Luminous intellect of a sidelined genius

 Walking every morning  and evening across his Makbarah near Metro station  Jama Masjid Delhi  during my Delhi University days ,it  often crossed my mind that  how unjust & ungrateful we have been in conferring him honour he deserved.   

Now traversing across some introductory landscape of works written by and written on Moulana Azad ,I again  still more strongly  wonder how awfully we've  failed to grasp his tremendous role in socio-religious, political ,educational development and significance of  his universalist thought for united India.What accounts for this cold disregard ?
Well ,the origin of this as a  personal awakening, to a certain extent, may be  based on my own ignorance or possibly my late discovery of his genius to an appreciative extent  due to my upbringing in an environment where Azad is not even properly mentioned let alone kept in hall of fame.In fact , even objectively  ironically and ridiculously he is seen as a person responsible for problems of Indian Muslims, predominantly based on the idea that he strongly opposed two nation theory.Many of these muslims believe Azad was at grave fault ,when he thought of peaceful co-existence and communal harmony of Muslims and Hindus,citing the state of Indian muslims .That becomes the first strong push of  Muslim induced sidelining of Azad. 

As for other mainstream  Indian Muslims ,they haven't played their expected role to even recognize Moulana well,let alone robustly represent him .To get that symbolically,it would take a cursory exploration of the area around Jama Masjid Delhi , where Azad lies hidden as a virtual non-entity in a tiny niche.The quality of Urdu is visible in grammatically terrible shop board titles,an absolute dishonour to Azad's legacy in Urdu.This is not to say absolute sidelining has occurred but not he's definitely been not given his due even by Indian Muslims.This is second albeit a  modest push . This  perception of "faltered Azad ''  and half-hearted efforts of Indian Muslims are  possible reasons of  why he has been sidelined apart from the obvious; current regime's obsession with removal of Muslim names and contribution. This is fundamentally systematic & politically motivated huge drag of the Moulana to periphery  from several decades ,more recently instanced by removal of his name and role from NCERT texts.  

Finally ,his unorthodox, liberal views and some of his personal habits may  be some other  subsidiary reasons.If we view him from narrow religious sense, his  non conservative attitude sometimes  stung  religious orthodoxy deeply forcing it to not endorse him, yet more modest push to periphery. To be brief ,Azad has been sidelined by some Muslims themselves, communal politics and weakly represented by mainstream Indian Muslims  possibly in same order in proportion .Last but not the least ,beyond these narrow lenses millions of Indians see Azad just a muslim figure,relegating his entire contribution towards freedom and nation building to a truncated religious figure .Did millions of Indians forget about his contributions in education like UGC,several IITs ,IIMs ,Shanti Swarup Prize,Sahitya Academy ,Lalit Kala Academy ,Sangeet and Natak Academy ,his birthday being celebrated as National Education Day  on 11 November? Did they forget his sacrifice for India's freedom and fraternity ?

So ,is Azad's Muslim induced push to periphery on the pretext of his idea of United India justified ? 

We may have our own reasons of disagreements ,our own differing views on religiosity, partition or the reasons of partition (from Ayesha Jalal to Prof Ishtiaq Ahmad school) .However,holding his view on United India ,to digress a little ,I would personally say   partition was the mad spiral let lose ,opening a Pandora's box of problems and conflicts that haunt and would continue to haunt the subcontinent for the centuries to come .Vision of united India was  certainly the best idea as in all its predictions and repercussions partition unleashed -genocide, largest mass migration in human history, birth of two nations based on religious hatred ,unfolding fate like separation of West and East Pakistan, Kashmir , host of other problems of minorities around both the sides of border, frequent coups in Pakistan, constant unrest and over all instability in the subcontinent  .Interestingly, Azad's own predictions about Pakistan, repercussions of partition  have proven to be true,for instance his prediction on separation of Bangladesh back in late 1940s in  an interview with Shorish Kashmiri along many other anticipations are proving miraclously true! To quote Sarojini Naidu ,''Don't ask Moulana's age ,he was 50 the day he was born. He was fifty years ahead of his time ''

Still don't agree ?
 In any case , this discourse does nothing to his otherwise remarkable contribution & it is unjustified for his cold sidelining. It is irrelevant whether you agree with him or not on this view of United  India .It does not  hurt  acknowledging his role & knowing him beyond political & religious lenses .The bias of politics and religion must not overshadow his unparalleled role.As  a cautionary remark, this write up is not meant for  promoting Azad's hero worship which I seriously personally abhor and actively speak against,like everyone he had his own flaws and shortcomings ,no deifications !    
Who ,then, was Moulana Azad ?
Azad was Azad in real sense of the word ,he loved the idea of freedom so dearly and fought valorously for freedom of India .Opening his eyes in an extremely conservative family,his father didn't let him even meet strangers and outsiders to keep him away from moral pollution . However,that won't  stop him from his Azadi ,as he would later explore ,taste,believe,disbelieve ,challenge ,question everything that would come his way including his traditional beliefs and test them fearlessly,virtually come from lap of disbelief back to belief.It was during this phase he adopted this title ''Azad".  He strongly spoke against slavery of mind in his Gubar e Khatir(unburdening of soul)  and passionately supported free thinking .Some traditional, unreasonable & rigid  patterns of thought  ,according to the Moulana ,are antithetical to  full blown intellectual development of a person. If you don't think freely ,your mind will never rise to a higher rung of mental growth.      
Azad was Moulana  both of Delhi and subcontinent ,he was Imam ul Hind,Indian Ibn i Taymiyah , Abul Kalam ,the father of eloquence. .One rarely finds  a -politician,philosopher ,poet,polyglot , minister of education, culture and  research, journalist ,exegete of the Quran in a single person and you are forced to use ''polymath'' for him.Perhaps ,to pick a better word for him , man with a " luminous intellect '' -- as Nehru would  use later on his death in parliament-- seems more appropriate .

 

A lot has been written and said about  Moulana what ,however,personally particularly struck me is his '' luminous intellect "  .Let's try to explore that briefly;

 To start with history,,Mahatma Gandhi considered Azad as his teacher in history ,his sense of history is manifest in his writings ,his narratorly genius in his Shahadate Hussain is striking .

At the age of 15,he was a journalist starting Lisan u sidq in 1903 that later culminated in Al Hilal (1912) and Al Balagh which infused revolutionary spirit & fraternity in Indians . This proactively anti- imperialistic,seditious  and revolutionary journalism frightened the British invoking ban on al Hilal.

 Poetry he started very young ,languages he spoke several including Turkish,French ,quite like an indigenous speaker.Arabic was his mother tongue ,urdu his home,Persian his soul and he mastered English on his own. Azad strongly stressed learning literature,science and philosophy particularly.

SCIENTIFIC TEMPER
His scientific temper merits a special mention .Even as a boy of barely 14 or so  Moulana wrote to an old magazine editor to include more science articles in his journal instead of unremarkable novels .That was boy Moulana's mind which later culminated into a brilliant science thinker  reaching  the roots of scientific ideas of Einstein and Darwin  .Unlike traditional clergy he didn't hesitate to accept Darwinism for which he's  still strongly criticized by orthodox clergy.In his prose masterpiece Gubar he  dwells in some detailed aspects of evolution and more or less agrees with Darwin ,although invoking God.That's to say in today's terms he accepted theistic evolution .Mind you,this is still considered as heretical in major Muslim scholarly circles let alone during his times .

It is not simply with  brief superficial treatment that Moulana deals evolution with,he asks difficult questions on it,including "evolution of intellect ''.His  finer details obviously may or may not be like a scientist but his scientific curiosity and over all perspective , that too in his times and  personal context are beyond stunning .Thus ,debate on how his finer details are on scientific arguments is irrelevant to me personally.What I stress is  his open minded spirit of scientific inquiry which fascinates me as a science student.It is hard to find such an elaborate  level of scientific temper in any of his  religious contemporaries .That is not it ,Moulana had studiously studied medicine and Hakim Ajmal Khan bears testimony to his depth in medicine at a conference where top doctors spoke and Azad didn't leave them  unsurprised even in medical knowledge. Not to mention chemistry, mathematics ,he talks questions of quantum !

To conclude , exploring any facet of Azad's life is not without overwhelming fascination;  be it his prison or podium ,religion or scientific temper   , personal life  or public life ,his pen or sword  all stir us profoundly .Above all ,particularly his genius ,dazzlingly brilliant and ''luminous intellect" shines as sun over his  attributes.Moulana deserves to be viewed from various dimensions not just few narrow and shallow streams of thought.Change the lenses and see his hues ! It goes without saying that he deserves more  space than we gave him in popular perception of Indian consciousness . 

Syed Faisal