In the old city of Delhi, between the Jama Masjid and the Red Fort, both monuments to the glories of Mughal rule, a grassy space covers an area where once stood the houses of the Muslim nobility. They were leveled after the Indian revolt against the British in 1857. Now the space is filling up again with shops, many owned by refugees from another cataclysmic event in Indian history, the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.
Near the mosque, and above the level of the crowded new bazaar, a stone wall encloses a garden in which a tomb of simple dignity marks the resting place of a man born in Mecca in 1888, who died in New Delhi in 1958, Mohiuddin Ahmad, better known as Abul Kalam Azad.
The location is appropriate, a grave amidst the relies of past history, in a domain wrested by the British from the Mughals, and then freed again at great cost. The other leading figures of the freedom struggle, Gandhi and Nehru, were cremated not far away, along the banks of the river Jamuna, beyond the battlements of the Red Fort. But Azad, in death as in life, is alone.
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.
He had, in addition, a remarkable openness to modern western knowledge even as he opposed western rule over India. He made a lasting contribution to Urdu prose literature with his translation and interpretation of the Qur’an.
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.
This dichotomy is, of course, an oversimplification, for separatist and syncretist represent extreme points on a spectrum of possible intellectual responses by Muslims to the Indian scene.
Muslim intellectuals are more likely to represent various shades on this spectrum, combining ideas that are more or less classical, orthodox, or otherwise identified with the great scriptural tradition of Islam, and ideas that are more or less influenced by the Indian milieu, including monism, mysticism, and a host of folk beliefs and rituals.
The years during which Azad wrote and published the two volumes of his Tarjuman were a period that was politically unrewarding for him. For Indian Muslims generally, the period following the collapse of the Khilafat movement was a time of uncertainty. From 1930 onwards, growing communal disorder jeopardized Hindu-Muslim unity in the eyes of many former nationalist Muslim leaders.
Nothing moved Azad from his conviction, however, even if it meant standing alone. After 1937, he became the leading Muslim in the Congress, and in 1939 he was elected its President, a post he held throughout the war years.
By that time, the Muslim League under the leadership of Jinnah was becoming a force in Indian politics, having taken full advantage of Muslim grievances against the Congress provincial governments that came to power following the elections in 1937.
After the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution of 1940, which committed the party to the demand for Pakistan, Azad became a target of attack; as a symbol of those Muslims who wanted a united India, he was an obvious irritant to the Muslim League, which claimed to speak for all Muslims in the country.
Muslim papers that supported the League wrote inflammatory and threatening articles against him. He was accused of being a ‘dishonest traitor to Islam’ and a ‘mercenary agent of the Hindus.’
This was not a time, Mujeeb comments, ‘in which moral values could be asserted in the form of political principles.’ Nevertheless, Azad’s political activities continued to be inspired by his religious faith, even though he now learned how to ‘eliminate irrelevant religious considerations when thinking of or discussing purely political issues.’
In his youth, Azad had been totally inexperienced in politics. Now with a full knowledge of what was involved, he had proved that his religious faith could guide him in the area of general principles, and give him strength for the difficulties he had to face.
He earned a 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 the Indian Muslims in all aspects of life, and his political hopes for them were within this context. For any such reform, he realized the key position of the ulema and of the traditional educational system which produces them.
This was why he pinned his early hopes on the Nadwat ul-Ulama under the leadership of Shibli. Such was Azad’s vision concerning matters internal to the Muslim community. 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 had never contemplated any other political possibility, and when incidents of communal strife in the 1920s threatened Hindu-Muslim unity, an then in the 1930s and 40s the Pakistan movement gathered strength, his spirit rebelled against those trends. In his presidential address to the Congress in 1923, he said that the ability of Hindus and Muslims to live together was essential to ‘primary principles of humanity within ourselves.’ Almost twenty years later, when he again addressed Congress from the presidential chair, he repeated this absolutely fundamental premise:
“I am a Muslim and profoundly conscious of that fact that I have inherited Islam’s glorious tradition of the last thirteen hundred years. I am not prepared to lose even a small part of that legacy. The history and teachings of Islam, its art and letters, its cultural 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 Indian nationhood, a vital factor in its total makeup, without which this noble edifice will remain incomplete. I can never give up this sincere claim…”
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