Bridging Region and Nation

Pandit Ko bhi Salam hai aur maulvi ko bhi, mazhab na chahiye mujhe imaan chahiye.
– Akbar Allahabadi “Rafi Ahmed Kidwai: Bridging Region and Nation” is a political biography of a congressman from Uttar Pradesh to whom nothing mattered but Indian freedom. During pre-partitioned days when greatest of the Muslims queued to Muhammad Ali Jinnah in his Pakistan movement, he stood his guns with resolute firmness. He was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s closest colleague, India’s first communication Minister and was one of the two Muslims in the Nehru cabinet along with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. He achieved miracles as Food and Agriculture Minister by his policy of food de-control. He was an administrative genius to the caliber of Sardar Patel, a nationalist Indian, and a humanist in truest term. This book is a product of extensive research on pre- partition Gandhian phase of UP congress vis-à-vis India as a whole. It will provide opportunity for the readers to peep inside the Congress organization in colonial era in the back drop of rising factionalism and communalism.