Hasrat Mohani
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Hasrat Mohani
Remembering Hasrat Mohani
By Sharif al Mujahid
All said and done, Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a revolutionary par excellance. His was a life of labour, tears and toil – a veritable saga of incessant struggle, awesome tribulations and poignant suffering.
Born in a middle class Sadaat family, in a small town (Mohaan) situated between Lucknow and Kanpur, in 1880, and named as Syed Fazlul Hasan, Hasrat Mohani, as he later came to be known after his nom de plum, graduated from the M.A.O. College, Aligarh, in 1903. He belonged to the radical wing of Aligarh’s first generation. While justifying Sir Syed for his loyalist plank in his own time, this group stood for taking the political path so that the Muslims could take part in the onward march of both the community and the country.
That stance called for shunning the comforts, perks and prestige that went with a cosy government job. It called for opting for uncertain, stormy politics. Hasrat not only joined the Congres in 1904, but aligned himself with the extremist wing, headed by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. For Hasrat, the Moderates, led by Gokhale and Pherozshah Mehta, had little attraction. And along with Tilak he abandoned the Congres when the Congres split at Surat in 1907, and the Moderates became ascendant. Hasrat was among the earliest Muslims to boycott British goods and opt for indigenous cloth. Even his redoubtable wife, who cast off the veil to share the burdens of her intrepid husband, went in for swadeshi. Along with preaching the swadeshi cause in his monthly, Urdu-i-Mu'alla, he also opened a store at Aligarh to promote it.
Hasrat’s first test came in 1908 when he published an extremely critical article on the British policy in Egypt – a translation from an Arabic article. The Maulana refused stoutly to divulge the name of the writer. He was charged with sedition, sentenced to two years’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs500. And in default of its payment, the Maulana’s precious library was auctioned off for a paltry sum of Rs60 only. The lawyers’ reluctance to take up cases involving sedition in those days denuded him of any legal aid. Rigorous imprisonment for him meant grinding over 36 kilos of wheat every day. In Hasrat’s own words:
Hai mashq-i-sukhan jari, chakki ki mushaqqat bhi Ek turfa tamasha hai Hasrat ki tabiyyat bhi
And the Maulana was, perhaps, the first Muslim to undergo rigorous imprisonment for his political views. The first two decades of twentieth century saw him gaoled three more times. His father died while he was in jail and he was not informed. His only daughter’s wedding took place during his incarceration at Ahmedabad in 1915. Letters from family and friends were not allowed, nor were visitors. Thus, compared to Hasrat’s, the jail terms the other political leaders (including Gandhi, the Nehrus and the Ali brothers) had gone through since the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation and Quit-India days during the 1920s and the 1940s, were mere picnic.
By 1913, Hasrat was able to inject a streak of radicalism into Muslim politics. During the aftermath of the Kanpur Machhli Bazar Mosque affair, he along with the Ali Brothers, Maulana Azad Subhani, Maulana Abdul Bari Farangimahli, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan and others, addressed mammoth meetings.
When it comes to bold and trenchant political writings, the three names that are usually invoked are those of Muhammad Ali, Abul Kalam Azad and Zafar Ali Khan. But much earlier than these three, Hasrat had suffered incarceration for his editorial independence. His Urdu-i-Mu'alla also appeared much earlier than Comrade, Al-Balagh and Zamindar. The Mu’alla had invited British wrath for Hasrat’s writings during the agitation on the Kanpur Mosque demolition, resulting in a security demand for Rs 3,000 under the Vernacular Press Act. It was sheer tyranny to demand Rs 3,000 from a press, worth little more than Rs 50. Undeterred, however, he founded the Tazkiratush Shu'ra in place of the Urdu-i-Mu'alla.
Throughout his life, Hasrat was in dire financial straits, but he consistently refused financial assistance from everyone. And his wife was made of the same stuff. While he was being held at the Baroda jail in Puna, in 1922, she declined financial assistance from Puna Muslims, saying, “If you are such admirers of my husband, then why not purchase his books? But on no account would I accept financial help.”
Both Hasrat and his wife led a simple life. And she helped her illustrious husband in all possible ways – getting his books published, reading the proofs, looking after the press and running the Swadeshi store.
He was the first political leader to propose to define the Congres’s creed of Swaraj as “Complete independence, free from all foreign control by all possible and proper means”. This he did at its Ahmedabad session in 1921. Though rejected by the Subjects Committee of the Congres at the instance of Gandhi, he moved it in the open session. Because of Gandhi’s opposition, no one dared second his amendment to the Congres’s creed. Whereupon Begum Hasrat boldly stood up in that huge gathering and seconded it, without much ado.
Because Gandhi’s word was law in the tempestuous, emotion-laden non-cooperation days, he stood adamant in his opposition, trotting out plausible excuses for the hero-worshipping motley crowd’s consumption. The proposal, he said “in all confidence”, showed “lack of responsibility”; it raised “a false issue”; it was akin to “throwing a bombshell in midst of the Indian atmosphere”; and, above all, it was “a step which will redound not to your credit, not to your advantage, but which may cause you irreparable injury,” argued Gandhi. (The Indian Annual Register, 1922, I:65-66)
Subhas Chandra Bose, twice Congres President during 1938-39, calls Hasrat’s definition “revolutionary”, adding, “The proposition was, however, to be brought up over and over again at subsequent Congres sessions till it was accepted at the Lahore Congres in 1929, the mover on that occasion being none other than the Mahtama himself.”
Undeterred by his discomfiture at the Ahmedabad Congres, the Maulana included his proposal in his Presidential Address to the All India Muslim League on December 30, 1921. He suggested that complete independence should be announced from January 1, 1922, that India be declared a Republic, that it be named the United States of India. If Martial Law be imposed then guerrilla warfare should be launched against the British government. The Presidential Address was confiscated and Hasrat was prosecuted. The jury went for the defendant, but the Session Judge convicted the Maulana, sentencing him to two years’ rigorous imprisonment and putting him in a condemned cell. However, on a reference to the High Court, Justice Crump found that the Maulana was not “guilty of instigating and therefore abetting the waging of war”. Since the learned Judge found no incitement to violence in the Maulana’s Presidential Address, the earlier sentence was set aside and the Maulana set free.
Interestingly, it was at the instance of the Maulana that the All India Muslim League adopted “full independence” as its creed at Lucknow in 1937. The word, “complete”, had been dropped because, in view of being variously defined as Dominion Status, Purna Swaraj, etc., as the Maulana explained, its interpretation had made the word meaningless. In subsequent years, the Maulana was in the forefront of, first, the struggle for Pakistan, and, later, for the rights of the Muslims in the Indian dominion. He was the lone member of the Indian Constituent Assembly who refused to sign the Indian Constitution. And when he left for his heavenly abode on May 13, 1951, his death was widely mourned.
THE KRISHNA FAN WHO coined ‘INQUILAB ZINDABAD’
Mohammed Wajihuddin, January 5, 2025: The Times of India
Sometime in 1899, a boy from Mohaan, a kasba in Unnao of Uttar Pradesh, joined Mohammedan Anglo Oriental (MAO) College, which would later come to be known as Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Clad in a loose pyjama, flowing robe and topi, the short, bespectacled boy carried a paan-daan (betel-leaf case) in one hand, which attested to his upbringing in a traditional upper middle-class Muslim family. But the undergraduate student appeared a misfit at the elite college, famous as much for its unique dress code as for the genteel adaab, or demeanour, of its students. He immediately earned the comical moniker of khaala jaan (aunt, or mother’s sister) from fellow hostellers.
A Name For Himself
But quickly picking up the ways of the college, Syed Fazlul Hassan in no time became a popular presence on campus. He excelled both at studies and extracurriculars, including writing and reciting romantic Urdu poetry, so much so that Fazlul, who had adopted ‘Hasrat’ as his nom de plume, soon came to be reverentially called ‘Maulana Hasrat Mohani’ by the same lot who had once mocked him as khaala jaan.
Mohani, whose 150th birth anniversary was on Jan 1 this year, would later shine among the galaxy of Indian freedom fighters and Urdu poets. ‘Hasrat’, meaning desire or wish, captured the popular imagination in the India of the last century and sought to reflect on his pen name in this couplet:
Ishq ne jab se kaha Hasrat mujhe, koi bhi kehta nahin Fazlul Hassan (Ever since love called me Hasrat, no one calls me Fazlul Hassan) His famous ghazal, Chupke chupke raat din, sung by the popular Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali and later featured in the BR Chopra film Nikaah (1982), touches romantic chords even today.
Krishna Devotee
Though largely forgotten in contemporary Indian politics and consigned to the margins of ‘official’ history, it can be argued that Mohani nonetheless deserves to claim his place in popular memory for both political and non-political reasons. Not many know that this great romantic poet, who has left a huge ouvre of Urdu ghazals, was a great devotee of Lord Krishna.
But he is not the only Muslim poet to have praised Hindu icons, sacred sites and deities. Much before Mohani, Mirza Ghalib, in his panegyric Persian poem, Chiraag-E-Dair (Temple Lamp), called Kashi, or Benaras India’s Kaaba, underscoring the ancient city’s spiritual importance.
But then Ghalib was famously an iconoclast, never conforming to the expectations of orthodox Islam, drinking and gambling being among his known “weaknesses”.
Unlike Ghalib, however, Mohani was a devout Muslim who had per- formed the Haj 13 times. He was the disciple of a Sufi saint associated with the Chishtiya order and regularly attended and immensely enjoyed Qawwali mehfils. Even so, though it baffled the conservatives no end, he became a great devotee of Lord Krishna and would travel to Mathura and Vrindavan for the annual Janmashtami festival. He paid tribute to Lord Krishna thus: Paigham hayat-e-jawedan tha, har naghma Krishn bansuri ka (There is a message of eternal life, in every note of Krishna’s flute).
“Few used poetry to express the syncretic ethos of India like Mohani did. He called Mathura a city of divine ashiqui, or love, and showed that Islam is compatible with reverence for icons of other religions,” said Shafey Kidwai, a noted critic and professor of Mass Communication at AMU.
Cong To ML To CPI
If a devout Muslim’s unflinching devotion to Hindu deity Krishna boggles minds, Mohani’s political predilections seem even more curious. He initially joined Indian National Congress, camped with the radical group of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh, and also had a stint in Muslim League but quit it after Muhammad Ali Jinnah turned it into a tool to divide India. He then helped found the Communist Party of India and chaired its first all-India session in 1925 in Kanpur.
“As early as 1921, eight years before Congress would push for Poorna Swaraj, it was Mohani who had been unequivocal in his demand for complete freedom — mukammal azadi — for India. He steadfastly worked for the freedom of the country, writing articles and editorials that were considered subversive by the colonial govt and getting imprisoned for it,” said Rakhshanda Jalil, writer and literary historian who is working on a biography of Mohani.
Even if all is forgotten, Mohani’s name is guaranteed to echo through the ages and wherever the politics of protest hits the streets because it is he who coined the slogan, Inquilab Zindabad (long live revolution), the rallying cry of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh.
“If for nothing else, Mohani deserves our respect only for giving us this revolutionary slogan, which people use to protest injustice and oppression even today,” said senior Urdu journalist Nadeem Siddiqui.
Mohani also served as a member of the Constituent Assembly, helping draft the Constitution of India though he never signed it as he had his reservations about the final document.
During the Swadeshi movement, Mohani opened a Swadeshi store, prompting eminent scholar-poet Shibli Noamani to quip: “Are you a human or a spirit? Initially, you were a poet, then became a politician and now you are a baniya.”
Mohani altogether spent over five years in British prisons and his prison diary, ‘Mushahidaat-Zindan’ is filled with descriptions of the hardships he had to undergo during his various spells of incarceration. Upon Partition, he chose to stay behind in India and died in 1951, leaving behind a vast literary legacy. He was buried at the family graveyard of the patriotic and revolutionary Ulema of Firangi Mahal in Lucknow.
