Remembering Abbas Tyabji
Robert Tyabji, Shah Alam, September 2019
Abbas Tyabji also known as the "Grand Man of Gujarat" was my great uncle. He was born on 1st February 1854 in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, and died at 82 on 9th June 1936 in Mussorie, Uttarakhand, India. He was buried at the Landour Graveyard in Mussorie.
His immediate Family: Son of Shamsuddin Tyabji and ; Husband of Ashrafunnisa Tyabji and Amina bu Shamsuddin Tyabji; Father of Shamsuddin Tyabji; Shujauddin Tyabji; Sharifa Ali; Dr. Salahuddin Tyabji; Raihana Tyabji and 1 other; Brother of Zeenuth Moizuddin Abdul Ali
source:www.geni.com, information provided by Sharique Khan on 5 February 2009
Reproduced below is The Hindu newspaper article Remembering Abbas Tyabji, courtesy the Muslims of India Facebook page:
Remembering Abbas Tyabji
“Khara rupaiya chandi ka..
Raj Tayab-Gandhi ka..”
With the recent violence in the country causing further polarisation between the communities, there seems to be no place for the legacy of people like Abbas Tyabji.
In the Hindu-Muslim polarisation being fostered in Gujarat, the common heritage of the people is being assiduously erased from memory.
One such legacy is that of Abbas Tyabji, the Grand Old Man of Gujarat. Born in Baroda before the Indian Revolt of 1857, 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 events of 1919 having shaken up the country, Tyabji became a member of the committee set up by the Indian National Congress to inquire into the military violence. The committee produced a famous report accompanied with voluminous evidence. Tyabji remained active in the Congress and all its struggles, presiding over the Gujarat Political Conference in 1920.
In Gandhi’s words
Gandhi writes in his autobiography that, under Abbas Tyabji’s influence, Gujarat accepted the non-cooperation programme even before the Congress as a whole did. He was a signatory to the October 1921 manifesto, a bold document, calling upon Indians to withdraw from the 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 Tyabji was nearing 80, he went around Gujarat’s villages in a bullock cart popularising “the livery of freedom”. A pity that organisations like the Khadi and Village Industries Commission have done little to perpetuate the memory of people who did so much for the cause.
He was active in the peasants’ movement in Bardoli. In the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, Tyabji succeeded Gandhi as the national leader after the latter’s arrest. A few days later he was himself arrested, leading a party of 59 persons to besiege the Salt Works at Dharasana. Before that he had been second in command of the Dandi March.
Household name
Tyabji’s was a household name in the 1930s. One popular slogan then went like this: “Khara rupaiya chandi ka/ Raj Tayab-Gandhi ka”.
Tyabji had an affectionate relationship with Gandhi and they exchanged an unending stream of letters. 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 like children exchanging notes: “Dear Bhrrr!” start many of Gandhi’s letters.
I once asked Sohaila, Tyabji’s daughter happily still with us, what this “Bhrrr” was about. Apparently, Gandhi and Tyabji were held up one winter night at the Godhra railway station. It was so cold that they shivered and “bhrred” to each other to keep warm. 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 Godhra in a different age.
The ‘ever-smiling’ Tyabji kept poor health in later years. Advised to spend more time in the hills, he moved to a cottage, ‘Southwood’, in Mussoorie, where he died in the night of June 9-10, 1936. The cottage was to be pulled down a few years ago. But the demolition was prevented by public protests. Now the Uttarakhand Freedom Fighters Association protects Abbas Tyabji’s legacy, even if Gujarat seems to neglect it. His grave in Landour was located after considerable effort last year.
A biography of Abbas Tyabji in Gujarati by Kalyanji Mehta, also 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 nephew, the late ornithologist Salim Ali.
For an account of the life of Abbas Tyabji on Wikipedia, please click HERE.
Photo: Gandhi with Abbas Tyabji, 1934
From mapsofindia.com: “A close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Abbas Tyabji was a great nationalist and freedom fighter. One of the famous Vadodara people, Abbas Tyabji served as the judge of the Baroda High Court. However, he resigned from the post of judge and joined the Non Cooperation Movement under the leadership of Bapuji.
“He was among the first line Muslim leaders from Gujarat and took active part in movements such as the Bardoli Peasant's Struggle, and Satyagraha movement. Abbas was a a moderate nationalist until the Jallianwallabagh Massacre of 1919.
“He changed his way of life and adopted simple life like Gandhiji, wearing Khaki, traveling by ordinary public transports and eating humble food. He spent quite a few years in jail for his active participation in the Non Cooperation Movement. He breathed his last in the year 1936.’
Abbas Tyabji: Hero of Salt Satyagraha, by Syed Naseer Ahamed, from the Hetitage Times, February 1, 2018:
Abbas Tayabji was born on 1 February 1854 in an aristocratic family of the Tayyabjis in Gujarat. There is no death to Great People; their sacrifice for the nation will make them live long. He was the noblest soul. Meeting him was a great opportunity.” This was how Justice Abbas Tayabji was eulogized by Mahatma Gandhi. Abbas went to England at a very young age for Education, where he completed Bar-at-Law in 1875 and returned to India in the same year. He became a Judge in the Baroda High Court in 1893. His meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in 1915 changed his life. He became a very close associate of Gandhiji.
He led the Gujarat Political Council, which had taken up the Non co-operation movement prior to the Indian National Congress. He had sacrificed his luxurious life in 1919 and took part in the national movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Even at the ripe old age of eighty years, he traveled all over Gujarat in a bullock cart for selling Khadi cloth and to promote use of Khadi. He led the Bardoli Satyagraha successfully in 1928 and took the leadership of the National Movement as a “Dictator”, when Mahatma Gandhi was arrested during the Dandi March. He was arrested several times for leading the national movement. But he did not care about his health and marched ahead with the freedom movement despite his old age and other difficulties.
Under the leadership of Tyabji in Gujarat, Mahatma Gandhi had successfully implemented several experiments in the national movement. Several other movements like the Non Co-operation Movement, movement for boycotting the foreign goods, Anti-Liquor Movement, Civil Disobedience Movement were initiated first in Gujarat successfully under the leadership of Abbas Tayabji, which was later extended to the whole of the country. He was aptly praised as the “Gujarat Diamond” by Gandhiji. Justice Abbas Tyabji played a leading role in the Indian national movement with a strong determination to free Mother India from the yoke of British imperialism till he breathed his last on 9 May 1936.
Source:: The Immortals, an album of 155 Muslim Freedom Fighters with the brief of each MFF in English and Telugu, authored by Syed Naseer Ahamed.