Standing tall

The history of the building dates back to the time when it was home to Khwaja Azam,who was a noted nationalist leader and a staunch proponent of the Ahrari movement which stood up against the two-nation theory. Post Partition,the kothi fell into various hands; it housed a school in the 1960’s,and then it was sold off. Some part of its area is used for a tubewell and the area was also earmarked for an overhead water reservoir once.

Today,the sprawling area of well over 2,000 yards is now housing transporters’ business and a few shops apart from some residences inside its original premises.

As one finds his way to the place where the kothi once stood tall with its grandeur and gardens on both the sides,the only thing reminiscent of the structure’s pre-independence legacy is some old doors and dilapidated brick-walls of one part of the original structure,while almost all other traces have disappeared now.

The pre-independence structure was the pivot for the Ahrari Movement in the region and if you ask the locals,some of the old residents will be keen to tell how great a friendship was shared by the first Prime Minister of the country Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and Khwaja Azam.

“Nehru visited Khwaja Azam at his kothi and had also stayed here. He was very good friends with him (Khwaja Azam),” said 67-year-old Tilak Raj,who has a dry cleaners shop at Khwaja Kothi site,while recollecting the bits of history.

Khwaja Azam was known to be a very kind-hearted person who had no biases or discrimination between Hindus and Muslims and was strongly against the two-nation theory. He was a nationalist Muslim till his last days in India,before he had to migrate to Pakistan.

“He had to emigrate against his wishes but he remained true to his ideology and remained a nationalist always.

He was a very nice person and was calm and composed even when he was spending his last days in India at a refugee camp at Chavni Mohalla,” said historian Dr R Vatsyayan,recalling the stories his father used to tell about the Muslim saint.

Khwaja was also close to Maulana Habib Ur Rehman and Maulana Abdul Gani Dar,who were all part of the same school of thought,Majlis-e-Ahrari Muslimeen,which was against the division of the country,along with others like Aza Hassan Shorish Kashmiri.

Locals also fondly remember how the building saved them against the adverse weather conditions. “When it rained intermittently for about four weeks in 1965,it posed a serious threat to kuccha houses located in its vicinity,which were on the verge of collapse. The dwellers then took refuge in the kothi,” recalled Tilak.

As for others like Rajinder Singh or Om Prakash,who are running their shops in and around the place of the Kothi,they all have the stories of the era still etched on their minds to tell.

Besides,if there is any other proof of the Kothi’s historical importance,it is in the form of the chowk named after Kothi Khwaja Azam and a society called Chowk Kothi Khwaja Azam Welfare Society also exists in its name.