If a party commits a mistake it suffers. But if the Congress commits a mistake the whole country suffers.
Those were the last words of veteran communist leader Muqimuddin Farooqui, who died suddenly yesterday almost immediately after making a speech at a seminar on coalition politics organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. He collapsed on the podium, even as the meeting was being adjourned for lunch.
A bitter critic of the Congress till the end, Farooqui neverthless used to ackowledge its all-India presence and grip over the masses. Even in his last speech he did not mince words to criticise the Congress. He said the Congress advocacy for single-party rule was a sign of sheer frustration but that it would never get back to power in the near future.
His successful, though low pfofile, political career began in the late 1930s with the All India Students Federation (AISF). He was one of the delegates at the first meeting of the AISF, which Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah too attended. He became the general secretary of the AISF in 1940. Prime Minister IK Gujral was then the secretary of its Punjab unit and the two shared a close relationship to the last.
Farooqui served the CPI in various capacities since 1940. He joined the party central executive in 1972 and served as the party national secretary since 1981.
Almost five decades after he completed his post-graduation from the Delhi University, Farooqi was given back his degree. It had been taken away by the British because he organised a strike to protest against the arrest of national leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru in the early 1940s.
Farooqui, then a student at the St Stephens College, was expelled from the university for organising that strike by the then Vice Chancellor, Maurice Gwyer. The degree was restored to him in 1989 at a special convocation presided over by former president Shankar Dayal Sharma.
Born on March 15, 1920 at Ambehta in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, Farooqi was inspired by the Marxist ideology early in his student life. Revolutionary to the core, Farooqui had to put up with social ostracism quite early in his life, when he decided to marry a Hindu. His widow, Vimla Farooqui, is a well-known womens activist.
