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94 the Peace of Calcutta, while the many societies to which he belonged kept him fully occupied. Among his many activities that which was destined to assume perhaps the greatest importance of all was the inauguration of the National Muhammadan Association of Calcutta for which he was responsible. His object in founding it was to unite all classes of Muhammadans so that they might work together for the common good. He recognised that cohesion meant strength and that one of the main reasons for the backwardness into which the Muhammadan community had fallen was its lack of organisation and of any representative body to take action in its behalf. As President of the Association that he had founded Amir Ali did invaluable work on behalf of his co-religionists. He spared no effort to improve their condition and to bring home to them a sense of their responsibilities and of the necessity of bestirring themselves to keep abreast of modern conditions. Like Nawab Abdul Latif and a select little company of Muhammadan leaders, he was quick to see that the old conservative feeling of exclusiveness in social relations and education could only be persisted in at the expense of the general prosperity and well being of the Muhammadan community. He was never tired of expounding the advantages of British rule in India, and with the object of bringing them home to the people he wrote in Persian a work known as the Amir Nawab on the history of the