Category Archives: Freedom Fighters (under research project)

There is no history of India’s freedom without its Muslims

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INDIA :

At 80, revisiting the Muslim lives, movements and sacrifices that shaped India’s struggle for freedom, and the politics of forgetting them.

Stroll through the pages of India’s history, because academia has failed to acknowledge some names and contributions in the Indian freedom struggle. From the Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Qutub Minar, Humayun’s Tomb, Gol Gumbaz, Charminar, to Fatehpur Sikri and the bustling lanes of Chandni Chowk, they all speak volumes louder. But the cultural pattern of ‘selectively remembering’ and ‘selectively forgetting’ has downplayed nation’s history into one-dimensional narratives , while external sources of learning like cinemas, textbooks, public places re-branding, etc,  are getting colored with contemporary political dynamics, to legitimize their plans and policies. 

To fathom India’s past sincerely, we must be willing not only to learn but also to unlearn. Learning involves discovering forgotten contributions, while unlearning requires shedding inherited biases, political narratives, and simplified versions of history. Because, as eminent historians have speculated, the past is constantly reinterpreted in the light of new evidence and new questions. Consequently, the framing of our past will affect the present, which will further be read as a past in the future, thus entrusting us with sheer responsibility of weaving a lineage of conscience, not insidious storytelling.

The lost dots of the Indian freedom movements

Revisit in Indian history afresh because erasure never happens all at once, it happens slowly and systematically.

Independence Movements did not count from the very battles fought, but from the conditions laid down before and after to formulate and fixate Indian society and culture altogether. Resistance to the economization, politicisation, and, ultimately, colonization by the Britishers was confronted by the collective plurality which our country possessed with pride. Testifying that resistance was not always born on the battlefield, often it began with communities refusing to harbor animosity for one another. 

Hindu sanyasis and Muslim fakirs whom the British Company wanted to fragmentalise, chose each other instead. Naga ascetics of the Dashnami order like Pandit Bhabani Charan Pathak stood beside Muslim fakirs of the Madari and Burhana sects, Majnu Shah Fakir, Chirag Ali, Musa Shah, and together resisted the oppressive taxation and economic exploitation the Company had imposed. It was one of the earliest organized rebellions against British rule in India, and yet how many of us have even heard these names?

Tipu Sultan

That same defiance carried into Mysore, Tipu Sultan, a name antagonized in recent years that people even slipped away from the fact that he is the man who invented Missiles in India, a ruler who terrified the British. He built iron-cased rockets before most of the world imagined such a weapon, and fought the British across four wars, refusing again and again to let his kingdom bow. And what do we do with that legacy today? 

Islamic gallantry didn’t halt there. Moulvi Ahmadullah Shah, one of the key leaders of the First War of Indian Independence in 1857 was called the lighthouse of rebellion in Awadh, an epitome of the Ganga-Jamuna culture of Faizabad. The rebel army of Awadh was led by Barkat Ahmad and Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah, with Barkat Ahmad declared Chief Army Officer of the rebels after the Battle of Chinhat. ​​​​​​

Moulvi Ahmadullah Shah

At the head of that same uprising stood Bahadur Shah Zafar, lending his name and his throne to the rebellion we call the Sepoy Mutiny. He gave everything a king could give, and the British broke him in the cruelest way. After his surrender, his sons Mirza Mughal and Mirza Khizr Sultan, and his grandson Mirza Abu Bakr, were stripped and shot in cold blood by Major William Hodson at what is now called Khooni Darwaza, and their severed heads were brought before their own father as a trophy. So many lives were lost in that struggle, so many families broken, and it is widely said that nearly 5 lakh Muslims were martyred, close to 50,000 of them ullema who chose the battlefield over silence. After rotating around 79 years of India’s independence, we are still cynical over the contributions carved by Indian Muslims.

Bahadur Shah Zafar

Another buried name is of, Ashfaquallah Khan, was hanged on 19th December 1927, at just 27 years old, along with other Kakori comrades who were sent to the gallows. This Kakori robbery was to pull back the wealth of Indian soil to channelize it for the national struggle. Khan revolutionized nationalist movement with his participation in Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), founded by Ram Prasad Bismil along with two others. Like Kakori robbery, many other raids were rolled out to confront with required force rather than abstracting the notion of peace towards the gruesome tortures.   Have we ever lent an ear to these lines of Khan’s  ‘Hasrat’ poem- “Kuch aarzoo naheen hai, hai aarzoo to yeh hai, Rakh de koi zara si Khaak-e-watan kafan men” who as his last whim, recited this poem soaked in patriotism. Are we made to remember these lines by a Muslim freedom fighter when we are reminded about the terrified misapplication of the divine slogan “Allah-u-Akbar” to polarize the Islam?

Ashfaqullah Khan

Walking further, Abdul Habeeb Yusuf Marfani, gave away his entire estate for a freedom he’d never see honoured. His courage was never separate from the cause, it was central to it, and it’s long overdue we remember it that way.

Abdul Habeeb Yusuf Marfani

Muslim participation in India’s freedom struggle was not boxed in a specific time or way, it encompassed armed resistance, societal reforms, mass mobilization, revolutionary events, and non-violent protests. The hurls on the invasions done by Muslims are widely made, but onlookers of the contributions by very same people, are tactfully airbrushed.

Sacrifices for the Indian motherland were proven on silent or loud battlefields,  not by the mere recital of ‘Patriotic Songs’ such as Vande Mataram as a contemporary reference. That is turned down by Indian Muslims lyrically, not soulfully, because of the religiosity which the Indian Constitution guarantees them. When did the recital of patriotic songs begin to outweigh the very acts of sacrifice they were meant to spring up?

Freedom fighters such as Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi (clarified the Jihad term through his war against the British), and Azimullah Khan were also important in the 1857 uprising. Barely, we learn or are made to learn about them? While vilifying other names of this very same community. 

The Ali brothers, Shaukat Ali (1873-1938) and Mohamed Ali Jauhar (1878-1931)

Even the popular moments like the non-cooperation movement and the Khilafat Movement were helmed by some unheeded names: Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali. Erected on the former’s name, there stands a university in Rampur, U.P. which recently has fallen prey to the communal politics, staking Indian youth’s future at darker stage, thus disregarding the blood of these freedom fighters.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan who spent three decades in prison and headed the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar Movement among Pashtuns against British rule, wherein he combined social reform, service, and discipline. His demise took place during his house arrest in Peshawar. 

Abid Hasan Safrani

Without a single community-led leader, ideologies often find a loose hand to wrestle for their individual existence rather than collective results. Abid Hasan Safrani,  prominent INA member, mobilized the Muslim youth and committed to Subhas Chandra Bose’s movement (Azad Hind Fauj), which underpinned armed resistance in the Indian Freedom Struggle rather than non-violent means, brewing the unity for winning back the motherland.

Having said that, the famous Ghadar Party, founded in 1913, was pioneered by one more buried name- Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali. He was the first Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of India (Government-in-Exile), which was established in Kabul in 1915. He traversed across Europe, Asia, and North America to usher in the momentum for the Indian freedom struggle. His death took place in the US, leaving him deprived of bidding adieu to his motherland one last time.

Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali

Then, “Inquilab Zindabad”, the popular hymn echoed at Jantar Mantar very recently, was originally coined by Urdu poet-politician Hasrat Mohani at the Congress’ Ahmedabad session, while Bhagat Singh solely made it popularized. Mohani had been a soulful Krishna Bhakt, leaving him writing eulogies for ‘Hazrat Krishna’ (Hazrat is not a religious tag; it is an honorary title).  He, being the co-prisoner of Gandhi ji, presented him with the USSR idea of federalism for empowering the localized and regional pockets of the agglomerate India. His courage and values proved his patriotism in the debates of the Constituent Assembly and confrontations with the Britishers. 

Hasrat Mohani

We remember Mahatma Gandhi more than any other freedom fighter, but are we mindful of the fact that the man who saved him was Batak Mian Ansari during the Champaran Satyagraha in 1917? He was the cook deployed by the Britishers, who then ordered Batak Mian Ansari to serve venomous milk to Gandhi ji. His integrity made him stake his life to save Gandhi ji. He sneakily warned Gandhi ji, and, as anticipated, he was kicked out of his job by the Britishers, further leaving him battered by the villagers and ousting him and his family from his residence. To date, his family couldn’t receive what was promised for his courage by India’s first president, Rajendra Prasad. Questioning how much we have honoured the honorable personalities on the ground?

Batak Mian Ansari

The last Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, is also in this queue of the buried names. Independence movement is not merely the swing between direct confrontation with colonial regime, it too laps over the pre and post period that either nudged the movements or repaired the damages caused to India. He has reportedly granted mammoth donations across educational and religious institutions. From BHU, AMU, IISc, publication of critical editions of Mahabharata, Golden Temple, Amritsar and many more places . We rewind through cruel rulers who demolished Indian structures, to attack their community and make them accountable in the present, but are we awakened with these submerged realities as well? One-sided history or evolving history, rationality comes with the choices citizens make to discern their roots.

Mir Osman Ali Khan

The history of Muslim resistance to British colonial rule also travelled deep into Malabar in Kerala, where Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji, Ali Musliyar , and Sayyid Fazal Pookoya Thangal emerged as formidable names in a long tradition of anti-colonial mobilisation. Fazal Pookoya Thangal, the 19th-century Mappila spiritual leader of Malabar, became an influential voice against British authority and the oppressive agrarian order sustained under colonial rule, eventually being forced into exile in 1852. Decades later, that inheritance of resistance found powerful expression in the 1921 Malabar uprising, with Ali Musliyar, a religious scholar and Khilafat leader, and Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji becoming among its most prominent leaders. Haji challenged British authority in parts of Malabar and established a parallel administration in areas under rebel control, while Ali Musliyar mobilised people against colonial rule before being captured and executed by the British. Haji, too, was eventually captured and executed by firing squad in January 1922.

Ali Musliyar

Culture can marginalise women, but religion pours courage 

“Khoob Ladi Mardani thi, Wo Jhansi Wali Rani thi”, Whenever we speak of women who took up arms for this land, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi is the name that comes to every tongue, and she deserves every bit of that memory. But here’s what gnaws: she was not alone. There were other women just as fearless, standing in the same fire, and history simply didn’t bother to write their names down. 

Begum Hazrat Mahal

Begum Hazrat Mahal was one of them, and she wasn’t a side character, she was one of the rebellion’s most formidable forces. Even William Howard Russell, a British correspondent writing for his own side, couldn’t deny her fire. In his My Indian Mutiny Dairy, describing her as a woman of remarkable energy who had stirred all of Oudh into rising for her son’s cause and had herself declared undying war against the British. At Musa Bagh in Lucknow, she didn’t issue orders from a distance, she personally fought alongside and rallied nearly 9,000 rebel soldiers, moving from camp to camp, lifting morale with speeches that set entire camps on fire.

Abadi Bano Begum

And then there’s Abadi Bano Begum- the woman history remembers, if at all, only as “Bi Amma.” A widow with six children, one of the sons Maulana Shaukat Ali, and the other Mohammad Ali Jauhar, above-mentioned together known as the Ali Brothers. She could have used every excuse the world hands a woman to stay silent. widowhood, motherhood, the weight of raising children alone. She used none of them. When the country needed people brave enough to stand up to the British, she stood up too. She became the first woman to address a political rally while wearing a burqa and let that sink in for a moment. She didn’t have to remove a part of her identity to be taken seriously in public life; she broke the idea that a veiled woman couldn’t also be a fighter, a leader, or a voice loud enough to move a crowd. She urged women to stop hiding at home and join the struggle, organizing funds and meetings where they were addressed as political beings for the first time, and taught why boycotting foreign goods mattered. She convinced them to donate to the Tilak Swaraj Fund, set up by Bal Gangadhar Tilak to finance India’s freedom struggle.

Kulsum Sayani

Not every battle was fought with a sword, some were fought with pen and paper. Kulsum Sayani, awarded the Padma Shri in 1960, waged her own war against illiteracy through the Jan Jagran movement, teaching under “each one, teach one” and leading centres for Muslim women that grew from 50 to 600 by sheer will. Begum Rokeya, a fiercely prolific feminist writer at a time when a woman dreaming was seen as rebellion, imagined a world turned upside down in Sultana’s Dream, then built that vision into reality, founding a girls’ school in 1909 and the Muslim Women’s Association in 1916, giving women space to learn and speak.

Begum Rokeya

80th Indian Independence Day’s call to unwind the narratives 

As the author of ‘Sare Jahan Sai Achcha, Hindustan Humara’– Allama Iqbal penned- “The freedom lovers of the nation stepped forward with such dignity that even those long imprisoned by deprivation watched in admiration.” It has been shouldered on the present generations to soak in the evolving history to sanitize the present from groans of hatred, rotting the Indian society. 

These lost chapters from Indian history wouldn’t have been possible to muster without the effulgent works of Salim Khan, Romila Thapar, Ramachandra Guha, S. Irfan Habib, Mushirul Hasan, A. G. Noorani, Rana Safvi, etc. Grinning us with the fact that the pluralistic framework of India is not only designed by the constituent makers, but it is also originally earned by all the freedom fighters, from pre- to post-independence.

Adeena Navaid is a law student and writer covering legal, social, and feminist issues, with work published in Maktoob, Bar & Bench, The Quint, Siasat, SheThePeople, and other platforms. Aiman Tabassum is a final-year LL.B. student at the University of Mumbai who writes on constitutional law, legal history, and socio-political issues, with work published in Bar & Bench.

source: http://www.maktoobmedia.com / Maktoob Media / Home> Opinion / by Adeena Navaid & Aiman Tabassum / August 14th, 2026

Why General Shah Nawaz Khan Deserves to Be Remembered This Independence Day

Amazing Feats, Defence Services - Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, CRPF & others (wef. February 21st, 2026), First War of Independence 1857 / Naval Mutiny 1946 / Others PreIndependece (wef. July 27th, 2022), Freedom Fighters (under research project), Leaders, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Punjab (British India) / NEW DELHI :

EVERY year on August 15, India’s Prime Minister addresses the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi. It was at this same fort, in 1945, that Major General Shah Nawaz Khan stood trial for waging war against the British Empire. A Muslim officer in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, he had led troops into battle against colonial forces across Southeast Asia, been captured, and was sentenced to death. His court-martial, alongside Colonel Prem Kumar Sehgal and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, provoked mass protests across the country and became one of the final catalysts for British withdrawal from India. The slogan that echoed through the streets of Delhi became a rallying cry of the independence movement: “Lal Qile se aayi awaaz, Sehgal, Dhillon aur Shah Nawaz.”

After his release, Shah Nawaz Khan chose the path of non-violence at Mahatma Gandhi’s urging, joined the Indian National Congress, and went on to serve as a Union Minister for over two decades. He represented Meerut in Parliament through four terms, held portfolios ranging from Agriculture to Petroleum, and chaired the commission that investigated the circumstances of Netaji Bose’s death. He was buried near the Red Fort with full state honours in 1983.

Beyond politics, Shah Nawaz Khan was connected to one of India’s most recognizable families. The Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan’s father, Mir Taj Mohammed Khan, was his cousin and migrated from Pakistan to India alongside him after Partition.

His story traces an arc from armed resistance to democratic nation-building, from a death sentence in a colonial courtroom to the highest levels of Indian government.

Early Life and Military Career

General Shah Nawaz Khan was born on 24 January 1914 in the village of Matur, in the Rawalpindi District of British India (now in Pakistan). His father, Lieutenant Sardar Tikka Khan, served for nearly three decades in the British Indian Army with the 58th  Vaughan’s Rifles (Frontier Force), instilling in him an early exposure to military life.

After completing his early education, Shah Nawaz Khan went on to study at the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College in Dehradun, one of the premier institutions established to train future military leaders in colonial India.

From Prisoner of War to Leader of the Indian National Army

In 1940, Shah Nawaz Khan was commissioned as an officer in the British Indian Army. In December 1941, as part of the Second World War, Japanese forces launched a major offensive against Singapore, and the British deployed nearly 60,000 Indian soldiers, including Captain Shah Nawaz Khan.

The British forces were ultimately defeated, and Khan, along with thousands of other soldiers, was taken prisoner of war. During his captivity, he came into contact with Indian nationalists and revolutionaries aligned with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Deeply influenced by their vision of an independent India, he joined the Azad Hind Fauj, also known as the Indian National Army (INA), and rapidly rose to positions of leadership.

Role in the Freedom Struggle

Recognized for his leadership abilities, Shah Nawaz Khan was inducted into the cabinet of the Indian National Army’s (INA) Provisional Government of Free India. Between 1942 and 1945, the Azad Hind Fauj engaged British forces across Southeast Asia and, for a period, established control over large stretches of territory during its campaign against colonial rule.

In December 1944, he was appointed commander of the INA detachment stationed in Mandalay, Burma (now Myanmar). Owing to the close trust placed in him by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, he was later selected to lead the Subhas Brigade—a special unit formed from elite INA soldiers.

During military operations in Burma in 1945, General Shah Nawaz Khan and several of his comrades were arrested by British forces. The INA’s senior leadership at the time included Major General Shah Nawaz Khan, Colonel Prem Kumar Sehgal, and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon. In 1946, all three were put on trial for mutiny at the Red Fort in Delhi.

These trials ignited widespread public protests across India and became a turning point in the independence movement, significantly intensifying popular resistance to British rule. Facing overwhelming public pressure, the British government was ultimately compelled to release Shah Nawaz Khan and his associates. During this period, he remained in contact with leading figures of the national movement, including Mahatma Gandhi, and was defended in court by Jawaharlal Nehru.

Gandhi’s Colonel of Non-Violence

General Shah Nawaz Khan was regarded as one of Mahatma Gandhi’s close associates, a relationship reflected in Gandhi’s letters and public speeches, in which he frequently referred to him by name. Their association symbolized the bridge between armed resistance and the philosophy of non-violence that shaped India’s independence movement.

On the occasion of the 50th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Shah Nawaz Khan declared, “While living outside India, we fought for our country’s freedom with arms; now we shall serve India through non-violence.” Mahatma Gandhi echoed this sentiment while addressing members of the Indian National Army in Madras on 22 January 1946 and later reiterated it during his prayer meeting in Mumbai on 18 February 1946.

Contemporary records further document their close interaction. According to a report in the Bombay Chronicle dated 13 March 1946, Shah Nawaz Khan met Gandhi at Birla Bhavan in Delhi on 12 March, where the two held discussions for nearly ninety minutes. On 22 March 1946, Gandhi visited a military camp in Aravalli Kanchan, Maharashtra, and once again mentioned Shah Nawaz Khan while addressing the soldiers. Their engagement continued through personal meetings as well as an exchange of letters, many of which survive as historical evidence of their dialogue.

At Gandhi’s urging, following the dissolution of the Indian National Army in 1946, Shah Nawaz Khan joined the Indian National Congress. Later that year, he worked in Bihar to assist victims of communal violence, alongside Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He remained in the region during this period of unrest, and was present at the funeral of Professor Abdul Bari, who was assassinated in Bihar in March 1947.

Gandhi repeatedly acknowledged and praised Shah Nawaz Khan’s relief and peace-building efforts in Bihar during 1947. He spoke at length about Khan’s work during his prayer meetings on 29 April and 1 May 1947, and earlier, on 15 April 1947, the two were together at Gandhi’s camp in Patna. During one such conversation, Gandhi expressed his faith in him, saying: “I have great hopes for you. I wish to make you a complete soldier of non-violent weapons. You became a colonel under Netaji; in the same way, I want to make you a colonel of non-violence.”

Political Life After Independence

Even after India achieved independence in 1947, Shah Nawaz Khan continued to work in Masurhi, Bihar, focusing on relief and rehabilitation efforts. In a letter dated 7 October 1947, Mahatma Gandhi wrote to him: “Dear General Shah Nawaz, If the work you are doing there does not go to the dogs in your absence, you may leave it to go to the Punjab-Pakistan.” Despite this, Shah Nawaz Khan chose not to return to his ancestral home in what had become Pakistan; instead, his family migrated to India.

Shah Nawaz Khan entered electoral politics in independent India and was elected to the first Lok Sabha (India’s lower house of Parliament) in 1952 from Meerut, representing the Indian National Congress. He went on to win the same constituency in 1957, 1962, and 1971. Over the course of his political career, he served as a Union Minister for a total of 23 years.

Beginning in 1952, he served as Parliamentary Secretary and later as Deputy Minister for Railways. From 1957 to 1964, he held the portfolio of Food and Agriculture. He was again appointed Minister of Agriculture in 1965, followed by his tenure as Minister of Labour, Employment, and Rehabilitation in 1966. Between 1971 and 1975, he served as Minister for Petroleum and Chemicals, as well as Agriculture and Irrigation. From 1975 to 1977, he additionally served as Chairman of the Food Corporation of India while continuing as Union Minister for Agriculture and Irrigation.

In 1956, the Government of India constituted a commission to examine the circumstances surrounding the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Shah Nawaz Khan was appointed chairman of this commission, underscoring the trust placed in him by the national leadership. He also authored a memoir on the Indian National Army and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, regarded as an important firsthand account of the INA movement.

Representing the Meerut constituency for decades, Shah Nawaz Khan played a stabilizing role in public life, and the city remained free of major communal disturbances during his tenure. From 1977 to 1983, he served as the national in-charge of the Congress Seva Dal, the party’s volunteer organization. He remained associated with the Indian National Congress until the end of his life, continuing his commitment to public service and national unity.

General Shah Nawaz Khan passed away on 9 December 1983 while still serving the Indian National Congress. His life—spanning armed resistance, political leadership, and a steadfast commitment to unity and nation-building—remains a powerful testament to the ideals of freedom, sacrifice, and service. He is remembered not only as a soldier and statesman, but as a figure whose legacy continues to inspire generations in independent India and beyond.

— IAMC

source: http://www.clarionindia.net / Clarion India / Home> Editor’s Pick> Opinion / by Afroz Alam Sahil / August 08th, 2026

‘5 lakh Ahle Hadees sacrificed their lives during India’s freedom movement’

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INDIA :

It’s not a small number and there are very few who could match the sacrifices of Ahle Hadees for this country, Qasmi says.

Malegaon (Maharashtra): 

In the strongest ever rebuttal of baseless allegations raised against Ahle Hadees, Jamiat Ahle Hadees Maharashtra on Sunday reminded the country of the sacrifices made by the group during the freedom struggle of India.

“Over five lakh (500,000) Ahle Hadees had sacrificed their lives during India’s freedoom fighter. People travelling in villages and towns saw their corpses hanging on trees all around”, Jalaluddin Qasmi, an alumnus of Darul Uloom Deoband, said quoting Tara Chand.

Renowned archaeologist and historian, Tara Chand, who taught at Allahabad University and also served as its Vice Chancellor in 1940s, is the author of ‘History of Freedom Movement in India’.

“It’s not a small number and there are very few who could match the sacrifices of Ahle Hadees for this country”, Jalaluddin Qasmi addressing the day-long Manhaj e Salaf conference jointly organised by Jamiat Ahle Hadees Maharashtra and Jamiat Ahle Hadees Malegaon Sunday.

“Nothing can be more shameful and condemnable than the act of some people and a section of media who despite such a glorious history of Ahle Hadees level unfounded allegations against them just to fulfill their vested interest”, he added.

To further draw his point, Jalaluddin Qasmi quoted Jawaharlal Nehru, former Prime Minister of India and one of the frontal leaders of India’s freedom movement, who praised the sacrifices of Ulema of Sadiqpur Patna, Bihar for the country as extraordinary and unmatchable.

“Nehru had said if sacrifices of the Ulema of Sadiqpur Patna Bihar are put on one side of a balance and our entire efforts are put on the other, their’s will be heavier and our’s will be worthless in comparision”, Qasmi said.

Qasmi also said that it is because of the strong and firm stand taken by Ahle Hadees against terrorism and extremism because of which terrorist organisations hate Ahle Hadees the most.

Taking forward Jalaluddin Qasmi’s assertions, Mohammad Rahmani Sanabili, President of Jamia Islamia Sanabil, New Delhi, while addressing the valedictory session of day-long Jamiat Ahle Hadees Manhaj e Salaf conference shared of historical evidence to prove the contributions of Ahle Hadees during the Indian freedom movement.

“It is Ahle Hadees who called terrorists and violent groups Khawarij and ran campaigns to exposed them”, he said.

In his keynote speech of the conference, Mohammad Rahmani Sanabili condemned once again Pulwama terrorist attack and reiterated Jamiat Ahle Hadees’s stand against all kinds of violence,.

At the same time, he urged the Ahle Hadees, especially the youth, to focus more on practices based on the path laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him).

Earlier in the morning, the day-long national conference organised by Jamiat Ahle Hadees Maharashtra opened with a strong condemnation of the terror attack on the CRPF convoy in Pulwama district of Kashmir in which more than 40 CRPF troopers were killed and a large number of others were left injured.

“Terrorists will never succeed in their evil design to weaken our country by such cowardly attacks”, Razaullah Abdul Kareem, senior cleric of Jamiat Ahle Hadees Hind, said while opening the day-long conference.

“We want to make it very clear that the Indian Muslims and Jamiat Ahle Hadees are with the country in its fight against terrorism and violence”, he said while condemning the Pulwama terrorist attack.

Presided over by Dr Saeed Ahmed Faizee, president of Jamiat Ahle Hadees Maharashtra, the day-long conference was held at the SM Khaleel High School in Malegaon and was attended by a large number of delegates from all over Maharashta and the neighboring states.

source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> India / by ummid.com staff reporter / February 18th, 2019

A grandson discovers his freedom fighter grandfather through letters

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Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

Barrister Mohammed Yaseen Nurie who served as a Minister in B.G. Kher’s cabinet

The lane leading from the iconic Mahim Dargah to Mahim police station has an important address: Nurie Villa. But you may never know it unless you enter the haveli-like home and meet its owner Owais Shakir Nurie. At the house’s delightfully decorated drawing room, Owais, 54, pores over a heap of old letters carefully kept in folders.

Look carefully as these letters, mostly typed but many handwritten too, reveal a lot about what Owais calls “the unsung hero, the forgotten freedom fighter who took Pakistan founder Muhammed Ali Jinnah head on.” These letters are addressed to Barrister Mohammed Yaseen (M Y) Nurie (1895-1971), Owais’s grandfather who lies forgotten in the saga of freedom struggle.

If our freedom movement, especially the years after Quit India Movement leading to Independence pockmarked by partition, was strikingly eventful, Nurie must occupy the place of an important player. Educated at Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (Aligarh Muslim University since 1920), Barrister from England, incarcerated for two years during Quit India Movement (1942), opposed Jinnah so much that he called Nurie “my fiercest competitor”, elected MLA from Ahmedabad in the 1937 provincial elections for the Bombay province which included Gujarat, made minister of public works in the B G Kher cabinet, Nurie played multiple roles and yet remains largely unsung.

Letters written to him by luminaries like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, Syed Mahmud (External Affairs Minister), V K Krishna Menon (Defence Minister), S K Patil (Transport and Communications Minister), testify to Nurie’s importance in national and Maharashtra’s politics.

Yet, if Nurie does not figure immediately in the national imagination created and promoted, post-Independence, through careful curation and diligent deletion, blame it on the “syndicate” within the Congress party which suffered Indira Gandhi’s wrath for opposing her politics.

“Since my grandfather was in the syndicate led by the likes of K Kamraj and Morarji Desai, he too was denied positions in the 1960s and a place in the government-backed history projects,” says Owais, a govt contractor. “My father (Shakir Nurie) had seen how his father and the family suffered for siding with the Syndicate.”

The family was evicted from its rented Colaba home. “Nobody knew that there existed a tranche of letters, photographs and other documents related to my grandfather’s role in the freedom struggle and his interactions with so many important leaders till I opened the cloth bundle dumped at our Bewar (Rajasthan) haveli,” says Owais.

In his handwritten letter (November 17, 1956), Nehru profusely thanks Nurie for his birthday wishes. Through a 31st July, 1954 letter from Istanbul (Turkey), a director friend informs Nurie how Mehboob Khan-directed, Dilip Kumar-starrer Aan (1952) was a huge success in Egypt and he wants to show it in Turkey too.

Among the Nurie papers is a detailed protest letter Nurie lodged against a proposal to turn the historic Khilafat House in Byculla into a musafirkhana for Haj pilgrims. “It was due to his protest that the Khilafat House did not become the Haj House (it came up much later near Crawford Market).  Nurie sahab had served the Khilafat Movement and knew its importance in our national life,” observes Khilafat House’s trustee Rauf Pathan, currently engaged in the redevelopment of this iconic building.

Owais thanks his friend Sunil Bhatia who drew his attention to the blog created by the Ministry of Culture as part of its initiative on “unsung heroes” under the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav. Ministry officials jumped with excitement when they saw some of the letters and requested Owais to collect and add more credible information to the project on Nurie’s life.

At a meeting in 2018 in Ahmedabad, held by businessman Zafar Sareshwala, a Hindu businessman felicitated Owais after he learnt he carried the Nurie legacy, the freedom fighter who opposed Jinnah and, as PWD minister (1937-39), must have overseen work on Queen’s Necklace , Marine Drive.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Mumbai News / by Mohammed Wajihuddin / May 24th, 2026

Why We Need a Book About Muslims Who Fought for India’s Freedom

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Mumbai, INDIA :

Can a stable and just democracy flourish on foundations of wilful amnesia and erasure?

A c. 1800 painting showing the last stand of Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore in 1799 at the end of the Anglo-Mysore Wars with the East India Company. Photo: Henry Singleton/Public domain.

Many will ask why a book about Muslims who fought for India’s freedom? There’s no answer to such questions except another question. Had we been better memory keepers as a nation, could we have avoided the peak disinformation and stupidity which normalises reviling ordinary Muslims as outsiders, infiltrator and insurgents? 

Muslim Freedom Fighters of India is a two-volume biographical compilation by Salim Khan on less-known, mostly forgotten and hardly known Muslim figures. The books aim to clear the fog around Muslim freedom fighters whose names are heard of without them being extensively known and this requires us to understand why this fog exists. Written in an extremely readable and accessible format, these biographical accounts embed the historical figures in the context of their times, responding to unprecedented events with foresight, clarity and conviction that sealed their fate and shaped and the nation’s destiny.

 Whether we are reading about Generals of 1857 – Bakht Khan and Khan Bahadur Khan – or the Cambridge-educated Rampur scion Mohammad Ali Juahar of Khilafat moment and his fiery mother Bi Amma, the larger questions seething beneath the stories keep rising to surface. Who does a society and nation choose to remember and celebrate? Whose memories are deemed worthy of preserving? History is always shaped by those who control archives, narratives and memorialisation and hence memory. 

Reading about Tipu’s dazzling reign through the three Anglo Mysore wars where he proved superior to British forces, I was reminded of the controversy sparked by the late Girish Karnad’s suggestion of naming the Bengaluru airport after Tipu Sultan. Karnad had said, “It is true that Tipu Sultan was not born in Bengaluru, but he was a son of this soil and a freedom fighter. Had Tipu been a Hindu, he would have achieved the status of Shivaji, and the airport would have been named after him.” I recalled Karnad because his play Dreams of Tipu Sultan echoes the same theme that this two-volume tribute to erased, obscured and deliberately unremembered historical figures echoes: that when politics lays down who should be forgotten, remembering the erased becomes a duty, an affirmation and a political act. 

It is important to clarify that this is not a compilation of eulogies but well-researched fact based account of people who had the uncommon clarity to resist colonial domination even before the nationalistic narratives took shape. That they happened to be Muslims is important today because of the distortions that have obscured and erased them. But back then when they fought and resisted, they were simply rallying for the cause of their soil and their watan. From the earliest times they understood that freedom from foreign domination required Hindus and Muslims to put up a united front as in the war of 1857, the Khilafat movement, and the period between 1919 and 1924. Back then too, traitors cut across religious lines – Jagat Seth, Mir Jafar, and Ilahi Baksh.

Muslim Freedom Fighters of India: Part 1 and Part 2’, Salim Khan, Qalam Aur Kaagaz Books.

From Siraj ud Daulah to Tipu to Shahzada Firoz Shah, the book shows how the fog around these personalities is not accidental but meticulously designed – initially by the colonial mind, then picked up by early nationalists and woven into simplistic narratives. The macabre dance of history further stifled Muslim voices. Cataclysmic events like the ‘end’ of the Mughal Dynasty in 1857 and the Partition in 1947 sundered clans, erased family histories, legacies crumbled with no one is around to defend and uphold them. Today, even people who don’t know history have heard of Lakshmi Bai, but many who read history may not have heard about Shahzada Firoz Shah, the Mughal Emperor’s grandson who in August 1857, led a band of armed soldiers to rally the rebels in Rohilkhand and Malwa and who fought alongside Tatia Tope and called for a united Hindu-Muslim front against the Company. 

The British understood the dangerous potential of popular memory and subverted any potential for memorialisation of hugely influential figures. No one knows if Shahzada Firoz died in battle or escaped to West Asia. The Maulavi Ahmadulla of Faizabad whose authority and fearlessness scared the British so much that they kept a reward on his head, was likewise interred in an unmarked grave. Knowing that even his memory could become a node to unite the rebels, the British saw to it that no commemoration was permitted or possible. Zafar, the last Mughal was exiled to Rangoon for the same reasons.

In her book, India, 5,000 years of history on the subcontinent, Audrey Truschke, elucidates how Muslim rulers like Nawab Siraj ud Daulah and Tipu Sultan to Zafar felt a responsibility for their subjects no matter what their religion. For example, Siraj ud Daulah actively intervened in times of famines and drought in Bengal. But after the British took over they did nothing to alleviate human suffering, so that 20% of Bengal’s population died in the famine of 1768 and the small-pox epidemic of 1769-70 following it. This had never happened during earlier episodes of failed harvests. Truschke says, British historians initiated the custom of categorising Indian rulers as tyrannical, effete and incompetent, reducing them to their religion and writing in terms of Hindu rulers and Muslim rulers. The British needed to demonise Muslim rulers who were their immediate predecessors in subcontinent so that they might look good by comparison, Truschke notes. It was a part of the colonial propaganda.

Another pattern Salim Khan’s compilation brings out is that from mid-18th century onwards, the first responders and the most committed crusaders resisting colonial domination – the kings, queens, princes, preachers, noblemen – were Muslims. Not only because the British had wrested from them the power they had wielded for centuries (howsoever fragmented or diluted it may have become); but also, because they were looked upon as leaders. In Awadh, for example, the Shia elite took it as their moral-ethical duty (see Chapter 7, volume I: Shia Ullema and Noblemen of Awadh) 

Even in the 20th century, Muslim freedom fighters like Hasrat Mohani of the Inquilaab Zindabad fame and Asfaqullah Khan of the Kakori conspiracy who was an icon for Bhagat Singh, remain in the shadows, seen only in a hazy half-light. Were their contributions any less or only less remembered? One of the most important projects post-Independence should have been to restore memory and affirmation to those whom the British put on the wrong side of history, no matter what their religion or caste. But we know this is not what happened.

Since the arrival of the political controversy over Tipu Sultan, we have entered in an era of deliberate distortion of history. The larger question that these accounts refrain from asking but that jumps to any thinking person’s mind is this: can a stable and just democracy flourish on foundations of wilful amnesia and erasure? Should the memory of Muslim freedom fighters be kept only by the Muslims? The heritage and memory of Indian Muslims needs to be reclaimed by them. But equally, these volumes are required reading for the casually miseducated, hopelessly disinformed or simply ignorant Hindus who have been stupefied into denying and distorting their composite history.

Varsha Tiwary is a Delhi-based writer and translator. She has recently published 1990, Aramganj a translation of the best-selling Hindi novel Rambhakt Rangbaz.

Remembering Asaf Ali: A Forgotten Hero of the Freedom Struggle

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Seohar Town (Bijnor District), BRITISH INDIA / NEW DELHI :

For too long, a handful of names have dominated the history of the years leading up to 1947 with Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Patel being the most-often cited.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and others at Governor-General‘s Dussehra reception held at Government House, New Delhi on September 29,1949. At extreme left is Asaf Ali, the then Governor of Orrisa. Edited via Canva. Photo: Photo Division, Govt. of India

For several years I worked in a publishing company situated on the bustling Asaf Ali Road, a road that serves as a cordon sanitaire between the squalor of Old Delhi and the (relative) order of New Delhi. Once an important business hub, by the time I went to work there in the late 1980s, this long stretch of colonnaded corridors with a warren of densely-packed offices wore an unmistakably grubby, down-at-heel look. At the head of the road, stood the statue of Asaf Ali in a derelict enclosure near Delhi Gate (or Dilli Gate as the locals pronounced it). The dark statue, generously speckled with startlingly white droppings from the many pigeons that frequent this neighbourhood, looked forlorn, especially so with the shervani-clad, bespectacled figure standing with hands clasped in a peculiarly supplicatory posture.

TCA Raghavan, Circles of Freedom: Friendship, Love and Loyalty in the National Freedom Struggle,
Juggernaut (2024)

I must confess that in the four years I worked at Asaf Ali Road and passed this statue twice a day, morning and evening, it evoked no curiosity in me and I knew virtually nothing about Asaf Ali. Perhaps, his wife Aruna Asaf Ali’s name seemed more familiar given that she was still alive and active. I suspect I was not alone in this. For most people in Delhi, Asaf Ali is a forgotten footnote from long-ago history lessons, one of the many ‘obscure’ people who were part of the national freedom struggle. If the situation is so dismal in Delhi, where he had lived and worked, a city that had been home to his ancestors, I suspect it can only be worse in the rest of the country.

In writing Circles of Freedom: Friendship, Love and Loyalty in the National Freedom Struggle, TCA Raghavan corrects an old wrong. For far too long the tall poppies of the freedom movement have overshadowed the countless others who devoted their entire lives to the cause of independence and struggle against colonial rule. For too long, a handful of names have dominated the history of the years leading up to 1947 with Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Patel being the most-often cited.

Over the past decade, with history being rewritten by new, dominant players, new names are being invoked and icons fashioned from often slender resources. In this unseemly clamour for space and recognition, some names have almost slipped through the crevices of the popular imagination, neglected and overlooked by the professional historian or, at best, relegated to the lowest rungs in a carefully crafted hierarchy of heroes. A park or a road named after the lesser-known evokes neither curiosity nor interest in their lives and the place they occupied in the shaping of a young nation. Asaf Ali (1888-1953) is one such person.

Raghavan’s book, however, is not a straightforward biography for it is not about Asaf (as the author calls him) alone. Instead, he chooses to tell his story through five protagonists who were inextricably tied by the threads of friendship and solidarity: Asaf Ali, Sarojini Naidu, Syud Hossain, Syed Mahmud and Aruna Asaf Ali. While Aruna enters this narrative quite late when she marries the much older Asaf, the other four meet in England just before the Great War where the three men have gone to study and Naidu, recuperating from an illness, is the erudite diva, eloquent poet, ardent nationalist and a veritable magnet for impressionable young men dreaming impossible dreams.

Over the next four decades, they meet, write long letters to each other, take a lively interest in each others’ lives and careers but ‘what gave meaning to their lives,’ as Raghavan notes in his conclusion, ‘was the great enterprise they chose to become part of’. And so it was the freedom struggle that not just formed the core of their relationship but also, in effect, shaped their lives. Were it not for this one singular, overwhelming zeal to seek freedom for their country, they could very well have lived other lives: Naidu would have remained a dulcet-voiced poet, both Asaf and Mahmud successful and wealthy barristers, Hossain a journalist and Aruna a do-gooder with no special qualifications. But such were the exigencies of the times that all five were caught up in different ways and different degrees with the national freedom struggle and that singular ‘great fight’ defined their lives.

With three extremely well-received books behind him – Attendant Lords: Bairam Khan and Abdur Rahim – Courtiers and Poets in Mughal India, The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan and History Men: Jadunath Sarkar, G. S. Sardesai, Raghivir Sinh and Their Quest For India’s Past – Raghavan, a former diplomat, can recreate history with the aplomb of a master story-teller and the meticulousness of a professional historian. Here, he weaves the events of the tumultuous years leading up to Independence with the lives of his five principal characters, keeping Asaf at the centre of his concern. Through Asaf, he teases out the nuances and dilemmas of the moderate Muslims in India who refused to be enamoured by the lures and promises of the Muslim League and remained steadfast in their devotion to the Congress and, by extension, Nehru. 

The extreme deference that the nationalist Muslim leaders displayed towards Nehru is noted; each time a Muslim leader attempted to bring the ‘communal problem’ to Nehru’s notice, the latter would brush aside these concerns by saying, ‘The real problem is a political problem – the conflict between an advanced organisation like the Congress and a politically reactionary organisation like the League.’ Concerns of leaders such as Asaf who believed ‘self determination was preferable to a union that was forced’ were disregarded. Mindful of the suspicion that Muslim leaders within the Congress evoked amongst their colleagues, Raghavan notes, ‘Because he was a Muslim, the impression among some was that he was a fifth columnist for the League’. The coming of independence didn’t make it any easier for those Muslims who chose to stay on in India. Nationalism increasingly began to mean thinking and living in the Congress way and none other. Those who lived or thought another way came to be regarded as anti-national, a phenomena we see repeated in the New India that is Bharat, except that it is the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party that has replaced the ideological hegemony of the Congress.

Different readers will possibly take different things from this book: the broad brush strokes that delineate milestone moments from modern Indian history, Gandhi’s irresistible call to Quit India, the unfurling of the national flag at Gowalia Tank by a young Aruna that catapults her to national fame, the detailed account of jail-life for a group of high-profile, political prisoners inside the Ahmadnagar fortress, a meticulous dove-tailing of accounts from different sources and disparate perspectives to create a bright, colourful and immensely readable patchwork quilt of modern Indian history, and much else in this engrossing book.

I, however, was left with an ineffable sadness and a sense that the more things change, they remain the same – at least for India’s Muslims. Despite his many sterling qualities of heart and mind, despite a fine legal education, Asaf neither made a mark as a lawyer or a politician. Though seemingly destined for greatness, having aided fate by preparing himself assiduously for a life devoted to the larger good, Asaf never quite scaled the heights he aspired to. The few successes that came his way, such as a seat in the Constituent Assembly (from Delhi) or fighting high-profile cases such as those of Bhagat Singh or Shaikh Abdullah, were marred by controversy or a smaller share in the limelight than he felt he deserved. The mantle of statesmanship that should have fallen on him with the passing of Dr Ansari and Hakim Ajmal Khan, both national leaders from Delhi like him, and a seat at the high table that should have been offered to him as a veteran Muslim leader, did not happen.

Given the price paid by far taller leaders in the Congress – such as C. Rajagopalachari and Bhulabhai Desai – for showing initiative and thus offending the party high command, shows the extent to which the Congress, not unlike the League, was becoming a personality-dominated organisation. Asaf’s case was compounded – to use a modern expression – by the optics; his timorousness, his ‘going to pieces’ fretting with worry over his wife during his long years of incarceration, his marital woes, the shadow of mistrust and suspicion that clung to him all his life combined to create a persona that failed to inspire confidence.

For all his loyalty to Nehru, Asaf was not chosen for any cabinet position or placed on any important committee. Instead, he was sent as Ambassador to Washington, brought back to serve as Governor of Orissa and then sent again as Ambassador to Sweden where he died barely a few months into his tenure.

Just as being a moderate Muslim defined Asaf’s public persona, so did his marriage to Aruna. From a political novice she rapidly transformed into a stormy petrel causing immense anxiety, consternation and eventually a sadness in her husband. Raghavan is to be credited for staying steadfastly away from prurient gossip and portraying the changing contours of the marriage objectively: ‘… in fact the relationship had started changing quite early in the marriage and here Aruna’s own political journey was the driving factor.’ Reading between the lines of Raghavan’s carefully crafted text, one picks up the whiff of misogyny in the higher echelons of our national leadership. While acknowledging Aruna’s bravery and patriotism, Gandhi saw her as a ‘perpetual rebel’ and Nehru went so far as to call her ‘hysterical’ on one occasion – something Aruna never forgot.

Incidentally, Gandhi, who was vehemently opposed to inter-religious marriages and had opposed his son Manilal’s relationship with Fatima (a Gujarati Muslim) and Hossain’s alliance with Nehru’s sister Sarup Rani (later known as Vijay Lakshmi Pandit), endorsed Asaf’s marriage to Aruna. Read Circles of Friendship to find out why.

Rakshanda Jalil is a Delhi-based writer, translator and researcher. 

source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Books / by Rakshanda Jalil / August 29th, 2024

Urs-e-Sharieff of Hazarath Tipu Sultan Shaheed on May 16, 17

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Srirangapatna, KARNATAKA :

The 234th Urs-e-Sharieff of Hazarath Tipu Sultan Shaheed, organised by Hazrath Tipu Sultan Shaheed Wakf Estate, Ganjam in Srirangapatna, will be held on May 16 and 17 at Gumbad-e-Shahi at Ganjam in Srirangapatna.

The Sandal procession will commence from Masjid-e-Ala in Srirangapatna at 3 pm on May 16 and will reach Gumbad-e-Shahi at 5 pm.

Special programmes will be held from 7 pm at Gumbad and will continue the whole night till next morning.

For details, contact Hazarath Tipu Sultan Shaheed Wakf Estate on Ph: 08236-252786 or Mob: 97390-58786, according to a press release.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home>In Briefs / May 05th, 2026

Evaluating Indian Kings: Tipu Sultan Stood Against the British with Valour and Courage

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Mysuru, KARNATAKA :

The half-baked propaganda of communal forces against the Tiger of Mysore is trying to divide communities

THE Tiger of Mysore (Sher-e-Mysore) Tipu Sultan often finds space in sections of the media, especially in Karnataka. There have been occasions of State-sponsored celebrations of his birth anniversary and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regularly creates obstacles to these celebrations, resulting in unnecessary ruckus. This time around, Tipu Sultan is in the news from Malegaon in Maharashtra.

The newly elected deputy mayor of Malegaon Shan-e-Hind Nihal Ahmad, put up the portrait of Tipu Sultan in her office, upsetting the Shinde group’s Shiv Sainiks and the BJP. These forces got the portrait removed with the intervention of the authorities. Some protests were also held.

Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee President Harshvardhan Sapkal got incensed and defended Tipu Sultan, claiming that the contribution of Tipu Sultan to Mysore is equivalent to that of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Maharashtra.

But, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis did not like the idea of comparing Tipu Sultan and Shivaji Maharaj, as it was an insult to the latter. Following this absurd comment, the Congress office was pelted with stones by BJP workers and nearly seven people were injured in the ensuing mayhem.

The objection of the BJP to the statement from the Congress leader is that Tipu was a “mass murderer of Hindus” and he tried to convert Hindus to Islam. There are many other charges put against Tipu by Hindutva elements. Most of these try to project Tipu as anti-Hindu and a cruel king. This is far from the truth.

Lots of these myths are part of the communal narrative, accentuated by the British narratives, which are harsher against Tipu in particular. This is because he was one of the few rulers who fought against the British. Tipu had asked Nizam and the Peshwas to oppose the armies of the East India Company. He foresaw the dangers of British power entrenching in India.

Tipu’s administration was a mixed one, with many top officers being Hindus. Purnaiah served him as the Mir Miran (head of a department) and was crucial to his administration. Krishna Rao was his treasurer. Shamaiya Iyengar held a high-ranking ministerial position and Narsimha Iyengar held a position in the postal department. Tipu Sultan reportedly provided grants to the Sringeri Shankaracharya, including for the rebuilding of the temple and the installation of the Hindu goddess Sharada. He granted land and endowments to various temples throughout his kingdom. During his reign, the 10-day Dussehra celebrations were an integral part of the social life of Mysore.

In 1791, Maratha forces led by Raghunath Rao Patwardhan attacked and plundered the historic Sringeri Sharada Peetham, causing the Shankaracharya to flee. Upon learning of this, Tipu Sultan expressed deep anger, stating that those who committed such acts would face consequences, and promptly sent funds, gifts, and letters to restore the temple and reconsecrate the idol. The raid was part of the Third Anglo-Mysore War, during which Maratha forces caused significant destruction to the temple complex, including killing or wounding people and looting property.

Tipu Sultan, who frequently interacted with the Sringeri Jagadguru and addressed him with high respect, immediately ordered the Mysore administration to assist in the restoration, demonstrating his patronage of certain Hindu institutions. Evidence of this restoration is found in several letters in Kannada, preserved in the Sringeri monastery records, where Tipu requested the Jagadguru to pray for the prosperity of his kingdom.

Tipu Sultan was a staunch opponent of the British. There is an accusation against him that he persecuted some Hindu and Christian communities. The reason for this persecution, however, was purely political, not religious. About these persecutions, historian Kate Brittlebank says that “This was not a religious policy but one of chastisement”. The communities targeted by him were seen as disloyal to the State.

The communities Tipu targeted did not belong only to the Hindu stream. He also acted against some Muslim communities, like the Mahdavis. The reason was that these communities were supporting the British and were employed as horsemen in the East India Company’s armies. Another historian, Susan Bayly, says that Tipu Sultan’s attack on Hindus and Christians outside his state is to be seen on political grounds, as at the same time he had developed close relations with these communities within Mysore.

Sarfaraz Shaikh, in his book Sultan-E-Khudad has reproduced the ‘Manifesto of Tipu Sultan’ in which he declares that he would not discriminate on religious grounds and would protect his empire until his last breath. He had a great interest in rocket technology. This finds appreciative mention in Dr APJ Abdul Kalam’s book, Wings of Fire.

It is interesting to note that in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s series for children on Indian history, they had published a book on Tipu in the 1970s. BJP’s Yeddyurappa had adorned Tipu’s headgear to solicit votes in the 2010 elections in Karnataka. Then President, Ramnath Kovind, sent a eulogising message on the occasion of Tipu Jayanti (2017). He has an RSS background. He praised Tipu by saying that “Tipu Sultan died a heroic death fighting the British. He was also a pioneer in the development and use of Mysore rockets in warfare.”  Tipu – along with Rani Laxmi Bai – are also depicted as freedom fighters through drawings in Part XVI (page 144) of the original, hand-written and illustrated copy of the Indian Constitution.

Due to his policies, Tipu was popular among the people of Mysore. There are many folk songs, sung in villages, praising him. It is for this reason that one of our greatest playwrights, Girish Karnad, said that had Tipu been a Hindu, he would have the same status that Shivaji Maharaj has in Maharashtra. This is very close to what Sapkal stated, nothing extra.

This whole incident of opposing the portrait of Tipu in the Deputy Mayors’ office is one more instance of communal forces latching on to divisive politics. Kings should not be seen just by their religion; their policies towards people of different religions and people’s welfare should be the major criterion for evaluating them. Tipu stands very tall in this scale of religious tolerance. The half-baked propaganda of the communal forces is trying to divide communities.

A major tribute to Tipu was paid by Subhash Chandra Bose. He adopted Tipu’s ‘springing tiger’ as the insignia of Azad Hind Fauj, which fought against the British. The major contribution of Tipu was to forewarn the Indian rulers about the advancing threat of the East India Company, the British. It was for this that he bravely fought against the British and laid down his life in the fourth Anglo-Mysore War. The communal forces who are out to demonise Tipu belong to the ideology that did not even lift a little finger against the British rule.

source: http://www.clarionindia.net / Clarion India / Home> Opinion / by Prof Ram Punyani / February 18th, 2026

Remembered in files, erased in life: Jharkhand’s forgotten martyrs of 1857

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JHARKHAND :

The Banyan tree on which the execution took place. Photo: Ghulam Ahmad Raza

During the 1857 revolt against British rule, Jharkhand too witnessed armed resistance. The rebellion had spread across regions including Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Ramgarh, Palamu and Singhbhum. In the dense forested border areas of Ranchi and Hazaribagh, the rebel forces were led by Shaheed Sheikh Bhikhari Ansari and Tikait Umrao Singh. From the dense jungles of the Chuttu Palu valley, their army fought British troops and prevented Ranchi from falling under colonial control. Both leaders were captured by the British forces on January 6, 1858 and were publicly executed by hanging on January 8, 1858, in the same Chuttu Palu valley.

The banyan tree on which they were hanged still stands today. The Jharkhand government has developed the surrounding area as a martyr memorial with the stated aim of preserving history and keeping alive the legacy of the region’s sites of resistance. Yet even today, many residents of the Chuttu Palu village where the memorial stands remain unaware of who these martyrs were.

Fifty-eight-year-old Nirmal Kumar, who works as a stone breaker near the memorial, often rests inside the premises during breaks. He says he has been coming here since childhood. Despite this, he is unaware of the historical significance of the site and does not recognise the names of Sheikh Bhikhari Ansari or Tikait Umrao Singh.

“I only know that blankets are distributed here every year on January 8,” he said. On the martyrdom anniversary, social workers and officials visit the site to pay tribute and distribute essentials among the poor.

Sanjay Munda, a resident of Chuttu Palu village, said that even today, most villagers do not know about the martyrs or the memorial’s history. “Members of the surrounding Scheduled Tribe (ST)  and Scheduled Caste (SC) communities refer to the site in the local language as Fasiyahi Bar (tree where the hanging took place). Most people do not know about the 1857 revolt or the sacrifice of Sheikh Bhikhari and Tikait Umrao Singh,” he told Maktoob.

Despite the lack of awareness, locals often bow their heads in respect when passing the site.

The memory of these two revolutionaries who laid down their lives fighting British rule is slowly fading. Their history has largely been reduced to government files and digital web pages. On martyrdom days, ministers, officials and locals pay tributes, but beyond symbolic gestures, little is done. While the Jharkhand government has taken some steps to acknowledge them, no substantial initiative has been taken by the central government to formally recognise or honour their contributions.

Dr Muzaffar Hussain, researcher and author of Jharkhand ki Muslim Vibhutiyaan, says Muslim, SC and Adivasi martyrs have not received the recognition they deserve. “Jharkhand has produced many revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives for India’s freedom, but recognition has been limited largely to Birsa Munda only,” he said.

He points out that the 1857 revolt took place nearly 40 years before Birsa Munda’s Ulgulan (revolt). “Names like Nadir Ali, Imam Ali, Jatra Tana Bhagat, Sidhu–Kanhu, Phulo–Jhano, Nilambar–Pitambar, Sohbat Miyan, Chandan Miyan, Jaggu Miyan and Najahat Hussain are a part of Jharkhand’s resistance history during the 1857 revolt, yet they remain largely forgotten.”

Hussain argues that the Jharkhand government must project its revolutionaries on a larger scale for the central government to take meaningful steps. “Even platforms like Google and Wikipedia carry very limited information about them,” he said.

He suggests state-funded research, naming welfare schemes and government buildings after revolutionaries and honouring their descendants are ways to restore their place in public memory.

Ruchi Kujur, an activist working on SC and ST rights and a member of the Jharkhand State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, said every state has its own history, and Jharkhand is rich with stories of courage and resistance. “The list of Adivasi and SC heroes is long,” she said.

“People need to be made aware of their ancestors’ sacrifices. When these revolutionaries are honoured, it inspires the younger generation to work for society and the nation.”

Situated amid a valley rich in natural beauty, the martyr memorial complex (Shaheed Sthal) has been developed with basic amenities. Yet, several factors discourage people from visiting the site, further deepening the lack of public awareness about the martyrs. Surrounded by dense forests and hills, the memorial lies in an isolated location, with no human habitation within a radius of nearly five kilometres. This isolation is a major reason why people hesitate to visit the site, either alone or with their families.

The premise includes resting sheds, benches and toilet facilities. However, due to poor maintenance, thick shrubs have grown across the complex. Lights installed in the area and doors of the toilets have reportedly been stolen. Although the police conduct patrols from time to time, the absence of adequate security continues to deter visitors.

Ghulam Ahmad Raza is a Jharkhand-based freelance journalist with over four years of experience. He has worked as a City Reporter with Pratah Awaz and as a Sub Editor with Prabhat Mantra. His reporting focuses on marginalised communities, forgotten histories and grassroots political narratives.

source: http://www.maktoobmedia.com / Maktoob Media / Home> East India / by Ghulam Ahmad Raza / January 29th, 2026

Havaldar Jhantu Ali Shaikh Honoured With Sena Medal for Supreme Sacrific

Amazing Feats, Bravery Awards, Citations, Commendations etc (since April 14th, 2024), Freedom Fighters (under research project), , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

WEST BENGAL :

New Delhi:

The Indian Army has posthumously awarded the Sena Medal to Havaldar Jhantu Ali Shaikh of the elite 6 Para Special Forces, recognising his exceptional courage and sacrifice during a counter terrorism operation in Jammu and Kashmir. The gallantry award was announced on the occasion of Republic Day 2026.

Havaldar Shaikh, a resident of West Bengal, laid down his life during a fierce encounter with terrorists in the Udhampur district on April 24, 2025. He served with the 6 Para Special Forces, one of the Army’s most demanding combat units. During the operation, he faced heavy fire and suffered grave injuries. He continued the mission despite his condition and ensured pressure on the terrorists until his final moments.

Army officials said his conduct reflected discipline, courage, and devotion to duty. His actions helped protect fellow soldiers and upheld the operational objective. The Sena Medal recognises acts of bravery and exceptional service. His name features among 70 gallantry award recipients announced this year, highlighting the continued sacrifices of armed forces personnel.

The White Knight Corps paid tribute to Havaldar Shaikh and acknowledged his role in counter insurgency efforts in the region. Fellow soldiers described him as committed and fearless, with a strong sense of responsibility toward his unit and the nation.

Havaldar Jhantu Ali Shaikh’s sacrifice holds deep meaning for the country. His story reflects service guided by faith, duty, and courage. His legacy stands as a reminder of the price paid by soldiers who protect national security and civilian lives, even at the cost of their own.

source: http://www.radiancenews.com / Radiance News / Home> Latest News> Report / by Radiance News Bureau / January 27th, 2026