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Audio:Maulana Azad's historic
address to the Indian Muslims from Jama Masjid after the
partition
Maulana Azad's efforts in shaping the Education policy in
Independent India:
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...Click
for Full
Maulana Azad as distinguished writer: Azad
started writing poems and literary and political articles for
Urdu Newspapers and journals at a very early age. He launched
his Urdu weekly Al-Hilal on June, 1912 when he was only 24....Click
for Full
Maulana Azad as Freedom Fighter: It is
significant that all these moves and various political
activities of Azad were initiated before the emergence of
Gandhiji on the political horizon. Advent of Gandhiji into the
National Movement and Azad's meeting with him had crucial
bearing on the future course of the...Click
for Full
In the galaxy of
the patriots of India's freedom struggle, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
occupies a distinctive position. He was a savant statesman and the
tallest among the nationalist Muslim who fought for a united India.
Along with Jawahar Lal Nehru and Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad
comprised the famous trio that carried out the negotiation to usher
in freedom and laid the foundation of a secular society in India.
Born on 11
November, 1888 in an orthodox family of Maulana Khairuddin and to
his Arab wife, Aliyah, as one of their five children, Ghulam
Muhiyuddin Ahmad, who came to be known later as Abul Kalam Azad, had
combined in him scholarly pursuits, sturdy independence of character
and a distinct mental bent towards unworldliness.
Maulana Azad
took pride in tracing his birth from an ancestor who earned a name
for himself during the reign of Emperor Akbar. One of his ancestors,
Maulana Jamaluddin was a contemporary of Akbar, the Great. “I am the
ninth of tenth in paternal descent from Sheikh Jamaluddin", Azad
said to Mahadeo Desai, one of his earlier biographers......I can say
that there wasn't one of my ancestors, but was noted for his
learning and Sufism.”
Immensed in the
closed world of learning, Azad longed for an escape from the
unusually rigorous scholastic atmosphere and to become a free man.
He could not get peace by just reading Islamic history and theology
and preaching it to faithfuls. During this period he also got an
exposure to the writings of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who patronized the
Aligarh school which was known for its pro colonial modernism which
Azad later sought to contest from a nationalist angle.
The first major
turning point for Azad came after the partition of Bengal, when he
rejected the mainstream of the Muslim middle class, which wanted
partition and considered the colonial government as its benefactor.
Repudiating it, he associated himself with the anti British
Movement.
In 1908, after
his father's death, his visits to France and some Islamic countries,
Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey had a profound and decisive influence
on Azad's political thinking. While abroad, he met a number of
groups, the young Turks, the Arab Nationalists and the prominent
leaders of the pan-Islamic Movement who wanted to throw away the
yoke of imperialism to free the Arab countries.
He was
influenced by the writing of Jamaluddin Afghani (l 837_97), a
pan–Islamist modern reformer who regarded European countries as
enemies of Islam. He also met the Iranian revolutionaries fighting
against the Qajar autocracy and the followers of Sheikh Muhammad
Abduhu and Saeed Pasha and supporters of Mustafa Kamal Pasha. He was
apprised of the programmes of the young Turks. These Indian, Arab,
Turkish, Irani and Afghani revolutionaries vividly demonstrated
their anti-imperial attitude to Azad. They lamented over Indian
indifference to their struggle for freedom. All these experiences
also motivated him in plunging into the political arena. He found a
new world astir with ideas of liberty, progress and revolutionary
Islam. He noticed that the Muslim world was facing various kinds of
threats. Italy had conquered the provision of Tripoli in 1911. The
Balkan states were determined to dismember Turkey. Morocco had
yielded to French yoke and Russia threatened Iran. Turkey was
encircled by Russia, England and France. These events deeply
affected Azad.
In India too,
the Muslim Community was going through a serious ideological crisis
at the turn of the century. Earlier, during the last quarter of the
19th century, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan tried to persuade the Muslim elite
that its political future laid in adopting a liberal outlook at the
same time as it adopted a cooperative attitude towards British
Imperialism in the subcontinent. However this call for an alliance
with imperialism was totally unacceptable to large sections of the
Muslim community in India, particularly among the elite and the
popular classes. Young Maulana Azad, in common with leaders like
Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, Wazir Hasan and others represented
those within the Muslim community who challenged this concept of
Islamic modernism in alliance with Imperialism, propounded by Sir
Syed. These leaders looked upon Great Britain as an alien power bent
upon humiliating Islam in Asia at the same time as it sought to
undermine the spiritual and secular status of Islam within the
Indian sub-continent.
It was at this
juncture that Azad launched his Urdu weekly Al-Hilal on June, 1912
when he was only 24. He believed that only by educating the 'Ulama,
the learned in Law and in theology, there would emerge a nucleus of
dedicated and idealistic elite which can act as a lever for the
moral and intellectual regeneration of the Muslim community. With
the launching of Al-Hilal, Azad shot into the National Movement. He
gave fearless and powerful expression to his nationalist ideas
through the journal. The basic intent of Al-Hilal was to launch a
vigorous attack not only on the colonial distortions of our history
but more on the pro-colonial modernism of the Aligarh School, which
had poisoned the minds of the Modernist Muslim intelligentsia.
Al-HilaI held out the message of nationalism to the Muslim elites as
well as the popular classes and urged them to join other communities
in the struggle for the liberation of the country.
It is
significant that all these moves and various political activities of
Azad were initiated before the emergence of Gandhiji on the
political horizon. Advent of Gandhiji into the National Movement and
Azad's meeting with him had crucial bearing on the future course of
the movement. Azad met Gandhiji on 18 January 1920 at the residence
of Hakim Ajmal Khan in the presence of Lokmanya Tilak and Ali
brothers.
Before his
meeting with Gandhiji, he defined collective identity of the Muslim
Community in terms of Islam and denned and visualized a safe and
legitimate place for the Muslims within the sub-continent. In
Gandhiji, he found institutional support for his political stand.
The Khilafat Movement and later the non-cooperation Movement was to
provide a broader platform and offer more serious challenges to
Azad's budding political career.
He exhorted the
Muslim masses to join the freedom struggle by giving a religious
justification for the Movement. For the Hindus working for
independence might be a patriotic gesture. But for the Muslims it is
a religious duty. In the 1920s, Azad was, to a large extent,
responsible in sanctifying the Hindu-Muslim partnership and in
drawing more and more Muslims to the folds of the Congress, thus
enhancing the momentum of the Freedom movement.
In 1923, at its
Delhi session, he was elected President of the Indian National
Congress at the age of 35, becoming the youngest Congress President
to date. He was an ardent protagonist of Hindu-Muslim unity. On his
election, he said, “If an angel were to descent from the high
heavens and proclaim from the heights of the Qutab Minar, discard
Hindu-Muslim unity and within 24 hours, Swaraj is yours, I will
refuse swaraj but will not budge an inch from my stand. If Swaraj is
delayed it will affect only India while the end of our unity will be
the loss of our entire human world.”
At a time when
many Indian Muslims led by the Muslim league were crying for
partition, Azad stood up in defence of the unity of the
sub-continent. When the Congress launched the Satyagraha Movement in
1930, Azad was arrested. He was a party to every direct action
launched by the Congress during the course of the freedom struggle
and spent 11 years of his life in British jails. He accepted the
most challenging assignment of his life when he took over the
presidentship of the Indian National Congress at its Ramgarh session
in 1940.
Shortly before
Azad presided over the Ramgarh Session of the Congress in 1940,
Nehru said of him, “…he is not the type of man who likes the rough
and tumble of politics. He is very sensitive and rather avoids
crowds and publicity. He lacks a certain vital energy. In a wider
world he is rather out of place as he thinks on political lines and
hardly at all on social or economic lines... In the Muslim world of
India he is tremendously very advance. Probably he is the ablest
among the Muslim divines. Most of them are afraid of him because he
can floor them in any argument. His knowledge even of the scriptures
and traditions is very great,"
Maulana Azad's
tenure as Congress President was longest in its pre-independence
history. He presided over the Congress during the most crucial phase
of the struggle. It was under his presidentship that All India
Congress Committee passed the famous Quit India Resolution and gave
the call of "Do or Die". The Movement was ruthlessly suppressed by
the British Government and Maulana Azad, along with the rest of the
Congress leaders, was arrested and put behind the bars.
On his release
in 1945, he was entrusted with the most delicate task of negotiating
with the British and the Muslim League for transfer of power to
Indians. He negotiated with Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India later
at Shimla. He led the Congress delegation in talk with the Cabinet
Mission headed by Sir Pethwick Lawrence, the Secretary of State for
India. He wanted to have a dialogue with Mohammad Ali Jinnah who
brushed him away and refused to talk to one he considered as the
Congress' Show-boy.
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.”
C,
Rajagopalachari regarded Azad as “one who represents the keen
understanding and synthetic ideology of the great Akbar."
Rajagopalacahri had all praise for Azad's liberal outlook.
The other
philosopher, statesman and a contemporary of Maulana Azad, Dr. Radha
Krishnan had these to say about him, “The Maulan Azad stood for what
may be called the emancipation of the mind free from superstitions,
obscurantism and lanaticisrn. This mind should be free from narrow
prejudices of race or language, province or dialect, religion or
caste. It is only then that it is a civilized mind. He worked for
the ideals of national unity, probity in administration and economic
progress. In a philosophical vein, the Maulana points out that ‘to
find out the meaning of life and existence in the purpose of the
philosophical quest, we may not succeed in finding it out but the
pursuit of the quest is its own reward.’ Those who follow the path
never tire because it is both the way and the destination.”
His devotion to
Indian National Movements was the result of the new religious
awakening. It was out of his deep understanding of the fundamentals
of Islamic thought that he was able to question Pakistan's religious
basis itself. Azad wrote in India Wins Freedom, “It is one of the
greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can
unite areas which are geographically, economically, linguistically
and culturally different.” The birth of Bangladesh in 1971 perhaps
confirmed Azads' reasoning.
On February 22,
1958 the Nation mourned the death of this distinguished scholar,
philosopher and statesman who had the courage of conviction to
preach unity of mankind, at a time when religion was used by fanatic
elements to separate man from man and ideals of nationalism were
used to separate nations from nations. Announcing his death in the
Parliament Jawaharlal Nehru said, “We mourn today the passing of a
great man, a man of luminous intelligence and mighty intellect with
an amazing capacity to pierce through a problem to its core. The
word ‘luminous’ is perhaps the best word I can use about his mind.
When we part with such a companion, friend, colleague, comrade,
leader and teacher, there is inevitably a tremendous void created in
our life and activities.”
Perhaps the
nation today could look for inspiration to the social ideals which
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad propounded as an enduring basis of sanity in
relations between classes and Communities which still carry over the
prejudices of the past.
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