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GLIMPSES OF LIFE’S JOURNEY
REVIEWED
BY: Abdur Razzaq Thaplawala
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“Glimpses of Life’s Journey”
written by veteran businessmen Mr.
A. Sattar Parekh is a unique book. We have many books on history of freedom
movement but almost all of them talk about experiences of senior political
leaders. This book however tells us about the part played by a young political
worker. The part played by Mr. A. Sattar Parekh is also unique because he
belongs to famous business community of Memons who rarely participate actively
in such movements. Dr. Manzoor Hussain the famous educationist and philosopher
in his FORWARD to the book pays tribute to him and said that he found that Mr. Parekh was not a prosaic industrialist or
businessman. He had led an active social and political life, possessed humility
which was rare amongst the people of his class, has a very sharp memory and
remembered things in detail, an uncommon trait in people of his age.
Mr. Parekh is of 88 years
of age and was persuaded by Dr. Manzoor Hussain to write his memories. In his
political career he had the opportunity of meeting may political stalwarts.
During his school days, some students were assigned routine four hours duty as
volunteers to attend to Mrs. Sarojini Naidoo who was staying in Bajaj House
Bombay very near to the School. Mr. Parekh was one of such students. He speaks
of the talk, he had with Mr. Sarojini Naidoo and says that once performing his
duty, she spoke to and asked for his name. Hearing his name she asked, are you a
Muslim? Mr. Parekh said yes madam. She affectionately told him, “my child you
know that if there were 200,000 Muslims of the good old days they would have
thrown away the British from
India
. True Muslims would never accept slavery, so my boy try to be a true Muslim.
SATAYA GRAHA MOVEMENT
Writing
about his participation in Sataya Graha by Mr. Gandhi during 2nd
world war, he narrates an impressive story. He writes that in 1941, Gandhi
started his individual “Sataya Graha Movement” by selecting volunteers to
court arrest by making anti-war and anti recruitment public speeches. The first
man selected for this was an un-known person to most of Indians. He was a close
associate and follower of Gandhi, namely Vinoba Bhave. After the arrest of Bhave,
lists of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from various parts of
India
including their C.V. were sent to Gandhi who after careful scrutiny selected
the names of the volunteers approved to court arrest after making anti-war
speeches. Mr. Parekh’s name was selected very early in the movement. One of
the rules was that the police had to be informed about the name of the
volunteer, time, date, and place where the speech would be made for police to
come prepared to arrest the speaker. The magistrate, it appears, was informed
about Mr. Parekh’s background and while convicting him ordered that he should
be put in “B Class” with all its facilities. For the first one month he was
placed in Thana Jail which was a suburb on GIP railway
line in
Bombay
. Later he was taken to Yarovda Jail in
Poona
.
QUITE
INDIA
MOVEMENT
Narrating his participation
in “Quit
India
” movement, he narrates his story which is rare for a Muslim and youngmen
belonging to Memon Community. He writes that on 9th August, 1942,
Gandhi declared “Quite India” movement with a message of ‘do or die’ and
even gave signal to resort to violent means if necessary. Mr. Parekh’s mind
was in the movement and he wanted to rush back to
Bombay
, which ultimately he did. He was advised to
remain underground, pretending that he was not actively participating in the
movement. In
Bombay
, to finance and conduct the movement, Dictators were appointed, who had all the
funds to finance sabotage movement. Mr. Parekh became the twelveth Dictator and
in that capacity had millions of rupees at his command. Somewhere he had huge
stock of explosive powder and in another spot there was a make shift
broadcasting facility and yet at another place there was a cyclostyle machine
where daily bulletins were printed.
The duties assigned to Mr. A.
Sattar Parekh can place him in the category of a terrorist by every standard but
it was part of freedom movement and Mr. A. Sattar Parekh has not hesitated in
sharing this part of his memories with the readers.
LITERARY PURSUITS
The memories of Mr. A. Sattar Parekh
are not only about his political career but also about happy moments of his
life. In 1960, he married. Shaukat Surraiya, a beautiful, cultured and highly
respected lady who was a patron of Urdu literature, particularly poetry.
Narrating a story of his married life, he says that People could not understand
why did such a refined and literary lady decided to marry a Memon businessman.
Mr. Parekh says “I could not thank
Allah enough for His great favour to me. It was indeed a companionship for a
period of thirty years during which my house became a hub of literary and
welfare activities.”
He and his wife used to have
regular literary sittings in the drawing room of their large house in
Karachi
. The drawing room could accommodate more than fifty persons, about twenty on
low sofa sets and about thirty on carpets. The literary personalities and Urdu
poets like Mr. Aal-e-Raza, Jamiluddin Aali, Shan-ul-Haque Haqqi, Ifikhar Arif,
Maulana Mahir-ul-Qadri, Tabish Dahalvi, Iqbal Azim, Bahzad Lakhnavi, Mahshar
Badauni, Sahar Ansari, Iqbal Anari and many others were
guests on various occasions. Generally Mr. Hashim Raza presided. Mr.
Shabnam Roomani compared most of the functions.
SHAUKAT
SURAIYA
COLLEGE
OF LIBERAL ARTS & SOCIAL
SCIENCES,
In
his memories Mr. A. Sattar Parekh speaks highly of Dr. Manzoor Hussain. Mr.
Parekh is a Philanthropist as well. He writes about establishment of Shaukat
Suraiya College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences in
Karachi
. Dr. Manzoor Ahmad motivated him to donate one crore rupees to start a college
of Liberal Arts and Social Science as a constituent of Hamdard University with
Hakim Muhammad Said as Chancellor. Some of the educationists in Pakistan and
educationists attached to the Bombay school of Arts and TATA Institute of Social
Sciences spoke very highly about the project when Mr. Parekh showed them the
‘Blue Prints’ during one of his visits to Bombay. Though the amount of one
crore was much too small for the project, Dr. Manzoor Ahmad giving his full time
in an honorary capacity conducted the classes with a shoe string budget. Hakim
Sahib and Dr. Qazi the Vice Chancellor of Hamdard University had promised to
contribute more finances but unfortunately Hakim Sahib was assassinated and Qazi
Sahib left the University.
This
is the second book of Mr. A. Sattar Parekh. Earlier he has written and book
‘Enterprising Philanthropist” which
was also the result of encouragement of Dr. Manzoor Ahmad. Mr. Parekh says that
Dr. Manzoor Ahmad encouraged me to accept the challenge of writing a book
“Enterprising Philanthropists” dealing with contribution of Memons in
Pakistan movement and also their contribution in making Pakistan viable
economically, filling the vacuum created in Trade and Business by en-block and
sudden migration of Hindu traders from Karachi and other towns of Sindh. He
accepts that but for Dr. Manzoor’s encouragement he would never have been able
to write this book.”
The
book is full of variety of memories of the life of Mr. A. Sattar Parekh. It is
very interesting and a rare book in contemporary literature.
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