Of Freedom and Friendship
T.C.A. RAGHAVAN’S CIRCLES OF FREEDOM FOLLOWS THREE YOUNG MUSLIMS DRAWN INTO THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE
Diplomat turned historian T.C.A. Raghavan has turned his hand at various aspects of the past. He has a talent for rescuing figures from the footnotes of history. Circles of Freedom, his latest, follows the trajectory of three young Muslims, studying law in London in the first decade of the 20th century, who are drawn into the nationalist struggle. Asaf Ali is from Old Delhi; Syud Hossain grew up in Calcutta, while Syed Mahmud comes from a landowning family of Uttar Pradesh. The catalyst in their lives is Sarojini Naidu, a poet with a network of friendships that include Gandhi and Jinnah. Passionate about Hindu-Muslim unity, she casts a spell—Mahmud’s letters to her, she sighs, are “like the cry of a wounded animal in agony”. Asaf Ali sets up a legal practice on his return to Delhi and Syud Hossain is a successful editor in Bombay. The defeat of the Ottomans, a blow to Muslim self-esteem, fuels their response to Gandhi’s battle cry of non-cooperation. Swapping Bond Street suits for homespun, and legal briefs for full-time activism, Asaf Ali’s jail terms are a “necessary baptism” to rise in the Congress hierarchy. Hossain finds his brilliant career aborted. Invited by the Nehrus to start a newspaper in Allahabad, he falls in love with Jawaharlal’s 19-year-old sister Sarup (later Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit). Their elopement is scotched, with Sarup banished to Gandhi’s ashram and Hossain to the US. Mahmud, the feudal landowner, is cloyingly obsequious to Nehru: he compares his “devotion and fidelity” to that of a dog for his master and causes a “flutter” when he names his son Jawaharlal. But Nehru can’t suppress his irritation: “Why are you so emotional or why do you exhibit your emotion so much?” Asaf Ali’s life as a Congress leader against the escalating debate of Muslim representation in legislatures forms the crux of the book. Back in 1926, Asaf had married Aruna Gangulee of Nainital, a girl half his age. A Hindu-Muslim union was hardly a propitious idea. As liberal nationalists Aruna and Asaf decide to make a go of it—and for a while they do. But Aruna becomes radicalised; their divergent ideological responses to Gandhi’s non-violent satyagraha, and enforced separations, leaves their marriage in tatters. The tortuous terms of Asaf Ali and Aruna’s estrangement against a tumultuous backdrop could make a compelling book, but, as the author concedes, primary material is sparse. So, what became of the group that had gathered at the court of Sarojini Naidu in London? Asaf Ali and Syed Mahmud ended up as discontented ambassadors and governors. Syud Hossain went back to writing columns. Sarojini became the first woman governor of UP. By then her ornate verse had curdled into indigestible prose. Of her a newspaper had once remarked: “In a land of many famines there was never a famine of words.”