Prem Swaroop

Dear @Javedakhtarjadu. I'm afraid your response is as boring and overloaded as your similes and metaphors. When countered with facts, you shift the goalpost, bring in the RSS, berate the right wing, take refuge in context, cushion the bigotry, and claim Kafirs were Colonialists not Hindus. I know countering you again is like watering a cactus and praying for leechis, but in the hope that all that knee massaging with Doctor Ortho would have sprouted some neurons, here goes: You asked for a source because you said the quote was “quite unlike” Azad’s “lifelong sociopolitical stances.” I gave you the source: Calcutta, 27 October 1914, published in Khutbat-e-Azad. The words are his. That should have ended the enquiry. It did not. So let us walk through your new script, line by line. 1. “The khutbats were about Khilafat and British colonialism.” Yes. That is what I wrote. Maulana Azad was telling Indian Muslims that a Turk’s battlefield thorn must be felt in a Hindustani Muslim’s heart; that Millat-e-Islam is one body; that friendship and enmity are for the religion of Allah. Then he quoted Quran 48:29 and added his own gloss: be extremely hard against disbelievers, extremely kind among yourselves, and do not pass over this as if you had not heard it. You asked for the when and where. You received both. “It was about Khilafat” is not a rebuttal. It is the context in which he said it. 2. “To claim he was quoting this about the Hindus of India will not be true. The Kafir here was the colonialist.” I did not say the 1914 speech was a municipal circular against the Hindus of Howrah. I quoted what Azad quoted: a Quranic verse about kuffar, and his commentary on unbelief, Tawhid, and hardness toward disbelievers. If Azad had meant “kafir = only the British officer,” he knew Urdu enough to say Angrez. He did not. He used the Book’s word, then told his flock not to skip it. And if “kafir” in Azad’s mouth was a temporary colonial nickname, kindly explain the 1920 Hijrat fatwa, published in Ahl-e-Hadith of Amritsar, in which he said Indian Muslims had no choice but to migrate, and that those who stayed and kept connection with “the enemy of Islam” would themselves be counted as the enemy of Islam. That is not a lecture on income-tax collectors. That is a theology of the land. 3. “When Ataturk took over, Azad called it a closed chapter and condoned the secular government.” Men change. Texts do not. If later Azad made peace with the death of the Caliphate, good for the later Azad. It does not unsay 1914, nor the Khilafat years, nor Masala-e-Khilafat, nor the call that any government hostile to Turkey was hostile to Islam, not the belief in the Quranic verse damning the Kafirs. You began by saying the paragraph was unlike his lifelong stances. Lifelong includes the years he spent as a pan-Islamist firebrand. Evolution is not an eraser. It is a timeline. 4. “Read his Calcutta High Court statement. An honour no member of the Mahasabha or RSS was ever given.” Sedition charges from the Raj are not a unique family heirloom. Tilak got them. Aurobindo got them. Savarkar was given two life terms and sent to Cellular Jail, where the honour included the oil mill, the lash, and years in a cell the size of a cupboard. And of course, knowing your pitiful knowledge of Indian History, I guess you would not know legendary RSS names like Devipad Chaudhary, Jagatpati Kumar, Anna Saheb Deshpande, Ramakant Keshav, Vasantrao Oak, Narayan Singh, Chandrakant Bhardwaj, Dada Naik Chimur, Baburao Begade, Lala Hansraj, Balaji Raipurkar who participated in our freedom struggle and were jailed or shot. 5. “Azad was in British jails for nine years. Name one from your right wing who can match that.” Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: roughly a decade in Kala Pani, further years in mainland jails, then thirteen years of internment in Ratnagiri. Sentence on paper: fifty years. Conditions: not Ahmednagar Fort with time to write Ghubar-e-Khatir. By the way, you might know that your great-great-grandfather Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi was also incarcerated at Kala Pani. What you might not know, or would want to hide, is that he wrote a grovelling mercy petition to the British, pleading to be released. 6. “In 1946 Jinnah refused to shake Azad’s hand. He hated Azad for his patriotism.” How does this turn “be severe against the kafirs, merciful among themselves” into a sonnet about communal harmony? A man can spend 1946 refusing Partition and still have spent 1914 telling Indian Muslims that their first body is the ummah. Fairness is holding both pages open. What you are doing is hiding the 1914 page and waving the 1946 one like a flag. 7. “Your reference to Rahul Gandhi was unnecessary, I expect decency and class.” And I expected you to have some sense of humour. The PS was a reminder that this is the second time I have had to fetch your hero’s paperwork. Last time it was Nehru’s India: books banned, editors sacked, films blocked, Majrooh jailed for a couplet. You lecture me on class after moving from “this cannot be Azad” to “it is Azad but you must read kafir as colonialist” to “anyway he went to jail” to “Jinnah was rude to him” to “please don’t mention Rahul.” That is not class. That is a guided tour of every exit except the text. Look, Javed sahab, let us end this here. I like you. Doubtless a lot of your work is incredible, truly it is. So in that spirit, permit me to pen an ode to you: Javed Akhtar ko dekha toh aisa laga, jaise chhal ka nawab, jaise jhoot ki kitaab, jaise dhong ki kiran, jaise adambar ka van, jaise kapton ki baat, jaise pakhand ki raat, jaise janpath mein ho ek jalta diya. Alvida, Shabba khair. WDTP