Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam played a inspiring role in the united fight for India's freedom.

 

Affan Nomani, Writer

Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam ( Assembly for freedom of Islam) commonly known as Ahrars was one of the prominent mass-based Muslim organization which stood for United India and opposed two Nation theory propagated by the Muslim league fervently. It was established in 1929. Habeebur Rahman Ludhianvi ( 1892-1956), one of the founders and most prominent ideologue of the organization, represented a group of Muslim scholars known as 'Ludhianvi Ulema'. He hailed from a family of Muslim scholars who played a leading role in the 1857 Rebellion. Moulana Abdul Qadir, the great grandfather of Moulana Habeebur Rahman, was the cleric who delivered a fatwa against the British in 1857 and led a parallel rebel government for few days in Ludhiana. 

The above words of Moulana Habeebur Rahman were amazingly similar to the words of Bhagat Singh. One salient feature of Ahrars mobilization against the scheme of Pakistan was that it took the fight to the streets by holding meetings in Muslim working-class struggles used to be underlined. To cite one example, for mobilizing Muslim masses against the Ahrar league it held a meeting at Gomtipur, a working-class suburb of Ahmedabad. The Ahrar speakers in the meeting apart from exposing the game of the Muslim league expressed support to the local trade union struggles. Non-Muslim league elements tried to disrupt the meeting but they were chased away. ( National Herald, Lucknow, April 21, 1940). 

Ahrar played a steady, fervent and inspiring role in the united fight for India's freedom. It always stood for Hindu-Muslim Unity. According to Smith - They have been resolutely anti-British, and socially have been remarkably radical. They developed a large and important following throughout Punjab and in neighboring areas. For a time, too, it was well organized and was the premier Muslim party in the north-west. ( Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis, Wictor G. Ltd. London, 1946, pp.225-6). 

When World War 2nd broke out in September 1939, the Ahrars was the first organization in India to declare it as a purely imperialistic struggle. The Ahrars with Jamiat Ulema -e- Hind suffered greatly from government repression because politically they often followed the same line as Congress. ( Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, Penguin, Delhi, 2010, P.-433). 

The Ahrars were firmly against the partition of India. Habeebur Rahman was a leading figure in organizing the Azad Muslim Conference in 1940 in Delhi which challenged the Muslim league's politics of vivisection of India. Moving the resolution condemning the partition scheme, he said that since the nationalist movement became viral in India, the enemies of India's freedom had been trying to create division among the Hindus and Muslims. He wanted them to dispel from their minds the dreams of a Hindu Raj, Muslims Raj, or Sikh Raj. He declared that no sane Muslims could accept the Pakistan scheme which was positively dangerous to their interests. The Ahrar speaker at the Delhi conference told the huge audience that the sponsors of the Pakistan Scheme were the same old allies of British imperialism namely the Muslim league. After his speech, a resolution against the partitioning of the country was passed unanimously. ( The Hindustan Times, April 30, 1940 ).

The Ahrars not only opposed the division of India but also rejected Hindu Mahasabha's call for a unitary Akhand Bharat and some politician's call for independent Punjab. It stood for a federal India where people of all religions would stay together enjoying equal rights. ( The Bombay Chronicle, May 1, 1943). 

The writer is a Lecturer, Columnist, and Director of the Centre For Islamic and Modern Studies ( under the aegis of SERF, Hyderabad ).