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NC meet put off as Farooq Abdullah's mother dies

Mukhtar Ahmad in Srinagar

Begum Akbar Jehan, doyen of the National Conference party and mother of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah, died on Tuesday morning, after a protracted illness.

Begum Abdullah was 84. Madre Meherban, as she was known, was Sheikh Abdullah's widow.

Sources said she died after a cardiac arrest at the family's Gupkar home. Three of her sons and her two daughters were by her side when she died.

Her eldest son, who left for Reasi in Jammu early on Tuesday morning to attend a police parade, returned to Srinagar later. The chief minister cancelled all his engagements, including a crucial National Conference working committee meeting. The meeting was convened to decide on its relationship with the ruling National Democratic Alliance in Delhi following the Union Cabinet's rejection of the J&K assembly's autonomy proposal last week.

Born in 1916, in the family of Michael Harry Nedou, a Swiss settler who had converted to Islam, Begum Abdullah married Sheikh Abdullah in 1933. She was a freedom fighter, social reformer and parliamentarian who became a household name in the state after her husband launched a struggle against Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir. Her organisational skills came to the fore during the Quit Kashmir movement and her husband's subsequent arrest.

Begum Abdullah, in her husband's absence, received Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi at Soura, on the outskirts of Srinagar, when he visited the valley in 1947. Gandhi began his public meeting in Srinagar only after the recitation of verses from the Quran by Begum Abdullah. She organised Red Cross teams in 1947, to help the needy during the tribal invasion.

She was elected to the Lok Sabha from Srinagar in 1977 (winning 67.7 per cent of the vote) and was associated with the women's welfare centre, which she founded.

Her body will be laid to rest on Tuesday afternoon at Naseem Bagh, near her husband's grave.

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