India Wins Freedom an Autobiography by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Maulana Azad was born in 1888 and died in
1958. His real name was Firoz Bakht at birth but was known in his youth
as Muhiuddin Ahmad and later adopted the pseudonym of “Abul Kalam Azad.
He was descended from a family which came from Heart to India in the
time of Zaheer ud Din Babar and among his ancestors
were well-known scholars and administrators. Two years after his birth
in 1888 in Mecca where his father Maulana Khairuddin had migrated after
the 1857 Revolt, the family moved and settled in Calcutta. Azad was
educated at home by his father and by private tutors. His political awakening was stimulated by the partition of Bengal in 1905.
Maulana
Azad travelled extensively in Ira, Egypt, Turkey and France and had
planned to visit London but his father’s illness obliged him to return
home in 1908. Azad started the Urdu weekly
magazine Hilal at Calcutta in July 1912. He opposed the Aligrah line of
remaining aloof from the freedom movement. With the outbreak of war in
Europe in 1914, the journal was banned under the press Act. He then
started another Urdu weekly Al-Balagh, also from Calcutta, in November
1915, and this continued to be published, until March 1916, when Azad
was externed under the Defence of India Regulations. The government of
Bombay, Punjab, Delhi and the united Provinces banned his entry, and he
went to Bihar. He was interned in Ranchi until 1st January 1920.
After
his release Azad was elected President of the All India Khilafat
Committee ( at the Calcutta session, 1920 ), and of the Unity Conference
at Delhi in 1924. He presided over the Nationalist Muslim Conference in
1928. He was elected President of the Indian National Congress in 1923,
and again in 1940, and continued to hold this office until 1946. He led
the negotiations on behalf of the Congress Party with the British
Cabinet Mission in 1946. Later he joined free India’s first government
as Minister for Education, a post he held until his death on 22 February
1958.
Among
his other published work are Al-Bayan (1915), Tarjuman ul Quran
(1033-36) which are commentaries, Tazkirah (1916) an autobiographical
work and Ghubar e Khatir (1043),a collection of letters, all in Urdu.
India Wins Freedom book described the complete autobiography
and history of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in English language. Click on
the below mentioned link to download the complete book in Pdf format for
offline reading.
