Meccan Born Patriot of India

[Guest guest]

MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD [1888-1958)]

 

"Tagore's conception of God rises above all narrow limitations of

race, religion or creed. The term Adavita translated into Arabic

would read 'Wahdahu-la-Shareek,' the one who has no second...."

 

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was born in the year 1888 in Mecca. His

forefather's came from Herat (a city in Afghanistan) in Babar's

days. Azad was a descendent of a lineage of learned Muslim scholars,

or maulanas. His father's name was Maulana Khairuddin and his mother

was the daughter of Sheikh Mohammad Zaher Watri.

 

In 1890, Azad's father moved to Calcutta. Educated according to the

traditional curriculum, Azad learned Arabic and Persian first and

then philosophy, geometry, mathematics and algebra. He was taught at

home, first by his father, later by appointed teachers who were

eminent in their respective fields. Seeing that English was fast

becoming the international language, Azad taught himself to read,

write and speak the language. He adopted the pen name "Azad" to

signify his freedom from traditional Muslim ways.

 

Revolutionary Shri Shyam Sunder Chakravarthy introduced Azad to the

freedom struggle. Most revolutionaries in Bengal were Hindus. Azad

greatly surprised his fellow Hindu revolutionaries with his

willingness to join the freedom struggle. At first his peers were

skeptical of his intentions.

 

Azad found the revolutionary activities restricted to Bengal and

Bihar. Within two years, Azad helped setup secret revolutionary

centers all over north India and Bombay.

 

Most revolutionaries were anti-Muslim because they felt that the

British Government was using the Muslim community against India's

freedom struggle. Azad tried to convince his colleagues that

indifference and hostility toward the Muslims would only make the

path to freedom more difficult.

 

Azad began publication of a journal called Al Hilal (the Crescent)

in June 1912 to increase revolutionary recruits amongst the Muslims.

The Al Hilal reached a circulation of 26,000 in two years. The

British Government used the Press Act and then the Defense of India

Regulations Act in 1916 to shut the journal down.

 

Azad roused the Muslim community through the Khilafat Movement. The

aim of the movement was to re-instate the Khalifa as the head of

British captured Turkey.

 

Azad supported Gandhiji's non-cooperation movement and joined the

Indian National Congress (I.N.C) in January 1920. He presided over

the special session of Congress in September 1923 and is said to be

at the age of 35, the youngest man elected as the President of the

Congress.

 

Azad was arrested in 1930 for violation of the salt laws as part of

Gandhhiji's Salt Satyagraha. He was put in Meerut jail for a year

and a half.

 

Azad was the staunchest opponent of partition of India into India

and Pakistan. He supported a confederation of autonomous provinces

with their own constitutions but common defense and economy, an

arrangement suggested in the British Cabinet Mission Plan of May

1946. According to Azad partition was against the grain of the

Indian culture which did not believe in "divorce before marriage."

Partition shattered his dream of an unified nation where the Hindu

and Muslim faiths would learn to co-exist in harmony.

 

Maulana Azad served as the Minister of Education in Pandit

Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet from 1947 to 1958. He died in August

1958. Azad was honored with the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1992.

 

Compiler: Gambhirwala, Siddharth

 

He was a Muslim theologian, scholar and author of this 20th century

in India, who also held high political and ministerial posts in the

republic of India. In his well-known Urdu commentary of the Quran,

put forth his views.

 

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

 

I am a Muslim and profoundly conscious of the fact that I have

inherited Islam's glorious tradition of the last fourteen hundred

years. I am not prepared to lose even a small part of that legacy.

The history and teachings of Islam, its arts and letters, its

culture and civilization are part of my wealth and it is my duty to

cherish and guard them.... But, with all these feelings, I have

another equally deep realization, born out of my life's experience

which is strengthened and not hindered by the Islamic spirit. I am

equally proud of the fact that I am an Indian, an essential part of

the indivisible unity of the Indian nationhood, a vital factor in

its total makeup, without which this noble edifice will remain

incomplete."

 

"If the whole world is our country and is to be honored, the dust of

India has the first place......If all mankind are our brothers, then

the Indians have the first place."

 

"Not only is our national freedom impossible without Hindu-Muslim

unity, we also cannot create, without it, the primary principles of

humanity. If an angel were to tell me: 'Discard Hindu-Muslim unity

and within 24 hours I will give freedom to India'; I would prefer

Hindu-Muslim unity. For the delay in the attainment of freedom will

be a loss to India alone, but if the Hindu-Muslim unity disappears,

that will be a loss to the whole humanity."

 

"Tagore's conception of God rises above all narrow limitations of

race, religion or creed. The term Adavita translated into Arabic

would read 'Wahdahu-la-Shareek,' the one who has no second...."

 

"It was India's historic destiny that many human races, cultures and

religions should flow to her, and that many a caravan should find

rest here.... One of the last of these caravans was that of the

followers of Islam. This came here and settled for good.... In India

everything bears the stamp of the joint endeavor of the Hindus and

Muslims. Our languages were different, but we grew to use a common

language. Our manners and customs were dissimilar, but they produced

a new synthesis. No fantasy or artificial scheming to separate and

divide us can break this unity."

 

"As an Indian I hate the notion of slicing India into two. As a

Muslim, I am not prepared for a moment to give up my right to treat

the whole of India as my domain or to content myself with a mere

fragment of it."