Azam Khan
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Career
2019-20: Hard times
Subhash Mishra, February 28, 2020: The Times of India
LUCKNOW: The way the Yogi Adityanath government has brought the powerful SP leader Azam Khan to his knees has few parallels in UP’s political history. The Rampur MP was not only declared a land mafia, but also a goat thief.
He has also been hounded by income tax and enforcement directorate sleuths for financial transactions linked to his Jauhar University, though he, along with wife and son, were sent in judicial custody for alleged forgery in the birth certificate of his son Abdullah Azam which he submitted while filing papers for 2017 assembly poll.
Political observers say that closest example of such a subjugation is the taming of firebrand Thakur neta Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya during the BSP government in 2002 when Mayawati was the chief minister. Raja Bhaiya had not only been booked under draconian Prevention of Terrorist Activities (Pota) law but also slapped with charges like stealing of utensils and murder.
Azam is a founder member of SP and his stature could be gauged from the fact that just when he landed at Sitapur jail the party chief Akhilesh Yadav rushed to see him. Earlier, SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav, addressed a press conference after long when the BJP government lodged over 80 criminal cases against the Rampur MP.
Earlier also, Azam has been showing his authority and importance by using pressure tactics. Often, his tantrums have embarrassed the party leadership. Be it his constant absence from party meetings, including national executives, and his insistence on not keeping any principal secretary in his urban development department when he was a minister, Azam has been in news for wrong reasons in the past. Once when he didn’t go to Agra for the party’s summit, Akhilesh went all the way to his house cajole him. The secretariat staff didn’t show any such reverence and they went on strike when Azam allegedly misbehaved with his personal assistant.
He had frequent run-ins with governor as well. During the SP regime between 2003 and 2007, he described then governor TV Rajeswar as ‘darban of Sonia Gandhi” (attendant of the Sonia Gandhi). Rajeswar was insistent on sacking him, but then CM Mulayam Singh Yadav saved him by apologising to the governor.
During the 2012-17 SP regime, he again invited the wrath governor Ram Naik when he allegedly used disparaging remarks against him during his speech in the assembly. An enraged Naik sought Azam’s unedited speech and asked CM Akhilesh Yadav to take action against him. Akhilesh, too, expressed regret.
During 2014 LS poll, Azam also earned Election Commission’s censure when he said during campaign that only Muslim jawans fought and won Kargil for India. It saw a counter-polarisation against the SP and it was reduced to just five seats.
During 2019 general elections, he again hogged the limelight by declaring that the Rampur DM (who was pursuing cases against him) would be made to clean his shoes when the SP came to power. He has been accused of forcefully acquiring land during SP regime for the construction of Jauhar University, which has led to 80 FIRs.
Slapping of so many criminal cases against Azam has brought back memories of Raja Bhaiya’s plight during Mayawati’s regime. While Azam’s Jauhar University is facing demolition (HC has just ordered an stay), the BSP government had bulldozed Raja Bhaiya’s riverside sanctuary in his native place Kunda in Pratapgarh. Besides, his palace, Bhadri House, had been turned into an impromptu camp for para military forces.
While by nailing a feudal Thakur leader, Mayawati wanted to send a message that socio-political dynamics was changing, by taming Azam Khan, Yogi wants to give a larger political message. “The more Akhilesh would defend Azam , the more Yogi would brand him a pro-Muslim in the run-up to 2022 polls,” said an analyst.
2020
Azam Khan was a legend of Pakistan squash, a true great in an overcrowded array of Pakistani squash maestros. Described as the ‘Accountant,’ by most estimates, Azam was the finest ever player of the tight court and tighter corners. But, as the old sporting joke goes, he may not even have been the best player in his own family.
A Feb 2019 article in UK-based web magazine, DESIblitz.com quotes former international Johan Barrington from his 1982 book, Murder in the Squash Court: “If Hashim was the most devastating savage of the great Khans, and Roshan the most beautiful stroke player, Azam would have been the little accountant, methodically arranging all the bits and pieces of the game, having everything under close analysis, nothing out of place. He was totally silent on court, like a little bird.”
These names were family. Hashim Khan, was Azam’s brother, 11 years his senior. A squash Hafeez Qardar of sorts, Hashim is generally considered as the pioneer of the sport as Pakistan would dominate the sport for almost nearly half a century from late 1950 onwards. Roshan Khan was a second cousin. Roshan’s son was one Jahangir Khan.
“There was also Mohibullah Khan Senior, he was Hashim and Azam’s nephew,” Jahangir tells TOI from Karachi. “Together these four men ruled world squash in the ’50s and the laid the groundwork for me and Jansher,” says the man, a six-time world champion and record 10-time British Open winner, and one who is generally be regarded as greatest squash player of all time.
All hailed from the Nawa Kille Payan village outside the garrison town of Peshawar. “We are one big family – brothers, uncles, cousins. And we are Pashtuns, we don’t leave anything easily that we get after,” laughs Jahangir of the semi-professional era and the great rivalry between the four. A four-time British Open champion, Azam’s streak from 1959 to 1962 also boasts of a wildly one-sided 9-1, 9-0, 9-0 scoreline over Roshan Khan for his first title. “Oh, my waalid saab had a bad knee that season,” Jahangir, airily dismisses the query about his father, but Barrington provides some insight on what may have been. “He (Azam) was unbelievably efficient … he constantly sucked you into situations from which it was impossible to extricate yourself,” he writes in his book.
Jahangir is effusive about Azam’s legacy. “He was the leading light in putting Pakistan on the sporting map of the world. What’s more, the situations he overcame, the facilities they had in those days, to do what he did is simply phenomenal. Raising money to travel abroad was very difficult. Going to England was like scaling a mountain back then. Yet, these men persisted,” adds Jahangir. So close were the rivalries and so hotly followed that the famous 1959 final verdict caused anger among spectators for it’s extremely brief duration, many of whom had barely settled in their seats when it was already over. Pakistan media remembers how organisers had to hastily devise a third-place play off to placate the spectators. It gave an indication of Pakistan’s love for squash and the adulation for Pakistani squash stars.
Squash in Pakistan was a British army hand me down. Centered around the cantonment culture in Peshawar, the sport grew with local boys observing the officers playing the game. “Remember, they all began as ball boys either in tennis or squash. They would watch the British officers play and carried the game to our homes, to our villages.” Originally a tennis player, Azam switched to squash at the advice of his older brother. Money was meagre and Azam Khan himself left his employment as ‘electrician’ – Rs 100 per month -- in the Pakistan Air Force since he was demoted to ‘porter’, subsequently to move to the UK as coach at New Grampians Club. Azam’s personal legacy continued in the form of granddaughter Carla who was top British pro in the 2000s.
Despite the familial familiarity, it is possible that Jahangir may not have felt the need for a deeper acquaintance with Azam. “He belonged to my father’s age group, so you know, as boys we stayed away,” he remembers, “But yes, I’d meet him at each British Open. He was a regular feature there ever since he moved to London in 1956. We would visit his club in London’s Shepherd’s Bush too. I hear it shut down a while ago.”
It was the other, the “outsider,” however, who recalls Azam more fondly. A second-generation squash player, the Peshawar-born Jansher is not related to the Khans from Nawa Kille Payan, but feels a closer affinity to Azam. “I learnt how to grip the racquet from him,” he tells TOI, recalling how he met Azan for the first time in 1984 when he had come for the junior British Open. “He always had a tip or two whenever we would go for the British Open. He was always there.
“I remember he’d told me, ‘Jansher if you’re not 100% fit you cannot succeed in squash.’ It was a strange thing to say because his game was usually so tactical, but I hung on to it all through my career. I decided that if I ever lost in squash, it would not be due to my opponent being fitter to me. When I beat Jahangir for the first time in 1987, I realised it was because I was more fit and could last longer in the long games. His tip worked,” says the eight-time world champion.
