Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad

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Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad

• Media History

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• These two countries India and Pakistan will
  now focus on the military and society will not
  develop, predicted Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad in a
  well-known speech in Delhi.

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Maulanas Political Ideology

• Maulana Azads views earned him a contentious
  status in both India and Pakistan.
• Many Pakistanis consider his ideas of secularism
  and nationalism to be against Islam.
• In India, he is also criticized by many for not
  doing enough to prevent partition.

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Maulanas Political Ideology

• Not only did he criticize partition, he went on
  to condemn all those who played a role in the
  historic events of August 1947.
• He questioned whether Jinnah could actually be a
  Muslim leader, citing his westernized lifestyle.
• He ridiculed Gandhis ideals of non-violence.

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Maulanas Political Ideology

• He opposed Nehrus biased attitude towards Indian
  Muslims and denounced his relationship with Lady
  Mountbatten.
• His basic argument against partition is that it
  would be a major loss to Muslims on both sides.
• On the Indian side, Muslims would lose their
  majaority.

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Maulanas Political Ideology

• On Pakistans side, the Muslim population would
  not be able to compete with India nor would it be
  able to solve the issues of Indian Muslims.
• He believed that partition would give birth to
  two states that would always be in confrontation
  with each other.

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Maulanas Early Life

• Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was born in Mecca in 1888
  and lived there till he was about seven.
• His father Khairuddin, a scholar-sufi and pir
  originally from Calcutta, was persuaded by his
  disciples to return to that city.
• Under his strict father, Azad continued his
  Islamic studies.

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Maulanas Early Life

• Though he resented the restrictive and
  authoritarian manner in which this syllabus was
  taught.
• Therefore, on his own, Azad furtively cultivated
  a taste for Urdu and Persian literature and even
  learnt to play the sitar.
• He got an astonishing memory and encyclopedic
  information.

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Maulanas Early Life

• He was eager to write biography of Ghazali when
  he was only twelve.
• Two years later, he began to contribute learned
  articles to Makhzan, the best-known literary
  magazine of the day.
• When Shams-ul-Ulama Shibli Nomani met him, he was
  so much impressed by his intellectual skills that
  he took Azad to Lucknow

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Maulanas Early Life

• He made him prominent in national circles by
  offering him editorship of Al-Nadva.
• In 1906, he became the editor of a very popular
  biweekly, Vakil of Amritsar.
• By the time he was thirteen, Azad was
  disillusioned with his Islamic training due to
  modernist writings of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.

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Maulanas Early Life

• He fell into a phase of atheism which, according
  to him, lasted from the age of 14 to 22.
• During his later teenage years he came into close
  contact with the Hindu revolutionaries of Bengal.
  
• A combination of brief travel to the Middle East
  and his Arabic reading also exposed him more
  deeply to the reformist ideas of Sheikh Abduh of
  Egypt and the uncompromising nationalism and
  anti-imperialism of Mustafa Kamil Pasha.

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Maulanas Career

• But his faithlessness in religion came to an end
  in 1910 when an emotional/mystical experience
  renewed his faith in religion.
• Azads career really began to take-off in 1912
  with the appearance of his Urdu journal Al-Hilal.
  Equipped with literary pursuit, breathtaking
  language and auxiliary attractions the journal
  simultaneously meant to preach pure Islam and
  Indian independence.

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Maulanas Career

• Through his unique style, Azad sought to bring
  Indian Muslims onto the platform of the freedom
  movement and to work in cooperation with Hindus.
• Despite his earlier admiration for Sir Syed Ahmad
  Khan, Azad was then a harsh critic of the
  loyalist politics of Aligarh University.
• Though the journal was ambiguous about specific
  methods of cooperation and post-Independence
  political arrangements.

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Maulanas Career

• Maulana had been partial to sentiments of
  Hindu-Muslim unity from the very beginning of his
  life.
• His journal was viewed as seditious when suddenly
  World War I broke out in Europe.
• He was expelled from Bengal and interned in
  Ranchi for three and a half years.
• It was during this period that he wrote his
  well-known commentary on the opening Surah of
  Al-Quran.

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Maulanas Career

• A few weeks after his release, for the first time
  he met Mr. Gandhi in Delhi and became the first
  prominent Muslim in India to associate himself
  with Mr. Gandhi and his plan of non-cooperation.
• In 1920 the Indian Muslims were extremely
  disturbed by the British governments handling of
  the Turkish empire and the Khilafat during the
  War.

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Maulanas Career

• In consultation with Azad, Gandhi persuaded the
  Congress to make the demand for the protection of
  the Khilafat a part of the national demand for
  freedom.
• In 1921 Azad was again arrested. When he was
  released in 1923, the country was passing through
  a strong wave of communal rioting.
• He became an active member on the Congress stage.
  Though he continued his efforts to bring various
  Muslim organizations in line with Congress.

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Maulanas Career

• In 1928 serious differences arose between the
  Congress and organizations like the Muslim League
  and the Khilafat Conference over the Nehru
  report.
• Azad was forced to break ties with the latter two
  organizations.
• In 1930, the Congress declared complete
  independence as the goal of the national
  movement, and civil disobedience continued in
  vigor following Gandhis famous Salt March

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Maulanas Career

• Azad was imprisoned twice in a row during this
  period, and then released in 1936 along with the
  other Congress leaders.
• It was during these periods of imprisonment that
  the Maulana was able to complete the first
  edition of his famous Tarjuman al-Quran, his Urdu
  translation and commentary on the Quran.

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Maulanas Career

• Maulana Abul Kalam Azad articulated an Islam that
  was hospitable towards other forms of monotheism,
  especially Hinduism, and which placed emphasis on
  commonly held rules of righteous conduct.
• Though it was a landmark effort to inject a
  liberal ethos into Islam, the Tarjuman al-Quran
  was unable to receive the overwhelming impact he
  hoped it would

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Maulanas Career

• in 1939 he was elected President of the Congress.
  
• His presidential address at the Ramgarh session
  of the Congress in 1940 occurred just a few days
  before the Muslim Leagues historic Pakistan
  Resolution.
• It was negation of the two-nation theory and
  articulated his oft-repeated ideology of secular
  nationalism.

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Maulanas Career

• Azad was severely criticized by influential
  Muslim political leaders as well as so many
  religious and modern educated classes who earlier
  in his career had adored him and his revivalist
  ideas.
• Azad was imprisoned for a fifth time in 1940,
  following a limited campaign of civil
  disobedience, and released a year later.

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Maulanas Career

• By 1942, and following the more comprehensive
  Quit India Movement, he, along with the other
  Congress leaders, was once again imprisoned.
• He was released in 1946 and continued to be the
  president of the All India National Congress
  throughout the War years.
• During his presidency, he tried to persuade the
  Congress to make some concessions and come to
  terms with the Muslim League to avoid division of
  India

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Maulanas Career

• The Maulana reluctantly relinquished the Congress
  presidency in 1946, hoping that this would open
  an avenue between the Congress and the League.
• He kept out of the coalition government formed
  that year, but in 1947, at Gandhis urging he
  became Minister of Education.
• Though, like Gandhi, he was forced to accept
  Partition, he could never reconcile himself to it
  and was rather heartbroken by the event and its
  bloody aftermath.

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Maulanas Career

• After partition, he held the post of Minister of
  Education of India for ten years.
• Though he was not a particularly effective
  administrator, he did perform some important
  services such as cultivating technical, adult,
  and womens education, and an academy of
  literature, as well as opposing the ejection of
  English as a national language.
• He was a great literary figure and essentially a
  thinker and the chief exponent of Wahdat-i-deen
  or the essential oneness of all religions

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Maulanas Career

• Among his works Ghubar-i-Khatir is considered not
  only his masterpiece but also an illustration of
  great Urdu literature.
• He died in 1958 of a stroke and was buried in a
  dignified corner near Jamia Masjid in Old Delhi.
• Towards Pakistan and her leaders, the attitude of
  Maulana Azad remained dignified and
  statesmanlike.
• Now that it has come into existence, everybodys
  interest lies in its being strong and stable.