Maulana Azad

• 1. Introduction

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  Maulana Azad was born in Mecca on the 11th of November 1888. His father was a Muslim scholar who had fled Delhi during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, settling in the holy city. Muhammad Khairuddin bin Ahmed Al Hussaini had thousands of disciples and claimed noble ancestry. His mother was Sheikha Alia bint Mohammad, whose own father was a reputed scholar from Medina. From these roots came a man who would become India's first Minister of Education and a giant of the independence movement. He would spend nearly four years in British imprisonment writing one of Urdu literature's most celebrated prose works. He would also become the most prominent Muslim voice arguing that India must not be partitioned. The question at the heart of his life is this. What does it mean to hold faith, political principle, and national belonging together when all three pull against each other?

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• 2. Languages and Libraries

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  By the time Azad was twelve, he was already running a library, a reading room, and a debating society. He had been home-schooled by tutors hired by his family, who settled in Calcutta in 1890. Arabic was his first language; he mastered Bengali, Hindustani, Persian, and English alongside it. His tutors trained him in four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, in mathematics, philosophy, world history, and science. At fourteen, he was contributing learned articles to Makhzan, a literary magazine. At fifteen, he was teaching a class of students, most of whom were twice his age. He completed the traditional course of study at sixteen, nine years ahead of his contemporaries, and launched a magazine the same year.

  At thirteen, Azad married Zulaikha Begum. He had published a poetical journal, Nairang-e-Aalam, at eleven, and was editing the weekly Al-Misbah by 1900. The monthly journal Lissan-us-Sidq, which he brought out in 1903, ran until May 1905, when it closed for lack of funds. That closure sent him toward Al-Nadwa, the Islamic theological journal of the Nadwatu l-Ulama, at the invitation of the scholar Shibli Nomani. He went on to edit Vakil, a newspaper in Amritsar, from April 1906 to November 1906, then returned and continued there until July 1908.

  Azad compiled many treatises interpreting the Qur'an, the Hadis, and the principles of Fiqh and Kalam. These scholarly works would eventually give authority to his political arguments about Islam and Indian nationhood.

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• 3. Journalism and Rebellion

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  In 1908, Azad traveled to Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and France. He encountered followers of Kamal Mustafa Pasha, members of the Young Turk Movement, and Iranian revolutionaries. He returned with political views that most Muslim contemporaries considered radical. Against common Muslim opinion at the time, he had already opposed the partition of Bengal in 1905. Back in India, he was introduced to revolutionary networks by the Hindu activists Aurobindo Ghosh and Shyam Sundar Chakravarty. He worked secretly to organise meetings and activities across Bengal, Bihar, and Bombay.

  In 1912, Azad established Al-Hilal, a weekly Urdu newspaper published from Calcutta. Its targets were British policies and the political passivity of Indian Muslims. Espousing Indian nationalism and Hindu-Muslim unity, it aimed to encourage young Muslims toward the independence movement. When World War I began, the British tightened censorship. Al-Hilal was banned in 1914 under the Press Act. Azad launched a successor, Al-Balagh, which was also banned in 1916 under the Defence of India Regulations Act.

  After the banning of Al-Balagh, Azad was arrested. The governments of Bombay Presidency, the United Provinces, Punjab, and Delhi all prohibited his entry into their territories. He was moved to a jail in Ranchi, where he would remain for years. On his release, he would enter a political atmosphere transformed by massacre, new laws, and the rising figure of Mahatma Gandhi.

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• 4. Gandhi's Closest Muslim Ally

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  Azad walked free from Ranchi jail on the 1st of January 1920 into a country on the edge of open rebellion. The passage of the Rowlatt Acts in 1919 had severely restricted civil liberties. On the 13th of April 1919, British troops had killed unarmed civilians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. The massacre alienated even long-time British supporters across India. The Indian National Congress had come under Mahatma Gandhi, who had recently led successful revolts among the farmers of Champaran and Kheda. Gandhi's method, which he called Satyagraha, combined mass civil disobedience with complete non-violence and self-reliance.

  Azad joined the Ali brothers, Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, in welcoming Congress support for the Khilafat cause. Together they worked with Gandhi on a programme of non-cooperation. The programme called on Indians to boycott British-run schools, colleges, courts, public services, the civil service, police, and military. Azad was elected president of the All India Khilafat Committee. Although he and other leaders were soon arrested, the movement drew millions into peaceful processions, strikes, and protests.

  Along with Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari and Hakim Ajmal Khan, Azad grew personally close to Gandhi. The three men helped found the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, an institution of higher education run entirely by Indians without British support. Azad adopted the Prophet Muhammad's example of living simply and rejecting material possessions, and became deeply committed to ahimsa, or non-violence. He drew close to fellow nationalists Jawaharlal Nehru, Chittaranjan Das, and Subhas Chandra Bose.

  The movement suffered a severe blow in 1922 when a nationalist mob killed 22 policemen at Chauri Chaura. Gandhi suspended the revolt and undertook a five-day fast. Many Congress leaders grew disillusioned. Chittaranjan Das co-founded the Swaraj Party, breaking from Gandhi's leadership. The Ali brothers also grew distant from Gandhi by 1923. Azad, alone among the movement's major figures, stayed firmly committed. In 1923, at 35, he became the youngest person to serve as Congress president. He used his position to lead the Flag Satyagraha in Nagpur and to preside over a Unity Conference in Delhi in 1924.

  When Gandhi launched the Dandi Salt March in 1930, Azad organised and led the nationalist raid on the Dharasana salt works. The action was a non-violent protest against the salt tax and restrictions on its production.

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• 5. Ahmednagar and the Letters

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  Azad served as Congress president from 1940 to 1945, the longest of his presidential terms. As the Muslim League adopted its Lahore resolution calling for a separate Muslim state in 1940, Azad delivered his response at Ramgarh. He declared that eleven centuries had passed since Islam's arrival on Indian soil. Islam had, he said, as great a claim on that soil as Hinduism. He called on every Indian Muslim to reject separation and preserve a united India. He spoke of bonds of brotherhood and nationhood that no argument about separate nations could dissolve.

  On the 7th of August 1942, Congress president Azad stood at the Gowalia Tank in Mumbai. He delivered a speech inaugurating the Quit India rebellion. Just two days later, the British arrested him along with the entire Congress leadership. Gandhi was taken to the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. Azad and the Congress Working Committee were imprisoned at a fort in Ahmednagar. Outside news and communication were largely prohibited and completely censored.

  Inside Ahmednagar Fort, Azad kept his mind occupied. He played bridge, refereed tennis matches among his colleagues, and taught Persian and Urdu, as well as Indian and world history. Each year on the 26th of January, the leaders gathered to remember their cause and pray together. Azad, Nehru, and Patel would briefly speak about the nation and the future. In the early mornings, Azad began writing his Ghubar-e-Khatir.

  Ghubar-e-Khatir translates roughly as Sallies of Mind. It is a collection of 24 letters addressed to Azad's close friend Maulana Habibur Rahman Khan Sherwani. The letters were never actually sent; correspondence was forbidden during the imprisonment. After his release in 1946, Azad gave all the letters to his friend Ajmal Khan, who had them published that same year. The letters deal with questions of existence and philosophy. They address the origins of God, the origins of religion, and the place of music within religious life. More than five hundred couplets appear in the book, mostly in Persian and Arabic. Azad had never been formally taught Urdu; Arabic and Persian were the languages of his childhood home.

  India Wins Freedom, his account of the independence struggle and its leaders, was written in the final years of his life. About thirty pages of the book were held back from publication at his own request, appearing only in 1988, thirty years after his death.

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• 6. A United India, at Any Cost

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  In his sixth year as Congress president, Azad headed the Indian delegation to negotiate with the British Cabinet Mission. The mission put forward two proposals for India's future structure. Azad championed the earlier proposal, dated the 16th of May 1946, which envisaged a federal system with limited central government and strong provincial autonomy. He argued that this framework would address the concerns of India's Muslim communities without partition. He managed to win Jinnah's agreement to the proposal. When the Working Committee approved the resolution backing this plan, it did so against Gandhi's expressed scepticism.

  Jinnah had described Azad as the 'Muslim Lord Haw-Haw' and a 'Congress Showboy.' Muslim League politicians accused him of allowing Muslims to be politically and culturally dominated by the Hindu community. Azad met these charges with a direct declaration of identity. He stated: 'I am proud of being an Indian. I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without me this splendid structure is incomplete. I am an essential element, which has gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim.'

  When the British announced a plan to partition India on the 3rd of June 1947, the debate inside the Congress was fierce. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan spoke against it. Azad privately discussed the proposal with Gandhi, Patel, and Nehru. He could not deny the League's growing popularity or the impossibility of any functioning coalition with it. Faced with the prospect of civil war, he abstained from the All India Congress Committee vote. He remained silent throughout the session.

  After partition and independence on the 15th of August 1947, an estimated one million people died in violence concentrated in Punjab. Azad toured Bengal, Bihar, Assam, and Punjab to calm tensions and organise refugee relief. His dispute with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel over Delhi's Muslim community revealed the depth of the challenge. At its centre was the city's police commissioner, whom Muslims accused of overlooking attacks against their community. Patel argued the commissioner was not biased and that dismissing him would provoke anger among Hindus and Sikhs. Azad argued for reserving houses vacated by Muslims who had left for Pakistan for displaced Muslims inside India. Patel insisted a secular government could not offer preferential treatment to any religious community.

  Nehru called him Mir-i-Karawan, meaning the caravan leader. He described Azad as 'a very brave and gallant gentleman, a finished product of the culture that, in these days, pertains to few.' The work of embodying that culture in national institutions now fell to Azad.

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• 7. The Minister of Knowledge

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  From the 15th of August 1947 until his death on the 22nd of February 1958, Azad served as India's first Minister of Education. He placed special emphasis on educating the rural poor and girls. As Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education, he advanced adult literacy and free primary education for all children up to fourteen. He championed girls' education and pushed for the diversification of secondary and vocational training.

  On the 16th of January 1948, Azad addressed the All India Education conference. He told the audience: 'We must not for a moment forget, it is a birthright of every individual to receive at least the basic education without which he cannot fully discharge his duties as a citizen.' Under his ministry, the first Indian Institute of Technology was established in 1951. The University Grants Commission followed in 1953. He also oversaw the Central Institute of Education in Delhi, which later became the Department of Education of the University of Delhi. He laid emphasis on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and on the Faculty of Technology of Delhi University.

  In 1956, Azad presided over the UNESCO General Conference held in Delhi. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952 from the Rampur constituency. In 1957, he re-contested Rampur and also won the Gurgaon constituency in Punjab, taking both seats.

  The Maulana Azad Education Foundation was established by the Ministry of Minority Affairs in 1989, on the centenary of his birth. The government also provides the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad National Fellowship, which offers financial assistance to students from minority communities pursuing M.Phil. and PhD degrees. In 1992, the government posthumously awarded Azad the Bharat Ratna. Institutions bearing his name now span the country. They include Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi and Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad. The Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology stands in Bhopal. Gate No. 7 at Jamia Millia Islamia carries his name. On the 16th of November 2005, the Delhi High Court ordered the renovation of his tomb beside the Jama Masjid in New Delhi. His birthday, the 11th of November, is observed across India each year as National Education Day. Mahatma Gandhi once counted Azad 'a person of the calibre of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagorus.' It is a measure of that calibre that the institutions he founded remain the backbone of Indian higher education today.

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