Rafi Ahmad Kidwai - A Memoir of His Life and Times

Rafi Ahmad Kidwai died ten years ago and since then new forces and new situations have arisen. Nevertheless India's basic problems remain the same. Rafi Ahmad's approach to food shortages and emotional integration, the two problems plaguing us, is not only a matter of considerable interest but it can serve as a guideline for the nation.

Most of the persons who figure in this biography are no longer alive. Babu Purushottam Das Tandon, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant have all died. After the book had gone into print, Jawaharlal Nehru, whose colossal portrait serves as the moving background to the panorama of Rafi's life, passed away on 27 May 1964. Rafi's generation is becoming a thing of the past.

After a full decade we are now in a position to make a dispassionate assessment of that highly complicated and intriguing person-Rafi Ahmad Kidwai. In several spheres of activity he was an extremely controversial figure and some of the events narrated in the book may still provoke controversy. I have tried to be as objective as I could, of course, subject to my intense emotional attachment to Rafi Ahmad. At numerous places I have concealed names of some actors on the stage.

Rafi Ahmad Kidwai was one of the most colourful figures in Indian politics. A man of fearless courage, he acted according to his convictions without regard to any personal considerations. He was completely free from any communal feeling and, during the last three decades of British rule in India, when communal and religious feelings swamped the patriotism of many an old fighter of freedom, Rafi Ahmad remained steadfast as a rock. Yet he delighted in the rough and tumble of politics and on several crucial occasions proved himself a master of tactics. Both in private and public life, he was unflinchingly loyal to his colleagues and generous to a fault.

Shri Ajit Prasad Jain has not only given an account in these pages of the life of Rafi Ahmad Kidwai but has also thrown light on the inner story of the ideological struggle within the Indian National Congress in the period immediately preceding and following the independence of India. Shri Jain himself was an active participant in this struggle and a close colleague of Rafi Ahmad. The book is written with devotion and discernment and will prove of interest and value to students of recent Indian history.

**Contents and Sample Pages**