M. GHAZALI KHAN
Seventy-four years ago, on 13 May 1951, Maulana Hasrat Mohani — a fearless freedom fighter, revered poet, and bold journalist — passed away, leaving behind a legacy that remains underappreciated beyond Urdu-speaking circles.
While his poetry, courageous journalism, and unwavering patriotism have been extensively documented in Urdu, his broader contributions are often overlooked. Outside of his iconic ghazal Chupke Chupke Raat Din, immortalised by Ghulam Ali, much of his work remains unfamiliar to non-Urdu audiences. Even within Urdu circles, little is known about the trials he endured in post-Partition India.
Between 1947 and 1949, Hasrat Mohani documented the harrowing events he witnessed in a personal diary. This powerful account lay hidden in a private archive until it was unearthed by renowned historian Professor Francis Robinson.
A few years ago, Professor Robinson presented a compelling review of this unpublished diary at the British Library in London. I had the privilege of attending the talk and recording it — though, regrettably, I accidentally deleted the file. Just recently, however, I discovered that a podcast of the lecture is now available on the British Library’s website.
Below is a slightly abridged and edited transcription of the talk — M. Ghazali Khan
Hasrat Mohani’s Life
I’ve just completed a biography of Maulana Jamal Mian Firangi Mahali, one of the last two or three people fully formed in the Firangi Mahali tradition of scholarship in Lucknow. He was also a member of the Muslim League High Command in the 1940s, and he was a minor figure in the politics of Pakistan in the 1950s and 60s…
Among his papers was his diary, which starts in the late 1930s and comes all the way up to the 21st century, which provided the essential spine of the book that I wrote.
But also among his papers were the diaries of Hasrat Mohani, covering the years from January 1947 through to December 1949. It’s these that I’m going to talk about this evening. In their original form, they’re all in Shakista[*]—virtually very, very miniature Shakista—almost impossible to read. Mahmood Jamal and I had to get them transcribed into a decent Nastaleq before we could even begin to use them.
………… He [Hasrat Mohani] was a leading Indian Muslim man of letters and also a leading politician. He came from a family of small zamindars of Mohan in Unnao, a district close to Lucknow. According to family tradition, it was at the beginning of the 13th century that the qasba [town] of Mohan was founded by his ancestor, Syed Mahmood, who came from Mohan, close to Nishapur in Iran. So, in one sense, Hasrat Mohani was definitely of the shareef class — Iranian origin, a Syed, and so on. His ancestors were poets, hakims, ulama, and Sufis.
His mother’s father, Ali Hasan Mohani, was educated at Firangi Mahal. And he became an East India Company munsif [Civil Judge in subordinate courts]. And he was one of those who debated with Dr. Pfander, the Lutheran missionary, at Agra in 1854. And those of you who’ve read the various descriptions of the debate, I think, will probably come away with a view that it was the Muslims that won.
He was educated in the family maktab [nursery] and subsequently in a government school, coming first in the United Provinces in 1899. So he must have been a pretty precocious young man academically. This won him a government scholarship to Aligarh.
At Aligarh, where he mixed with the aristocracy — not necessarily people from his zamindari background — he was a noted poet and a debater. In 1903, he was expelled from Aligarh, only being permitted back to take his examinations. This was the first time he demonstrated his propensity for getting on the wrong side of the authorities.
In 1903, he started the literary journal Urdu-e-Mualla […and] produced and edited it on and off right down to 1937…
In 1907, he was jailed for refusing to reveal to the British the name of an author of someone who had submitted an article to Urdu-e-Mualla. And this is an Aligarh student who had written an article criticising British educational policy in Egypt. He went to prison for two years and, in fact, was forced to do hard labour.
In 1913, as Muslim protest against the British came to be more vigorous and came to be linked with pan-Islamic issues, he was much involved, for instance, with the Kanpur Mosque case in 1913, and he
also came to be involved in what was known as the Silk Letters Conspiracy, in which Obaidullah Sindhi, Mahmood-ul-Hassan, Hasrat Mohani, and others were endeavouring to get the Afghan tribes to rise against the British. He was captured as he was on his way to the frontier in early 1916 and interned for the rest of the war.
In the Khilafat movement, 1920, it’s Hasrat Mohani who proposes the non-cooperation resolution at the Delhi Khilafat Conference. He, at the same time, declares his willingness to join an Afghan invasion of India, and by 1922, he’s advocating guerrilla warfare against the British. As you can imagine, the British didn’t take kindly to this, and he was imprisoned for 22 years. But, in fact, it was only for two years.
In the 1920s, his ideological positions begin to shift, and he becomes very interested in socialist thought. He is the Chairman of the Reception Committee of the Communist Party of conference in Kanpur. And so, throughout the ’20s and early ’30s, he’s interested in communism, generally. But in the 1930s, under the impact of Hindu revivalism, particularly its influence in the Indian National Congress, he moved towards the All India Muslim League.
In 1937, it is Hasrat Mohani who moves a resolution making complete independence the Muslim League policy at the Lucknow session…
In 1939, he performed one of his 11 Hajj. [From there, along] with Jamal Mian, and [he also went to pay] their respects to Abdul Qadir Jilani in Baghdad. But, actually, he wants to go on through Europe to the United Kingdom [where he wants] to speak to the Secretary of State for India and tell him what’s what. He goes through Beirut and through Italy. Of course, he [didn’t] have any visas, but somehow succeeds in making his way through France and also to London.
He does succeed in having an interview with the Secretary of State for India. But, of course, that made absolutely no difference to the way in which they were falling out. But it tells you something of this man — that he was completely unmoved by the obstacles in his way. If he was going to go to London, there might be a war brewing, he might have no visas, he was going to do it. And he did it.
In his last years, from 1946 — and these are the years which the diary covers — he is a member of the UP Legislative Assembly. He’s a member of the Kanpur Municipal Board. And he’s also a member of India’s Parliament. So he’s got quite a little grouping of representative positions. He died in Firangi Mahal in 1951 and is buried in the Firangi Mahal Bagh. He’s known for saying as he was dying, ‘Why [are] all those people weeping and wailing around me? It’s nothing unusual that’s taking place here.’ But all that was in harmony with his rather contrary spirit. So Hasrat is very much his own man. He’s fearless, a man of principle. And this is a quality that I certainly see shining through the diary.
I’m going to address the diaries [from 1947–1949], in the following rough categories:
- Stuff on the position of Indian Muslims from the local to the national level. What does the diary tell us about what Muslims are experiencing at this time, at all levels?
- Stuff that relates to Hasrat as a man of letters, as a newspaper wala, as a communicator, as a poet. You get some idea of the daily life of a man of letters.
- There’s stuff that reveals Hasrat’s spiritual and dream life. And I’m quite interested in the dreams that these people have.
- There’s a ragbag of odd but revealing issues.
Indian Muslims pay the price for Partition
So, beginning with stuff on the position of Indian Muslims, what is a very difficult time for them, particularly in northern India. The diary is excellent in revealing Hasrat’s activities as a member of the Kanpur Municipal Board. He visits schools. One school he visits is the Mohammad Ali Jauhar Junior School for Girls. He’s dealing with rationing, a huge issue after the war. Rationing is as much an issue in India as it is in Britain at the time. He’s dealing with unions. He might be a man of principle, but he’s still fixing elections and exercising, of course, sifarish. Sifarish must be one of the more common words, actually, in the diary.
The diary, of course, reveals the tough times that Kanpur’s Muslims are having. There’s continuing violence in the city from March 1947 onwards. In March, Hasrat is arranging armed guards outside mosques. In April, he’s trying to rescue Muslims who are surrounded in a particular mohalla, although he’s prevented from doing so by the district commissioner.
In April, he moves a ration office so that Muslims do not have to walk past a Sikh gurdwara in order to get their rations— a sensible move. He’s frequently visiting Kanpur jail because there’s a great deal of people being imprisoned without due process and so on at this time.
In August, he’s making sure that not everyone has to have lights on and put national flags out on the 15th of August, which is quite interesting. I’m interested that he even thought of doing that, or that it should have been an issue. In August and September, there’s a curfew in Kanpur, which makes life pretty inconvenient for everyone. And he’s trying to help Muslims who had their gun licenses taken away. So you have people like dignified former Muslim chief inspectors of police complaining because they’ve had their pistol taken away. And Hasrat goes to speak to G.B. Pant, the chief minister, in order to try and get that resolved.
In October, members of the Block Printers Union, […] asked to stay in Kanpur as they no longer feel safe in their village. Well, Kanpur was unsafe enough, so what their village must have been like, no one really knows.
In October, the collector closed all the Muslim hotels in Kanpur. And I suspect this was because Muslim hotels serve beef or other forms of meat. And by this time, the municipal board was dominated by Hindus, and they decided to use their power to put an end to that.
In December, Hasrat received Urdu teachers who had been told that now they must stop running Urdu schools and instead run Hindi schools. This had been a result of a really rather arbitrary decision by the UP government. And of course, Hasrat in one sense was just the man to come to, because no one was more concerned about Urdu than he was. But he wasn’t necessarily the man to fix things in the Assembly.
In 1948, the pressures on Muslims seemed to ease in Kanpur. But on the 3rd of July 1949, Hasrat notes that ‘as part of the construction of a new road, all the Muslim shops had been removed by order of the collector and had been given to Sindhi Hindu immigrants.’ The diary also depicts the changed position of Muslims in Delhi and more broadly.
17 November 1947, Hasrat notes that because of the curfew, the only way he can get into Delhi from Kanpur is to get off the train at Ghaziabad and take a lorry—those of you who have been from Lucknow to Delhi will know how that’s not a difficult thing to do. But, he says, ‘there’s a real sense of danger because wherever I looked, there was not a Muslim to be seen.’ So even though he was taking a lorry in order to break the curfew, he felt extremely insecure.
On 24 November 1947, he notes that Chandni Chowk is in the control of strangers. A Muslim cannot think of going there.
I can imagine this was essentially a great Muslim street before independence. But now it’s completely in control of people who have come from the [the region that’s now in] Pakistan.
On 26 November 1947, taking a lorry from Delhi to Ghaziabad, he notes that it stopped five times, but it’s only the Muslims who are searched, no one else.
On 5th December 1947, he notes that there’s not a single Muslim face to be seen in New Delhi. I don’t know how one would recognise a Muslim face from a Hindu face or not. Perhaps he judged it also by clothes as well. But nevertheless, what he writes in his diary is there’s not a single Muslim face to be seen in New Delhi.
On 23 January 1948, he said he saw only one Muslim in Old Delhi. If you think of the history of these cities, this is quite extraordinary.
On the 5th of February 1948, he says, ‘I note the government’s real purposes towards Muslims. Because he sees that Muslims on the train going to Lucknow and further afield, that the police and the railway operatives, even though these Muslims have bought their tickets, are forcing them to pay extra in order to be able to travel.
19 February 1948, he says, ‘there are no Muslim hotels left in Ballimaran and Gulapur.’
Those of you who know Delhi will know that Ballimaran was where Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was brought up as a youngster. It was also, in fact, the last vizier of the Mughal Empire, because he was Syed Ahmad Khan’s maternal grandfather. He also says he’s having great difficulty in getting his favourite nihari and roti.
Now, for those of you who don’t know what nihari is, nihari is actually a stew, either made of beef or lamb, into which marrow has also been mixed, and with quite a lot of spices. And it’s very rich, and most people, after eating it, only go to sleep. But it was invented in, or said to have been invented, in the royal kitchens, both in Delhi and in Lucknow. But it’s one of Hasrat’s treats himself when he gets to Delhi to get a good nihari. He can’t do it any longer.
Then, on the 23rd of February 1948, after all of these entries in his diary, suggesting the destruction of the Muslim world, he says something which is psychologically, I think, very interesting.
He said, ‘I went to the Qul at the Urs of Hazrat Nizamuddin.’ And the Qul is when the Quranic verses beginning with Qaf are recited. So he went to the Qul at Hazrat Nizamuddin [and writes]: ‘I was deeply immersed in it. I felt that there was no power which could remove Muslim history and culture from Delhi. Things have been pretty difficult over the past 18 months.’
But that’s his reflection after that experience.
Then, from June 1948, the fate of Hyderabad is the touchstone of what’s happening to the Muslims. On 15th June 1948, Hasrat notes that there is to be a statement on Hyderabad today. ‘I pray to God that the independence of Hyderabad is respected.’ As his personal protest against Indian actions, he says he will not use any Hindi words in his speeches in Parliament—a typical piece of defiance on the part of Hasrat.
From June to August 1948, his diary is full of comments on Hyderabad. And what is also interesting is that he tells us that he’s listening to developments on the wireless. The wireless has now suddenly come into play. A little later I’ll go through the range of things that he listens to on the wireless. But the wireless is there. And he obviously has a wireless at home on which he listens to it.
On 17th September 1948, he notes that the Nizam has accepted defeat. Perhaps, he says, this happened because the Nizam flirted with Shiism. Or perhaps it is the revenge of Tipu Sultan. Nice little things going on in his mind. Nevertheless, he says, this development is a sad example of English perfect.
After this, Hasrat tells us about the fallout from the integration of Hyderabad into the Indian Union. The Firangi Mahlis are very worried about losing the grant from Hyderabad, which helps to keep the madrasa going. In fact, Hasrat starts giving Qutub Mia, who leads the madrasa, money from his pension to make up the difference. In fact, he gives him something like a thousand rupees a month, which is quite a large sum in those days. And of course, although this is part of another story, Jamal Mian has to go to seek work in Dhaka in order to earn money to help keep the madrasa and Farangi Mahal going.
Then there’s the impact of integration on Hyderabad Muslims. Some are moving into northern India, and of course we know that many move into Pakistan. When they move, particularly if they travel by train, Hasrat notes that they can be given a very rough time on the train journey. He notes several examples of trains coming from Hyderabad, in which all the Muslims have been taken off, been given a rough time, searched. He doesn’t say they’ve been robbed, but there was an opportunity for robbing there as well.
On the 22nd of August 1949, Hasrat notes a man from Hyderabad who has come to stay with him, talking about the impact of the integration of Hyderabad into the Indian Union on the Muslim psyche…
Through this time that Hasrat is noting what’s going on in Hyderabad, he’s also fighting a battle for Urdu in the UP and in its role in the Indian Constitution. And as you know, it is actually made an official language in the Indian Constitution. But there are two telling diary statements which he makes:
- On 12th of October 1948, and he’s going to the UP Legislative Assembly at this point, and he says, the whole agenda seems to be about promoting Sanskritised Hindi. Hasrat notes that the Persian couplets which had decorated the walls of the UP Legislative Assembly had been removed.
Such a narrow-minded government, he says, will not pass law. And it’s quite interesting because actually, Jamal Mian, in talking about some of the people who are part of the Hindu rights in the Congress, people like Madan Mohan Malaviya and others. actually reflects on the marvellous Persian which they spoke and how they were able to use verse in their Assembly speeches to great effect and so on. So that was the first thing, the removal of Persian from the walls of the UP Legislative Assembly. - Secondly, on 27th June 1949, he says [and] laments the fact that he should have lived to see this day on which he could see only Hindi newspapers. I could not get the Urdu or the English newspapers. I could only get Hindi newspapers.
And I’ll just read you a poem which Maulana Jamal Mian Firangi Mahli composed for his newspaper, Hamdam, at this time, about the imposition of Hindi and the imposition of Devanagari. And he says:
Reason demands, my friends, that you start studying Hindi.
If you want to live, then friends, you must study Hindi.
If you want to earn a living, friends, you must study Hindi.
If you want to live in Hindustan, then Hindi is compulsory.
Don’t intrigue anymore, friends. You must study Hindi.
We ask from our hearts, study Hindi at once.
Reason demands, my friends, that you start studying Hindi.
If you want to live, then friends, you must study Hindi.
Move forward from Kufr and Iman and become a philosopher.
Leave sectarians and become human.
Become an enemy of Urdu and an opponent of Persian.
Instead, from head to toe, become a Devanagari man.
At least he could be humorous about it…
The third issue under the experiences that the Muslims are having is the issue of how they should be represented after the creation of Pakistan. And this happens while Muslims are having their loss of power and their declining place or the declining place of their culture in Indian society spelled out. How can we represent our interests?
In July 1947, Hasrat is determined that Muslims should join the Azad Hind Party, or some other fragment from Subhash Chandra Bose’s forward block. ‘But Jinnah refused to come and talk to us. We were interested in doing this. He said he was too busy.’
Well, Jinnah probably was pretty busy, but actually looking after the interests of Muslims once Pakistan had been created wasn’t an unimportant issue… Maulana Jamal Mian, he was a great admirer of Jinnah, but one of the things he was strongly critical of was the fact that Jinnah showed not nearly enough interest in the fate of the Indian Muslims after Partition. And so, on this occasion, he failed to come and give them guidance.
In September 1947, Muslim leaguers are saying they cannot join a socialist party or a socialist formation because it’s against their beliefs. Hasrat says that Muslims have to stop being a religious party and become a socialist party, or becoming a socialist party is the way. By this time, there is a serious loss of leadership because Khaliquzzaman, whom Jinnah has appointed the leader of the Muslims in India once he’s gone to Pakistan, had himself fled to Pakistan. And it wasn’t until December 1947 that Jinnah appointed Mohammed Ismail of Madras to lead India’s Muslims. And that was probably not a good idea because if you were a Madrasi Muslim, you really didn’t understand what the problems were for North Indian Muslims and for the issues that they were experiencing. So, there’s no agreement at the end of 1947 on how they should go forward.
On 2 December 1947, Abul Kalam Azad lectures the Muslim League leadership in a hotel in Lucknow on what they should be doing. He says that they should abandon all Muslim institutions and that they should join the Congress. This is not what the Muslim League grouping, which has spent most of its life fighting the Congress, is particularly interested to do.
On the 10th of March 1948, at the Madras Conference, which was held to consider the future of Muslim political organisation, Mohammed Ismail makes it clear that he wants to keep the Muslim League going. [It] Shows you how out of touch he is with things in northern India. But the majority of those present want to organise Muslims only as a party of social and political struggle. And this is a position endorsed by the UP Muslim League leadership in March 1948. So, this is as far as Hasrat Azad is concerned, is as far as things go about what sort of formations Muslims should be performing in order to represent their interests. And as you know, this is an issue that doesn’t really go away. It’s continued almost up to the present.
The second big issue is Hasrat Azad as a man of letters, newspaper owner and poet, makes it clear how important newspapers were in his life. Over three years, he mentions the following Indian papers:
Wahdat, The Pioneer, The People’s Age… The Statesman, Hamdan, Al-Aman, New Age, Anjam, Medina, Qaumi Awaaz, Hindustan Times, Qaumi Akhbar, The Leader and Zamindar.
That’s quite a number of newspapers… and then of Pakistani newspapers, he mentions: Dawn, Inquilab, Zamindar, Siyasat of Lahore and Qazi.
The first thing that Hasrat would do each day is to read several newspapers. For instance, arriving in Lucknow early in the morning from Kanpur, he would head to Firangi Mahal or to the Shipley Bookstore to read the papers.
Jamal Mian would say that he was impossible when he had his head in a newspaper, and if addressed, he would just say, yes, and that would be it.
When traveling, Hasrat would often dos down in newspaper offices. He stays in Wahdat and Alaman in Delhi, in Zameendar and Siasat in Lahore. And it was almost to say there was a special sense of brotherhood amongst newspaper editors, and that one would put one’s fellow newspapers out as they were traveling around.
Hasrat kept all his old newspapers. They weren’t to be sent to the Kabadiwala. Each year, his diary tells us when he binds up the previous year’s supply and puts them away in store.
It’s quite interesting. Obviously, paper is regarded as something very important and not just to be thrown away or used to wrap fish and chips.
Of course, he was always keen to see his speeches in the press, and he frequently gave his poems to newspapers for publication. There’s no world in which the wireless, which is certainly present in his Kanpur house, as I’ve already said, has superseded the newspaper as a source of news.
He listens to the wireless for Hyderabad news, Kashmir news, probably unwisely, the odd Pakistani broadcast. And once, he listened to the wireless to hear Patel launch a naval vessel in Vishakhapatnam. But the newspapers mean everything to him. In that sense, he’s a man after my heart.
Literary Activities
The diary is also a continuous record of his work as a poet. You see him correcting the verses of other poets. You see him writing verses for and performing it on All India Radio—quite a lot of times on All India Radio. You see him putting together collections of his poetry for publication, attending musharas, and meeting individual poets. So you get a real sense of the life of the working poet.
Dreams
Now thirdly, I want to move on to Hasrat’s spiritual and dream life. Hasrat was a devout Sufi in the Firngi Mahali tradition. His first peer was Abdul Wahab, Maulana Abdul Bari’s father. He attended the family urs every year in Mohan. But apart from this, he followed the Firangi Mahali pattern entirely, but for one exception, which I’ll mention. He attended the urs of the Firangi Mahali saints Abdul Wali, Abdul Wahab, and Abdul Bari… He attended the urs of Syed Shah Abdul Razaq of Bansa, which Firangi Mahalis regarded as central to their good fortune over many, many years. And he attended the urs of the premier Awadhi saint, Ahmed Abdul Haq of Radolvi. Jamal Mian married the eldest daughter of the Sajjadanashin. Like Jamal Mian, he attended the urs of Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer and was a trustee of the Dargah. So, for the most part, his spiritual life completely followed that of Firangi Mahal.
But there’s one issue I would like to bring up, and that is, those of you who know Hasrat’s poetry will know that he writes many poems talking of his love for Krishna. And he did regularly attend the Janamastani in Mathura each year.
I know he used to do that early in his life. And I find it striking that in his diary he doesn’t mention a single attendance at Krishna’s Janmashtami. Not in one of those three years. Now, it could be that Hindu revivalism had made him change his view. I find that unlikely, but it could be. But he seems to have moved away from attending the Janmashtami. Hasrat … makes clear the effort he takes to attend these urs…
In June 1948, after going to the Firangi Mahal Bagh for Qawwali, he comments that Arabic created a great love of the Prophet in the hearts of those present…
In June 1949, he noted that, I just managed to get to Lucknow for the Firangi Mahal urs because it is spiritually very important for me. And you should also know that at the Firangi Mahal urs in the Qawwali, several na’ts written by Hasrat played quite an important part. So that’s his spiritual life.
But there’s also his dream life. And like Jamal Mia, Hasrat records his dreams. I doubt if he records all of them, but at least some of them. On 2nd of April 1947, he dreams of the Prophet and rushes to kiss his hands. The Prophet smiled, he said, and gave me some advice which I do not remember. That’s a typical dream experience. You can’t get the vital bit out of the dream when you wake up.
On 12th October 1948, he has a dream that he met Zakir Ali, who’s a political player in Kanpur, with Jawaharlal Nehru. And in fact, Jawaharlal Nehru actually figures quite prominently in the dream life of certainly Jamal Mia as well. So psychologically quite interesting.
On 21st August 1949, Hasrat notes that, ‘in the middle of the night, I had the feeling that I was at the Prophet’s court and that I’d also made Hajj. Tremendous feeling to have.’ When he woke up, he wrote a ghazal.
On 7th October 1949, Hasrat dreamed of his grandmother, who was bringing something cooked for him. And then he saw Jinnah Sahib, who goes to bazaar—a did Jinnah ever go to the bazaar— who goes to bazaar with him and sets out a meal for him to eat. He interpreted this as meaning that he was doing good things for the Muslims and Jinnah was pleased with him.
On the 8th of October 1949, he saw Nehru in a dream. On 12th October 1949, he saw the Nizam of Hyderabad in a dream, addressing the members of the Indian Parliament.
On 16th November 1949, and rather touchingly, he dreams of Begum Hasrat Mahani, his first wife, who is making him comfortable and giving him a pomegranate. The next day was the anniversary of her death.
Some odd and interesting issues
And finally, there are just some odd points of interest. In his diary, neither on the day of independence or in the days surrounding it, does Hasrat make any mention of independence. It’s surprising. It’s a big event. Someone might want to mention it. The only time he mentions it when he’s trying to help the citizens of Kanpur… He notes Gandhi’s death with sadness and praises Jinnah for his achievement, again both on their deaths.
He always picks up his attendance allowance from the National and the UP Assembly, and he’s just like a member of the House of Lords. He is meticulous in noting that he has done this, in noting the amount that he’s picked up and when it is banked. He is also happy to take all the petrol coupons he can lay his hands on, now to rationing. He doesn’t have a car, so why would he need petrol coupons? But obviously they have very considerable value as a currency.
His one big issue in Parliament was the defence of Urdu… And Hasrat in the 47-49 period was often ill. I think he probably…had some urinary infection; he may have had an enlarged prostate, and he also had stomach problems.
And he often takes several Unani medicines at the same time, alongside Western biomedicine. And he does this even though Dr Faridi, Jamal Mian’s friend, tells him that it’s a very silly thing to do. But nevertheless I think it’s quite interesting that people will use as many medicines as we can and perhaps one of them will work—Interesting approach.
On the 13th of July 1949, Hasrat was delighted to note, and he’s 72 at this time, that overnight he’d had an erection. He put it down to the impact of Hakim Abdul Rashid’s medicine. And I should say that Jamal Mia also mentions this kind of thing in his diary.
Then on the 9th of June 1949, he notes that India’s parliament— and I found this very interesting, you may have known it—had a holiday for the birthday of King George VI. This is 1949. In fact, George VI is still King of India until the Republic is launched in January the following year. I had no idea of that and I found it quite extraordinary. And Hasrat, who is dead against anything to do with the British and the British monarchy, just mentions it in passing and doesn’t sort of say, gosh, this is terrible. But I thought that quite interesting.
So, in conclusion, I hope I’ve given you some sense of what Hasans’s diary contains. It enables a real engagement with the fabric of daily life in the troubled years from 47 to 49. It certainly brought this world alive for me and was very helpful for me in writing Jamal Mia’s biography.
Like Jamal Mia’s diary, it is not a literary diary. But it does do that essential task of enabling the historian to come to grips with what it was to be human in another place at another time. And it’s possible that more volumes of this diary may be found.
