Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari
|
Date of Birth |
: |
Dec 25, 1880 |
Date of Death |
: |
1936 |
Place of Birth |
: |
Ghazipur |
Dr.
Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari was an Indian nationalist and political leader,
and former president of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim
League during the Indian Independence Movement. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari was
born on December 25, 1880 in the district of Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh.
Educated at the Victoria High School, Ansari and his family moved to
Hyderabad. Ansari obtained a medical degree from the Madras Medical
College and went to England on scholarship studies. He achieved the M.D.
and M.S. degrees. He was a top-class student and worked at the Lock
Hospital and the Charing Cross Hospital in London. He was an Indian
pioneer in surgery, and today there is an Ansari Ward in the Charing
Cross Hospital in honor of his work. Dr. Ansari became involved in the
Indian Independence Movement during his stay in England.
He moved back to Delhi and joined both the Indian
National Congress and the Muslim League. He played an important role in
the negotiation of the 1916 Lucknow Pact and served as the League's
president in 1918 and 1920. He was an outspoken supporter of the
Khilafat movement, and worked to bring the official Khilafat body, the
League and the Congress Party together on the issue against the Mustafa
Kemal's decision to oust the Sultan of Turkey, who was the Caliph of
Islam, and to protest the recognition of Turkey's independence by the
British Empire. Dr. Ansari served serveral terms as the AICC General
Secretary, as well as the President of the Indian National Congress
during its 1927 session. As a result of in-fighting and political
divisions within the League in the 1920s, and later the rise of Muhammad
Ali Jinnah and Muslim separatism, Dr. Ansari drew closer to Mahatma
Gandhi and the Congress Party. Dr. Ansari also served as the chancellor
of the Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi soon after the death of
its founder, Dr. Hakim Ajmal Khan. Dr. Ansari's wife was a deeply
religious woman, who worked with him for the upliftment of Delhi's
Muslim women. The Ansaris lived in a palatial house, called the Darus
Salaam or Abode of Peace in Urdu. The Ansaris would often host Mahatma
Gandhi when he visited Delhi, and the house was a regular base for
Congress political activities. However, he never stopped practicing
medicine, and often came to the aid of Indian political leaders and the
Indian princely order. Dr. Ansari was amongst a new generation of Indian
Muslim nationalists, which included Maulana Azad, Muhammad Ali Jinnah
and others. He was very passionate about the issues of common Indian
Muslims, but unlike Jinnah, was resolutely against separate electorates
and opposed Jinnah's viewpoint that the Muslim League could be the only
representative of India's Muslim communities. Dr. Ansari was very close
to Mahatma Gandhi and an adherent of Gandhism, with his core teachings
of ahimsa and non-violent civil resistance. He enjoyed an intimate
friendship with the Mahatma. Dr. Ansari died in 1936 en route from
Mussoorie to Delhi on a train due to a heart attack, and is buried in
the premises of the Jamiya Milliya Islamiya in Delhi.