Letters: Assessing Azad

This refers to C P Bhambhri's book review "Maulana Azad's contested legacy" (December 20). Hats off to him for the remarkably candid observations on Azad's legacy going beyond the received wisdom on Azad, beginning with the title saying Azad's legacy is - or deserves or needs to be - contested. Second, that Azad was an "Islamist scholar by training", as Bhambhri succinctly puts it, and a votary of pan-Islamism by conviction. One could think Azad's "active involvement in the Khilafat movement" was only natural, even if it did not make him a "Mullah". Arguably, few people have hitherto even comprehended that Azad's much-advertised opposition to Partition and his enthusiastic espousal of the fateful Cabinet Mission Plan that envisaged a "united" India with an anaemic Centre, were fundamentally and essentially the obvious corollaries of his pan-Islamism, regardless of all the righteously indignant rhetoric. Finally, every thinking Indian needs to seriously ponder and imbibe what Bhambhri says in his illuminating concluding paragraph that a secular society means a "religion-free society".

Sharadchandra Panse Pune

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