TRIBUTE
Published: 12:45 AM, 18 November 2018 Last Update: 12:51 AM, 18 November 2018
Syed Badrudduja ... politician of principle and erudition
To generations of Indians as also Pakistanis and Bengalis, Syed Badrudduja is a rapidly receding figure in the moving history of the subcontinent. Indeed, the generation that knew him or knew of him has itself been passing into the ages, with the consequence that the narrative about his life and his contribution to subcontinental history has been suffering from a widening gap that not many can fill in with the needed details.
Forty four years after his quiet passing in Calcutta (as it was known and pronounced then), the legacy of Syed Badrudduja largely survives in the memories of his clan and among the descendants of men and women who honoured him for the politically active and activist life he led both before and after the partition of India. Badrudduja remains noted --- and that is in the history books and in the reminiscences of people --- for his oratory. In his times, which were as dramatic as they were decisive in the shaping of a modern India, he was often referred to as the Edmund Burke of India.
The accolade was well-deserved. Those who heard his eulogy at the funeral of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964 --- and they included leading figures from all around the globe --- listened in mesmerized silence. Such oratory was not new for Syed Badrudduja, but it was a revelation for the dignitaries who had come to bid farewell to India's first prime minister.
Of course Nehru and Badrudduja did not see eye to eye in politics. But they inhabited a time when mutual respect was a powerful underpinning of politics, when academic debate on the floor of parliament was a pointer to the intellectual affluence which defined the times. When Nehru came to Calcutta in 1962, he made it a point to spend good time with Badrudduja, sharing thoughts and sharing wit.
And that was another quality in Syed Badrudduja. His oratory was often laced with purposeful humour. His thoughts were not aimed at pontificating but at persuading people to test ideas and to choose from among those ideas, the one they were comfortable with. In the Lok Sabha, where Syed Badrudduja served for fifteen years; in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, where his reflections permeated proceedings all the way from pre-partition days to the early 1950s, it was a combination of gravitas and humour he brought into his observation of conditions in the country.
Political courage, in that true sense of the meaning, together with conviction was a defining quality with Syed Badrudduja. One had no reason to agree with him on some of the core issues of his times, but neither could one fail to hear him out on the splendid arguments he made in defence of his views. That perhaps was a result of the cumulative experience which gave his politics shape and substance through the years.
Badrudduja's politics was shaped through his interaction with some of the more remarkable men of history in Bengal. It was Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das who brought him into politics, through recognizing his talents and finding him a niche in the Calcutta Corporation. Deshbandhu, like all great men, could see the best in people and draw it out of the young. That is what he did with Badrudduja. Deshbandhu's death was a blow to Badrudduja as it was to the whole of India.
Syed Badrudduja hitched his wagon, naturally, to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's star once Deshbandhu was gone. But he was not ready to join the Congress, despite his sympathy for its cause. For a brief while, he drew close to Muhammad Ali Jinnah on the issue of a guarantee of Muslim rights in a united India. And yet Badrudduja drew a clear line in the sand: while he was vocal about the place of the Muslim community in India, he was unwilling to acquiesce in the demand for the creation of a separate state for Muslims.
Pakistan was not for him, not even in the years when he was aligned with that other prominent figure in his political life, Shere Bangla A.K. Fazlul Huq. The Tiger of Bengal, as prime minister of Bengal, and Syed Badrudduja, as mayor of Calcutta, together were confronted with one of the worst periods in Bengali history when tens of thousands of people perished in the famine of 1943. Shere Bangla and Badrudduja expended all efforts in combating the crisis, but with the British colonial government turning a blind eye to the calamity, their efforts did not go far enough. Add to that the consistency with which politicians like Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy remained engaged in trying to undermine the Fazlul Huq government and indeed ended up succeeding.
Power politics pulled the rug from under Shere Bangla's feet. And power politics was not the goal Badrudduja had set for himself. Unlike so many others, he was not tempted by dreams of power and pelf in the new state of Pakistan. Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Suhrawardy and Fazlul Huq all made their way to the newly cobbled Muslim state. Syed Badrudduja stayed on in Calcutta. His argument was simple and yet poignant: in a divided India, with communal politics having already taken its toll, the Muslim minority of a free country would need a voice, a guardian. He was ready to be their spokesman.
He was not willing to turn his back on the certainties in a sovereign India in favour of the tentative politics which Pakistan appeared to have on offer. And so he stayed. In the Lok Sabha, outside parliament, at intellectual gatherings, Badrudduja's sharp and strong grasp of issues exercising the public mind were inspirational for the people he served.
Syed Badrudduja's mastery of languages approximates folklore in the subcontinent. His Bengali was superb, naturally, for he was a Bengali. But, then, his command of Persian, of Urdu, of English was equally to be envied. His oratory, in impeccable Urdu, at a conference organized by the Anjuman-e-Tarakki-Urdu in Aligarh was a forceful demonstration of his ability to coat his politics with the charms offered by literature. His addresses on the floor of the Lok Sabha were a mark of the cosmopolitan nature of his politics. His strident protests against the Holwell Monument in Calcutta were his way of exposing the falsehoods of colonial rule.
In the final phase of his life, Syed Badrudduja ran into problems with the Indira Gandhi government. He went to prison, more than once, and emerged free every time the case against him collapsed. An indefatigable political warrior all his life, he lost his last election in 1971. In the three years which remained of his life, he read --- he had always been a bibliophile and an avid reader --- and reflected on what politics used to be in the extraordinary times he had been part of.
Siddhartha Shankar Ray respected him. Jyoti Basu honoured him. Pranab Mukherjee remembers him with fondness. Bangabandhu recalled the times when, as a very young Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he was a frequent visitor at his European Asylum Lane residence in Calcutta in the undivided India days.
Syed Badrudduja could have reached greater heights through accepting the several offers of higher office on an all-India scale that came his way. But ambition for him came stripped of the personal. He was not ready to play truant with his soul. He was content in his world.
(Syed Badrudduja --- eminent Indian politician, mayor of Calcutta, member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, member of the Lok Sabha --- passed away on 18 November 1974)
The writer is Editor-in-Charge,
The Asian Age
