Khawaja Azam Kothi may have been reduced to a terra incognita today. There was, however, a time when the kothi, which is now identified only by a little-known chowk in an old city area, was a cynosure of all the eyes, for its grandeur as well as the person who inhabited it.

Even though there are no historical records which could lend any kind of proof to its relevance in the past, the moment the sound of its name echoes, it flashes the images of the era gone by.

The history of the building dates back to the time when it was home to Khwaja Azam, who was a noted nationalist leader and a staunch proponent of the Ahrari movement which stood up against the two-nation theory. Post Partition, the kothi fell into various hands; it housed a school in the 1960’s, and then it was sold off. Some part of its area is used for a tubewell and the area was also earmarked for an overhead water reservoir once.

Today, the sprawling area of well over 2,000 yards is now housing transporters’ business and a few shops apart from some residences inside its original premises.

As one finds his way to the place where the kothi once stood tall with its grandeur and gardens on both the sides, the only thing reminiscent of the structure’s pre-independence legacy is some old doors and dilapidated brick-walls of one part of the original structure, while almost all other traces have disappeared now.

The pre-independence structure was the pivot for the Ahrari Movement in the region and if you ask the locals, some of the old residents will be keen to tell how great a friendship was shared by the first Prime Minister of the country Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and Khwaja Azam.

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