Sincerely yours, Maulana

The first education minister of India took care to reply to all letters from constituents, colleagues or friends that reached him through post or by hand. His writings reveal him to be a politician who lived as ordinarily as the common people

At a time when Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal is hard-pressed to explain why his nephew has been going around peddling influence, it would perhaps be instructive, or at least nostalgic, to recall how ministers of an earlier era handled such controversies. As education minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet in the 1950s, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was also president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). In 1956, when the Maulana returned to the capital from a long tour, he found that his nephew, Nooruddin Ahmed, had taken up the job of librarian at ICCR. Ahmed had applied for the vacant post and SMH Burney, an IAS officer who was then the secretary of the council, had obliged, given Ahmed's relationship with the Maulana. When this fact was officially brought to the notice of the education minister a month later, he got upset. He told Ahmed that taking advantage of their kinship was unacceptable and asked him to tender his resignation immediately. For good measure, the minister told him that for the period he had worked at ICCR, he would be paid only a rupee.

A letter that Azad wrote to Burney on September 5, 1956, says in Urdu, "I've received and accepted the resignation letter of ICCR librarian Nooruddin. Please arrange someone else in his place temporarily. We'll take care of this vacancy in the days to come."

What a throwback to a genteel era when political leaders took their responsibilities to country and citizen seriously. They considered themselves the privileged people given the task of creating and consolidating a new nation, and they accepted that task with humility and honesty.

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As material at the National Archives shows, the first education minister of India - who had fought shoulder to shoulder with Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to free the nation from foreign rule - did not forget others even when assuming an important ministerial post. He met people, advised them, helped them, and, above all, took care to reply to all letters from constituents, colleagues or friends that reached him through post or by hand.

These letters reveal a politician who lived as ordinarily as the common people - an almost unimaginable reality in these days of super rich MPs and multi-crore scams. In an eye-opening communication to Sardar Swaran Singh, then the minister for works, housing and supplies, Azad complains about the charges he has to pay for the air conditioner at his official residence at 4, King Edward Road in the capital (the road is now called Maulana Azad Road). He writes, "My Dear Swaran Singh, thanks for your letter! Even if the rate of the AC is Rs 5,500, the rent charged from me, that is Rs 210, is too much. It seems that you want to recover the entire cost of the machine within two years. I think that the monthly rent should not be more than Rs 100."

The modesty reflected in this letter is a testament to the humbleness of the Maulana. He was after all one of the biggest names of the Freedom Struggle, having become the youngest president of Congress at the age of 35 in 1923. Though the Maulana knew English, in order to promote Urdu in the new nation, he almost always wrote or replied in his mother tongue. His notings, therefore, often required translation into English for ministerial action.

The man who oversaw the modernisation of Indian education, as well as the creation of the Indian Institutes of Technology, was always keen to help the youth. He once wrote to Kailash Nath Katju, the then home minister, in which he pleaded the case of an IAS aspirant. "My Dear Dr Katju! I've been informed of a case in which an IAS competitor has come at the 32nd position though there was the need of only 30. However, as per law, he could have been shifted to IPS, Indian Revenue Service or the Railways, but nothing has been done in spite of his requests. However, it has also been brought to my notice that candidates whose score is lower than his have been recruited. I hope you'll follow up this case so that there's no injustice with anyone."

As early as 1952, he understood that denial of employment to Kashmiri youth would alienate them. In his letter to Labour Minister Jagjivan Ram on March 22, 1952, he writes that he has sent a copy of his letter regarding jobs in posts and telegraph to the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister. "It's difficult to believe for me that of the 43 candidates that had applied for clerical posts, only one had qualified…. It saddens me to state that people who are responsible for decisions like these are oblivious to the fact that such actions have been creating bad blood amongst Kashmiri youth."

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Usually, when Azad wrote to his fellow ministers on issues like education or culture, his requests were accepted. Perhaps it had to do with his personal integrity as a man who, unlike today's self-aggrandising politicians, wanted no profits for himself accruing from his ministerial duties. He refused gifts, even books. As he politely informed the ambassador of Turkey on receiving a gift of the book, Hadyatul Aarifin, "Kindly convey my thanks to the Turkish ministry of education. However, I've transferred this book to the Indian Council for Cultural Relations library as I've donated all my books to it."

On another occasion, when KS Vaidya, president of the Institute of Asian Studies, Somajiguda, Hyderabad, requested the education minister to be the patron of the institute, Azad instructed his secretary, "Please inform him that I congratulate him on the formation of this Institute as it was the need of the hour. But also inform him that I won't be able to accept the post as patron as it is against my nature. However, I'll always take interest in its work."

Azad's letters, whether it is to stalwarts like Nehru or Railway Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri or to ordinary people, tell of a cultured man in a position of power and yet someone who did not forget that there were common citizens bedevilled by the task of establishing livelihoods in a newly free, and freshly partitioned, nation. In the issues that we see him taking up in his letters, from restoration of property of Muslims in Punjab and funding for a strapped magazine to endorsing land for an institute of eastern medicine (which later became Hamdard University in New Delhi), and soliticiting monetary help for a direly ill man, we find a leader who put others above self. Above all, he showed himself accessible to his constituents and ever ready to pull out his writing pad and push their cases in the right quarters with a final signature in all its Nashta'liq elegance.

The writer is the grandnephew of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and author of the recently published book, Maulana Azad: Chand Shakhsi Pehlu