November 11: Azad Day Special

Azad's efforts in shaping the Indian Education Policy

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 07:23:53 PM, Team ummid.com

Maulana Azad held a position unique in several ways. He was emotionally and intellectually close to both — Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru. He was closely associated with crucial decision making since the twenties. With the dawn of freedom in 1947, his was a natural choice to be in the Cabinet- He was the Minister of Education during 1947-52, and Minister of Education, Natural Resources and Scientific Research from 1952-58. His influence on the process of policy making was immense. He was Nehru's, comrade-in-arms during the days of the freedom movement and was-one of his closest confidante and adviser in the Cabinet.

Maulana Azad was a great educationist too. His standing as an outstanding scholar of Oriental learning was demonstrated in moulding the educational system of the country in the immediate post-independence years. It was he who established the University Grants Commission and launched the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) which has now come up to play a significant role in the academic growth of the country. The three Academies- Sahitya Academy, Lalit Kala Academy and SangeetNatak Academy— topromote art, music and literature were his ideas. He assisted Pandit Nehru in setting up the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and many a chain of Science Laboratories in India.

As the Minister for Education he insisted that both the Union and the States must share responsibility in promotion of education. He appointed the University Education Commission in 1948 and Secondary Education Commission in 1952. Between 1947 and 1958, on his initiative the budgetary allocation for Education was raised fifteen fold.

A leader is defined as a person who knows the way, who shows the way and who goes the way, Azad was one of those who went the way carrying his people with him and thus obtained a legendary fame in his lifetime itself, a feat earned by only a few statesmen. At a time when it was in the understanding of most Muslims of India that it is an offence against religion to be both a nationalist and a Muslim, Maulana Azad showed us how one could be both at one and the same time. His greatest contribution perhaps lies in the fact that he was chief instrumental in converting a passive and sometimes collaborationist section of the Indian society to become a very active and vocal opponent of the British Raj.

Any realist assessment of Maulana Azad's contribution to Modern India will not be complete unless we look into the manner in which he reached out to his co-religionists during the freedom movement and after the advent of freedom and persuaded them to play a constructive role in shaping the destiny of the newly liberated State. It is here that the relevance of his religious philosophy, his standing as an inspiring writer and scholar and the philosophical basis of his nationalist outlook come.

Azad's writings reflect a synthesis of his political nationalist philosophy and his religious philosophy based on secularism. Though they are saturated with a religious fervor it is easy to discern the secular message from between the lines. He wanted discern the secular message from between the lines. He wanted to act as scholar dissemination ideas through the instrumentality of his writings, among the Muslim religious teachers whom he regarded as natural leaders. He thought that it was the educated class that ought to be educated first so that they could influence the behavior of the general public.

Maulan Azad was a patriot, a leader, a philosopher-statesman and a great scholar. By a profound learning and “luminous intelligence" he did a real good job for Islam, by clearing it of the dust of prejudice and bigotry which had gathered up on it during the eleven hundred years of its history in India. He was a rightful inheritor of all the thought movements of the past. In the unfolding of his intellectual life and in the evolution of his thought, we find staged the whole history of Islamic thought. He was one of the very few acquainted with the philosophies of India and had deep insight into the various religions of the world and could isolate the real and essential from the spurious.

Reminding of Azad's unique intellectual achievements, Pandit Nehru said, “…..He was great in many ways. He combined in himself the greatness of the past with the greatness of the present. He always reminded me of the great men of several hundred years ago about whom I have read in history, the great men of the Renaissance, or in a later period the encyclopaedists who proceeded the French Revolution, men of intellect and men of action. He remembered also of what might be called the great quality of olden days - the graciousness which we sadly seek in the world today….It was the strange and unique of the good qualities of the past, the graciousness, the deep learning and toleration and the urges of today which made Maulan Azad what he was.”

Taken from the excellent article on Maulana Azad

written by Subhash Kashyab

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