Born in 1888 as Mohiuddin, he was a man
of many parts. A precocious student, home-schooled and self-taught, he
completed his religious curriculum at the age of 16. But his interpretation of
Islam was not conventional. He believed in independent thinking based on reason
and was critical of what he called “the shackles of conformity” and literal
interpretations of Islamic texts. At a very early age he began a remarkable
career in journalism. His writings and speeches in Urdu, unparalleled for their
eloquence and sophistication, earned him the sobriquet Abul Kalam (father of
speech), which became his adoptive name.
On February 22, 1958, Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru went on air to announce: “Aaj hamara Mir-e-Karavan chala
gaya (today we have lost the leader of our caravan).” He was referring to India’s
first Education Minister Maulana Azad who had just passed away. Azad was the
youngest and the longest serving President of the Congress during the freedom
struggle.
He found no contradiction between being
an Islamic scholar and an ardent Indian nationalist. He considered the fight
for an independent, united India a part of his religious creed. Azad declared,
“I [as a Muslim] 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.”
Beginning in 1912 with the publication
of his weekly Al-Hilal, Azad threw himself whole-heartedly into the
independence struggle. He joined the Congress in 1920, when Gandhi launched the
non-cooperation agitation in conjunction with the Khilafat movement, and became
its president in 1923. Particularly committed to building bridges between Hindus
and Muslims, he opposed separate electorates, which he attributed to the
British policy of divide and rule. He vigorously challenged the separatist
ideology of the Jinnah-led Muslim League, which he termed a “death knell” for
Indian Muslims, earning him the derogatory epithet “Congress’s Muslim show boy”
from Jinnah. During the Quit India movement, he was imprisoned from 1942 to
1945 with other senior leaders of the party. He led the Congress delegation to
the failed Shimla Conference, convened to break the impasse between the
Congress and the Muslim League.
Despite the Congress’s acceptance of
Partition in 1947, Azad’s opposition to it remained undiminished. He wrote 10
years after Partition in India Wins Freedom, “As a Muslim, I for one am
not prepared for a moment to give up my right to treat the whole of India as my
domain and share in the shaping of its political and economic life. To me it
seems a sure sign of cowardice to give up what is my patrimony and content
myself with a mere fragment of it.” No proponent of Akhand Bharat could have
said it better. It is unfortunate that Maulana Azad’s legacy, a superb antidote
to majoritarian chauvinism so rampant currently, is all but forgotten today.
Source:
Mohammed Ayoob a University Distinguished
Professor & Emeritus of International Relations, Michigan State University
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