Maulana Abul Kalam Azad - India Wins Freedom: The Complete Version

MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD (18881958) was named Firoz Bakht at birth but was known in his youth as Muhiyuddin Ahmad and later adopted the pseudonym of Abul Kalam Azad. He descended from a family which came from Herat to India in Babar's time and among his ancestors were well-known scholars and administrators. Two years after his birth in 1888 in Mecca where his father Maulana Khairuddin had migrated after the 1857 Revolt, the family moved and settled in Calcutta. Azad was educated at home by his father and private tutors. His political awakening was stimulated by the partition (later annulled) of Bengal in 1905. He travelled extensively in Iraq, Egypt, Turkey and France and had planned to visit London but his father's illness obliged him to return home in 1908.

Maulana Azad started the Urdu weekly Al Hilal at Calcutta in July 1912. He opposed the Aligarh line of remaining aloof from the freedom movement. With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, the journal was banned under the Press Act. He then started another Urdu weekly Al Balagh, also from Calcutta, in November 1915, and this continued to be published until March 1916 when Azad was externed under the Defence of India Regulations. The governments of Bombay, Punjab, Delhi and the United Provinces banned his entry, and he went to Bihar. He was interned in Ranchi until 1 January 1920.

After his release Azad was elected President of the All India Khilafat Committee (at the Calcutta session, 1920), and of the Unity Conference at Delhi in 1924. He presided over the Nationalist Muslims Conference in 1928. He was elected President of the Indian National Congress in 1923, and again in 1940, and continued to hold this office until 1946. He led the negotiations on behalf of the Congress Party with the British Cabinet Mission in 1946. Later he joined free India's first government as Minister for Education, a post he held until his death on 22 February 1958.

Among his other published works are Al-Bayan (1915) and Tarjuman-ul-Quran (19331936), which are commentaries, Tazkirah (1916), an autobiographical work and Ghubar-i-Khatir (1943), a collection of letters, all in Urdu.

HUMAYUN KABIR (19061969): After a distinguished academic Career at the Calcutta and Oxford Universities, he served as lecturer first at the Andhra University sit Waltair and then at calcutta University, 193345. In 1937, he was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council as leader of the Peasants Parry. In 1946 Azad selected him to serve as his secretary and he was therefore closely associated with Azad. He served as Educational Advisor to the Government of India until 1956 when he resigned and was elected to Parliament as a member of the Congress Party in 1957. He was appointed Minister for Civil Aviation (195758), for Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs (195863), and for Petroleum and Chemicals (196368). The author of more than twenty books in English and Bangla on philosophy, literature, politics and culture, he also published two novels and three volumes of verse.

INDIA WINS FREEDOM

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The text has been adapted from the original published by
Orient Blackswan in 1988

Reprinted 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004(twice), 2005, 2006, 2007.

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for
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friend and comrade