Mar 25, 2010

Jawaharlal Nehru and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in 1947

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Third from left)

Jawaharlal Nehru (Second from left)

Mr. Feisal Ali (feisal.ali@gmail.com) has contributed two photograhs for this blog. In his mail he has written some details about the photographs:

Attached are the pictures of my grandfather Khwaja Mohammed Azam a member of the Indian National Congress based in Ludhiana. He was a great friend of Jawaharlal Nehru. This picture was taken in 1947 when Mr Nehru visited Ludhiana and stayed at my grand father's residence.

My great grand father was Khwaja Ahad Shah Dar was also a member of the Council of the Lieutenant Governor Of the Punjab and was well known in the Punjab.
Under the Morely-Minto Reforms, Khawaja Ahah Shah of Ludhiana was elected to the Central Legislative Council in 1910 as a liberal Congreesite and remained its member for nine years till 1919.

After the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy of April, 1919, the residence you see in the pictures became an asylum for revolutionaries. The Maratha leader Mangla and Dr. Saif-ud-din Kitchlew took shelter there during the period of underground political activities

In 1888, he become a member of the Indian National Congress at the fourth session of the Indian National Congress held at Allahabad in the third week of December, 1888. He remained a member or the Ludhiana Municipal Committee for 26 years and died in 1923 at the age of 63.

In those days there were hardly any Muslim who could read and write in English but even under heavy odds. Khwaja Ahad started publishing a news paper in English the OBSERVER.