Noorani ‘One-Man Institution,’ Hamid Ansari Tells Packed Delhi Gathering

NEW DELHI: Former vice-president Mohammad Hamid Ansari on Friday described eminent constitutional scholar A.G. Noorani as a “one-man institution” and an “encyclopaedic figure,” saying his fierce independence, courage and precision distinguished a lifetime devoted to constitutionalism, human rights and secularism.

Delivering the third A.G. Noorani Memorial Lecture at the India Islamic Cultural Centre here on Friday, Ansari offered an expansive account of Noorani's life and scholarship, ranging from Kashmir and Article 370 to the Babri Masjid, Indian Muslims, civil liberties, Hyderabad, the India-China boundary dispute and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The hall was packed with an audience that included former ambassadors, politicians, journalists, lawyers, academics and many of Noorani's friends and admirers.

Senior journalists Qurban Ali and Iqbal Ahmed arranged the gathering and memorial lecture.

Former Union minister and India Islamic Cultural Centre president Salman Khurshid also spoke on the occasion. He thanked Ansari for delivering the lecture and recalled Noorani's contribution to India's constitutional and intellectual discourse.

‘The Noorani Records’, a collection of articles Noorani wrote for Frontline, was also relaunched on the occasion. The volume, compiled by Frontline, part of The Hindu Group, brings together writings representing decades of Noorani's engagement with some of the most contentious constitutional, political and foreign policy questions facing India.

Noorani died in Mumbai on August 29, 2024, aged 93.

‘One of Sharpest Minds’

Ansari's lecture, titled “The Life and Times of Abdul Ghafoor Noorani,” was as much a personal remembrance as an assessment of the intellectual legacy of a man friends affectionately called Ghafoor Bhai.

“Noorani was a polymath and much more,” Ansari said.

He described him as “one of the sharpest minds on constitutional law and a prolific writer on a range of subjects,” possessing a deep sense of justice and commitment to “secularism, equity, and progressive ideas.”

His writings, Ansari said, ranged across “domestic politics, jurisprudence, as well as international relations, both contemporary and historical.”

Ansari recalled economist Prabhat Patnaik's assessment after Noorani's death that his loss was “a severe blow to the intellectual discourse on contemporary India.”

The former vice-president also remembered the intensely private man behind the formidable public intellectual.

Noorani was a “Bombay boy” from the Kutchi Memon community whose legal abilities were well known among lawyers in Bombay and the Supreme Court. Many contemporaries found him reserved and fiercely protective of his privacy.

Ansari's own friendship with him, however, was nourished not only by books and politics but also by food.

He recalled “many a trip to Karim's near the Jama Masjid,” adding that Noorani was particularly fond of Mughlai and Kashmiri cuisine. During his frequent visits to Delhi, Ansari said, Noorani was invariably looking for an opportunity to satisfy that appetite.

Defender of Civil Liberties

Beyond those personal memories lay the central theme of Ansari's lecture: Noorani's formidable scholarship and his consistent defence of constitutional freedoms.

“In matters relating to human rights, Noorani's knowledge was articulated in a widely appreciated series of books and articles,” Ansari said.

He called him “a fierce defender of civil liberties, minority rights, and constitutional governance,” whose writings concentrated particularly on “state overreach, Jammu and Kashmir, and secularism.”

“His writings were focused on the defence of fundamental freedoms and opposition to oppressive legislation,” Ansari said.

That concern ran through works dealing with subjects separated by decades of Indian history.

Ansari recalled Noorani's The Trial of Bhagat Singh: Politics of Justice, in which he argued that Bhagat Singh and his colleagues had been subjected to a travesty of justice amounting to “judicial murder.”

Noorani also delved deeply into the India-China boundary question.

His work tracing the boundary problem from 1846 to 1947 characterised the dispute as “a heady cocktail of history, law, morality and expediency.” Ansari recalled Noorani's argument that any eventual resolution would require Indians to confront historical facts that had been brushed aside by political leaders, the media and academia.

Kashmir Shaped His Intellectual Journey

For Kashmir, however, Noorani's relationship was particularly long and consequential.

Ansari traced it back to 1958.

The defining point in the young lawyer's career, he said, came when Mridula Sarabhai selected Noorani to defend Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in the Kashmir Conspiracy Case after a foreign lawyer was refused permission to appear before an Indian court.

That encounter began an intellectual engagement with Kashmir that continued for the rest of Noorani's life.

Ansari called Noorani's two-volume The Kashmir Dispute 1947–2012, published in 2013, his “seminal work.”

He drew particular attention to Noorani's decision to begin both volumes with Jawaharlal Nehru's January 1952 remarks on Kashmir.

Nehru had said that regardless of what the Constitution stipulated, “if the people of Kashmir do not want it, it will not go there,” because the alternative would be “compulsion and coercion.”

Nehru went further, warning against treating Kashmir like any ordinary Indian state.

“You are dealing with an area, historically and geographically, in all manners of things, with a certain background,” he said in the passage reproduced by Noorani.

“Real integration comes of the mind and the heart and not of some clause which you may impose on other people.”

Ansari followed the citation with a terse observation of his own:

“We know that the Government subsequently had reasons to think and act otherwise.”

He said Noorani himself eventually recognised changed political realities and began exploring other possibilities for resolving the Kashmir dispute, including models adopted elsewhere for situations bearing some similarities.

Article 370 Concerns

Ansari also singled out Noorani's scholarship on Article 370, the constitutional provision that had governed Jammu and Kashmir's special relationship with the Indian Union.

Noorani regarded proposed changes to the constitutional arrangement as detrimental to the interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, Ansari recalled.

“The continuing public and political agitation for the restoration of these changes seems to shed much light on his concerns,” he said.

For Noorani, Kashmir was therefore not simply a territorial or diplomatic dispute. It was also a question of constitutional commitments, federal relations, civil liberties and the consent of people whose history he documented over decades.

Muslims and Indian Nation

Ansari devoted another substantial part of his lecture to Noorani's writings on Indian Muslims.

In a 2003 volume of documents on Muslim life in India after 1857, Noorani examined the community's political predicament and the failure of its leadership after Independence.

He argued that the community had become leaderless and that those who came to the fore often lacked the qualities of political leadership and organisation.

Noorani was particularly critical of communal mobilisation as an answer to discrimination.

“The solution of the Muslim problem lies in the resolution of this dilemma by devising a form and context of agitation which heals old wounds and inflicts no new ones,” he wrote.

Discrimination against Muslims, Noorani argued, should be regarded as “a problem of Indian democracy to be resolved within the framework of national integration.”

His prescription was political participation rather than withdrawal.

“Empowerment of Muslims will not be achieved through communal mobilization,” Noorani wrote, but through a process in which Muslims “participate actively in national life” and take up their grievances as part of the wider injustices affecting Indian society.

Ansari called this “eminently sensible advice,” though he added that it was “perhaps not altogether practicable,” considering the community's size and diversity.

“Noorani was detached but not indifferent to the issues that bothered the community,” he said.

Ansari also recalled Noorani's admiration for Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's conception of Indian nationhood.

Citing Azad's 1940 Ramgarh speech, Noorani had asserted: “Whether we like it or not, we have now become an Indian nation, united indivisible.”

Babri Masjid and RSS

Noorani's vast documentation of the Babri Masjid dispute also figured prominently in Ansari's assessment.

“The saga of the Babri Masjid has been narrated in innumerable books and journals,” Ansari said, noting that Noorani's own contribution eventually became a three-volume work.

Ansari said he would not venture into the legal intricacies of the disputed judgment, but recalled former Supreme Court judge V.R. Krishna Iyer's remark that “the judiciary will be described as the villain of the piece.”

Ansari also referred to Noorani's extensive study of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The RSS: A Menace to India, published in early 2019, was “perhaps his last major book,” Ansari said.

“It is substantial in volume and content,” he observed, adding that Noorani made no effort to disguise his assessment of the organisation's ideological objectives.

Noorani had opened the book's introduction with an Urdu couplet which, he wrote, “accurately summed up the Muslim sentiment in India today.”

He also cited an observation attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru at a meeting of External Affairs Ministry officers:

“The danger to India, mark you, is not communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism.”

‘Fiercely Independent’

Ansari concluded by asking how Noorani should ultimately be remembered.

“So how do we sum up our perceptions of Ghafoor Noorani?” he asked.

“I can only repeat what many before me have said. He was a one-man institution, fiercely independent, known for his courage and precision, renowned for his commitment to human rights and secularism.”

“He was altogether an encyclopaedic figure.”

Ansari ended with an Urdu couplet:

Marne waale marte hain, lekin fana hote nahin,
Yeh haqeeqat mein kabhi hum se juda hote nahin.

Those who die, die, but do not cease to exist; in truth, they never really part from us.

And then came his final, simple remembrance of Ghafoor Bhai:

“Kya khoob aadmi tha, Khuda maghfirat kare.”