The following recollection of Musharaff Moulamia Khan (1895 – 1967) was dictated by his older brother Hazrat Inayat Khan. The two were in Calcutta in 1910 when the news came that Inayat has been invited to the West. He departed immediately, leaving Musharaff there, but later called him to come to the United States. Musharaff would have been about sixteen when he made that long journey.
Musharaff Khan joined us in America after one year’s stay in Calcutta, and to him coming to America was quite a revelation. An Indian youth with all shyness and innocence and with a feeling of love and respect, found himself quite in another sphere, where first he realised that everything he did was wrong.*
Since then he travelled with us and shared alll the pain and pleasure that we have passed through, war and peace, looking upon me as his brother, father and teacher. He also, influenced by his cousin Ali Khan and by Maheboob Khan, took up the Western method of voice production and developed a beautiful tenor voice. It seemed as if was born for that and nothing would have been better for him than to be a singer.
He has always been by temperament religiously inclined and devotional simple and sociable, ready to make sacrifices and most sympathetic. After many years of his stay in the West, he kept to the East just the same, in his way of looking at things and especially in living in eternity.**
He has been a help to me in every direction of my activity in the Western world, having the same ideal which I have brought to the world as his belief.
*A family anecdote recounts that the young Musharaff, still innocent of Western ways, upon hearing from a Western lady the help that she was willing to offer the brothers, exclaimed what would be high praise in India: “Madam, you are a cow!”
**Another family anecdote tells that when Sharda Begum went into labour with their third child, Hidayat, Mushraff was asked to go for the doctor. Living ‘in eternity,’ though, it took him a long time to get ready, and in the end it was Inayat who had to run.