HYDERABAD: The family of Abid Hasan Safrani, a Hyderabadi freedom fighter and the personal secretary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, is penning a book based on letters and registers from the duo. To support their family Madhuri Bose, the great-granddaughter of Sarat Chandra Bose and the grandniece of Subhash Chandra Bose is in the city
Abid Hasan Safrani, a Hyderabadi freedom fighter and former secretary of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, took extensive notes and maintained registers during his time as secretary — his notes, which were recently unearthed by his family members, are being compiled into a book. “The book yet to be named. But the notes certainly are extensive,” said Madhuri Bose, who is in the city to support the project and meet family members of Abid Hasan.
The book will include notes from Safrani’s time as secretary, as well as personal letters written by Subhash and Sharath Chandra Bose to Safrani’s father. “One of the notes includes Pebbles from the Seashore, which Bose, as Abid Hasan Safrani said, wrote at 2 am in the morning while they were on a voyage from Berlin to Tokyo in a submarine. He wrote that Bose when in a submarine worked, from 2 am and woke up before sunrise, nobody, including us knew this until we found his notes,” Madhuri said.
Safrani was born in Hyderabad in 1911 and became a member of the Indian National Army (INA) and a diplomat in independent India. He abandoned his college education to join the freedom struggle at the call of Mahatma Gandhi but later pursued his engineering education in Germany during WWII, where he met Subhash Chandra Bose and joined the Indische Legion.
He became Bose’s personal secretary and interpreter and eventually rose to the rank of Major in the INA. “We don’t know much about Hasan but, he is the man who coined the popular slogan ‘Jai Hind’ and has also translated Tagore’s ‘Jana Gana Mana’ in Urdu,” she added.
Safrani fought with the INA from Burma to Imphal in India, and wrote about his experiences in an article called ‘Our Men in Imphal’. Madhuri added, “He added the surname ‘Safrani’ to Abil Hasn, which means “saffron” in reference to the holy Hindu colour, as a symbol of communal harmony. It is also said that Safrani coined the title ‘Netaji’ for Bose, but is yet to be confirmed.” After the INA trials, Safrani was repatriated in 1946 from a Singapore jail and briefly joined the Indian National Congress. He later settled in Hyderabad and was appointed to the Indian Foreign Service by Jawaharlal Nehru. Safrani served as ambassador to several countries, including Denmark, China, Iraq, and Egypt, before retiring in 1969. He passed away in 1984.