A three-part write-up by David Lelyveld on Swaraj Bhawan, the original Anand Bhawan, in Allahabad, which Pandit Motilal Nehru gifted to the Indian National Congress in 1930. Lelyveld begins by questioning the truthfulness of the following inscription engraved at the entrance to Swaraj Bhawan: "Swaraj Bhawan originally belonged to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the 19th century Muslim leader and educationist. At the house-warming party, Sir William Moor (sic) hoped that this large palatial home in Civil Lines of Allahabad would become the cement holding together the British Empire in India. Paradoxically, the house was bought by Motilal Nehru in 1900, and went on to become a cradle to the Indian Freedom Struggle which was to destroy British rule in India." He concludes (in part three) thus: quote ** What this inscription does is to set up Syed Ahmad Khan against the Nehrus as the embodiment of anti-national feeling, the Muslim 'other' that helps define the boundaries of the Indian nation. What I am suggesting is that the two families were not in fact so different after all, that they came from remarkably similar backgrounds and responded to the colonial encounter in remarkably similar ways. When Jawaharlal Nehru was invited to address the Aligarh Student Union in 1933, Ross Masud £££ (see below) preempted this nationalist gesture on the part of the students by meeting Nehru at the railway station and taking on himself the role of introducing him as an old friend. It is probably true that much more united than divided them. They were, in many respects, cut from the same cloth. I can only hope that the authorities in charge of Swaraj Bhawan will take that into consideration when they come up with a new inscription. ** unquote [Note £££ : Syed Mahmud's son, Syed Ross Masud, probably most widely known now as E.M. Forster's friend and partial model for the character of Dr Aziz in A Passage to India, was in fact a significant educational leader, first in Hyderabad State, where he played a central role in the founding of Osmania University, India's first European-style university to be conducted in an Indian language, and later as Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University. He was born in 1889, the same year as Jawaharlal Nehru, and went to England at about the same time, the former eventually at Oxford, the latter at Cambridge. Both became barristers, but neither took up a legal career.] The mystery mansion Swaraj Bhawan and the myths of patriotic nationalism by David Lelyveld Full Text and photos at: http://www.littlemag.com/ghosts/davidlelyveld.html ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India