Abul Kalam Azad: A hero effaced for decades

The contribution of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a true son of the soil, may be erased from school textbooks but he cannot be erased from India’s historical Hindu-Muslim amelioration paradigm. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is, by any reckoning, a major figure in twentieth-century Indian history. He was a scholar thoroughly trained in the traditional Islamic sciences, with great intellectual abilities and eloquence of pen and speech for all subjects ranging from religion to science and politics to literature as could be seen through his writings in many newspapers and magazines—Al-Hilal, Al-Balagh, Lisan-us-Siddq, to name a few. He had, in addition, a remarkable openness to modern western knowledge even as he opposed western rule over India. Because Azad possessed such an enlightened worldview, he unhesitatingly advocated the vision and mission of Hindu-Muslim unity, social progress, religious tolerance, spread of modern knowledge, individual liberty and above all, educational reforms.
What matters is not that India’s top freedom fighter and the first minister of education, Bharat Ratna Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had for decades been tossing and turning in his grave in the walled city of Shahjahanabd’s mausoleum just adjacent to the Shahjahani mosque or Jama Masjid. What counts is the fact that the paradigm of interfaith mingling and diaspora of composite culture plus cultural nationalism that he gave to India, will be badly dented for the posterity as India embarks on a path to becoming Vishwa Guru (leader of the world). This status cannot be achieved if there is no gelling of Hindus and Muslims.
It was the Congress Party that deleted the photograph of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, freedom fighter and doyen of communal concord, from its 87th conclave some time ago. Now his name is dropped from the new edition of the Class 11 political science textbook, “Indian Constitution at Work”, in the first chapter—page 18 and in fact from the whole course. The Congress had already dumped Azad and many other freedom fighters, only to retain the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. The present BJP government is the least to be blamed as the Congress has been demonizing the RSS stalwarts like Savarkar, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Golwalkar, Hedgewar and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya among others. To me it seems that the sharpest retaliatory cut of the axe of that deletion has fallen upon Azad, more that it had impacted Gandhi or Nehru.
Over the decades, Maulana Azad has been ignored and subjected to ignominy even by the Congress, his own party. Incidentally, in 2005, in a PIL at Delhi High Court filed by me through advocate, M. Atyab Siddiqui, in the case of the protection and restoration of Azad’s mausoleum (being inhabited by anti-social elements and drug addicts) and placing of the life history plaques in English, Hindi and Urdu, Hon’ble Justice Vijender Jain had stated that the contribution and sacrifices of Maulana Azad for the liberation of India, were greater than those of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. Even the author couldn’t believe these words. This was a historic landmark order recognising the services of the Maulana. I am writing to the NCERT and the concerned authorities to restore Azad’s name and contribution for the wider mission of “India of my dream” as envisioned by Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India.
Born in a predominantly Hindu environment, Azad was bold enough to propagate nationalism to Muslims at variance with the prevalent political consciousness based on communalized politics. Maulana coalesced with endogenic creativity, the Vedantic diaspora of many parts of truth with the Islamic doctrines of Wahdat-e-Deen (unity of religion) and Sulah-e-Kul (universal peace). It also reminds me that in 2009, in the social science NCERT textbook of Class 9, it was misquoted that Maulana Azad was born in Uttar Pradesh, whereas, the truth is that Azad was born in Mecca on 11 November 1888. There was a minor error even in the reference to Sardar Patel. After this author served a notice to the NCERT, the errors were rectified.
Basically, Azad was a Sufi, immensely impressed and impacted by Sufi Sarmad, the naked saint, who was beheaded by Aurangzeb. Sarmad, through his poetry comes out cleaner, loyal, faithful and truthful to God: “Sarmad! Gila ikhtesar mibayad kard Yak kaar az ein do kaar mi bayad kard Ya tan be raza-ai dost mi bayad daad Ya jaan barahash nisaar mi bayad kard (O Sarmad! Shorten your complaint Of two choices, take one; either surrender Your body to the will of your friend Or offer to sacrifice your soul).” Azad, who followed the spirit of Sarmad, wrote that the saint, in his state of ecstasy, lost all his wealth and worldly possessions with the only shackles remaining in the form of clothes that also he threw away totally to become free from worldly concerns. That’s why he said: “It is not the fortune of the faint-hearted to suffer in love; suffering is for those who walk in the flames of love.”
A great educationist, Maulana Azad was an outstanding scholar of Oriental learning that was demonstrated by him 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 cultural growth of the country. The three academies—Sahitya Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi and Sangeet Natak Akademi—to promote 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 other scientific institutions.
Abul Kalam Azad made a lasting contribution to Urdu prose literature with his translation and interpretation of the Qur’an, that is, Tarjuman-ul-Quran. The intellectual history of Islam in India has long been described in terms of two contrasting currents: the one tending towards confrontation, the other towards assimilation, with the Hindu milieu. Maulana Azad believed in the ecumenist and eclectic approach leading towards syncretic existence. Maulana Azad earned the reputation for “absolute impartiality” and “unimpeachable integrity”, which served him well, particularly in the years after Independence.
The major concern of Azad’s life was the revival and reform of Indian Muslims, especially to make them tolerant without an iota of belligerence for cultural nationalism in all spheres of life including interfaith concord and educational excellence, for which he termed India as Darul Aman (land of peace) and his political hopes for them were within this context. It was he who gave the slogan, Hubbul Watani/Nisful Iman, meaning that half of a Muslim’s faith is his patriotism and nationalism for the land where he lives. As far as relations with others were concerned, we have seen that Azad never questioned the fact that being Muslim in India meant living with non-Muslims in common citizenship. He never contemplated any other political possibility, and when incidents of communal strife in the 1920s threatened Hindu-Muslim unity, and then in the 1930s and 40s the Pakistan movement gathered strength, his spirit rebelled against those trends.
Azad wasn’t at all ambitious the way Nehru was. Azad, towards the end of his life, was upset both with Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru as he thought that under the influence of Nehru, Gandhi, who was against the vivisection of the country, agreed to it. Azad believed that Nehru was under the influence of both Edwina and Lord Mountbatten.
Through his fiery eloquence and revolutionary writings, first in Al-Hilal and later in Al-Balagh in Calcutta in 1912 and 1916, Maulana Azad roused Indians from their stupor and political apathy. Although he started his career as an aalim (religious leader), his faith in nationalism, as Mahatma Gandhi described it, was as robust as his faith in Islam.
Maulana Azad’s interests were kaleidoscopic and his genius versatile. He enjoyed fame in the field of Urdu journalism. He was not a pseudo-secular intellectual like today’s politicians but a committed patriot wedded to the principles of communal harmony. Maulana Azad’s name will remain in the hearts of all no matter how many decades of neglect his legacy has faced.
Firoz Bakht Ahmed is the former Chancellor, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad; grandnephew of Maulana Azad; columnist and community worker.