Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888 to 1958) was an Islamic scholar, journalist and Congress leader, the best-known nationalist Muslim voice against the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan. He matters here as Congress president through the 1946 Cabinet Mission talks, whose plan would have kept Punjab undivided but left the Sikhs inside a Muslim-majority group, and as an opponent of Partition who in the end did not block it.

He was born on 11 November 1888 at Mecca and his family settled in Calcutta in 1890. In June 1912 he began the Urdu weekly Al-Hilal, which opposed British rule and was banned in 1914. His next paper, Al-Balagh, was banned in 1916 and he was interned at Ranchi until 1 January 1920.

Key moments

• 1923: elected Congress president at 35, the youngest to hold the post to that date.
• 1940 to 1946: Congress president again, elected at Ramgarh in 1940 and continuing through the Quit India years, when no election could be held.
• August 1942: opened the Quit India struggle at Gowalia Tank, Bombay; arrested two days later and held at Ahmednagar Fort for nearly four years.
• 1946: led the Congress negotiations with the British Cabinet Mission. The Mission's statement of 16 May 1946 refused a sovereign Pakistan and warned that dividing Punjab "would of necessity divide the Sikhs". The Sikhs, represented by Master Tara Singh, Giani Kartar Singh and others, were united against Pakistan and rejected the plan that followed.
• 1947: he opposed Partition to the end, but The Wire, citing Rajmohan Gandhi and Acharya Kripalani, says he did not block the Mountbatten Plan at Congress meetings. In his book India Wins Freedom, published in 1959, he sought to explain his efforts against Partition. Dawn adds that he asked for his harsh judgments of Congress leaders, including his description of Patel as the founder of Indian partition, to be included in posthumous editions.
• 15 August 1947 to 22 February 1958: India's first Education Minister until his death in Delhi. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1992.

Remembered for: his scholarship and editorship, his Congress presidencies, his refusal to accept the two-nation case, and the book that remains a main source for the negotiations that preceded Partition. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism lists India Wins Freedom among the works on the partition of the Punjab.