A Muslim leader (M. Y. Nurie) of Congress, in Ahmedabad, was addressing a public meeting criticizing Muslim League and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Suddenly a mob of Muslim League supporters arrived and started throwing stones at him. A few hit the leader but he did not stop. Rather, he compared the stones thrown at him with the stones thrown at Prophet Muhammad.
The date was 8 June 1940 and M. Y. Nurie was the leader in question. The readers must be wondering who was this M. Y. Nurie. He must be prominent enough that the Muslim League sent its mob to attack him. In fact he was a prominent Muslim face of Congress. We can call it a tragedy that there is no article, let alone a book available on this man.
M. Y. Nurie found himself mentioned in the book They Told Me So written by Homi J. H. Taleyarkhan in 1947. Taleyarkhan wrote his conversations with prominent politicians of the time which included Nurie along with Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajgopalachari and others. This gives an idea about the importance of Nurie in the politics of 1940.
Taleyarkhan wrote that Jinnah believed Nurie to be his fiercest competitor. He wrote, “never had I heard him (Jinnah) indicted so severely as he was by Nurie, that is, not by a Hindu communalist, not by a Hindu Congressman, not by a Mahasabhaite, but by a Muslim himself.”
Why was it so?
Nurie entered politics during the Khilafat Movement and was considered close to Maulana Shaukat Ali. He rose to more prominence when as an independent candidate he won from Ahmedabad during the 1937 elections. After the elections, he joined Congress and held the Ministry of Public Works in Bombay Province (Gujarat was part of the province).
Nurie was supposedly the most well-known Muslim leader among masses of Ahmedabad and Mumbai. He was the leader of several trade unions and labor unions. When several Muslim organizations came together to form the Azad Muslim Conference in April 1940 to oppose Jinnah’s demand of Pakistan, Nurie was one of its prominent leaders. In fact he was the leader of this Conference in Bombay province.
What Did Maulana Azad Think About Pakistan and Jinnah?
Jinnah’s supporters attacked Nurie on several occasions when he campaigned against the Muslim League and people gathered in large numbers on behalf of the Azad Muslim Conference. They found a respite when he was arrested on 8 August 1942 along with Congress leaders after the Quit India resolution was passed.
One of the first steps taken after the release from jail on 4 May 1944 was to form All India Muslim Majlis, a political outfit to fight elections against the Muslim League. Nurie was the President of the Bombay branch of Muslim Majlis.
The rise of the Muslim League militia led to violence in which several people were killed. Nurie raised ‘Bombay Peace Patrols’, an organization to save people from violent mobs. When India was partitioned, Nurie remained the Vice President of the Bombay Provincial Congress Committee and worked towards peace in his province.
Leader of common people
Nurie was not a leader of Muslims alone. He was a leader of poor and common people. He served as the General Secretary of the National Seamen’s Union as well as many organizations.
Another distinction held by Nurie is of being one of those few Indian leaders who fought for the independence of Goa before 1947. He addressed rallies in Goa in 1946 under the joint auspices of the Goa Congress Committee, the Goan Youth League and the Nationalist Christians Party. In one of such meetings, he reportedly said that it was the primary duty of the leaders to dispel fear and infuse political consciousness amongst the common people of Goa. Goan leaders should make it a part of their program to wean the people away from the political influence of the Catholic Church.
Taleyarkhan writes about his meeting with Nurie on 27 October 1945, “Before I left, I saw a photo of Mr. Nurie as he was in 1937. I remarked you looked much better than, Mr. Nurie. Don’t forget, my friend, I lost forty pounds in jail, he said, and then added quickly, but that didn’t help me to get out of the jail as Mr. Jinnah may think. On the contrary, it helped me to feel fitter!”
