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‘Ambedkar was a nominee of the Muslim League’
By Iftikhar Gilani
NEW DELHI: An Indian scholar on Saturday revealed that author of the Indian Constitution and famous Dalit leader Dr B R Ambedkar was in fact a nominee of the Muslim League in the Council of States (Upper House) of united India’s Constituent Assembly.
Participating in a discussion on a roadmap for the political empowerment of Indian Muslims, noted historian and former vice-chancellor of the Agra University, Professor Manzoor Ahmed said the Congress had refused to support Ambedkar’s candidature for the upper house.
Tracing history, Ahmed, also a former inspector general of police in Uttar Pradesh, said the Muslim League leader Hussain Shaheed Suharwardi had nominated Dalit icon Ambedkar and a tribal leader Joginder Nath Mandal as candidates for the Council of States from Bengal at the behest of the Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. “Both seats belonged to Muslim League,” he said.
The scholar also blamed the Congress party’s Muslim face, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, for the political disempowerment of Muslims in northern India.
Professor Ahmed claimed that soon after the partition, Azad chaired a Muslim Political Convention in Lucknow at the Rufai Aam Club. He asked Muslim representatives to renounce community-based politics. He even took oath from them to stay away from community parties and urged them to join the mainstream political parties. Only a south Indian Muslim, Muhammad Ismail, walked out of the meeting.
He later founded the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in Kerala, a step that helped Muslims to share power in the successive provincial government unlike in northern India, where they were left to the mercy and whims of mainstream political parties.