By Abdur Razzaq Thaplawala
Mr. A. Sattar Parekh a Veteran Memon social and political worker as well as writer expired on 9th March, 2011 at Karachi. Mr. Parekh was born on June 10, 1918 in a small village in Halar, India. From very early age his thinking was evolutionary and he always dreamt of undertaking activities considered unusual for the times. In fact he was a visionary right from his childhood and continued at the age of 93 years. He was sent to Bombay for education where he completed high school and later graduated in Law. Dreams of higher education in London were shattered due to father’s death and beginning of Second World War. Finding legal profession unsuitable to his idealism and having been forced by circumstances to become a businessman, he developed a personality which led businessmen to call him an idealist and the idealist condemning him as a businessman. In his school days he was very popular with the management, teachers and fellow students Muslim students, though in microscopic minority amongst about 2000 students. He was always chosen to lead the school in debating competitions, essay writing, editing school magazine, acting as a scout leader, and becoming head prefect of the school to maintain discipline in the school. His activities continued in college days also and he became Secretary of Bombay Students Union representating all the colleges of Bombay city and later on became General Secretary of Bombay Presidency Students Union and member of the working committee of All Indian Students Federation. In his capacity as a representative of the students of Bombay, he had the opportunity to meet some top politicians of India frequently and with some of them his relationship became personal. Political leaders of all persuasions were very keen and obliged me by accepting my invitations to lead and guide student’s conferences. Leaders like Moulvi Fazlul Haq, Subash Chandra Bose, Jai Prakash Narain from Bihar, Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman from U.P. patronized him. When Sir Stafford Cripps visited India in his private capacity as a guest of Indian National Congress, he had an opportunity to be sort of a Personal Assistant to him for a period of about a week while Sir Stafford Cripps was in Bombay. He became the Mayor of Borough of Bombay and later was elected to the greater Bombay Municipal Corporation. Having contested and lost the first general election of Free India, a conspiracy forced him to migrate to Pakistan. Pioneered low cost housing and modern dairy industry continued his public activities in Pakistan but kept away from politics.
He has written 3 books in English. His first book was ‘Enterprising Philanthropists”. His 2nd book was ‘Glimpses of Life’s Journey’. It is in fact an auto biography in which he narrates his participation in Sataya Graha by Mr. Gandhi during 2nd world war, He narrates an impressive story. He writes that in 1941, Gandhi started his individual “Sataya Graha Movement” by selecting volunteers to court arrest by making anti-war and anti recruitment public speeches. The first man selected for this was an un-known person to most of Indians. He was a close associate and follower of Gandhi, namely Vinoba Bhave. After the arrest of Bhave, lists of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from various parts of India including their C.V. were sent to Gandhi who after careful scrutiny selected the names of the volunteers approved to court arrest after making anti-war speeches. Mr. Parekh’s name was selected very early in the movement. One of the rules was that the police had to be informed about the name of the volunteer, time, date, and place where the speech would be made for police to come prepared to arrest the speaker. The magistrate, it appears, was informed about Mr. Parekh’s background and while convicting him ordered that he should be put in “B Class” with all its facilities. For the first one month he was placed in Thana Jail which was a suburb on GIP railway line in Bombay. Later he was taken to Yarovda Jail in Poona.
The memories of Mr. A. Sattar Parekh are not only about his political career but also about happy family life. In 1960, he married. Shaukat Surraiya, a beautiful, cultured and highly respected lady who was a patron of Urdu literature, particularly poetry. Narrating a story of his married life, he used to say that People could not understand why did such a refined and literary lady decided to marry a Memon businessman. Mr. Parekh said “I could not thank Allah enough for His great favour to me. It was indeed a companionship for a period of thirty years during which house became a hub of literary and welfare activities.”
He and his wife used to have regular literary sittings in the drawing room of their large house in Karachi. The drawing room could accommodate more than fifty persons, about twenty on low sofa sets and about thirty on carpets. The literary personalities and Urdu poets like Mr. Aal-e-Raza, Jamiluddin Aali, Shan-ul-Haque Haqqi, Ifikhar Arif, Maulana Mahir-ul-Qadri, Tabish Dahalvi, Iqbal Azim, Bahzad Lakhnavi, Mahshar Badauni, Sahar Ansari, Iqbal Anari and many others were guests on various occasions. Generally Mr. Hashim Raza presided. Mr. Shabnam Roomani compared most of the functions.
Mr. Parekh was a Philanthropist as well. He established Shaukat Suraiya College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences in Karachi. Dr. Manzoor Ahmad motivated him to donate one crore rupees to start the college of Liberal Arts and Social Science as a constituent of Hamdard University with Hakim Muhammad Said as Chancellor.
In Pakistan worked as the Honorary General Secretary of Pakistan Memon Education & Welfare Society with Mr. Abdul Wahid Adamjee as the President of the Society and later on remained Vice President of the Society for almost two decades, he impressed upon his fellow members not to hoard funds, which were donated to society for the education of needy and poor students. He motivated the society to be more liberal with the students in helping them pursue their school and college activities.
After the death of his second wife he did not marry again. He had no children. He therefore shifted to a small Benglow in PECHS where he lived alone with two servants. At the time of death no one except the servants were in his home. Until the day previous to his death he was quite well and went out in his car with driver.
In Mr. Sattar Parekh the Memon community his lost a very veteran and valuable personality.
