A G Noorani (1930-2024): A rare scholar

Abdul Ghafoor Abdul Majid Noorani
Pic: The Hindu

A very senior journalist and editor once told me that they initially thought A G Noorani was an 'Islamist'. I did not ask to elaborate on what exactly they meant by 'Islamist', but in the very next sentence they said Noorani's meticulous research and prodigious output showed him as someone who was wedded to facts. Noorani, who died on 29 August 2024, at the age of 94, was born in Mumbai in a Kutchi Memon family in 1930.  

Till his last days he continued to collect, document, read and write. The quest for documents perhaps began with the Kashmir issue. In the 1950s, when he was in his early 20s, he sought white paper on Kashmir. That was not the era of surfing websites and downloading documents. So his effort to gain a copy of the white paper made New Delhi think about outlining the practicalities of making such documents available to the public. Noorani's quest for knowledge and accuracy was legendary and he brought to life not just India's disputes with China and Pakistan, but also Jinnah, Savarkar, Tilak, Bhagat Singh, Badruddin Tyabji, and Zakir Hussain among others. He wrote passionately on Kashmir, government agencies, and parliamentary bodies. His rich body of work covered international affairs, constitutional law, jurisprudence, conflicts, politics, and history. 

A G Noorani was of leftist persuasion, but a constitutionalist at heart. He was catholic in the choice of research areas, but had a restricted list of friends. His friends in the media, N Ram and Siddharth Varadarajan, have spoken how fastidious he was about the company he kept. A tiny slip-up, and you could be out of his list. No amount of cajoling or pleading could restore you in his good books if you had erred. Perhaps he could do that because his first love was reading and writing. And whatever time was left, was taken up by legal cases. Among his famous clients were Shaikh Abdullah and Karunanidhi. His involvement in the Kashmir Conspiracy case as an assistant to the venerable Mridula Sarabhai got him closer to Kashmir.         

Even his harshest critics would agree that his writings carried weight. They always did. His series in The Indian Express on Indian Muslims sometimes in the 1960s found its way to the President's office; his articles on reforming the Election Commission in the 1980s were circulated among officials to elicit their views. In the mandarins of power he was termed hypercritical, too idealistic, and worse still, misguided. Right wing ideologues may not agree with his views, but they always read him.              

His niece Fawzia Madni told the Hindustan Times that Noorani was arrested under the preventive detention law during the Sino-India war. He remained in prison for four months in 1965. A decade later he diligently catalogued the excesses of the Emergency called by Indira Gandhi. Although he was courted by politicians it is less likely that he was seen as an ally by any leader or political party unless it was to uphold the rule of law and constitutional freedom. His fame spread across the border, famously granting him access to Parvez Musharraf; during the same visit he had the temerity, as recounted by Iftikhar Gilani, to object to the presence of General Ashfaq Kayani, the then head of the ISI, as he was not supposed to be in the meeting.

That Noorani wrote extensively would be an understatement. Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Statesman, Illustrated Weekly of India, Economic & Political Weekly, Frontline, Dawn are some of the newspapers where he contributed regularly. His bills for procuring archives and records, from Delhi to London, must be massive. He once threatened to take to court the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) over their refusal to share some records. Noorani constantly asked lawyers, journalists, and friends for help to locate and share documents.

Noorani was a Bombay boy. Members of the Kutchi Memon community, including the Nooranis', had made it big by playing their role in the development of colonial Bombay as an important trading centre. This was the background to Noorani's elegant jackets, club memberships and his flat in Miramar, Nepean Sea Road. His extended family owns Zodiac, the iconic apparel brand. Another branch of his family, who went over to Pakistan, was close to the progressive Urdu writers and poets who had made Bombay their base from the 1930s onwards. A G Noorani fell in between. While it is difficult to imagine him as a businessman, he was also not the one to hang around Urdu addas. A younger brother had settled down in America where he passed away few years ago. Noorani's sensibilities and personal conduct were fashioned by his family history.

Noorani's grave in Memon Kabrastan Mangalwadi, Mumbai.
Pic courtesy: Shariq Nisar 

Scholar-administrators Rafiq Zakaria and A A A Fyzee belonged to Bombay and were senior to him. Zakaria is mentioned in the Transfer of Power, while Noorani adorns the back cover of one of its volume, having reviewed it for Illustrated Weekly of India. Fyzee was a jurist and is remembered as an Islamic scholar, a term which would be a misnomer for Noorani, who perhaps did not have as much respect for Nehru as Zakaria and Fyzee. However, to read Noorani's extensive work on Jinnah, be it the book on Jinnah-Tilak relationship, or his articles on Jinnah's love and longing for Bombay, among others, as an indication of his fondness for the Muslim League leader would be incorrect.

Facts always remained important to Noorani. In a conversation with author and historian Gautam Pemmaraju, Noorani "castigated Bahadur Yaar Jung as a rank communalist". Jung was the President of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a fine orator and very popular in the Hyderabad of the 1940s. But considering that Noorani wrote The Destruction of Hyderabad, a revisionist account of the police action, his characterisation of Bahadur Yaar Jung should be seen as as assessment made in the light of his research.      

Abdul Ghafoor Abdul Majid Noorani lived a full life and on his own terms. He followed his lifelong devotion to documentation, reading and writing. Anyone else in his place would have become a Rajya Sabha member or enjoyed a cushy position. Noorani abhorred official recognition; he was also not a community activist. He preferred his pen to do most of the talking. Arrangements should be made to house his library, papers and correspondence in a scholarly institution. That would be the most fitting tribute to this rare scholar.