulk, Moshin-ul-Mulk, Hamid Ali Khan, Sir Ross Masud, Sahibzada Aftab Ahmad Khan, Nawab Fateh Ali Khan Qizilbash, Imad-ul-Mulk Syed Husain Bilgrami and many other distinguished persons who dedicated themselves to the dissemination of education among the Muslims, as well as to the struggle for greater representation of Indians in the affairs of their nation.
There were four main factors which sustained and energised the social and political movements of Indian Muslims of North India at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The majority of the leaders of these movements were an elite who spoke Urdu and Persian and considered themselves as the natural leaders of their community.
The initial sense of outrage and anger which gradually changed to a resolve to acquire the necessary educational accouterments for successfully engaging with British rule in India remained paramount. However, changes in the economic structure led to a belief that Muslims had to protect themselves economically and socially quite separately from Hindus who were seen as the agents and beneficiaries of these changes. A rising mercantile class and bourgeoisie, led to conflicts of interests between the predominantly land-owning Muslim classes.
The changes in the structure of governmental institutions and their bureaucratization were disadvantageous for the Muslim. The encounter of Hinduism with rational, liberal and democratic ideas and institutions had led to the new reformist movements such as the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj which became vehicles of Hindu revivalism.
Lastly, the replacement and usage of Hindi and the subsequent promotion of the Devnagri script in lower courts and in legal documents, by what came to be known as ‘Sir Anthony Macdonnell’s Nagri resolution of 1900’, were perceived as a blow at the very foundations of Muslim religion and culture. Raja Amir Hasan Khan, who was a prolific poet of Urdu and Persian, was among those Muslims who became progressively alarmed by these developments, especially the last two, which, in his opinion constituted a challenge and threat to the future of Islam and Muslims in India.
Raja Amir Hasan Khan played a major role in the organization of the ‘Urdu Defence Association’ and cooperated and supported the efforts of Hamid Ali Khan in Lucknow and Nawab Fateh Ali Khan Qizilbash in Lahore.
A new era began with the foundation of the Indian National Congres in 1885. Among the demands of the Congres was universal suffrage which was perceived by many Muslims as an instrument for dominance by the Hindu majority over the Muslim minority.
Raja Amir Hasan Khan passed away in 1903 and was succeeded by his older son Raja Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan who also inherited his father’s deep interest in public and political life. The partition of Bengal in 1905 and subsequent agitations by mainly Hindu Bengalis, together with the adoption of the Vande Matram as anthem of defiance against the British led to serious introspection, discussion and a consensus amongst a large group of influential Muslim notables and leaders to form an organization to protect the political, social and economic interests of the Muslims.
This momentous decision was conveyed to the Viceroy, Lord Minto, by a delegation of eminent Muslims led by Aga Khan III, and which included Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk, Nawab Salimullah of Dacca, Sir Syed Ali Imam, Sir Mohammad Shafi, Maulana Mohammad Ali and Raja Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan of Mahmudabad on 1st October 1906. Consequently the delegates founded the All India Muslim League on 30th December 1906. Raja Ali Mohammad Khan became the vice-president of the League and took an active part in it.
It should however be noted, that Raja Ali Mohammad Khan had developed a deep and close friendship with Pandit Motilal Nehru who was active in the Indian National Congres. In fact, a large number of Muslims were concurrently members of the Indian National Congres and the All India Muslim League. Raja Ali Mohammad Khan was also a member of the Indian National Congres, became a friend of Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari was another close friend of the Raja and was also an active member of both the Congres and the League.
The Morley-Minto reforms, officially known as the Indian Councils Act (1909), gave weightage to Muslims in the proposed Councils and treated Muslims as a separate community and introduced communally based separate electorates. The annulment of the partition of Bengal brought the Muslims closer to the Hindus in the hope that they would be able to obtain more concessions from the British in matters relating to self-government.
Internationally, the Balkan wars, hostility towards the Ottoman Empire and the Arab Revolt were seen as various ways of weakening Muslim power and influence by British imperialism. The Aga Khan sent a cablegram to the Raja in December 1912 requesting him to help in raising funds for refugees of the Balkan wars and published this appeal in the Times of India of 9th December.
The Raja responded promptly and a successful campaign was launched in which Dr. Ansari, Maulana Mohammad Ali, and Maulana Shaukat Ali participated. Substantial funds were raised and remitted for the rehabilitation of the refugees. Dr. M.A.Ansari and Raja Ali Mohammad Khan followed the deteriorating situation in Europe and had apprehension of the efforts which would be made to defeat and destroy the Ottoman Empire which with all its faults and failings had a deep symbolic significance which in the words of Dr. Ansari “… would be difficult for any non-Muslim to realize…”. Dr. Ansari and the Raja therefore sent a petition to the Ottoman Caliph Mehmed V imploring him not to remain neutral in the conflict between Britain and Germany.
In 1913 a part of a mosque in Kanpur was demolished for widening the road. The ensuing agitation involved Maulana Mohammmad Ali and many other leaders among whom a very prominent part was played by Raja Ali Mohammad Khan who personally went to Kanpur and participated in the agitations.
It was estimated that during these agitations hundreds were injured and scores killed. Finally the matter was resolved through the intervention of Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy and the demolished part was reconstructed.
The period between the foundation of the Muslim League and the early years of the First World War was one of cooperation and understanding and culminated in the rapprochement popularly known as the Lucknow Pact of 1916.
In this period the leaders in the forefront of the Congres and the Muslim League had close personal relations and could manage the policies in their respective parties so as to generally accommodate the position of the other party. Some of the very prominent leaders of the Congres and the League were, Pandit Motilal Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, B.G. Tilak, C.R. Das, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Bhupendranath Basu, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Sir Syed Ali Imam, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, Maulana Abdul Bari Firangimahali, Sir Syed Raza Ali, Syed Wazir Hasan, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, Dr. M.A. Ansari, Haji Abdullah Haroon, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, Maulana Abdul Majid Daryabadi, Syed Nabiullah, Choudhry Khaliquzzaman and Raja Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan who had close relations with all of them.
The principal architects of the Lucknow Pact were Tilak and Jinnah, although others major leaders also contributed to its inception. The discussions and drafting of the Lucknow Pact were done at Mahmudabad House, Kaiserbagh in which my family and I continue to live. Raja Ali Mohammad Khan was the Chairman of the reception committee of the joint session of the Indian National Congres and the All India Muslim League in December 1916 when the Pact was formally approved by the delegates.
This rapprochement and the resulting cooperation between the Congres and the League was reflected in their disposition towards the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1918. Both the parties both welcomed the reforms with reservations and viewed it as not sufficiently far reaching and passed resolutions to this effect at special sessions held simultaneously at Bombay in 1918.
It was in this year that Jinnah married Rutti Petit the daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit. The marriage was solemnized on 18th April 1918 in the presence of Raja Ali Mohammad Khan who presented a diamond ring for the bride. After the marriage Jinnah and his bride went to spend their honeymoon at the Metropole Hotel in Nainital which was the property of the Raja.
Raja Ali Mohammad Khan presided over this special session of the League at Bombay in 1918. The internment of the Ali brothers, Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, was one of the major issues raised at the session. The two brothers had been interned in 1916 after they led agitations in regard to the developments in the Middle East which were considered by them and a very large section of the Muslims of India as a direct blow to the institution of Khilafat and the Ottoman Empire.
In particular the Arab Revolt of 1916 and the war against Turkey which had allied itself with Germany were the cause for deep anguish and concern among the Muslims in India. It was widely rumoured that the holy shrines at Mecca and Medina had been taken over by the British and this sacrilegious act further fuelled Muslim anger and resentment. After the armistice, the fate of Turkey and the punitive actions taken against it by breaking up its empire and handing them over to the British and the French as mandated territories led to the creation of the Khilafat Conference which was held in Delhi in mid 1919.
Nationwide protests were held and both the Congres now under the leadership of Gandhi and the Muslim League passed resolutions condemning Allied policies with respect to Turkey and the Khilafat.
The Rowlatt Bill of 1919 was opposed by the Congres as well as the League. Peaceful agitations against this draconian and inhuman Bill were conducted through out the country, but the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar on 13th April 1919 which coincided with Baisakhi was particularly tragic and appalling. In this massacre over a thousand people died and over two and a half thousand were seriously injured.
The massacre was unequivocally condemned by the Congres and the League and as a sign of solidarity the Congres and League held sessions simultaneously in Amritsar. Raja Ali Mohammad Khan joined Pandit Motilal Nehru in calling this event as one of the blackest and most infamous in the annals of the history of India.
The Khilafat movement was supported by Gandhi and many clerics such as Maulana Abdul Bari of Firangi Mahal in Lucknow. At this time a group of Ulama from Deoband formed the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind, to support and give religious sanction to the Khilafat Movement. The Congres under Gandhi’s leadership attracted the frenzied group of Muslims who were convinced that Islam was under attack by the British.
As a consequence, the League was sidelined during this period and Jinnah and other leaders such as Wazir Hasan, and Raja Ali Mohammad Khan found themselves eclipsed. Maulana Mohammad Ali, who had until that time been an extremely close friend of Raja Ali Mohammad Khan drifted away from him. The Congres party launched the ‘Non-Cooperation Movement’ and this together with the Khilafat movement further alienated the group of League leaders such as Jinnah, Wazir Hasan and Raja Ali Mohammad Khan from Congres policies.
With the abolition of the Khilafat by Kemal Ataturk on 3rd March 1924, the Khilafat movement lost the importance and centrality which it had enjoyed. However the communal frenzy and the movements ensuing from it generated growing Hindu-Muslim antipathy. Some Ulama belonging to the Jamiat advocated ‘hijrat’ or emigration from India which was considered unsafe for orthodox Muslims to neighboring Muslim countries. The Moplah rebellion was another instance which led to great bitterness between the Hindus and Muslims.
In 1924, Raja Ali Mohammad Khan was given a personal title of Maharaja by the British on the recommendation of his close friend Sir Harcourt Butler, the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces, as an attempt to wean him away from the independence movement. In this the British miscalculated and the Maharaja continued his support and participation in the struggle for independence.
The was a spate of Hindu-Muslim disturbances from 1921 onwards which added to the growing bitterness between the two communities. To add to these tensions two movements sprang onto the political scene. One started by the Hindus and called the ‘sangathan’ (organization) and ‘shuddhi’ (re-conversion to Hinduism) movement and the other started by the Muslims which mirrored the Hindu movement was called ‘tanzeem’(organization) and ‘tableegh’ (proselytisation). Jinnah and Raja Ali Mohammad Khan together with the majority of Muslim leaders found this utterly abhorrent and dissociated themselves from all such repugnant activities.
In this atmosphere the British sent a Commission known as the Simon Commission which was appointed by British Government under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon, to examine the “…. desirability of establishing, extending, modifying or restricting the degree of responsible government”. No Indians were included in the Commission and this led to unreserved condemnation of the Commission from the Congres and Jinnah group of the League.
At this time the League faced grave problems as a result of fragmentation and with various groups such as the ‘Shafi group’, the ‘Aziz group’, and others competing for leadership and these groups were not opposed to the Commission.
The Congres decided to boycott the Commission and Maharaja Ali Mohammad Khan also organized a successful boycott of the Commission on 28th and 29th November 1928. As a precautionary measure his residence, Mahmudabad House, in Kaiserbagh was surrounded and searched by the police and his staff and other residents of the house were humiliated. His close friend Motilal Nehru raised this humiliation of the Maharaja in a patriotic cause in the Council at Lucknow.
The Nehru Report which had been commissioned by the Congres session of Bombay in May 1928 almost reversed the agreements and rapprochement which had been reached through the Lucknow Pact. Nevertheless Dr.M.A. Ansari and the Maharaja supported the Nehru Report in the hope that at an appropriate time adjustments would be made to ensure the political future of the Muslims.
They decided to boycott the RoundTable conference to be held in London as the majority of the Muslims invited by the British were unrepresentative of the Muslims. Jinnah had become progressively dismayed by the developments in the preceding years and unable to obtain amendments to the Nehru Report, withdrew and left for England.
The health of Maharaja Ali Mohammad Khan had been deteriorating over the years preceding his death in May 1931. His anxiety about the manner in which the British would act during the minority of his older son who was to be his successor in accordance with primogeniture, led him to form trust and make a will which would ensure that the British administration would be unable to interfere in the affairs of Mahmudabad Estate during the minority of his son Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan.
He therefore formed a trust of which his very dear friends Motilal Nehru and Jinnah were to be alternate Chairmen until Raja Amir Ahmad Khan reached the age of majority. Unfortunately Motilal Nehru predeceased the Maharaja and therefore Jinnah was left as the only Chairman of the trust.
Raja Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan reached the age of twenty-one in 1935 and formally succeeded his father the Maharaja in 1936. The first conversation which the Raja had with Jinnah had taken place in the lifetime of the Maharaja and in his presence. When Jinnah had asked the young Amir Ahmad Khan ; “Are you a Muslim first or an Indian first ?” and got the reply; “I am Muslim first and then an Indian”, Jinnah had retorted in a loud voice; “My boy no. You are an Indian first”.
As a boy Amir Ahmad Khan had seen the great leaders of India visiting his father’s house and had seen some of them such as Motilal Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru and other members of Jinnah’s and Nehru’s family staying for days in the house.Raja Amir Ahmad Khan has written a short autobiographical article titled, “Some Memories”, which has been published many times and contains some of his reminiscences and memories.
Briefly from 1936 to 1947 Raja Amir Ahmad Khan devoted himself to the freedom struggle under the guidance of Jinnah and as an active and committed member of the Muslim League. He was the youngest member of the working Committee of the All India Muslim League during this period, its treasurer and the President of the Muslim Students Federation of India. Except for a brief period of about a year when he became entranced by a group of politically orthodox Muslims in Aligarh, he remained loyal to Jinnah and his political stand.
He came into contact with almost all the main participants of the freedom struggle.
In spite of his commitment to the League and its programme, he continued to have close and warm relations with Jawaharlal Nehru and his family, Sarojini Naidu, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and other members of the Congres Party. He went into self-imposed exile to Iraq in 1947 and spent nearly ten years living in Karbala and Baghdad. He became a Pakistani citizen in 1957, but Jawaharlal Nehru refused to cancel his passport and Indian citizenship.
When he came to India as a Pakistani citizen, Jawharlal asked him to reconsider his decision to surrender his Indian citizenship and passport. He was deeply moved by this offer but said that he would face the consequences of his decision as “ …. changing citizenship and nationality are deliberate and serious act and not akin to a change of clothes”.
Raja Mohammad Amir Ahmad remained restless even after changing his citizenship and continued to question the politics of his past relentlessly and ruthlessly. From a person who had founded the Islami Jama’at in the early forties he changed to an ardent supporter of secularism in matters of politics and government and recalled with deep respect and affection the views of Jinnah in support of a secular approach to the political programme of Pakistan and especially in regard to the secular Constitution which Jinnah wanted for the republic.
In 1962 Raja Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan was offered the Presidentship of the League he declined the offer as he believed that a new secular political party was needed to strengthen and nurture democratic institutions in Pakistan. When Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rahman visited London for the first time after the creation of Bangladesh, he personally went to receive him and brought him to his flat in London to have him examined by medical doctors from Harley Street.
The deep love which he had developed for the people of East Bengal during the freedom struggle remained constant and unaffected by all that had happened just before Bangladesh came into existence. Likewise his love for the common people of India and especially for those living in the area in and around Mahmudabad and Lucknow grew as the years passed.
He dreamed of a time when the three major countries of the sub-continent, India, Pakistan and Banglaadesh would cooperate and work together for alleviating poverty, eradicating illiteracy and creating a truly enlightened society where the finest traditions of this region would flourish.
Two years before his death while recovering from a heart attack in a general ward of a London Hospital he said to me, “Take me back to Mahmudabad’. I replied “ I will take you to Switzerland to recuperate”, he said “No, Mahmudabad is better than Switzerland could ever be”.
The writer is the son of the Raja of Mahmudabad.
