Syed Ali Zaheer

Ali Zaheer
Born	Lucknow, India
Died	February 3, 2014
Occupation	Lawyer, politician

Syed Ali Zaheer was an Indian politician and a minister in the first cabinet formed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

He was born as one of the four sons of Sir Syed Wazir Hasan at Kalanpur, Jaunpur. The family belonged to the Shia sect of Islam, and were a land-owning family of the region. Zaheer's younger brother, Sajjad Zaheer, was a Communist leader, whose daughter Nadira Babbar is a theatre artist and the first wife of Raj Babbar, the film actor and Member of Parliament (MP).

He was married at a young age to Aliya, a distant cousin, in a match arranged by their parents. After Zaheer achieved prominence as a Muslim leader within the Congress Party, his wife was appointed chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board. The couple had a son, Karim Zaheer, and a daughter, Sakina Hasan, who was a communist and a member of the Committee of the Status of Women appointed by Indira Gandhi under the chairmanship of Vina Mazumdar.

Zaheer began his career as a barrister in the Chiefs Court of Oudh (Awadh), based in Lucknow. He took interest in politics at an early age and joined the Indian National Congress. He selected this party for two reasons: firstly, the Congress was leading India's struggle for independence from Britain, and secondly, its main opponent at the local level in Avadh, the Muslim League, was dominated by Sunni Muslims, whereas the Zaheer family belonged to the Shia sect.

In the 1930s and 1940s, actively encouraged by the policy of Divide and Rule, communalism was at its peak in India. Awadh, dominated by vastly rich Muslim landlords ruling an overwhelmingly Hindu peasantry, had become a hotbed of Muslim separatism, and indeed the main source of funding for the Muslim League, which wanted to partition India and create Pakistan.

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