Draft:Haji Abdul Sattar Ishaq Sait

Abdus Sattar Sait was born in 1896 in Tellicherry, now Thalassery in Kannur district, Kerala, then part of the Malabar district of the Madras Presidency.^[15] His family were Kutchi Memons, a Muslim mercantile community from the Kutch area of Gujarat whose members settled in coastal Kerala, mainly in the nineteenth century.^[15][16] His father was Haji Ishaq Haji Ayub Sait and his mother was Fathima Bai.^[15] He married Asia Bai, daughter of Abdul Sattar Omar Hashmani of Thiruvananthapuram, and later married Halima Bai of Bangalore.^[15]

Abdus Sattar Sait's political career began in Malabar in the early 1930s, when he became involved with the Malabar Muslim Majlis and the emerging Malabar Muslim League. In 1934, he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly as the Muslim League candidate, with the support of K. M. Seethi Sahib.^[1] His victory has been described as marking the Muslim League's debut as an active force in Malabar politics.^[17] After his election, the All-India Muslim League under M. A. Jinnah began organisational activity in Tellicherry, Cannanore and Calicut, with Abdus Sattar Sait among the League's leading figures in Malabar.^[2]

In June 1936, Abdus Sattar Sait delivered the presidential address at the First Session of the Kanara Muslim Conference in Bhatkal, where he attributed the economic decline of Muslim merchants on the Malabar Coast to their neglect of modern education and resistance to adapting commercial methods. He called for a network of primary schools across Karnataka to eliminate illiteracy, and urged Muslim university graduates to enter trade, industry, and agriculture rather than seek government employment. ^[18] In the Central Assembly he also raised questions about Mappilla representation in public services, including in the Railway Services.^[19]

The Mappila newspaper Chandrika began as a monthly in Tellicherry in 1932 and became a daily in 1939; it was created to promote the League's message in Malabar, and its development was led by community figures including A. K. Kunyumayin Haji, Abdus Sattar Sait and K. M. Seethi Sahib.^{[20] [21]}

In 1936, the first formal committee of the Kerala Muslim League was constituted at Thalassery, with Mohamed Ali Raja as president, Abdus Sattar Sait as general secretary, and K. M. Moulavi and K. M. Seethi Sahib as joint secretaries.^[22]

At the Muslim League Conference in Lucknow in October 1937, Abdus Sattar Sait was photographed with Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan and other League leaders. In his presidential address, Jinnah described the session as one of the most critical in the League's history and pointed to the expansion of League parliamentary boards, provincial League parties and hundreds of district Leagues, extending from "the farthest corner of Madras to the North-West Frontier Province".^[23]

By 1940 Abdus Sattar Sait served on the All-India Muslim League Working Committee as the Madras member, and attended the committee's meetings in New Delhi in February and Bombay in June that year.^[10] He was among the 25 members of the Special Working Committee that gathered in Lahore in March 1940 to deliberate the text of what would become the Lahore Resolution.^[4]

At the League's Madras session in April 1941, Liaquat Ali Khan moved a resolution incorporating the Lahore Resolution into the League's formal aims and objectives; Abdus Sattar Sait seconded it, and it was adopted unanimously.^[11][12]

In his correspondence with Jinnah during this period, Abdus Sattar Sait reported in January 1940 on Deliverance Day mobilisation in Malabar; in July he wrote from Tellicherry about enforcing the League's policy against participation in British war committees, signing the letter as a municipal councillor and secretary of the Kerala Muslim Majlis. ^[24][25]

In 1943 he was appointed to the League's Central Committee of Action, a six-member body set up after the Karachi annual session to coordinate the provincial League branches. Nawab Muhammad Ismail chaired the committee, with Liaquat Ali Khan as convener; the other members were Nawab Iftekhar Hussain Mamdot, Qazi Isa, G. M. Sayed and Abdus Sattar Sait. He and Nawab Ismail were assigned to review organisational issues in the Delhi Provincial Muslim League.^[26]

By the mid-1940s, Sait was active in major League gatherings in Malabar, appearing alongside K. M. Seethi Sahib, B. Pokker Sahib and Bafaqi Thangal.^[27] In 1946, he moved a resolution for a separate Muslim-majority region in Malabar, called "Mappillastan"; Jinnah later discouraged the proposal while thanking the Madras delegation for its strong support of the Pakistan demand.^[27]

In April 1947, at the annual general meeting of the Muslim League Party in the Central Legislature presided over by Jinnah, Abdus Sattar Sait was elected Chief Whip, with Jinnah as party leader and Khan Mohammad Yamin Khan as secretary.^[13]

Abdus Sattar Sait won election to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1934 as the Muslim League candidate, defeating the Congress leader Muhammad Abdur Rahiman by 1,960 votes to 1,638.^[2] He was re-elected from the West Coast and the Nilgiris Muhammadan constituency in 1945, receiving 6,300 votes against Kunhikoya Palat's 632.^[3]

He is listed as "H. A. Sathar H. Essak Sait", the elected member for West Coast and Nilgiris (Muhammadan), in Central Legislative Assembly rosters in The Indian Year Book 1936–37 and The Indian Year Book 1939; the same name form also appears in the original caption to a 1937 group photograph of Central Legislative Assembly members.^[28][29][30]

He was also a member of the Constituent Assembly of India from Madras.^[31] On 14 July 1947, after the decision to partition India had been announced, the Constituent Assembly record shows that when Abdus Sattar Sait was called to sign the register, Deshbandhu Gupta raised a point of order asking whether he still subscribed to the Two-Nation theory. Rajendra Prasad, presiding, ruled that any duly elected member was entitled to sit in the Assembly unless he resigned, and Sait's name was then listed among the members from Madras who presented credentials and signed the register.^[32]

After partition, Abdus Sattar Sait migrated to Pakistan, becoming the only Muslim legislator from Madras province known to have done so.^[14] His migration formed part of a wider post-partition departure of Muslim League figures from Kerala, which weakened the League's organisational base.^[22]

He was appointed Pakistan's first ambassador to Egypt in July 1948, a posting confirmed both by the Nehru Archive and by the Embassy of Pakistan in Cairo, which lists him as the first appointed ambassador, serving until 1951.^[6][7]

By November 1951 he was in Jeddah as Pakistan's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Saudi Arabia, signing the Pakistan–Saudi Arabia Treaty of Friendship on 25 November that year.^[8]

He took up the post of High Commissioner of Pakistan in Ceylon on 12 July 1952.^[9][33] He was in the role in early 1954, and during Queen Elizabeth II's royal tour of Ceylon in April that year appeared among the Commonwealth high commissioners who received her.^[34][35] A 1958 account credited him with supporting the establishment of a Muslim Cultural Centre in Colombo.^[36]

• 
  King Farouk I and Pakistan Ambassador Abdus Sattar Sait, Cairo, c. 1951.
• 
  King Saud bin Abdulaziz and Pakistan Ambassador Abdus Sattar Sait, c. 1951-54.
• 
  Queen Elizabeth II with Commonwealth high commissioners and Prime Minister Sir John Kotelawala in Ceylon, April 1954; Abdus Sattar Sait is second from right.

Haji Abdus Sattar Ishaq Sait died in Karachi in 1989 at the age of 93.^[15]