Khwaja Ahmad Abbas Quotes

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas , popularly known as K. A. Abbas, was an Indian film director, screenwriter, novelist, and a journalist in the Urdu, Hindi and English languages. He won four National Film Awards in India, and internationally his films won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. As a director and screenwriter, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas is considered one of the pioneers of Indian parallel or neo-realistic cinema, and as a screenwriter he is also known for writing Raj Kapoor's best films.As a director, he made a number of important Hindi-Urdu films. Dharti Ke Lal , about the Bengal famine of 1943, was one of Indian cinema's first social-realist films, and opened up the overseas market for Indian films in the Soviet Union. Pardesi was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Shehar Aur Sapna won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film, while Saat Hindustani and Do Boond Pani both won the National Film Awards for Best Feature Film on National Integration.

As a screenwriter, he penned a number of neo-realistic films, such as Dharti Ke Lal , Neecha Nagar which won the Palme d'Or at the first Cannes Film Festival, Naya Sansar , Jagte Raho , and Saat Hindustani . He is also known for writing the best of Raj Kapoor's films, including the Palme d'Or nominated Awaara , as well as Shree 420 , Mera Naam Joker , Bobby and Henna .His column ‘Last Page’ holds the distinction of being one of the longest-running columns in the history of Indian journalism. The column began in 1935, in The Bombay Chronicle, and moved to the Blitz after the Chronicle's closure, where it continued until his death in 1987. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1969. Wikipedia

✵ 7. June 1914 – 1. June 1987

“Maula Bakhsh, a peasant, lives in Tamil Nadu and speaks Tamil. In Andhra Pradesh he speaks Telugu. In Bengal, his language is Bengali. Do we think of such a Muslim for whom I have invented the name Maula Bakhsh. Jinnah, Khaliquz Zaman, Maulana Azad, the Aga Khan, M. C. Chagla and the Raja of Mehmudabad… were Muslims. So was Hakku, the elderly grandmother of our locality. She prays 5 times a day. She was so deeply moved by one of Gandhi's speeches that she would repeat his name after Allah and His Prophet. At the age of 70, she stitched her own khadi kafan, because she did not want her body to be wrapped and then buried in a foreign cloth. So when people discuss India's Muslims, I wonder who are they talking about. Maula Bakhsh? Jinnah and Co.? Or Hakku?”

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas

'Maula Bakhsh bhi ek Hindustani Mussalman hai', Gagan, in Urdu (Bombay: Mussalman Number, 1975), pp. 96-7 http://web.archive.org/web/20011006030417/http://website.lineone.net/~jon.simmons/roy/010929ij.htm <br class="br">Legacy of a Divided Nation: India's Muslims Since Independence by Mushirul Hasan (1997) C. Hurst & Co. Publishers ISBN 1850653046