Abul Kalam Azad

Today, if an angel descends from the sky and declares from the heights of Delhi’s Qutub Minar that India can get Swaraj in twenty-four hours provided she gives up the idea of Hindu-Muslim unity, I will forgo the Swaraj rather than the Hindu-Muslim unity, because if Swaraj is delayed, it will be a loss for India alone, but if this unity is lost, it will be a loss for the entire humanity …

—Abul Kalam Azad

In 1904, at the Lahore railway station, a group of Muslims was waiting to receive a very special guest. He was a ‘learned Islamic scholar’ from Calcutta who was going to address a gathering in the city. When the train arrived, a slim, fair teenager with just the beginnings of a beard alighted and shyly introduced himself as the guest speaker. As the men discovered that the great scholar was sixteen years old, they became quite nervous about the lecture he would deliver. To their surprise, Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin spoke so well that the audience was deeply impressed.

He was born in Mecca in 1888 to an Indian father and an Arab mother. His father Maulana Khairuddin was an eminent Islamic scholar who had settled in Mecca after the Uprising of 1857 but then returned to Calcutta when Abul Kalam was a boy. The son would also earn the title of ‘Maulana’ for his knowledge and writings on a variety of Islamic subjects.

In Calcutta, he was tutored at home and his education was a strictly traditional Islamic one that would make him an Islamic Ulema or teacher. He learnt Arabic, Persian and Urdu, mathematics, Unani medicine and calligraphy, and completed his studies years ahead of others his age. He was not allowed to study English, but the enterprising boy persuaded an acquaintance to teach him the English alphabet and then taught himself with the help of a dictionary. It was a very disciplined and rather lonely childhood where studies took precedence over games, and books not children were his companions. Later he studied at the famous Al Azhar University in Cairo, travelled to Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Turkey and was exposed to the nationalist movements there.

Even his cloistered existence could not keep Abul Kalam away from the events outside. This was the time just after the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the city was aflame with protests. He too was carried away by the mood of defiance and met leaders like Aurobindo Ghose, who was at that time advocating a revolution through his fiery speeches and writings. Inspired by newspapers like Bande Mataram and Jugantar that carried the message of the nationalists, he too started an Urdu weekly Al-Hilal in 1912 when he was just twenty-four years old. This was the time he began writing under the pen name ‘Azad’.

Al-Hilal became an instant success with twenty-six thousand copies being sold within a few months. People would wait for it to arrive and then sit in groups and listen as one man read out the paper. It created a wider awareness among the Muslims of the political events of the time and Azad wrote passionately in favour of the nationalist movement. He said that it was time for Muslims to stop showing a blind loyalty to the British Empire. The government retaliated with heavy fines and then forced Azad to leave Bengal. He was arrested and jailed for four years in Ranchi Jail in Bihar.

Mahatma Gandhi had heard of this new champion of freedom and was keen to meet Azad in jail, but the government refused permission. They finally met in 1920 at the Chandni Chowk residence of Hakim Ajmal Khan and Azad was deeply impressed by Gandhi’s strategy of Swadeshi, Satyagraha and ahimsa. He lived like a true Satyagrahi for the rest of his life, often visiting Sabarmati Ashram and regularly spinning cotton on his charkha. During Gandhi’s fast in 1947 when everyone feared for his life, it was Azad who managed to convince him to stop fasting. For Gandhi, he was the symbol of his dream of Hindu–Muslim unity, the true secular leader. As Azad recalled later, ‘We had differences also … but we never went different ways … with every passing day my faith in him became stronger and stronger.’

Maulana Azad was elected as the president of the Indian National Congress in 1923 at the age of thirty-five, the youngest president of the party. He became the president again in 1940 and continued till 1946. As one of the most trusted lieutenants of Gandhi, he was always in the inner core of the party with leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, C. Rajagopalachari and Vallabhbhai Patel. His second stint as president was an eventful one with the Quit India movement in 1942 when he proposed the resolution at the Bombay session. Then he headed the delegation from the Congress, with Nehru and Patel, to the Cripps Mission of 1942—when the British government tried to secure Indian support for their efforts in World War II—and the Cabinet Mission of 1946, which discussed and finalized plans for the transfer of power from the British Raj to Indian leadership.

After the historic resolution of 8 August 1942 that asked the British to leave India, the entire Congress Working Committee was arrested. Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu were taken away to the Aga Khan Palace in Poona while Nehru, Patel and Azad were imprisoned in the Ahmednagar Fort. From there Azad wrote to a friend, ‘Only nine months earlier … the gate of Naini Central Jail was opened before me … and yesterday the new gate of the old Ahmednagar Fort was closed behind me.’ A man of frail health, he would spend a total of ten years and five months in jail during his lifetime. This was a time of great personal loss for both Azad and Gandhi. Azad’s wife Zulaikha Begum passed away, while at the same time Kasturba Gandhi died in Poona.

During the last years of the freedom struggle the Indian Muslim League led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah first presented itself as the only representative of the Muslims and then demanded a separate homeland. Azad was completely against the two-nation idea of Jinnah and fought it with great passion and energy. Being a man who had dedicated his life to Hindu–Muslim amity, he was deeply angered by Jinnah’s declaration that the Indian Muslims were to be a separate nation. During his negotiations with the Cripps Mission, Azad insisted that a secular organization like the Congress was the only true representative of the nation. For this the Muslim members of the Congress like M.A. Ansari, Asaf Ali, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Ghaffar Khan and Azad had to face vicious personal attack from the Muslim League that tried to prove that they were traitors to their religion.

During meetings with the Cripps Mission, Azad led the delegation with Nehru, Patel and Ghaffar Khan, and vigorously opposed the formation of Pakistan. Jinnah insisted that if Pakistan was not conceded, then the country would face civil war. Azad, in contrast, was convinced that the communal violence that was sweeping across the country would abate once the country became independent. At one meeting Jinnah publicly insulted Azad by refusing to shake hands with him, but this open hostility did not stop Azad from continuing with his efforts. Like Gandhi, he was devastated by the partition of the country and the terrible carnage that raged afterwards. In his autobiography India Wins Freedom, while holding Jinnah responsible for the tragedy, he also mentions the mistakes made by the Congress.

After Independence he worked tirelessly, playing peacemaker during communal riots, and was devastated by Gandhi’s death. Azad was a member of Prime Minister Nehru’s first cabinet. He was India’s first Minister of Education, Culture & Fine Arts and laid much emphasis on scientific education. He also established cultural institutions like the Sahitya Akademi. Lalit Kala Akademi and the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Earlier, with M.A. Ansari and Ajmal Khan, he had also founded the Jamia Millia Islamia College in Delhi.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad died on 22 February 1958 and was buried opposite the Jama Masjid in Delhi. He left behind an inspiring legacy of Hindu—Muslim harmony and an overriding love for one’s country. A scholar who stepped out into the world of active politics, Azad’s formidable intellect enriched the freedom movement. As a linguist, writer and poet, he could have happily spent his life in the cocoon of books and learning, instead he chose the harder path of the struggle for freedom. He was a rationalist who was trusted for his organizing and negotiating skills, integrity and moderation. He believed that there was no innate difference or antagonism between Hindus and Muslims and faced much criticism for his secular views. He made many personal sacrifices for the cause of freedom because for him nothing was as important as being a patriotic Indian.