Those Fateful Days

(T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song ofJ. Alfred Prufrock.")

Or, as in the case here,
Merely three

Scene 1

In December 1906, twenty-eight men traveled to Dhaka torepresent U.P. at the formation of the All India Muslim League. Two were fromBara Banki, one of them my granduncle, Raja Naushad Ali Khan of Mailaraigunj.Thirty-nine years later, during the winter of 1945-46, I could be seen marchingup and down the only main road of Bara Banki with other kids, waving a MuslimLeague flag and shouting slogans. No, I don’t imply some unbroken trajectoryfrom my granduncle’s trip to my strutting in the street, for the elections in1945 were in fact based on principles that my granduncle reportedly opposed.

It was Uncle Fareed who first informed me that Naushad Ali Khan had gone toDhaka. Uncle Fareed knew the family lore, and enjoyed sharing it with us boys.In an aunt’s house I came across a fading picture. Seated in a dogcart anddressed in Western clothes and a jaunty hat, my granduncle looked like aslightly rotund and mustached English squire. He had been a poet, and one of hiscouplets was then well known even outside the family. Sadly, I cannot correctlyrecall it. And so I offer only an improvised version.

Khair se bagh-i-jahaN meN surat-i-shabnam rahe
Ek hi shab go rahe lekin guloN meN ham rahe

I lived in the world’s garden like a drop of dew,
For only a night, but among roses.

A grand-aunt always said it was a perfect epitaph for her brother.

Posterity, in the form of Professor Francis Robinson, tells a bit more.Robinson writes,

‘[He was] a Kidwai Sheikh, of the same family as the [taluqdar] of Jehangirabad …. He attended the foundation session of the All India Muslim League at Dacca in 1906 and was appointed a member of its provisional committee. From 1907 to 1909, he campaigned with Viqar-ul-Mulk and Mahomed Ali for the foundation of District Muslim Leagues. He was the first secretary of the UP provincial Muslim League after its foundation in June 1909. In the same year, he agitated against separate electorates and took part in the July 1909 discussions of the Government of India’s compromise proposals. [He was] supported by [his uncle, the Raja of Jehangirabad] in 1909 as a candidate for the Oudh Muslim seat on the provincial legislative council. Described by Hewett [the Lt. Governor of U.P.] as "a disreputable Taluqdar," he faded from politics after the Morley-Minto Reforms.’ [1]