By Navaid Hamid,
I got the news of the demise of Swami Akshay Brahmchari, freedom fighter and a Gandhian, through an email of Syed Shahabuddin, President of All India Muslim Majlis e Mushawarat.
I was little disturbed as no national newspaper, of repute, had covered the news of the demise of one of the last few surviving true Gandhians who had dedicated his life for standing for truth and justice and was a pillar of secular movement in India. Majority of the young congressmen and the activists of the fragile secular movement in India would be unable to recall the services of Akshay Brahmachari, if somebody mentions his name before them.
Many would wonder who Akshay Brahmchari is ? We are living in the age where we are not even ready to recall and praise the services of those leaders with the exception of those in the coterie of the ruling elites, even after their demise, who have selflessly worked for the nation.
Swami Akshay Brahmachari and Syed Shahabuddin have one commonality between them – their concern for the restoration of the Babri Masjid to its original character. Both have been associated with the Babri Masjid Movement, former since the conspiracy to install the idols in the premises of Babri Mosque of Ayodhya in December 1949 and the latter for his association to the mass agitation by Muslim leadership on the issue of Babri Mosque since mid eighties. Brahmachari agitated in his prime youth as a true follower of Gandhi and Syed Shahabuddin joined the joint initiative of the Muslim leadership, as an M.P. in the second half of the eighties.
Throughout his life, Akshay Brahmchari lived as a true disciple of Mahatma Gandhi. He had actively participated in Quit India Movement and his life was full of humility and had worked for the Hindu Muslim unity. He was associated with Vedanta traditions of Hinduism and was the head of his Ashram situated outside Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh.
I have the privilege to have met him, heard his speeches and had received his responses to my letters. When the National Integration Council was freezed, for the reasons best know to Sangh Parivar lead Government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Swami Akshay Brahmchari was one of the first respondents who encouraged me to explore possibilities to initiate the process of Peoples’ Integraton Council and have sent Rs. 1100.00 as his contribution to be one of the initiator. It is important to mention that one of the top “leader” of the community had discouraged me forcefully not to take an initiative to create a parallel Integration Council.
I still recalls Akshay’s pain and anguish when he had spoken in one the seminars called by the Milli Jamiat Ulama e Hind in late eighties, a faction of Jamiat Ulama led by Late Syed Ahmed Hashmi, on breaking his month long fast at the Congress headquarters in Lucknow to demand the restoration of Babri Masjid to Muslims in Ayodhya, in September 1950, after the assurance of speedy “restoration of the Babri Mosque to Muslims of Faizabad” by none other than the then Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh province, Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who later became Prime Minister of India.
He regretted that had he not broken the fast, he would not have lived to see the day when the Masjid was unlocked for the regular Puja by the Faizabad court with the connivance of the leaders in power.
He was the first visionary leader of India who have visualised that the whole conspiracy to put idols of Ram in the Babri Mosque would snowballed into a major confrontation between the Hindus and the Muslims and would shake the foundations of the secular fabric of the nation.
It was not easy for anyone to raise a voice of dissent against the Majoritarianism and justice for Muslims in the vicious atmosphere, just after two years of the partition of India. He was a courageous and extra ordinary leader of his time. As an General Secretary of the Congress Party of District Faizabad, he had informed about the conspiracy to install the idols in Babri Masjid from Contable Mata Prasad to District Magistrate of Faizabad to the then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru.
Akshay Brahamachari not only took stand against the majoritarian mentality but had fasted way back in January 1950 for the restoration of Babri Masjid, in Faizabad and the removal of the idols from the Mosque. One should not forget that in spite of being an important office bearer of the ruling Congress Party, Akshay Brahamachari was the first known face of the “Movement for the restoration of Babri Masjid” to Muslims.
He was the lone torch bearer of Justice, as none of his colleagues in District Unit of the Congress Party were willing to support his stand. After the hunger strike in Lucknow, Congress found a liability in him and he was removed from the post of General Secretary. His house was ransacked and was attacked not once but thrice. But all that does not deter him to stop taking stand for the Justice to Muslims of Ayodhya.
He exchanged letters with different leaders on the issue and in one his letters sent to, Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh province in 1950, Lal Bahadur Shastri he wrote, ” It (the dispute) is yet a historical question. But even after the question is decided on historical data, the problem as to what should be done with such places has to be decided on the basis of fundamental principles.”
If he had not taken stand for justice, he might have embarked on the ladder of success in his political life but he chooses a path of his conscience and that led him to political anonymity.
With his death on April 28 2010, the country has lost another Gandhian leader, the secular movement lost a strong pillar and its an end of a chapter in the struggle for justice.