Hamid Umar Dalwai : Completely Forgotten A Social Revolutionary

Subject : Hamid Umar Dalwai : Completely Forgotten A Social Revolutionary

Written By : Yogesh Gogwekar

Address :Mahim, Mumbai

WEBSITE: https://yogeshgogwekar.blogspot.com/2020/

 

 

“Secularism implies a dissociation of religious considerations from political and social life. The modern view of man and society includes a secular attitude to all political and social activities. It does not insist the abolishing the religion altogether but regards religion as a matter of personal faith. The ethical values on which modern secular society is based are secular ethical values which are rationally derived. Religion may or may not contain a notion of fundamental human rights as we understand them today. As modern men, we do not rely on religion for deriving our concept of social conscience. Our social conscience is inherent in the democracy system of government we have accepted. The democratic ethic is liberal and is, therefore, heterodox. It is necessary for a democracy to be secular, that is, totally dissociated from religion, to be democracy at all.  All Communities and Individuals in a democratic society have to conform to the basic liberal democratic ethic”.  These are the words of such a Muslim leader who can be called as a social revolutionary, Hamid Umar Dalwai. While reading his writings on The Challenge of Secularism, I came across these words. According to him, any religious state is not democratic and liberal. Therefore, he asked the leaders of all religious communities to keep their religious faith as personal faith and get proper scientific education and together make India strong, modern, liberal and democratic.

 

The River Vashishthi is one of the largest rivers in the Konkan coast in Maharashtra.  On the bank of the river, there is a small village known as Mirjoli which comes under Chiplun Taluka, District Ratnagiri. This Mirjoli village has seen the birth of Hamid Umar Dalwai on 20^th September 1932. He was born in a low-income Marathi speaking Muslim family. His childhood experience was not good. His family was always facing financial problems and poor health. Many members of his family died due to tuberculosis. Even in such a situation. His father married multiple times. Women in his family and also in his community were not treated equally and not having any respect. All this had been deeply influenced in his mind and he grew up believing that such situations can be changed  only when men and women would be treated equally and also the education for them is necessary.

 

He completed his primary education in Chiplun through Marathi language; he went to Mumbai to complete his further studies. There are no details available to know whether he had completed his formal education or not. After reaching Mumbai, he had taken over some odd jobs to support his financial condition. His main intention was changing the attitudes of Indian Muslims towards democracy and modernism. When he was in Chiplun, he Joined Rashtra Seva Dal (Social and Cultural wing of Samajwadi Party) where he was exposed to the values of democratic socialism, secularism, scientific temper and nationalism. This helped him for his future journey. While doing the work of RSD, he used to write short stories in Marathi in publications like Mauj, Vasudha and Satyakatha. All his writings were about the requirement of a secular and democratic system of India. In his writing, he opposed having different laws for different religions and stated the requirement of a common civil code. One can read these stories in his book ‘Lat’ means Waves in Marathi.

 

At the time of working as a socialist activist, Hamid Dalwai also worked as a journalist in Marathi newspaper Maratha run by Acharya Atre. During this time, he had written the novel named as “Indhan” which means fuel in Marathi. This novel has depicted the social life of people in Indian villages. It also gives information about the relations among the different religions and cast of the society. In this book, the writer returns to his village after fifteen years and finds many things have been changed but there are no changes in the cultural area. This book gives the reflection of his childhood experience.  The book makes the reader restless. After this book, he had written many articles or short stories to do the social reforms of his own religion.

 

He left socialist party and decided to work full time as a social reformer. His main intention was reforming bad practices in the Muslim communities. He wanted to stop the victimization of Muslim women and get them justice. He started promoting education facilities for women in Muslim communities. He started telling them to get educated and learn to read and write at least in their mother tongue Marathi.  He wanted to abolish the practice of triple talaq, whereby a husband could divorce his wife by uttering a single word three times , talaq, talaq, talaq. For that purpose he formed the organisation called as a Muslim Satyashodhak Samaj means Muslim Truth Seeking Society on 22^nd March 1970. He deliberately adopted this name from Mahatma Jyotiba Phule who had formed Satyashodhak Samaj a century before. 

He also formed the Muslim Secular Society. He said that secularism, embodied in the Constitution, is as yet only an aspiration. But still its impact is not on our social life. According to him, only Indian Liberals, from all communities can resolve this problem by coming together to battle the issue of communalism. He knew that Muslim remained backward because they were religion-bound revivalist who refused to modernize themselves. He said that it would not be correct to say that Muslim Communalism is only a reaction to Hindu Communalism.  He said that real conflict in India is between all types of obscurantism, dogmatism and traditionalism on one side and modern liberalism on another side.  Therefore, he asked the Indian liberals to support Muslim modernism in India.

 

Hamid Dalwai was advocating a common civil code for all Indian Citizens to bring a secular and democratic nation. He was insisting that all marriages in India must be registered under a Common Civil Code. He said that religious conversion should not be allowed under the law. If anyone desires to do conversion, it should take place before the magistrate.  He said that Children born of inter-religious marriages should allow practicing any religion only after they reach legal adulthood.

 

Hamid Dalwai has been called a social reformer; but for me he was a Social Revolutionary. Multifaceted personality and writer in Marathi, P L Deshpande said that,’When I say that I was a friend of Hamid, I feel it might amount to self-praise. He was so great. It is no exaggeration to say that meeting him was like embracing a great man because of the way he was fighting with injustice”.  He further stated that his work was much more difficult than the work of social reformers of Hindu religion as Muslim religion does not have liberal tradition.

According to another intellectual Narahar Kurundkar, Hamid was the most fearless thinker in the history of Muslim politics in modern India.  He said that Hinduism was ready to believe that there was something wrong with their religion for their defeat but same is not with Muslim community. Muslim Community believed that they were defeated because the faith of Muslims in the religion is not strong. Hamid Dalwai was the only Muslim who wanted to change their ideology. He never hears their emotions by discussing Prophet Muhammad and Quran and never insists that Muslim Community should become an atheist. He wanted radical change in society and justice for divorced women in Muslim Community.

Hamid Dalwai died on 3^rd May 1977 at the age of forty four due to kidney failure. As per his will, his body was cremated instead of buried. After reading the controversial verdict of Bombay High Court on removing ban on entry of women in one of the most popular Sufi Shrines Haji Ali Darga in Mumbai  and also the verdict of protecting the rights of Muslim women by banning triple talaq, I felt that these two verdicts are tribute to Hamid Dalwai who fought for it throughout his life to change harden mind sets of obscurantist communal leaders and husbands who treated their wives in worst possible way and keeping them in slavery by forcing them to use  purdah.

 

I am closing this writing by using the words of Hamid Dalwai about the slavery.  He said ,” The Freedom struggles of slave countries are defeated again and again, are we going to assume that slavery will remain forever? Ten uprising will fall but one day slavery will be destroyed”.

 

Thank You

Yogesh Gogwekar