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‘Ammaji’ Qamar Azad Hashmi passes away, funeral today

By TCN News,

New Delhi: Qamar Azad Hashmi, teacher, activist, widow of Haneef Hashmi and mother of Communist playright Safdar Hashmi and activist Shabnam Hashmi passed away on February 1 due to a massive brain hemorrhage, according to family sources.

A Communist and an atheist all her life, according to her wish no religious ceremony will be performed and her funeral will take place at 7.30pm today at Lodhi Road Electric Crematorium. Her eyes have been donated.

Qamar Azad Hashmi was born on the 4 March in 1926, in Jhansi. Her father, Azhar Ali ‘Azad’ who was a Tehsildar, wrote Urdu prose and Persian poetry, edited , Urdu literary magazine, her grandfather was also a recognized Persian poet.



‘Ammaji’ Qamar Azad Hashmi demanding 33% reservation for women. [Courtesy: Facebook account of Shabnam Hashmi]

Her mother, Zubaida Khatoon, was a woman far ahead of her times. She was against retrogressive traditions, was against dowry, neither gave any to her daughters or took any. She knew several languages, knew horse riding and rifle shooting. Qamar Azad ‘threw away her burqa’ at 9 yrs, carried her father’s Persian poetry manuscripts from one relief camp to another during the partition, wrote her first book at the age of 69, decided to do her masters at the age of 70.

She shifted to Delhi in the mid 40’s along with her parents, when her elder brother began teaching at the Kashmiri Gate polytechnic. In the aftermath of the Partition the family had to leave home in Timarpur and live with her brother’s friend Hameed Hashmi’s family in Kashmiri gate for some time. This is where she met Haneef Hashmi, Anis Hashmi and their mother Begum Hashmi, the founding president of the Delhi committee of the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW). Qamar was to later marry Haneef Hashmi.

When the Hashmis, with the exception of Haneef, decided to leave for Pakistan, Qamar’s family moved out of Kashmiri gate and spent many months at the refugee camps at the Purana Qila and the Humayun’s Tomb, before eventually leaving for Pakistan. Once in Pakistan Qamar came in contact with Sajjad Zaheer. Sajjad Zaheer knew the Hashmis well and knew that Qamar and Haneef had planned to get married. He convinced Qamar that she should go to Delhi and bring Haneef to Pakistan. Qamar returned to Marry Haneef and to settle down in Delhi.

Qamar somehow finished her B.A. and found a job as a Head Mistress in one of the 7 nursery schools started by the New Delhi municipal committee in 1961, She worked in that capacity till 1990. Winning the Delhi state award for the best teacher and running the biggest nursery school in Delhi. For three years she travelled to Aligarh almost every weekend, to be with her family, most of the time travelling in unreserved compartments.

In 1989 her younger son Safdar Hashmi was killed, while performing a play near Delhi. Qamar wrote about the incident a few years later, “The Streets of Delhi, accustomed to the sound of Safdar’s light-hearted step, to the music of his voice and his laughter, are silent and stunned. With the thunderous crash the crystal has shattered. It splinters with a brittle brilliance. The fragments will never become whole again. What has happened cannot be undone. …Safdar, vibrantly alive, is no more. No one seems to understand what has happened. …What am I to do now? I cannot think, cannot feel any more. But life, like death, is an eternal truth. One has to live, one’s ownself, for others, for realizing Safdar’s ideals. Wipe your tears, Comrades. Lift your torches. Light the Flames.”

Qamar – Ammaji to a very large number of people in Sahmat, in Anhad, in her neighbourhood and among a lot of others who have known her threw herself in the work of Sahmat, formed in memory of her beloved son and later Anhad formed by her daughter post Gujarat 2002.

Qamar has authored a biography of her son Safdar called Panchwan Chiraagh – the book is a mother’s attempt to come to terms with the loss of her son, it is also a personal account of the times from the early decades of the 20th century to its last decade, an account of shattered dreams, defeats, despair and also of hope and determination. The book originally written in Urdu and was published in Urdu and Hindi by Sahmat, an English translation by Madhu Prasad and Sohail Hashmi was later brought out by Penguin.

Qamar has also brought out the first volume of her Father’s Persian poetry.

Qamar was hit by a vehicle while crossing a road in 2004 and had to undergo a series of operations including a brain surgery and was bedridden for almost four months, once out of it she was back again and finished her third book. This one was for the SCERT Delhi meant for teachers working with young children and outlines her own experiments in working with young children.

She travelled with the Reservation Express carvans organized by Anhad demanding 33% reservation for women in the parliament and assemblies a few years ago.