The Hamdard example

The eldest brother, the one in Delhi, the Hakeemji of Tuqlaqabad, was on his death bed in Apollo Hospital. He died last month. He had been dying since October last year, when his younger brother Mohammad Sayeed was shot dead in Pakistan. I heard their story from an employee of Hamdard. Hakeemji and his kid brother parted after theirfather died and the nation parted. What were they to do? Their property lay divided in two lands. The brothers decided to separate. The younger one went away but called Hakeemji who was like his very father almost everyday, keeping him informed of every decision he took at Hamdard Pakistan.

Though Hamdard came to be known in India and Pakistan after it was expanded by the two brothers, it began operations in 1906 after their father Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed opened his own one-roomed clinic at Lal Kuan after leaving his job at another Unani dawakhana. Hamdard8217;s new boss, Hakeem senior8217;s son Mueed Sahib, still operates from Lal Kuan.

But more about the pioneer, the father of the two brothers. Abdul Majeed, who started activities at the Hamdard dawakhana with a capital of Rs 100, died at the age of 40 and at that time eldest son Abdul Hameed was barely 13. He had to shoulder the responsibility of looking after two brothers and two sisters. He started publishing a health magazine Hamdard-e-Sehatin 1932 which ceased publication in the turmoil of 1947. It was revived later, not in India but in Karachi by Hakeem Abdul Hameed8217;s brother Mohammad Sayeed. It is published every month to date.

What was dearest to Hameed8217;s heart was education and welfare of humanity. While a 30-acre campus in Tuglaqabad today holds the Jamia Hamdard Jamia means university a similar campus somewhere in Pakistan has an identically named university. A symbol of Sayeed8217;s love and devotion for his elder brother.

Sayeed, however, chose a slightly different path than his brother in India. Sayeed became a politician and was soon the education minister. But in one of their conversations the elder brother told Sayeed that if human welfare was his goal, he could not continue in politics. And the next day Sayeed quit as education minister. In October last year Sayeed was assassinated. The death hurt Hameed so deeply that he fell ill and never recovered.Abdul Hameed8217;s quaint style of living, his walking to his office from Tuglaqabadwhile his old car drove ahead, his simple diet, his non-airconditioned home8230; all remain just foot prints of a past moment.

What also remains is Hamdard, a massive pharmaceutical house of Unani drugs with assets worth crores of rupees and a popular product called Roohafza. This house of Unani medicines was converted to a trust and all the money channeled into various public projects including a university, a hospital besides an educational township called Talimabad in Delhi.

But those are details which are beyond the story of the two brothers and their two nations.