In the only issuance of its kind the posthumous Bharat Ratna award for Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad announced on January 23 his year was given away, not as is usually done, by the President at a glittering investiture ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, but delivered unceremoniously by post in the last week of June to the Maulana’s octogenarian nephew, Noor ud din Ahmad, living in poverty and secularism in Calcutta, The news was not reported in newspapers and hardly anybody knows that the award has been presented. Even the Rashtrapati Bhawan officials when asked seemed unaware of it. Officials in the home ministry, looking after wards, however, confirmed that the Bharat Ratra for the Maulana consisting of a medal and a sanad President’s certificate, was dispatched by registered post on June 18 to Nooruddin Ahmed, the closest relative of Maulana Azad. Nooruddin died in Calcutta last month.
His death has given rise to new controversy, Nooruddin who remained underground since 1958 is said to have had in his possession a trundle full of Maulana Azad’s private papers which he never allowed anybody to see. Nooruddin’s son, Firoz Sakht, however claims that during one of his visits to Calcutta his father had shown him the contents and said that, his only desire in life was to get these published, According to Firoz the trunk contained many handwritten manuscripts of Azad’s unpublished books. One of them Jashn-e-Azadi ya Jaqseem-e-Hind contained Azad views on Partition, In this manuscript, Azad holds Nehru as much responsible for Partition as Jinnal,
There were also 12 unpublished sections of Azad’s Tajumar-ul quran and a large number of letters by Gandhi and Nehru written to the Maulana in the 20s and 30s.
With Nooruddin’s death this valuable collection of Azad’s papers is said to have fallen into the hands of some unscrupulous persons who are trying to sell it to a publisher in Lahore for millions of rupees.
Four literary societies have, through posters, appealed to the West Bengal government to retrieve these invaluable manuscripts from irresponsible hands and deposit them with the Indian Council of Cultural Relations the institution set up by Maulana Azad and best suited to look after his assets. But no action has been taken so far.
The government’s indifference in this matter as well as the unceremonious manner in which the award was handed over has caused a lot of heart burn to Azad’s admirers. They feel that in thus sending the awarded by post, the government not only insulted the great leader but degraded the award itself. Criticizing the government’s action Firoz Bakht says “Even if Nooruddin was too old to come to Delhi to receive the award, it could have been presented to him by the government at a public ceremony in Calcutta. It was after all not an award for poor old Nooruddin but for one of the founders of Independent India and ought to have been handed over with dignity,”
The Bharat Ratna for the Maulana has been dogged by controversy from the very beginning. Soon after the government announced the award it came up for criticism by a section of the press which saw little justification for such a delayed honor, Others charged that the award was not an innocent honor but was meant to serve a political purpose. Indeed, the demand for the Bharat Ratna for the Maulana was first made by Syed Shahabuddin in a letter to the Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao in July 1991.
Even as the government’s wisdom in conferring the award was being questioned and criticized, there was a virtual scramble among Azad’s relatives to receive the award. Maulana Azad had no children but left behind a large number of grandnephews and grandnieces, the most well-known is Najma Heptullah, the grandniece of Azad’s sister Fatima. She said to have been initially quite excited about the award and even ousted a public reception to deliberate the announcement. But after realizing that there were many tyrants and not wishing to get to. a controversy, she took the remand that the award was a honor for the whole country and it was not important who received it, Another relative reported to have staked his claim was Baquar Hussain, a prosperous film distributor of Delhi, Home ministry officials decline to divulge the names of the claimants.
In view of the large number of relatives who put in their claim, the government launched a search to trace Azad’s closest relative. It found Nooruddin to be the closest blood relative of Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad. The award was therefore sent to him.
Nooruddin’s is a sad story. The only son of Maulana Azad’s elder brother, Ghulam Yasin (who died very young), Nooruddin was brought up by the Maulana and lived with him all his life. In 1956 he secretly married Nazuk Jahan and had a son Firoz Bakht (now a school teacher in Delhi), Maulana Azad disapproved of this clandestine marriage. His disapproval 8o upset Nooruddin that after his (Azad’s) death in 1958, he abandoned his wife and child and migrated to Calcutta, Shutting himself up in his old dilapidated house on Bright Street, he remained underground for the rest of his life. When his son Firoz Bakht met him for the first time in 1988, after a great deal of persuasion, he found him living in abject poverty and squalor.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 23, 1992
