Does Anyone Remember Abbas Tyabji?

By Anil Nauriya

[This piece on Abbas Tyabji was written by me after the communal killings in Gujarat in 2002. It was published in the Indian Expresss on April 17, 2002. It was updated in April 2005 at the time of the observance of the 75th anniversary of the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930]

In the Hindu-Muslim polarisation being fostered in Gujarat, the common historical heritage of the people is assiduously being erased from memory. One legacy that immediately comes to mind is that of Abbas Tyabji, known during the struggle for freedom as the Grand Old Man ( GOM) of Gujarat. Born in Baroda before the the Indian Revolt of 1857, he retired as a Chief Justice of the Baroda High Court around 1913. He was an England-educated barrister brought up in an atmosphere suffused with loyalty to the Empire. After some quiescent years, he was drawn into social struggles against untouchability, attending along with Gandhi, the Social Conference held at Godhra in 1917. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre and military violence in Punjab as a whole in 1919 pulled Abbas Tyabji into the national movement.And there was no turning back. With the 1919 events having shaken up the country, Abbas Tyabji became a member of the committee set up by the Indian National Congress to inquire into the military violence in the Punjab.Other members of the committee included Mahatma Gandhi, CR Das and MR Jayakar. The committee produced a famous report accompanied with voluminous evidence. (The report has recently been reprinted by the National Book Trust.) Abbas Tyabji remained active in the Congress and all its struggles, presiding over the Gujarat Political Conference in 1920. Gandhi writes in his autobiography that it was under Abbas Tyabji's influence that Gujarat accepted the non-cooperation programme even before the Congress as a whole had done so. Tyabji was a signatory to the October 1921 manifesto, a bold document, calling upon Indians to withdraw from civilian and military service of the Raj. Imprisoned often, the movement changed his lifestyle. He took to khadi, saying "this fakir's dress has broken down all barriers". In the hot summer of 1928,when Abbas Tyabji was nearing 80, he went around Gujarat's villages in a bullock cart popularising and hawking "the livery of freedom". A pity that even organisations like the Khadi and Village Industries Commission have done little to perpetuate the memory of personalities like him who did so much for the cause. He had been active in the peasants' movement in Bardoli. In the civil disobedience movement of 1930, Abbas Tyabji succeeded Gandhi as the national leader after the latter's arrest. A few days later Abbas Tyabji was himself arrested, leading a party of 59 persons to besiege the Salt Works at Dharasana. Before that he had been organisationally second in command of the Dandi march and

participated at its beginning and end. Tyabji's was a household name in India in the 1930s. One popular slogan in the 1930s movement went like this: Khara rupaiya Chandi ka Raj Tayab-Gandhi Ka Abbas Tyabji had an affectionate relationship with Gandhi. An unending stream of letters was exchanged between them. Gandhi's side of it alone stretches across 52 of the 99 volumes of his Collected Works. The correspondence deserves wider dissemination. The two are often as children exchanging notes: "Dear Bhrrr!" start many of Gandhi's letters to Abbas Tyabji. I once asked Sohaila, Abbas Tyabji's daughter who died recently, what this Bhrrr was about. Apparently, Gandhi and Abbas Tyabji were held up one winter night at a remote railway station in Gujarat, perhaps it was Godhra.It was so cold that they shivered and "bhrred" each other to keep warm through the night; when the station master asked them what the matter was, they bhrred him too! It became a private joke between them and sealed their friendship.A different Gujarat in a different age. The "ever-smiling" Abbas Tyabji kept poor health in his later years. Advised to spend more time in the hills, he took up a cottage, Southwood, in Mussoorie where he passed away in the night of June 9-10, 1936. The cottage was slated to be pulled down a few years ago by the CPWD.The demolition was prevented by public protests. Now the Uttarakhand Freedom Fighters Association protects Abbas Tyabji's legacy, even if Gujarat has seemed to neglect it. His grave in Landour,Mussoorie was located after considerable effort not so long ago. Abbas Tyabji's wife Amina was also prominent in the freedom movement. A letter sent to the Viceroy in the 1930s on behalf of Indian women is signed by her. Incidentally, a school for girls which she started in Baroda still bears her name. A biography of Abbas Tyabji in Gujarati by Kalyanji Mehta, himself a prominent freedom fighter, is still extant. The finest photograph I have seen of the Grand Old Man is in The Fall of a Sparrow, the autobiography of his distinguished ornithologist nephew, the late Salim Ali.