Maulana Azad (An Urdu Solo by Tom Alter)

I got a chance to watch this play at Rangashankara theater in Bangalore. For a brief introduction, synopsis is quoted here-

MAULANA AZAD (An Urdu solo by Tom Alter)

Script and Direction: Dr M Syaeed Alam

In his foreword to Maulana Azad´s India Wins Freedom, Humayun Kabir mentions the Maulana as a ¨Wonderful Conversationalist¨. So is Maulana Azad in the play Maulana Azad. The play evolves in the backdrop of Maulana dictating notes to Humayun Kabir for his book India Wins Freedom. While talking about the book, which is largely political. Maulana ofter digresses from the subject. As the result, he discusses at length entire gamut of issues, largely ´apolitical´ -ranging from White Jasmine Tea to Tajmahal, Music to Mecca and Cigerettes to Cheeta Khan.

Maulana´s narrative includes numerous entertaining anecdotes and memoirs characterizing his personality and life. Maulana´s personal relation with Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Jinnah also come forward for a review in the course of play.

Maulana Azad is relatively less known as a scholar of unparalleled caliber. Most of the published material about the ´apolitical´ side of him is available in Urdu, hence inaccessible to majority of people. The play in its own way endeavors to somewhat bridge this gap.

I found this play very impressive. I thought Tom Alter playing Maulana Azad will not be easy to accept, but he did a brilliant job. Script was so moving. I also found it inspiring because, it treats a human being as a human being, not a great public figure painted black and white on the pages of a history book.

A simple conversation can tell so much about, personal and intimate facets of one´s personality. I could understand this only after watching this play. I wonder, how the playwrite could manage to gather all that information and anecdotes. If it was just imagination then, it must have been even tougher to write such kind of play. One more thing to note-not only, this play made a strong and authoritative statement on the social and political scene of Indian freedom struggle, it was refreshingly humorous at times.

I would not like to talk about the factual correctness of the conversations by Maulana Azad in the play. Because there is no way, you could verify this. But, this play is a wonderful attempt to get a closer look into the life of the great Indian freedom fighter. I did not know that Maulana was Congress president for such a long time. Not only, I gained some perspective into the things which possibly happened during those days. I also got to know the human side of it, which is imperfect yet inspiring.

One word of caution- script writer has used very refined Urdu, which is not very easy to understand. I could understand only half of the dialogs/poetry.