I FOUND MY CALLING UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF MAULANA - Mr. Haroon Shaikh, Mumbai

and fearlessly what he felt was good and in the interest of peace and co-existence. When the Babri Masjid-Ramjanam Bhoomi dispute caught the country in communal conflict, he came out with a formula that could have saved much time, energy and resources had the stakeholders followed it. He suggested Muslims forego their claims on the Babri Masjid site and Hindus too forget disputes in Mathura and Kashi. They rejected the Maulana’s formula as some saw it as a “surrender”. That the Sangh Parivar liked the Maulana only kept many Muslims at a distance from him. Much before the Indian government scrapped Article 370 and turned Jammu & Kashmir into two Union Territories, the Maulana had earned the wrath of pro-Azadi youths of Kashmir. Once in the days of militancy in J & K, a bunch of Kashmiri boys reached the Maulana’s Delhi home. They were not militants. They were students and wanted to talk to the scholar who had taken a stand that the Kashmiris should not get misguided and abandon the struggle for a separate country. The boys kept arguing and didn’t get convinced. While they were leaving, the Maulana told them to remember his words: Kashmir’s future lies with India. Once I took a hotelier friend to the Maulana. During the conversation, the friend who runs a chain of guesthouses and hotels in Mumbai asked the Maulana about the madrassas he had attended. The Maulana had attended a madrasa in Azamgarh but he was mostly self-taught. From morning to the time he was asked to leave, he would spend the day at a library, reading books. History, science, philosophy, religions, civilizations, everything and anything that he lay his hands on.