Hasrat Mohani: Mystic As Rebel

SEATED IN HER HOME IN A TONY HOUSING society of Delhi’s Friends Colony, author Rakhshanda Jalil—currently working on a biography of Hasrat Mohani (1875-1951) titled ‘ The Pesky Nationalist ’—speaks of the freedom struggle veteran who coined the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ and called for Poorna Swaraj as early as 1921, long before anyone else in the In­dian National Congress. She calls him a “maverick”, a communist who had discussed Marxism with Mahatma Gandhi while in jail and had earned praise from Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for his revolutionary zeal. Mohani was also an ally of Bal Gangadhar Tilakand the Ali brothers, as well as the extremist faces of the Independence struggle.

Born into a zamindari family in Mohan, Unnao, in today’s Ut­tar Pradesh 150 years ago, Mohani began wearing coarse, hand-spun khadi in his teens long before Gandhi returned to lead the freedom movement from South Africa. He excelled in mathemat­ics but chose to pursue a BA degree instead of joining an Islamic seminary like his educated Muslim peers, and plunged into the freedom movement even before his BA exam results came out in 1903. Maverick, indeed. He launched a magazine that vehement­ly criticised the British, saw no contradiction—as a practising Muslim—between communism and Islam, endured multiple jail terms, travelled the country with his activist wife, and refused stipends, fees, or even accommodation whenever he was invited for speaking engagements or during debates in the Constituent Assembly, of which he was a member.

Unfortunately, he is not remembered as often as he should be for his contribution to the freedom movement. As so often happens to outspoken mavericks, he did not fully align with the majority opinion inside or outside Congress, with Gandhi, the Communist Party, or the Muslim League. He disapproved of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s methods and ultimately opposed the Partition of India.

Now, take the case of ‘Anton’ Pannekoek, one of the fore­most voices of mainstream Marxism in the early part of the last century who, according to Noam Chomsky, among others, was overshadowed and largely invisibilised thanks to the rise of Vladimir Lenin in the international scheme of things of the time. He was resurrected only later, that too in academic texts, as one of the pioneers of socialism in its truest sense where workers took care of their political priorities, and not under the directives

of an authoritarian communist party. Pannekoek had sharply criticised the deliberate weakening of the workers’ councils, or the Soviets, that ought to have formed the backbone of a new society created after the October Revolution.

Another example that comes to mind is the first woman to serve in a US cabinet. Frances Perkins played perhaps the most pivotal role as labor secretary under US President Franklin D Roosevelt dur­ing the Great Depression and designed “social security”, insisted on safer workplaces, meaning factories, passed a law that disallowed workers from putting in more than 40 hours a week at work, be­sides the most revolutionary act of the time: ban on child labour. Many of her contributions were destined to have a lasting effect and continue to be felt even today.

Coming back to Mohani, the freedom fighter and relentless poet—who changed his name and adopted a nom de plume early in life (his earlier name was Syed Fazl-ul-Hasan)—demanded “complete independence” for India in 1921 at the Ahmedabad Session of Con­gress along with Swami Kumaranand. The man was ahead of his time, opposed whatever he saw was an incremental move, unjust, unfair, no matter who his opponent was, be it Gandhi or Jinnah or BR Ambedkar.

Recalling his services to the discussions within Congress, Subhas Bose said many years later, “There was an interesting episode at the Ahmedabad Congress. Maulana Hasrat Mohani moved a resolution to the effect that the goal of the Indian Na­tional Congress should be defined in the [Congress] constitution as the establishment of a republic [the United States of India]. So impassioned was his eloquence and so responsive was the audi­ence, that one felt as if the resolution would be carried by a large majority. But the Mahatma rose to oppose the resolution and with great sobriety argued against the proposition, with the result that it was thrown out by the house. The proposition was, however, to be brought up over and over again at subsequent Congresses till it was accepted at the Lahore Congress in 1929, the mover on that occasion being none other than the Mahatma himself.” (Courtesy: Mohammad Arshad in a paper titled ‘Hasrat Mohani: A Critical Appraisal of His Political Career and Ideology’).

For someone who had been jailed multiple times and lived in Aligarh and later in Kanpur, Jalil notes that Mohani wore his pov­erty as a “badge of courage”. The main reason was that he, although belonging to a zamindari family, never fell back on his family riches and also did not hold a regular job, other than run a magazine and sell swadeshi products from a shop in Kanpur (then called Cawn­pore), none of which fetched him much money. “He was a maverick for a variety of reasons, for contrarian nature, otherworldliness, childlike behaviour and for being a perpetual voice of dissent,” Jalil elaborates. Mohani and his progressive-thinking wife ran the printing press together, but it did not make him a man of means. Which meant that he became an object of mockery in some quar­ters, who laughed at him for tying up his broken spectacles with a thread because he had no money to get them repaired. Wheatish by complexion, with pock-marks on his face, mostly covered by a big, unkempt beard, he wore the same kind of clothes his entire life. His thin voice was a cause for mirth among some people. So was his first visit to Aligarh, where he did his BA. On that occasion, he earned ridicule for appearing in his wedding clothes, shortly after marrying a relative, Nishatunnisa.

Regardless, his stature rose within the activists fighting for India’s freedom as he promoted Urdu literature and political awareness through trenchant criticism of British rule.

Surprisingly for an alum­nus of Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO) founded in the year of his birth, Mohani came under the spell of someone about whom Muslims of the day had several misgivings, Tilak, because of the pro-Hindu activism he employed against the British. Until Tilak died in 1920, Con­gress records from its summits show that Mohani forcefully ar­gued in his favour against moderates within the Congress fold. To many people of the time who had written in Urdu, Jalil reveals, there was a Tilak imprint in Mohani’s politics, favouring the so-called extremists for their youthful vigour and dedication to die for their cause. When Tilak died, Mohani wrote a glowing poem. Sample a few lines from his panegyric in 1920:

Jab tak wo rahe duniya mein raha hum sab ke dilon par zor unka
Ab rah ke bahisht mein nizd-i-khuda hooron pe karenge raaj Tilak

(For as long as he lived in this world he ruled over our hearts
Now in Paradise, Tilak will rule over the houris)

A devout Muslim, he was proud of his wife playing the role of an activist. Interestingly, whenever he landed in jail on sedition and other charges, it was she who ran from pillar to post in an attempt to get him released. On some occasions, notably when she visited him in Yerawada Jail in Poona, she collected his poems, some of which were dated, and got them published, specifying the time in which they were written.

Now, tales of young men from rich backgrounds embracing a larger cause, which takes them on a completely different and uncertain journey, filled with hardship, torture and unexpected turns of events, are nothing new. But Mohani took his devo­tion to his calling much farther: he neither fell for the adoring crowds nor did he stop standing up to his own leaders for what he thought were their faults. He participated in most of the crucial strikes and agitations launched by Mahatma Gandhi and sat in the Constituent Assembly, only to question several of the pro­posals in the draft, including the Preamble to the Constitution.

Proof of his simplicity and Sufi-like character is evident in the way he lived and his poetry. When he was invited to government meetings and literary functions, he accepted no money and in­stead stayed in mosques. To attend discussions in the Assembly, he preferred to go to Parliament in a shared tonga. Whenever he was asked why he invariably travelled third-class, he answered that he did so because there were no fourth-class compartments available! Surely, those lawmakers who complain of the difficul­ties of travelling economy class in airplanes today would like to read the story of his life and realise what being a selfless politician actually meant!

Just as his admiration of Tilak, his being a founder of the Com­munist Party associated with atheists did raise eyebrows. He was at ease sitting in the higher echelons of the Communist Party although he had done Hajj at least 11 times, sometimes along with his wife.

Jalil shared with me his speech as chairman of the Reception Committee of a conference of several loosely coalitioned peasant and workers’ unions as well as communist-sympathiser groups held on December 25, 1925, at the same time as the Kanpur session of the Indian National Congress, which offer a peek into his character. He spoke:

“The movement of commu­nism is the movement of peas­ants and workers. The people of India generally agree with the principles and aims and objects of this movement, but owing to certain misunderstandings some weak and nervous people fear the very name of communism … [our aims and objects are] to establish swaraj or complete independence by all fair means … some evil­ly-disposed persons incriminate communism as necessarily an anti-religious movement. The fact, however, is that in matters of religion we allow the largest possible latitude and toleration.”

Far stranger was his obsession with Krishna. Locked up in the Yerawada Central Jail in Poona for his ‘seditious’ activities shortly after the Ahmedabad session of the Congress in 1921, with the coming of Janmashtami, Jalil says, he couldn’t contain his longing to go to Mathura, the dwelling place of Krishna:

Mathura ka nagar hai aashiqui ka
Dam bharti hai arzu issi ka
(Mathura is the city of love
All my desires are centred on it)

And

Mann tose preet lagai Kanhai
Kahu aur kisurati ab kaahe ko aayi
Gokula Dhoondh Brindaban Dhoondho
Barsaane lag ghoom ke aayi
Tan man dhan sab waar ke ‘Hasrat ’
Mathura nagar chali dhuni ramaayeb
(My heart has fallen for you, Kanhai
How can it think of anyone else now?
I searched for him in Gokul and in Brindaban
I even went till Barsana looking for him
Having sacrificed everything for him, I, Hasrat,
Am now going to set up my abode in Mathura)

Although an Islamic background would make the faint-hearted agree with a popular resolution at the first conference of the Progressive Writers’ Association in Hyderabad in 1943, seek­ing a ban on obscenity in works of literature, he opposed the plan tooth and nail. His argument was: what was delicate obscenity and what was not? A debate ensued, resulting in the conference abandoning any such demand.

Mohani was also famously opposed to the reservation poli­cies initiated by Ambedkar and the introduction of any cat­egory called minorities. His contention was that in a functional democracy such distinctions did not matter.

Before India got partitioned, he resigned from the Muslim League and opted to remain in In­dia, snapping all ties with Jinnah and those who favoured carving out Pakistan from India. There is an apocryphal story that he was irascible, seeing Jinnah drunk on a visit to the latter’s Bombay home. After 1947, like 20th-century Palestinian poet Rashid Hussein, who collaborated with Jewish poet Nathan Zach, Mohani was convinced that fostering dialogue among Hindus and Muslims hurt by Partition was the way forward to build a pluralistic India, and worked towards Hindu-Muslim unity.

Mohani, whose ancestors migrated from Nishapur, Iran, to India, was an author of stellar works, including Kulliyat-e-Hasrat Mohani (Collection of Hasrat Mohani) Sharh-e-Kalam-e-Ghalib (Explanation of Ghalib’s poetry), Nukaat-e-Sukhan (Important as­pects of poetry), Mushahidaat-e-Zindaan (Observations in Prison), and others. A ghazal he penned, titled ‘Chupke Chupke Raat Din’, went on to become extremely popular and has been sung by the likes of Ghulam Ali and Jagjit Singh.

A man with a contagious sense of humour, he used to retort jovially whenever anyone asked him to go to Pakistan, “Why don’t you Hindus go back to Hindu Kush where you came from?”

Incidentally, one of his teachers in Fatehpur, where he went to high school, had prophesied that the precocious boy would either become a rogue or a great man. He became a great man, indeed, but more importantly, his greatness also lay in not seek­ing personal rewards, but in being a forever rebel, to the extent of being “pesky”.

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