Mohammed Babavali showing the ‘Princess Mary’s Christmas Gift 1914’ ‘received by his great grandfather and the medals won by his father.— Photo: Ch.Vijaya Bhaskar
Babavali is taking care of the brass tin gifted to his great grandfather by Princess Mary
Mohammed Babavali, a 36-year-old resident of Thotlavalluru in Krishna district, has been protecting a brass tin for the past two decades. His father the late Abdul Raheem, a head constable in Vijayawada Police Commissionerate, protected it all through his life and even salvaged it from the 1977 Diviseema cyclone that swept away everything in his native village Pedagurumotu of Avanigadda mandal.
Raheem’s father Abdul Azeez too protected it all through his life before passing it on to him.
The tin, with a shape of a small tiffin box, isn’t an ordinary item, for it has a long and interesting legacy connected with the British.
“It’s Princess Mary’s Christmas gift and has a history of more than 102 years. It (the tin) was born out of the idea of Princess Mary, the daughter of Great Britain’s King George V and Queen Mary, who wanted to gift the members of British, Colonial and Indian Armed Forces on the eve of Christmas during First World War.”
One of the captains in Indian Armed Forces Fateh Ahmed, the great-grandfather of Babavali, was one among the 4.2 lakh personnel who received the gift from Princess Mary in 1914. The gift came with tobacco, confectionary, spices, pencils, scissors and a Christmas card. “Everything is gone except this tin. I have been protecting it and after me my kids will carry on the legacy,” Babavali told The Hindu .
“We lost everything including our home during the 1977 cyclone, but the ‘tin’ was saved by father who kept it with him in the police quarters in Vijayawada,” Mr. Babavali said.
Some of those gift tins are now among the collections of several museums across United Kingdom and Australia. “I thought of giving it to a museum. But later I decided to keep it with me in memory of my great grand father,” said Mr. Babavali.
The decorative tin is embossed with the face of the Princess Mary and Britain’s allied countries France, Russia, Italy, Belgium and the United States during World War I.
Back home, Mr. Babavali lost a fortune taking care of his ailing father who passed away in 2003 and he is presently working as a security guard, still looking for a break in life.
This six-foot plus Thotlavalluru man is taking care of the 102-year-old brass tin gifted to his great grandfather by Princess Mary in 1914.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cites> Vijayawada / Tharun Boda / Vijayawada – May 07th, 2016
With no air conditioners, the approaching summer may spell doom for the thousands of rare and antique books of the famous Raza Library here.
The lab technicians have claimed that the precious books and manuscripts of the library may get damaged if the temperature soars in the coming months.
“The library had proposed a new building, with AC facilities, to preserve the books and Rs 20 crore was also sanctioned by the government,” said Himanshu Singh, spokesman of Raza Library.
But, governor Aziz Qureshi stopped it, he said. The state governor is also the chairman of Raza library board.
The library staff preserves the manuscripts manually and no high -tech support has been provided by the government. Speaking with TOI, Singh said, “Temperature between 18 and 24 degree Celsius is considered ideal for preservation of these documents and objects.”
The library is a treasure trove of rare documents and books. “Rare documents in different Indian languages written on palm leaves, more than 60 thousand published books in Indian and foreign languages.
There is also a Qur’an hand written by Hadhrat Ali on deer skin,” the spokesman said.
According to Singh, the library has also about 17 thousand rare documents in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Urdu, Pushto, Hindi and Turkish etc as well as rare specimens of arts and paintings.
“Since the days of Nawabs, not much attention was paid nor was it needed in preserving these documents. But, because of changing weather conditions during the past few years temperatures in summers and winters are varying greatly because of which more care and suitable temperature is needed,” said, Naved Qaisar, research scholar at the library.
Former director of Raza Library, Muhammad Azizuddin Husain, had prepared a proposal for setting up a separate building for preserving the documents. Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) permission was also obtained. The ASI has also suggested that the height of this new building should be one metre less than the old building, the spokesman said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Bareilly / by Nazar Abbas / TNN / April 09th, 2016
Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi is the dargah of one of the world’s most famous Sufi saints, Nizamuddin Auliya. Although any day is a good time to visit the dargah, the Thursday night qawwalis, steeped in Sufi devotional music and sung in an an electric atmosphere, should not be missed!
Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah is renowned all over the country for the unique experience it offers – a chance to hear and enjoy Sufi music up close. The qawwali sessions on Thursday evenings are incredibly popular and people from all walks of life come in huge numbers to be swept up in the magic of the devotional soul-stirring music.
The dargah is located in the Nizamuddin area of Delhi, amidst narrow bylanes and rows and rows of hawkers selling knick-knacks. It was featured in a number of Bollywood films including Rockstar (2011) , Delhi 6 (2009)andBajrangi Bhaijaan (2015).
On Thursday nights, as the scent of rose petals mixes with the searing aroma of chargrilled kebabs, traders sell chaddars to devotees and incense holders send plumes into the air. The rest is music, and music only.
The Niazi Nizami Brothers at the Dargah
Source: YouTube
True to Sufi tradition, love for God is invoked in terms of romance through the music. The lyrics for qawwalis are usually simple, their meaning clear, and the artistes have plenty of room to improvise. The vocalists sit in the front with the harmonium player, the percussionists and the accompanying singers are at the back – there is a convergence of voices, a combined effort that is enchanting to the senses.
The dargah is named after Sheik Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (1236-1325). His grave and a hospice are situated here.
The saint was believed to be a Sufi mystic and was revered amongst the rich as well as the poor.
Pic: ibb.in
His teachings, his spirit, his contribution to the world and an unshakeable faith in God are celebrated with regular gatherings of people who pay their respects and hold on steadfastly to a tradition as old as time.
The dargah is visited by thousands of Muslims every week, and sees a fair share of Hindus, Christians and people from other religions too.
Source: Saad Akhtar / Flickr
Best time to go: The sessions take place twice every Thursday, once at 4:30 pm and the other at 6:15 pm. Go slightly early to explore and get a good spot! The dargah is open on all days – 6 am to 10 pm.
How to get there: The nearest metro station is Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium.
The 22-year-old Syeda Falak, who mastered the nuances of martial arts in the by-lanes of old city, has clinched gold in the prestigious US Open Karate Championship.
This young champion reigned supreme in the Kumite category for women’s section.
The city girl had warded off challenge from other contenders in the championship featuring competitors from 42 countries.
“It is a great feeling to beat some of the toughest opponents from the home country and also Ukraine to clinch the gold,” remarked Falak, who happened to be the first-ever girl from Telangana to win a gold in the US Karate Championship.
The next destination is the Dubai World Karate Premier League from April 8 to 10
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by V.V. Subrahmanyam / Hyderabad – March 30th, 2016
Tajamul Islam is the first Kashmiri girl who is going to participate at the world kickboxing champion in Italy in November.
Jammu & Kashmir :
Tajamul Islam, a seven-year-old Kashmiri girl is all set to represent India on an international platform. Islam is the first Kashmiri girl who is going to participate at the world kickboxing champion in Italy in November.
Tajamul has come up a long way:
In 2014, she started her journey learning martial arts from a local institute
She became the best fighter at state level and was awarded a gold medal in Jammu
After winning a state level championship, she was invited at the 2015 National Kickboxing Championship in New Delhi
Tajamul bagged the gold medal in sub-junior category at the 2015 National Kickboxing Championship
This win got her national recognition and she got the ticket to participate at the national kickboxing champion in Italy
Praises pour in for the young athlete:
Though the young soul had to compete against a 13-year-old opponent, Tajamul punched her out in 15 minutes
The chief coach at the championship, Kuldip Handu, appreciated the fact that despite weighing lesser than the opponent by eight kilograms, she managed to grab the national medal
Shabnam Kounser, principal of the school, says “Tajamul is good in studies and other extracurricular activities. She dances well. She has her own team here and teaches them dancing. She is a bright kid and very good at studies.”
A senior army official, who is providing financial help to the girl, said, “She is an inspiration for all. Even I have learned a few things from her. She is a champion. All that the army can do is inspire children like her and support them. It is their parents who have to see to it that their children chase and realise their dreams.”
Tajamul is really excited to be a part of an international event. However, before stepping in for the national kickboxing championship she was “a little afraid” when she saw her (opponent). But then she consoled herself saying that “age or body structure does not matter”.
“I will remain focused and give my best shot,” she told to the PTI.
source: http://www.indiatoday.intoday.in / IndiaToday.in / Home> Education> News> Story / New Delhi , April 29th, 2016
Heritage The luxuriously embellished, richly coloured dargah is a feast for the senses. Serish nanisetti
Hyderabad, TELANGANA :
The real discovery of Hyderabad heritage begins only when you discard your vehicle and trade it for a cycle or a pair of sneakers. Walking on the road between the Charminar and Purana Pul you might discover the Syed Hazrath Musa Qadri’s Dargah. It is a blink and miss structure on the left side between Koka ki Tatti and Purana Pul on the Hussainialam Road.
A huge green door leads you inside and on the left is the kanqah. In a portion of the kankah lives the family of the 28th descendent of Musa Qadri, who was a descendent of Abdul Lateef Laubali, whose dargah draws a number of pilgrims to Kurnool. Laubali was among the seven migrating Shia saints who came from Baghdad.
Spiritual abode – The Syed Hazrath Musa Qadri Dargah near Purana Pul / Photos: Serish Nanisetti
Set amidst age-old tamarind trees, is the double-storey green domed dargah of Musa Qadri. According to the inscription, the construction of the dargah was completed in 15 years. “After Syed Hazrath Musa Qadri passed away in 1800 at the age of 63, his son Ghulam Ali Qadri had a dream and saw the shape of the dargah and he set about building it which he finished within 15 years. It was not very difficult as Musa Qadri had 45,000 followers including people like Ghansi Mian after whom the bazaar is named,” says Syed Shah Fazlullah Qadri, the 28th descendent.
Unlike the bulbous domes of Qutb Shahi nobles, this is a flatter much more graceful structure on a rectangular base but with luxurious decoration on the outside as well as inside. Geometrical patterns, vegetal and floral patterns and skilled Persian calligraphy dominate every nook and cranny of the structure. No space is left uncovered. The deep patterns in stucco, which have been created even in the undulating parts of the minarets, mark them out from the earlier tradition of simple geometric shapes.
The upper storey is reached by climbing an arcane claustrophobic staircase where 10 square stones are jammed in a small space. “Nobody comes here. Very few people can climb this,” says Fazlullah’s son as he shows the chronogrammatic calligraphy about Musa Qadri and the intricately wrought spandrels and minarets.
The calligraphy in stone narrates the names of God or tells us a bit about the structure and its creators.
Unlike others, Ghulam Ali Qadri had a sense of history and he wrote the Mashkwatun Nubuwat, a seven-volume history chronicling the miracles of Musa Qadri as well as tracing the lineage back to Huma (Syria) and Baghdad (Iraq). According to the book, it was Syed Shah Piranshah Mohiuddin Thani Qadri who came to pray at the Quli Qutb Shah mosque which was in an open ground and he settled down there.
The bowl of wish-fulfilment. / Photos: Serish Nanisetti
Outside the Dargah is a black boat shaped structure carved out of hard granite called qashti hazatmand(ship of wish-fulfilment). “People come here to pray and when their desires are fulfilled the fill this with sherbet and all the people come and finish it off,” says Fazalullah Qadri.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Friday Review / by Serish Nanisetti / November 19th, 2010
Narendra Luther talks about weaving in amusing legends and fact-filled anecdotes in his new book ‘Legendotes of Hyderabad’
Hyderabad, TELANGANA :
‘Don’t google the meaning of ‘legendotes’ for there is no such word,’ historian Narendra Luther says in the introduction to his new book ‘Legendotes of Hyderabad’ (Niyogi Books; Rs. 995). A combination of legend and anecdotes, ‘legendotes’ is also an encapsulation of nuggets of history, backed by research, presented in the style of a coffee table book illustrated with photographs of people and buildings that provide a window to the past. “To my surprise, the publishers were eager to have more photographs,” he says with a smile, speaking to us ahead of the launch of his book on Thursday in the presence of historian Aloka Parasher Sen.
“During the course of my research on Hyderabad over the years, I came across both legends and anecdotes. Legends are generally considered gossips of history, but some of those are also stuff that makes up history. Former historians, I believe, walked on the highway of history whereas I feel many pieces of history lie scattered in the lanes and by lanes of the city. I collected a few of these and applied tests of historicity and veracity before documenting them,” explains Luther. Narendra Luther focuses both on stories that are now popular knowledge and lesser-known facts that give readers fresh insights into the history of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. “These are not mere ‘he said, she said’ facts put together,” he emphasises.
Luther also prefers to gather information from people than just documents from the archives: “I believe in interviewing people to know about history than merely going through archives; they have given me a wealth of information,” he says, referring to how he got the late Zahid Ali Kamil to share the story of Kazim Razvi, who led the Razakars movement. The author draws our attention to rocks of Hyderabad that are 2500 million years old and as he points out, ‘older than the Himalayas’ and traces the origin of Hyderabad, including the much-debated tale of romance that gave birth to Bhagnagar. “The historicity of Bhagmati has been established beyond doubt,” says Luther, and states his earlier research while penning a biography of Mohd. Quli Qutb Shah that led him to a document mentioning an old seal of ‘qazi of Bhagnagar’. “And in the court of Jehangir, there was a reference to the city of Bhagnagar in the South, established by Quli Qutb Shah in memory of his beloved,” he adds.
The book contains quirky stories of a dog made to sit on a throne by Sultan Tana Shah in recognition of it raising an alarm spotting an intruder, Aurangzeb’s visit to Bhagnagar and Stalin’s orders on the red revolt. There’s also a perceivable effort to make history relevant to the times we live in, in the chapters that detail how the King Kothi got its name, the story of Lal Bazaar in the then Lashkar that later came to be called Secunderabad. “I’ve given historical citations even for amusing stories,” smiles Luther, citing the story of seven kulchas and how the kulcha was represented on the Nizam’s flag. “This was contradicted by the man himself, the first Nizam, who said the ‘circle’ was a moon that denoted his name Kamaruddin (‘Kamar’ in Persian means moon). But later when the sixth Nizam was approving the design of the flag in 1899, issued a written mentioning the big white circle as a kulcha.” Like his previous works, this book too is an ode to Hyderabad.
Hyderabad connection to ‘Jai Hind!’
Did you know that it was a Hyderabadi who coined the slogan Jai Hind? Zain-ul Abideen Hasan was pursuing engineering in Germany at the time when Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose visited Germany and urged Indian students to join his movement to liberate India. Abid Hasan gave up his studies and became Netaji’s secretary and interpreter. ‘Legendotes of Hyderabad’ discloses why Abid came to be called ‘Safrani’ in later years and how he coined the term ‘Jai Hind’ as the greeting for his army and for independent India.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Sangeetha Devi Dundoo / Hyderabad – January 30th, 2014
She’s helped revive traditional weaves and, like the Mahatma, dreams of a loom in every home
At 75, Suraiya Hasan Bose has energy levels that can put a teenager to shame. But when she chats, she exhibits the languid grace of a long-forgotten nawabi culture. As women work magic on the looms at her weavers’ workshop at Dargah Hussain Shah Wali (a village on the outskirts of Hyderabad), in the adjacent Safrani Memorial School run by her, children race around with unbridled enthusiasm.
Suraiya employs a large number of poor women, many of them widows, from the village. These women are trained to work on himroo, jamawar and paithani—fabrics that were brought into India by the Mughals. “I want to see these women stand on their own feet. I wish to see looms in all their homes and hope they can train future generations too,” she says. Suraiya’s unassuming demeanour envelops the large room as the women go about their work.
On the other side of the fence, the children’s learning curve, under Suraiya’s tutelage, spreads an air of hope. Like the women, students of the school too come from poor households—children of farmers, labourers or vegetable vendors. Suraiya charges them a nominal fee.
Suraiya attributes her passion to her father Badrul Hasan. Mahatma Gandhi too has been her idol. When Gandhi first visited Hyderabad, it was in front of Suraiya’s house that the first bonfire of English mill-made cloth was lit. Suraiya’s father died when she was only five but she had others to look up to. Her uncle Abid Hasan Safrani was the personal secretary to Subhash Chandra Bose and she was married to Bose’s nephew Aurobindo Bose. “My late husband was based in Calcutta, and used to be in and out of jail. Both our families understood the importance of Gandhi’s ideals of preserving traditional handlooms.” It is after her uncle that the weaving society and school are named since he was the one to encourage Suraiya to follow her passion for handspun textiles.
While Suraiya is credited with the single-handed revival of the Nizami-Persian fabrics of himroo, paithani and mashroo in Andhra Pradesh, she has also worked extensively in the village of Kanchanpalli, close to Warangal. In the early ’70s, due to lack of patronage, weavers in Kanchanpalli had almost given up their profession. They merely made decorative calendars woven with portraits. Suraiya encouraged them to make durrees. Today, over 500 weaver families in Kanchanpalli make a living through durrees and other weaves.
In Warangal too, when Suraiya began her efforts to revive weavers and fast-vanishing forms of royal designs, there were just two such families. Following Suraiya’s constant efforts, there are now a thousand families involved in weaving, research and development of textiles. Several of them also come to Suraiya’s workshop to learn the intricate art of himroo. Now, Suraiya plans to train women from the nearby villages of Hafizpet and Miyapur.
Funds are slow to come by but Suraiya believes if the passion is there, money will soon follow. As the school bell rings and children rush out, Suraiya says, “Half my heart is with them. Since they come from the poorer quarters, we also teach them to use cutlery, to speak softly and even pick up any garbage they find on roads and put them into dustbins. We basically want them to be honest and respectful citizens.”
Despite Suraiya’s busy schedule, she is at the school every day at 8 am. “What’s heartening is, marriage is not a priority for the girls passing out from my school. College is. That’s our greatest achievement,” she says, her eyes shining through her bifocals.
Her future plans? Adding weaving classes to the school curriculum. For like Gandhi, Suraiya’s dream is to see a loom in every home.
Contact Suraiya at: Safrani School premises, 1-86, Dargah Hussain Shah Wali, PO: Golconda, Hyderabad: 500008 Tel: (040) 23563792, 23560992.
source: http://www.outlookindia.com / Outlook / Home> Making A Difference / by Madhavi Tata / October 31st, 2005
When we talk of “Freedom Fighters”, we generally mean those people who fought for the independence of India within the country. Many Indians fought for the freedom of the country from outside India too.
Indian National Army
It was Captain Mohan Singh, an Indian officer of the British Indian Army, who first set up the Azad Hind Fouj (Indian National Army) on the defeat of the British by Japan on February 15, 1942.
Abid Hasan
A young enthusiastic and courageous man from Hyderabad also joined this force. His name was Zain-al-Abdin Hasan. He preferred to be called Abid Hasan and later became known as Abid Hasan Safrani.
Abid Hasan’s mother Hajia Begum was anti-British, so her children were sent to Germany for higher studies. And Abid went to do a degree in engineering.
Meeting with Bose
Netaji addressed a meeting of Indian prisoners of war in Germany and asked them to join the INA. Abid met him and was inspired by the charismatic leader. He told Bose that he would join him after finishing his studies. Netaji said tauntingly that if he was caught in such small considerations, he would not be able to achieve anything big in life. Stung by that remark, Abid decided to give up his studies. He became Netaji’s secretary and interpreter.
Abid Hasan was made a major in the INA. Netaji wanted an Indian form of addressing each other. Abid first suggested “Hello” and was snubbed for that. He later suggested “Jai Hind”, which Netaji liked and adopted it as the formal manner of greeting for revolutionaries and members of INA.Later Nehru used it in his Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort.
The Indian National Army
INA provided a common kitchen for its soldiers irrespective of their religious affiliations. But there were many differences of opinion within its ranks. One of the controversial issues was the design of the national flag. TheHindus wanted a saffron flag, while the Muslims insisted on green. Later the Hindus gave up their insistence. Abid Hasan was impressed by this gesture that he decided to append “saffron” to his name. Since then, he became to be known as Safrani.
After the famous trial of the INA, all the members of the INA were released. In 1946, Safrani came to Hyderabad and joined the Congress Party. The party was riven with factionalism. Disgusted, he gave up politics and joined the Bengal Lamp Company. He was posted at Karachi. On the partition of India, he came back to Hyderabad.
Diplomatic career
In 1948, he was taken into the newly created Indian Foreign Service. On retirement in 1969, he returned to Hyderabad. Safrani passed away in 1984 at the age of 73.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features / Online Edition / by Narendra Luther / Saturday – October 20th, 2001
Abid Hasan’s grandnephew recounts the story behind creation of a salutation to replace religion-based greetings for Indian soldiers.
Image credit: Photo courtesy: Anvar Alikhan | Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose with his aide Abid Hasan during their journey to Japan from Germany in 1943.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose had a problem. It was 1941. He was in Germany, and was spending a lot of his time in the Konigsbruck prisoner-of-war camp, trying to recruit Indian soldiers captured by Rommel’s army in North Africa into his new Azad Hind Fauj.
But what troubled him was that the soldiers of the Indian Army had historically been organised into regiments based on ethnic and religious lines – the Rajputs, the Baluchis, the Sikhs, and so on. And even here, in the prisoner-of-war camps, they tended to cluster into their own little ethnic and religious groups.
Netaji, however, was very clear that his new Azad Hind Fauj would be a completely integrated army with men of every community and caste fighting shoulder-to-shoulder for an integrated India. After all, how could it be any other way?
But to integrate the soldiers was a complex issue that had to be tackled at many levels. For starters, each community greeted each other with their own salutation: the Hindu soldiers said, “Namaste” or “Ram, Ram ji”; the Muslims said, “Salaam alaikum”, and the Sikhs said, “Sat Sri Akal”. Netaji believed the first thing he had to do was to replace these religion-based greetings with a common salutation that would help bond everybody together.
And this task he entrusted to his aide, Abid Hasan.
The great rallying cry
Hasan was a Hyderabadi who’d been a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi as a teenager, and had spent time at his Sabarmati Ashram. Later, when his contemporaries all went to university in England, Hasan chose to go, instead, to Germany. And it was there that, in 1941, he met Netaji, and dropped out of engineering college to became his aide.
Now, pondering over the task Netaji had set him, Hasan was wandering around the Konigsbruck POW camp, when he overheard two Rajput soldiers greet each other with “Jai Ramji ki”. And that triggered off in his mind the idea of “Jai Hindustan ki”.
This, in turn, led to the shorter, more rousing “Jai Hind”.
Netaji was delighted with Hasan’s idea, which worked so well that “Jai Hind” soon went beyond its original brief to become a rallying cry of the Indian National Army. Later, of course, it would be adopted as the national slogan when, at the time of Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru raised it, stirringly, at the Red Fort.
It is ironic now, in the time of the Bharat Mata ki Jai controversy, to think that Jai Hind was a slogan created specifically to help unite the people of India, rather than divide them.
Later, in 1943, when Netaji was searching for an anthem for his Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, or the Provisional Government of Free India, he decided on Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, Jana Gana Mana. But to make it more accessible to the common man, Netaji wanted it translated from Tagore’s classical Bengali into simple Hindi. And for that, once again, he turned to Hasan, along with two other INA officers, Mumtaz Hussain and JR Bhonsle, while the tune itself was composed by Capt Ram Singh. Netaji’s vivid brief to them was, apparently, that when the anthem played, it should be so rousing that auditorium itself should shatter in half to reveal the sky above.
It is a mark of the kind of man Netaji was, to combine such a wide sweep of vision, with such minute attention to its details.
Chalo Dilli!
So what became of Abid Hasan?
When Netaji made his historic escape from Germany to Japan by submarine in 1943, he took Hasan along with him. It was the longest submarine voyage in history till then, beginning in the Baltic Sea in a German submarine, transferring off the coast of Madagascar into a Japanese submarine, and then sailing across the Indian Ocean to land in Sumatra, nearly four months later (a voyage that is interestingly portrayed in Shyam Benegal’s The Forgotten Hero, with Rajit Kapur playing the part of Hasan). From Sumatra the two of them were then flown in a Japanese Air Force plane to Tokyo.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose with his aide Abid Husain on their famous voyage from Germany to Japan in 1943. Photo courtesy: Anvar Alikhan
Hasan (by then Major Hasan) fought in the historic Battle of Imphal in 1944 – which Netaji believed would be the INA’s great breakthrough into the plains of India at the head of General Mutaguchi’s 15th Japanese Division, culminating in his dream of “Chalo Dilli!” But, unfortunately, everything went wrong.
A spy code-named Silver tipped off the Allies about the attack. The Allied defenders fought back with unexpected desperation; the monsoon broke early, and torrential rains cut off the INA’s and Japanese supply lines, while the Allies managed to supply their troops by air. The expected defection of Indian soldiers from the Allied side to the INA didn’t happen; instead, demoralised INA soldiers and officers began to surrender to the Allies. Also, significantly, the Japanese, invincible until now, were, for the first time, under real pressure on various fronts, both geographical and metaphorical. The tide of the war had imperceptibly, but decisively, turned.
The four-month-long Battle of Imphal (along with the Battle of Kohima nearby) has been voted the greatest battle fought in the history of the British Army. But what that meant for the Indian National Army was that instead of leading to an advance upon Delhi, the battle ended with the long, dejected retreat back to Rangoon, which Hasan orchestrated.
That last, fateful flight
In August 1945, Hasan was one of the key aides whom Netaji picked to accompany him on his final flight, along with SA Ayer, a minister in his Cabinet; Colonel Habeeb-ur-Rahman, his secretary; Colonel Pritam Singh; Colonel Gulzara Singh and Debnath Das. The plan was that they would fly together from Singapore to Tokyo, via Bangkok, Saigon, Taipei, and Manchuria.
But at Saigon Netaji suddenly asked Hasan to remain behind to finish some work, and meet up with him in Tokyo. Ultimately Netaji took off in a Japanese Mitsubishi Ki21 bomber, accompanied only by Rahman.
And the rest we know.
Or don’t know.
It all depends, essentially, on your point of view. (Although it is interesting to note that the top INA officials who were closest to Netaji say that he died in the crash.)
At the end of the war, Hasan was imprisoned by the British and, along with other close Netaji associates, was grilled by British Intelligence about Netaji and his plans. But like the others – including Habeeb-ur Rahman, Pritam Singh and John Thivy, founder of the Malayan Indian Congress – he refused to talk. Some of them were taken away and never seen again; nobody knew whose turn would be next.
After Independence, Hasan joined the newly-formed Indian Foreign Service, and took on the surname Safrani (after the saffron colour in the Indian flag). He would ultimately retire as Ambassador to Denmark – the coast of which he had quietly slipped past at the start of his secret submarine journey to Japan in 1943.
After Independence, Abid Hasan joined the newly-formed Indian Foreign Service, and took on the surname Safrani. Photo courtesy: Anvar Alikhan
He also happened to be (and it’s now time for a disclosure) a favourite grand-uncle of mine.
I asked him once, in an unguarded moment, what really happened to Netaji, and he said, “Arre beta, yeh sab bilkul bakwas hai.” This is all complete nonsense.
But was he telling me the truth?
Or was it just a cover-up for some secret he didn’t want to reveal?
