About the Work
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: A Memorial Volume is a collection of tributes, essays, and reminiscences brought together in memory of one of twentieth-century India’s most distinctive public figures. Edited by Humayun Kabir and published by Asia Publishing House—with offices in Bombay, Calcutta, New Delhi, and Madras—on behalf of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in New Delhi, the volume appeared in 1959, a little over a year after Azad’s death. It was printed at The Times of India Press in Bombay, and its front matter carries a portrait drawn by M. A. Ahmad. The book’s occasion is inseparable from its form: a committee had been formed in late 1957, with figures such as Radhakrishnan, Nehru, Rajagopalachari, Zakir Husain, Govind Ballabh Pant, B. C. Roy, J. B. Kripalani, U. N. Dhebar, and Humayun Kabir himself, to present Azad with a Birthday Volume on his seventieth birthday, 11 November 1958. Azad died on 22 February 1958, and the committee accordingly published a memorial volume on the first anniversary of his death. Royalties from the book were directed to the Indian Council for Cultural Relations to fund two prizes—one for an essay on Hinduism by a Muslim citizen of India or Pakistan, the other on Islam by a non-Muslim citizen of those countries, both confined to writers aged thirty or under. The Preface is dated New Delhi, 12 January 1959.
“Maulana Azad was essentially a scholar who had been dragged into politics by the force of circu: stances.”
The volume gathers twenty-two contributors, a list that itself says much about the reach of Azad’s life. It includes Jawaharlal Nehru, then Prime Minister, and S. Radhakrishnan, then Vice-President; Shaikh Ahmad Al-Bakouri, Minister of the United Arab Republic; Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India during the Cabinet Mission; the French Orientalist Louis Massignon; and a range of Indian political, scholarly, and literary figures—J. B. Kripalani, Syed Mahmud, P. Subbaroyan, Rafiuddin Ahmed, Humayun Kabir, M. Mujeeb, Syed Abdul Latif, Mohammed Habib, J. C. Ghosh, Malcolm MacDonald, Horace Alexander, Asaf A. A. Fyzee, C. Rajagopalachari, M. C. Chagla, A. R. Wadia, and Tara Chand, among others. Saeed Naficy represents Iran. The result is not a single continuous biography but a composite portrait: parliamentary speeches, personal memoirs, editorial essays, and tributes from abroad, arranged so that the same man is seen from many angles and in many registers. The editor notes that he kept the spelling of proper nouns uniform except where contributors strongly preferred their own forms. Azad’s dates are given simply: born at Mecca on 11 November 1888, died at New Delhi on 22 February 1958.
Context
The book belongs to a particular moment in Indian public life—the first years after Independence and Partition, when the generation that had won freedom was beginning to reckon with what it had lost and what it had built. Azad’s death in February 1958 came less than eleven years after the transfer of power, and the tributes gathered here are written by people who had been actors in those events. Nehru’s speech in Parliament on 24 February 1958 sets the tone: he calls the death sudden and the sorrow deep, and insists that the familiar claim that a prominent person is irreplaceable was literally true of Azad. Nehru places him among the great synthesizing minds of history—like the men of the Renaissance or the Encyclopaedists—and stresses that he represented India’s composite culture, especially as it had flourished in Delhi, Bengal, and Calcutta, a synthesis that drew on Iranian, Persian, and Arabic influences as well as Indian ones. Nehru also corrects a widespread error, one he admits he had himself made, that Azad had studied at Al Azhar University; in fact Azad never did, visiting Cairo only as a visitor, studying chiefly in Calcutta in Arabic and other schools, and spending years in Arabia, where he was born, as well as visiting Egypt and other countries of Western Asia.
The volume’s context is also the context of the freedom struggle itself. Azad was elected Congress President at thirty-five, and later guided the Congress through six momentous years, negotiating with Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Wavell, and the British Cabinet Mission in the period that led to Independence in 1947. Radhakrishnan notes that before joining the Congress in 1920 Azad had been a revolutionary, and that he became Congress President in 1923, holding the position on different crucial occasions. The book thus sits at the intersection of several histories: the history of Indian nationalism, the history of Muslim political thought in modern India, the history of Islamic reform and Quranic interpretation, and the history of education and cultural diplomacy in the new republic. Its contributors write from within these histories, not from outside them, and the volume’s value lies partly in that immediacy—these are not later assessments but responses from contemporaries, some of whom had known Azad for fifty years.
Structure of the Book
The volume opens with its front matter—library stamps, title page, contributor list, and Humayun Kabir’s Preface—which establishes the occasion and the aims of the collection. The Preface explains the shift from birthday volume to memorial volume and sketches Azad’s career: his early eminence as writer and theologian, his spirit of free enquiry that led him into politics because man cannot fully develop except in freedom, his election as Congress President at thirty-five, his six years guiding the Congress, and his essential character as a scholar dragged into politics who shunned publicity and preferred his study. The Preface also notes that Azad’s shyness endeared him to the people, as the public grief at his death proved.
From there the volume moves into the tributes proper. Nehru’s parliamentary speech and Radhakrishnan’s tribute stand near the beginning, setting the public and official frame. Then come the personal and editorial essays: Shaikh Ahmad Al-Bakouri’s reflection on Azad’s humanism and his principle of compassion in personal relations and justice in public affairs; the piece titled “Among the Immortals,” which meditates on fate, truth, and the writer’s brief meeting with Azad in Delhi in April 1955, on the way to the Bandung Conference; and the account of Azad’s courtroom statement, in which he effectively sought to prove his own guilt rather than accept the prosecution’s failure to do so. That courtroom section is followed by reflections on Azad’s understanding of Islam, science, and education, including his Inaugural Address at the first conference of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
J. B. Kripalani’s memoir, dated Paris, 31 March 1958, forms a substantial section, recalling his first meeting with Azad in Baghdad in 1907–1908, their shared teacher Hajj Ali Alussy, and their last meeting in Paris on 14 July 1955. Syed Mahmud’s “The Voice of Reason” follows, opening with his acquaintance with Azad from 1913 through the columns of Al-Hilal. Then comes “A Resplendent Personality,” which describes first seeing Azad in 1906 as a youth of about eighteen, and traces his career through Al-Hilal, the Aligarh university controversy, his internment at Ranchi, and his meeting with Gandhi in 1920. P. Subbaroyan’s “As I Knew Him” and Rafiuddin Ahmed’s “A Great Indian” continue the personal recollections, covering Azad’s refusal to retaliate against Jinnah, his versatility, his firmness of resolve, and his insistence that Hindu-Muslim unity mattered more than immediate freedom. A former Honorary Secretary of the Bengal Presidency Muslim League (1928–1936) contributes a political reflection on the two-nations theory and the fate of nationalist Muslims. Saeed Naficy’s tribute from Iran describes his meetings with Azad in 1949–1950 and 1957. Humayun Kabir’s “A Personal Testament” begins near the end, recalling his first meeting with Azad in 1936 and offering an assessment of Azad’s intellectual and political qualities. The volume closes with the account of the Eastern Higher Technological Institute at Hijli, Kharagpur, in summer 1950—a concrete instance of Azad’s work as Education Minister, and a reminder that the memorial volume is not only about the past but about the institutions he helped to build.
Inside the Book
A Memorial Volume and Its Contributors
The book opens with the ordinary apparatus of a library copy—accession stamps from Maharaja Bir Bikram College Library, a fourteen-day return rule—before reaching the title page of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: A Memorial Volume, edited by Humayun Kabir and published in 1959 by Asia Publishing House for the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. A portrait drawn by M. A. Ahmad on 11 June fronts a list of twenty-two contributors, among them Prime Minister Nehru, Vice-President Radhakrishnan, the Egyptian minister Shaikh Ahmad Al-Bakouri, Lord Pethick-Lawrence of the Cabinet Mission, the French Orientalist Louis Massignon, and Indian figures from Kripalani and Rajagopalachari to Chagla and Tara Chand.
Kabir’s Preface explains the volume’s origin. Azad had won eminence as writer and theologian in early youth, and his spirit of free enquiry drew him into politics because, as Kabir puts it, a man cannot fully develop except in freedom. From his early twenties he fought for Indian freedom, was elected Congress President at thirty-five, and then guided the Congress through six momentous years of negotiation with Cripps, Wavell and the Cabinet Mission to Independence. Essentially a scholar dragged into politics, he shunned publicity and preferred his study; his shyness endeared him to the people, as the public grief at his death proved. Because of that dislike of publicity his friends hesitated to plan a celebration of his seventieth birthday on 11 November 1958, but he was persuaded, and in November 1957 a committee was formed including Radhakrishnan, Nehru, Rajagopalachari, Zakir Husain, Pant, B. C. Roy, Kripalani, Dhebar and Kabir. They decided on a Birthday Volume; Azad died on 22 February 1958, so the committee published a Memorial Volume on the first anniversary of his death. Royalties fund two prizes through the Indian Council for Cultural Relations—an essay on Hinduism by a Muslim citizen of India or Pakistan, and one on Islam by a non-Muslim of those countries, both confined to persons of thirty or below. The Preface is dated New Delhi, 12 January 1959. A note records Azad’s dates: born at Mecca on 11 November 1888, died at New Delhi on 22 February 1958.
Nehru and Radhakrishnan in Parliament
Nehru’s speech in Parliament on 24 February 1958 calls the death sudden and deeply sorrowful. The claim that a prominent person is irreplaceable, he says, is literally true of Azad: that peculiar greatness is unlikely to be reproduced. Azad combined deep learning, scholarship, oratory and writing with the greatness of past and present—like the Renaissance men or the Encyclopaedists—and possessed a graciousness, courtesy, tolerance and patience now sadly lacking. In his early teens he was filled with passion for freeing India and turned toward violent revolution, soon realizing that was not the way. He represented India’s composite culture, especially in Delhi, Bengal and Calcutta, a synthesis including Iranian, Persian and Arabic influences. Nehru corrects a widespread error, one he himself had made, that Azad studied at Al Azhar: he never did; he visited Cairo as a visitor but studied chiefly in Calcutta, and spent years in Arabia, where he was born, visiting Egypt and other Western Asian countries. Nehru mourns a luminous intelligence and mighty intellect, and urges dedicating ourselves to what Azad stood for.
Radhakrishnan calls Azad an outstanding figure of courage, fearlessness, integrity and passionate love of freedom—unique in political life for nearly two generations. Before joining the Congress in 1920 he was a revolutionary. Recognized early, he became Congress President in 1923 and held the position on different crucial occasions. He suffered for his convictions but never shrank from expressing views for fear of losing popularity; a leader, Radhakrishnan notes, must risk unpopularity. He noticed the defects causing subjection and struggled to remove them, standing against national dissensions. A devout Muslim whose work on the Quran became a classic, he stood for national unity and communal harmony, making no difference between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian. National spirit drove his life, and Indian unity must be nourished amid linguistic and regional dissensions, which should enrich rather than divide it.
Compassion in Private, Justice in Public
The next tribute describes the Maulana’s character: his humanism was well known, yet he held a clear vision of right and wrong in public affairs. He let compassion sway his personal relations but never deviated from justice in public matters. He might forgive a personal insult, but anyone doing a national disservice had to be dealt with adequately. His principle was compassion in personal relations and justice in public affairs; neglecting probity in administration would undermine the stability of government and the social structure. Too fond of the right to prefer the wrong or the expedient, he fought whenever questions of administrative integrity arose to preserve high standards in public administration—a lesson to remember.
Once freedom was won, he felt it must be used to promote social welfare, cleanse the country of sickness, squalor and illiteracy, and cleanse minds of superstition, obscurantism and fanaticism. He stood for the emancipated mind, free from narrow prejudices of race or language, province or dialect, religion or caste; in him was the civilized mind. The speaker recalls that whenever he visited him, the Maulana was full of quotations from Arabic and Persian, his command of these languages said to be unsurpassed, and his Urdu speeches firm in structure, dignified and polished in diction, cogent and pointed in purpose. The text urges remembrance that he worked for national unity, probity in administration and economic progress, and that the only way to honour his memory is to adopt these ideals and daily question whether our acts promote them.
Books were his constant companions. He wrote an introduction to History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western, beginning with a Persian couplet comparing the universe to an old manuscript whose first and last pages are lost, so it cannot be said how the book began or how it will end. A Sanskrit verse follows, and the passage states that finding the meaning of life and existence is the purpose of the philosophical quest; we may not succeed, but the pursuit is its own reward. He ends with another Persian couplet saying those who follow this path never tire because it is both the way and the destination. His life illustrates this: it was both the search and the attainment. The passage concludes that we will not see his like again—a great man of stately presence, indomitable courage and fearless behaviour—signed H. E. Shaikh Ahmad Al-Bakouri.
Among the Immortals
The section “Among the Immortals” opens with the line “A real man and few are such men.” This talk was scheduled for a reception honouring Azad on his seventieth birthday, in appreciation of his contributions to the Indian nation and humanity in politics, culture and national liberation. But while the sponsors fixed a date, Fate fixed its own; Fate was quicker, and the Maulana answered his Creator’s call in the calm manner that characterized his life. It is doubtful whether speakers could have expressed their admiration had he lived, given his innate dislike of praise—nothing was more disturbing or painful to him than being praised, even justly. He was above the level of greatness, never caring for words of praise despite awareness of his God-given qualities.
A Resplendent Personality
The reminiscence opens with a Persian couplet — “The taste of me may be insipid; but my worth is great; I am a fruit grown before the season” — offered as the key to Azad’s mind. He always stood apart, the author argues, a personality whose worth could not be measured by common standards, lending dignity to every role he took: scholar, man of letters, thinker, politician, leader, and fighter for liberty and justice.
The author first noticed him in 1906, already known as a master of Islamic lore and the originator of a new Urdu style, through essays in his own journal Lisan-as-Sidq (“The Tongue of Truth”) and in the Amritsar Vakil. Then seventeen, the author dared not approach him directly and sought an interview at Lucknow through the elderly scholar Allama Abdullah Imadi. Expecting a venerable figure, he was taken aback to meet a youth of about his own age — actually eighteen — thin, rosy-cheeked, with starlit eyes, tastefully dressed, cool and collected, and a gifted conversationalist, looking like a prince from fairyland rather than a Maulana. Elderly men such as Maulana Hali, Dr. Sir Mohd. Iqbal and Sir Abdul Qader expressed equal surprise on first seeing him at an annual meeting of the Anjuman-e-Islamia, Lahore, where he was to address “Rationalism in Islam.” The organizers assumed the editor of Lisan-as-Sidq had sent his son to read the paper, and were amazed to learn that he himself was Abul Kalam.
A second meeting came in 1908 at Aligarh, when Azad visited the author’s room at the M. A. O. College. After the author returned from England in 1912, Azad, as editor of Al-Hilal, had become a name to conjure with, heading a powerful political awakening at twenty-four. The passage gives his background: a scholarly Delhi family, birth at Mecca while his father was in exile there, and a traditional Islamic education at the madrasas of Calcutta after the family’s return to India. He travelled in West Asia as a youth; at Cairo he imbibed the reformatory spirit launched by Syed Jamaluddin Afghani and Shaykh Muhammad Abduh. Afghani led a Pan-Islamic movement to emancipate West Asian countries from imperialistic hold, particularly Britain’s, and their influence stimulated young Abul Kalam to inaugurate a like movement in his own country.
From its inception, Al-Hilal opposed the retention of British power in India — difficult for any journal, especially one started by a member of a minority community denied governmental favours since the Indian Revolution of 1857. Divide-and-rule had reached its climax, and Moslems had developed a mood to placate the British and receive favours. Azad felt otherwise, realizing that mighty energies could be released in moments of depression, and sounded his trumpet call: about the time when the desire to live becomes a sin, when ropes hang from trees and wooden planks await the sons of Adam, ushering in another day when seed sown by executions bears fruit. He wrote of seeking first men, not tasks, since tasks never lacked but men did; the age was one of wars and enemies, and patriots and fighters were lacking. The call was heard throughout the country; the Balkan war, with its tragic consequences for Moslems abroad, roused Al-Hilal‘s readers to a frenzied state to pull down British imperialism, and the author was caught by the wave of emotion.
The author next met Azad at Lucknow at a meeting of the Foundation Committee appointed by the Moslem Educational Conference at Aligarh to set up a Moslem university there, when Al-Hilal‘s reputation was highest and Azad was seen as the soldier of freedom par excellence. The meeting was held at the Baradari of Qaisar Bagh. On his entry, cries arose that he should address them; those supporting acceptance of Government terms were uncomfortable, but the cry was incessant. When he spoke, feeling against the motion grew so intense that it was resolved to reject the terms offered. The speech signified an emphatic divergence from the Aligarh attitude in politics; Azad held that Moslems should abandon their profession of loyalty to the British Government and boldly favour freedom from age-long domination.
Al-Hilal could not be tolerated by the British authorities; the story of its suspension, the starting and suspension of Al-Balagh, and Azad’s prolonged internment at Ranchi are noted. After leaving Ranchi in 1920, he took to intensely active political life. In Al-Hilal he had advanced that the solution to the Moslem problem in India lay in hearty political co-operation with Hindu brethren; after Ranchi this became an obsession. Mahatma Gandhi then entered the political arena; Azad first met him that year at Delhi, at an assemblage of Hindu and Moslem leaders considering a joint deputation to the Viceroy. Azad opposed the move and recommended absolute non-co-operation with the British Government, so appreciated by Gandhi that a lasting friendship was forged. From 1920 until Gandhi’s tragic death in 1948, the two marched hand in hand to victory.
As I Knew Him
P. Subbaroyan’s account records that Azad never retaliated against Jinnah’s well-known behaviour toward him. At a great meeting in Lucknow after partition, even Moslems who had derided him before partition attended, expecting him to condemn Jinnah. Instead his first words were that he had not come to condemn anyone; what was not to have happened had happened, and they must now think of the future. The audience was deeply impressed, seeing him as morally great. He never spoke a harsh word about Jinnah, saying instead that one should not expose the scar on one’s own heart, blaming only himself for being too incompetent to keep India’s Moslems from “deliberate suicide.”
His versatility impressed the author: a scholarly interest in literature, philosophy, religion, politics and science, East or West, and a prodigious memory for poetry and forgotten events. He was a hard worker who threw himself into entrusted tasks, sometimes overworking, and read new publications in his leisure. Through self-study he acquired remarkable English proficiency, keeping in touch with the latest thought in science, literature, philosophy and politics. He reluctantly gave interviews, which people misattributed to lack of courtesy; in fact he disliked idle talk, but readily gave interviews when good might result for anyone or the country. He quickly grasped the marrow of things, sifting dross from gold. In large deliberations with confused thought, he concentrated on essentials and found agreeable ways out, never losing his head amid tumult. This led venerable heads like Shaik-ul-Hind of Deoband and Maulana Abdul Bari of Farangimahal to have him preside over Khilafat conferences while in his twenties, and at thirty-five grey-headed politicians and literary geniuses like Pandit Motilal Nehru, C. R. Das, Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammad Ali and Dr. Ansari called on him to be President of the Indian National Congress.
His supreme distinguishing quality was firmness of resolve: he decided after cool deliberation and adhered tenaciously, which Maulana Mohammad Ali called “stubbornness.”
Birth in Mecca and the Break with Tradition
Shaikh Mohammad Khairuddin Sahib had migrated to Mecca, and there, in November 1888, in the Darus Salam quarter of the Holy City, his son was born. The father was both an eminent scholar and a mystic with a considerable following in India, but he was conservative to the core and hated every non-traditional reading of Islam, which he dismissed as Wahabism. The boy was educated under his stern control. When he was about ten, his father was invited back to India by his many disciples and settled mostly at Calcutta. Even before his father’s death in 1909, the young Maulana had already burst through the medieval shell of his upbringing, coming under the influence of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s writings. That phase did not last: Sir Syed had ruthlessly attacked the ulema for their medieval thought-categories and ways of life, and with this the Maulana agreed—but loyalty to the British power was integral to Sir Syed’s teachings and the Aligarh Movement, and the Maulana’s revolt against political subservience was inevitable. There followed, by his own account, a phase of unbelief, a term the author finds perhaps too positive, though he grants that the Maulana passed through an acute, short-lived tension in which his old ideas were shaken and he adopted the progressive attitude that distinguished him thereafter.
Al-Hilal and the Years of Expulsion
In 1912, already experienced in journalism, the Maulana started his Urdu weekly Al-Hilal with three definite aims; it reached a circulation of 25,000. He challenged the traditional interpretation of Islam and Sir Syed’s doctrine of political subservience, and attempted his own ijtihad, later elaborated in his commentary, the Tarjuman-al-Quran. He was prepared for sacrifice, writing in Al-Hilal in 1913 that there are contingencies when the individual’s will to live becomes a positive sin, and that during these the seed of self-sacrifice bears the fruit of eternal life; also that “it is due to the indolence of individuals that the souls of nations sleep.” When Al-Hilal’s guarantee was confiscated he started Al-Balagh, but the Bengal Government expelled him in 1916; all governments except Bombay and Bihar refused him admission; he settled at Ranchi, where he was soon interned by government order. To this period belong the Tadhkirah and the first text of the Tarjuman-al-Quran.
Answering the Orthodox
The orthodox attacked him on two counts. First, as a ghair-muqallid who challenged accepted Islamic thought twisted to justify Indo-Moslem customs—a charge he admitted, saying he always hated taqlid, sought his own path, and owed guidance to no man, family, or syllabus but only to the Divine Throne; traditional beliefs, he held, are the greatest obstacles to the human mind, preserved as jewels though they are chains. Second, that despite being a Musalman he believed in “the truth of all creeds”—correct, but often said with malice. The Quran says God does not punish a people till He has sent them a prophet; God’s basic attribute is Rabubiyat, interpreted as creation plus preservation plus promotion plus guidance. The Maulana was angry with theologians for interpreting the Quran according to Greek philosophy and science, claiming it should be understood as the Prophet and Companions understood it, as heirs of all preceding prophets.
Writing in Al-Hilal, he distinguished religion from its followers, blaming two-thirds of disappointments on confusing them; the Quran chose a third path declaring all religions correct but their followers deviated, yielding “unity in Truth.” To another correspondent he explained that after the first Islamic generation, Moslem thought followed Quranic and un-Quranic paths—the latter based on commentators’ thoughts, resulting from Greek thought and contact with Iranian, Byzantine, and Indian civilizations. Quranic teachings rest on nature and simplicity; learning and arts rest on man’s inventiveness. Devotion to inventiveness increased while natural understanding decreased. Canons of sciences cannot be absolutely true; religion cannot rest on changing foundations. He lamented that commentators were lost in Aristotle’s Logic and Greek learning. Elsewhere he said the greatest cause of conflict is the unity of truth amid varieties of names—one calls it shahd, another asl, yet none tells them they mean the same. If external forms were removed, religious differences would vanish. He distinguished hereditary, geographical, census-based, and custom-based religion, leaving “the true religion” whose way is lost; conflict is due not to religion but to followers’ evil deeds and worship of forms. On religion and science: philosophy opens doubt but cannot close it; science gives proofs but not faith; religion gives faith but not proofs; we need both demonstrated truths and faith.
He took two definite positions: the Quran must be understood naturally as the Prophet and Companions understood it, and medieval-category commentaries must be discarded. In the Introduction to the Tarjuman-al-Quran, planned at Ranchi and published in 1931, he affirms the Quran is independent of artificial canons, having a natural method; the first hearers, their minds unframed by artificial civilization, understood it as intended. Preference should go to those who learnt the book from its revealer; the Quran was revealed gradually over twenty-three years, and the Companions heard, recited, and inquired of the Prophet.
The Closing of Ijtihad
Every generation’s basic thought inevitably shapes all its knowledge, including Quranic commentaries. Islam can take pride that its righteous scholars never yielded to political pressure and never let it affect the faith. But the influence of an age operates through many avenues beyond politics, exercising psychological influence on the human soul; while articles of faith and religious acts could be protected, the human mind could not be prevented from being permeated by contemporary thoughts, and was not protected. During the fourth century of the Hijri era, the period of ijtihad ended in Moslem learning; thereafter scholars rarely left the beaten path of taqlid. This disease permeated Quranic commentaries: anyone wishing to write one first selected a leader to follow and then walked blindly behind him. A mistake made by a third-century commentator was repeated by all till the ninth century. Quranic scholars became so spineless that they could think of nothing beyond marginal notes on current commentaries—notes on the Baizawi and Jaldain merely white-washing an old building. In current commentaries, opinions of various commentators are quoted, but preference is always given to the weakest and most inappropriate, while the best, though quoted, are discarded. The author judges this severe but substantially correct, adding that Moslem religious thought became more or less stationary after a great twist was given to it. Alberuni, writing in the time of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, made a similar declaration about Moslem science, saying further progress was impossible.
The causes lie in the closing of the door of ijtihad. At the death of the Omayyad Caliph Walid bin Abdul Malik in 714 A.D., Islam had expanded to Spain on one side and the frontiers of China on the other. A unified system of administration was economically and materially a gain to the governed, and this is the primary reason for the succession of mammoth Empires—Omayyad, Abbaside, Ghaznavide, Seljuq, Khwarazmian, Mongol, Taimurid—till about the sixteenth century, when national movements appeared in both Europe and Asia.
The Making of a Scholar and the Birth of Al-Hilal
To judge Maulana Azad’s contribution to Islamic learning, the book insists, one must look at how his mind was formed in infancy and boyhood, since attitudes fixed early clung to him for life; later reading widened his canvas but did not alter its essentials. Born in Mecca to a mother from a renowned Arab scholarly family and a father of equally learned pedigree, he was saturated with Islamic lore under his maternal grandfather and father, and before the age of ten had peeped into almost every notable book on Islam’s religion and law. The madrasas of Calcutta added little he had not already gathered informally at Mecca, and the unregulated acquisition of so much knowledge so quickly bred confusion and doubt.
One conviction emerged: the Quranic word had never been allowed by vested interests to speak for itself, and unless it was rescued from medieval bondage and allowed to function as in the Prophet’s time, Moslems could not march abreast of the times. A chance to travel in West Asia came during his Calcutta studies; in Cairo he encountered the heyday of Al Azhar, where the influence of Syed Jamaluddin Afghani and Shaykh Muhammad Abduh had spread in favour of liberal Islam and emancipation from European domination. Returning to India, his single idea was to release Moslem religious thought from age-long obscurantism and to fight British imperialism—a resolve intensified by Italian aggression in Tripoli and the Balkan war, which roused Indian Moslems to send financial and medical aid to suffering brethren.
Thus the Pan-Islamic tendency formed in Cairo became a direct struggle against British rule, and in 1912 he started Al-Hilal, an Urdu weekly from Calcutta, whose scholarly style and boldness caught the public imagination and alarmed the Government. Its two objectives were fighting obscurantism among Indian Moslems and fighting British imperialism. Aligarh was then a leading centre of Moslem influence; the religious side of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s movement appealed to him, but its political aim seemed inconsistent—liberty in religious thought did not go with subjection in politics. By 1912 the Aligarh ideal had taken form in the All-India Muslim League, whose primary function was seeking favours from the British, opposed to the Congress’s method of demanding rights. The young Maulana held both approaches wrong: favours or rights alike perpetuated British rule, and reforming Islamic life required liberating the land. This notion seized him in 1912, years before Gandhi appeared. When the First World War broke out and Turkey aligned against Britain, Al-Hilal rose to its highest stature, giving Moslems new consciousness through fresh exposition of religion and preparing them to join revolutionary freedom forces, inspiring the Congress even as it faced endless vexations.
The Tarjuman-al-Quran: A Plan and Its Ruin
His Islamic thought covered doctrinal, philosophic and legal problems, and because his articles were stray and unrelated to any plan, pressure grew to undertake an exposition of the entire Quran. He planned three works: an explanatory translation, Tarjuman-al-Quran, letting the Quran speak for itself to the average reader; Tafsir-al-Bayan for students wanting detail; and Muqaddama-i-Tafsir on the Quran’s purposes for advanced students. Events in his public life prevented separate issue, and what was attempted under the three heads appeared in 1930 as Tarjuman-al-Quran. The publication history is called the most serious chapter of his life, dovetailing into his most vexatious political phase and spanning nearly fifteen years.
In 1916 he announced in Al-Balagh his plan to publish the translation and commentary, never dreaming it would lie in abeyance so long. On 3 March 1916 the Government of Bengal ordered his immediate externment from Bengal under the Defence of India Ordinance, leaving no time to arrange the continuation of Al-Balagh or the projected volumes. With entry into Delhi, Punjab, the United Provinces and Madras already banned, he chose Ranchi in Bihar, conveniently distant from Calcutta for publishing. By the announcement five parts were translated, commentary covered up to Al-Imran, and the introduction existed in notes; he hoped to finish the translation within a year.
The Bitterest Cup
The manuscript papers seized by Investigation Officers had been of different sizes and bundled separately; when returned, complete and incomplete manuscripts alike were a jumbled mass of mere rags. He calls the trial agonizing, the bitterest cup Fate ever held to his lips, drunk without demur though its bitterness lingered. Political turmoil and literary calm cannot coexist, he reflects—conciliation between fire and flakes of cotton is impossible—and he knew the result, so has no right to complain. What irritated him was that a thing already written twice must be written a third time, for an author the most arduous ordeal; producing hundreds of new pages is easy, but re-writing even a single lost page is most distressing. Reading Carlyle’s story of rewriting his French Revolution, he had failed to see why it was extraordinary; after going through the same mill, he realized Carlyle’s effort was amazing.
For several years he could not begin again, opening the bundles of his ruins only to lay the task aside after a couple of pages. Yet he could not turn away from the deepest need of the Moslem mind, and the delay grew embarrassing. As 1927 closed, a rumbling arose in his long-benumbed spirit and the door to literary activity seemed to burst open; at first there were intermittent jerks, but the path grew smooth and his pace of writing was never so rapid. Feeling the commentary on the Surat-ul-Fatiha was of primary importance, he gave it prior attention, and despite failing health and political distempers he persisted, finishing the work on 20 July 1930 in the District Jail of Meerut.
The Lost Third Volume
A second volume followed, carrying translation and commentary to the end of the eighteenth part, both revised in the Ahmednagar Fort Jail and republished in 1945. The third and last volume could not be issued in the Maulana’s lifetime—not because the matter was unwritten, but because his official preoccupations as Education Minister left no time to prepare it for press. His private secretary, Prof. M. Ajmal Khan, nearly despaired and asked the editor to intercede; the editor suggested the work be handed to him for preparation in collaboration with the secretary. Maulana agreed, but two days later said the manuscript was not to be found at 4, King Edward Road, New Delhi; he feared it lay in a trunk brought from the Ahmednagar Fort Jail, the trunks being in Calcutta. The sad event of 22 February 1958 decreed that further search would not be made by Maulana himself; the task falls to others, and to learned bodies like the Sahitya Akademi, to seek out the manuscript on the clue afforded.
The editor regrets that Maulana’s Quranic studies remained out of reach of educated classes not conversant with Urdu; had simultaneous translation been attempted from the days of Al-Hilal’s first appearance into English, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and leading Indian languages, a renaissance might have set in in the body of Islam. Of all his writings, Maulana attached greatest importance to his commentary on the Opening Chapter, surveying the entire Quran to expatiate its basic concepts as epitomized in seven brief lines. Some three years earlier the idea arose that the work needed English translation; he asked Dr. Syed Mahmud to sound the editor about undertaking it.
The Reinterpretation of Islam
The argument that runs through this stretch of the book opens with a definition of orthodoxy borrowed from Abu Hanifa—action in conformity with the principles laid down by the authoritative legists—and the author’s blunt admission that, apart from this single item, he accepts almost nothing else in its entirety. For him the only test of Islam is a sincere profession of faith. One may accept the faith yet fail to act and remain orthodox; but one who accepts no dogma beyond belief in God and the Prophet is a non-conformist. A fair proportion of educated Indian Muslims, he observes, belong to this class: some reject the authority of the Imams, some doubt the necessity of prayer, some hold that work itself is prayer, some vaguely rail against religion. The test is whether one accepts that Islam as interpreted by the Imams is, on the whole, beneficial and true for mankind—and his answer, offered in humility, is no. He is careful to distinguish himself from the non-believer: the non-believer denies religion itself, whereas the non-conformist may question forms and dogmas while remaining essentially religious, and history shows non-conformists have often been men of deep faith, non-conformist precisely because they believed. He does not wish to found a sect or set himself up as a teacher, but he is convinced that Islam as he understands it has much to offer the twentieth-century human spirit, and he cannot accept its definition as fixed by the Sunnite Imams or any Shiite school.
Principles of Reinterpretation
He then asks whether a message sent fourteen centuries ago needs reinterpretation, and whether it was not sent to the whole world and for all time—answering both affirmatively. Even an eternal message must be read afresh through modern science, philosophy, psychology, metaphysics and theology. Sketching religious history, he notes that only some ten thousand years ago man conceived divinities ruling his destiny—stars, animals, birds, reptiles—and worshipped them with sacrifice, chant and dance; five thousand years later, in Mesopotamia and India, man first believed in one Supreme Being, arguably the greatest single discovery in human history, greater than fire, iron or relativity. That message often came through the vibrant spirit of a sensitive soul, and one among the elect was Muhammad, whose quest, agony and illumination are recorded in the Koran. Quoting Surah LXXXI in Pickthall’s translation, he argues that belief in God rests on experience, cannot be proved or disproved, and has outlasted the shifting postulates of science. Yet such truth can only travel through language—human, variable, subject to change. No language is read for more than five or ten thousand years; word meanings evolve, and the evocative power of words rises and falls. Koranic meanings have therefore changed and will go on changing. Quoting Matthew xxiv, 35, he concludes that we cannot go “back” to the Koran but must go “forward” with it, understanding it as the Arabs of the Prophet’s time did only in order to reinterpret it for twentieth-century life. He cannot be asked to live in the desert, eat locusts, wear a beard and cloak, or cultivate a pseudo-Arab mentality; he must separate the real message from imagery, poetic truth from factual truth, husk from kernel. Islam rests on the Koran, which must be read in its historical setting, and one must first understand Judaism and Christianity before the Prophet’s message becomes clear. He lists six fundamental principles for modern reinterpretation—study of the history of religions, comparative religion of the Semitic races, Semitic languages and philology, and the separation of law from religion among them.
Restating Theology and Re-examining the Shariat
The theology of Islam, he continues, must be re-examined in all its aspects, applying modern philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, psychology and logic to restate its essential dogmas—scholastic theology has not been substantially restated since al-Ghazali. European thought, from Luther and the Protestant thinkers through Aquinas and Suarez down to Maritain and Berdyaev, along with modern Jewish speculation, should be used with discrimination to fortify Islamic principles. Where ancient scriptures speak of natural phenomena, their dogmatic character should be questioned: the virgin birth of Jesus and the Koranic descriptions of Heaven and Hell need not be accepted as literal truth, though their poetic truth is cardinal; the spiritual beauty of fasting can be emphasized without hide-bound prescriptions, especially when Ramadan nights across the Arab East are spent feasting, dancing and wasting money. On subsidiary principles, one must determine whether a Koranic rule is law or ethics—if law, the State enforces it; if ethics, the State cannot. The claim that the law of God cannot be disobeyed is no longer acceptable. Taking the prohibition of wine or ham as his example, he submits a five-step procedure: examine the pre-Islamic rule or custom using all available evidence, including pre-Islamic literature, inscriptions, papyri and the Semitic dialects; study how the Prophet tried to reform it, investigating the hadith afresh and refusing to accept the ancient Imams as final; assess the results of that reform—as with the law of marriage and inheritance, which is beneficial to women yet almost everywhere denied them by custom, so that woman is treated as a plaything rather than a helpmate, and the verse “Men are in charge of women” should be reinterpreted as local and temporary or held a rule of social conduct no longer applicable; examine how the rules were interpreted and applied in the various schools of law, and whether they were misunderstood, distorted or used for political ends; and finally ask what the present state of the law is, and how it can be amended or repealed to conform to modern concepts of social justice. Applied to the whole fabric of the shariat, this process would produce a newer “protestant” Islam in conformity with twentieth-century conditions—if a name is needed, “Liberal Islam.” The greatest gift of the modern world, he adds, is freedom—freedom to think, speak and act, circumscribed by law, with criticism distinguished from libel and sedition.
A Muslim’s Confession
The essay closes with a personal profession. He believes the Koran is a message from God—the voice of God heard by Muhammad, delivered in Muhammad’s own Arabic speech—and that in every age these words must be interpreted afresh, each Muslim having the duty to understand the message for himself. He reveres Islam’s great interpreters but craves their indulgence if he cannot share all their beliefs, since belief is a matter of individual conscience; they are not keepers of his conscience. Law must be separated from religion, science from religion; he affirms truth, beauty and goodness, brotherliness, manliness, fidelity, generosity and humility, and prayer—but not a soulless, enforced ritual. As a Muslim he is moved by the three languages of Islam and by Muslim architecture, art, music and poetry worldwide, feeling kinship with Muslims everywhere. He recounts the tradition of the Prophet asking certain people what they were; they answered “We are believers,” and when asked for proof said they thank God in prosperity, are patient in adversity, and resign themselves to fate—and the Prophet declared them truly believers. He claims to be one of these humble roadside wayfarers. Islam, he says, is a religion of humanity, deriving from Judaism and Christianity, honouring Moses and Jesus, inculcating love of Muhammad, who made the barbaric Arab civilized and taught brotherliness, humility, charity and service.
The Constitution’s Fundamental Rights and the Balance with State Power
The book turns to the constitutional analysis that closes its account of the new India. Fundamental Rights are defined as guarantees extended to all citizens and, in some cases, even to non-citizens—inalienable rights of the individual, essential to human dignity. The enumerated rights include equality before the law, protection against discrimination in public employment, freedom of speech and expression, the right to form associations and unions, the right to acquire, hold or dispose of property, the right to practise any profession or carry on any occupation, trade or business, protection of life and personal liberty except according to procedure established by law, freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion, the right to one’s own culture and to study in any educational institution, and compensation for the compulsory acquisition of property.
In a modern complex society, the argument runs, conflict always arises between individual rights and the security and interest of the State. Under laissez-faire the individual was left alone; a Welfare State inevitably encroaches more and more upon individual rights and activities. The difficult problem is drawing the proper line between these conflicting claims and ensuring the all-powerful State does not overstep it. One argument holds that individual rights must be subordinated to social good; another that social good is determined by the State and may not reflect what all individuals envisage; a further argument maintains that certain rights are so fundamental—on them depends the very dignity of the human soul—that no interest of the State, not even its security, can be permitted to violate them.
The Constitution tried to solve this practically. The Legislature may make laws contravening fundamental rights if the contravention is in the interest of public order, security of the State, public morality, or the maintenance of friendly relations with foreign States. The Judiciary—High Courts in the States and the Supreme Court at the Centre—are constituted custodians of these rights, and whether restrictions are reasonable is made a justiciable issue, placing tremendous powers in the Judiciary’s hands. Citizens cannot be deprived of fundamental rights by a majority in the Legislature; the Legislature is controlled by the Judiciary, and every citizen may challenge legislation attempting to deprive him of these rights.
Critics urged with considerable force that judicial review may seriously impede the social and economic legislation needed to achieve a Welfare State, that courts tend to be technical and may invalidate legislation on narrow theoretical grounds, overlooking the larger public good. Regret was expressed that the Constitution did not establish the sovereignty of Parliament and make Parliament the custodian of fundamental rights rather than the Judiciary. But the Constitution-makers felt it would be dangerous at the new State’s inception to give uncontrolled legislative power to Legislatures. It was realized that for a long time only one Party would be in power with hardly any opposition, and democracy might have been imperilled if a single Party could ride roughshod over individual rights. Therefore, even at the risk of slowing the country’s progress, an independent impartial authority was constituted as arbitrator between individual and State. It was essential that such authority be completely independent of the Legislature and Executive, with integrity and impartiality beyond question; the Constitution accordingly set up a Judiciary in the High Courts and Supreme Court that is irremovable and in no way controlled by the Legislature or Executive, its rights and privileges forming part of the Constitution and unalterable by any law passed by the Legislature.
Federal Form, Unitary Spirit
The book then addresses whether the Constitution is federal or unitary. It is neither, though it has important features of both. In form it is unitary because it sets up a Union of States. India’s past history indicates the importance of a strong Central Government and the danger of fissiparous tendencies. But governing India from the Centre and dealing with manifold local problems varying from State to State would be difficult, so decentralization was inevitable. States with large areas—sometimes larger than European countries—and large populations had to be invested with powers enabling administration without too much interference from the Centre. The Constitution retains essential unitary features while adopting federal aspects constituting States into fairly autonomous units.
A federal polity’s important characteristics include dual citizenship and dual judiciary—one set enforcing State laws, another federal laws. Neither feature is present. The citizen owes allegiance only to the Union of India. Although High Courts exist in States, the Judiciary is one and integrated, enforcing both State and Union laws. The Supreme Court at Delhi is the apex of the different Courts and is not only a Federal Court but also the highest Court of Appeal.
A novel machinery governs legislative functions: a Union List, a State List, and a Concurrent List. Residual powers of legislation lie with the Union Parliament. In the United States and Australia, the true federal principle strictly defines the Federation’s legislative power and leaves residuary powers to the States; in Canada the opposite principle was accepted. American history shows independent States surrendered part of their powers to set up a Federation, so unsurrendered powers remained with the States. In India there was no such problem: provinces under British rule never claimed independent powers; they were delegates of the Central Government discharging functions due to decentralization policy. Therefore, when States were set up under the Constitution, only powers considered necessary and not likely to endanger national interests were conferred. The Concurrent List is novel and helps the Union Legislature bring about uniformity even where State Legislatures have legislative powers; under that List both State and Union Legislatures may cover the same legislative ground.
Wadia on the Constitution and the Secular State
A. R. Wadia proposes it would be an interesting study to examine legislation passed by the State Legislatures and by Parliament, to determine how far it has been imbued with the spirit of the directive principles. He asserts an impartial student would conclude that in the few years since the Constitution was passed, India has made rapid progress in carrying out, if not fully then to a very large extent, the precepts the Constitution-makers placed before the Legislatures. He calls the most important aspect of the Constitution its establishment of a secular State: there is no State religion, all religions are treated alike, freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion is guaranteed, and every office from highest to lowest is open to members of every community. Equal care is taken to prevent discrimination against any linguistic section. India is a land of many religions and languages, and through its seemingly diverse cultures runs a golden thread of unity, which the Constitution-makers made provisions to strengthen and consolidate. In the ultimate analysis a Constitution must be judged by what it helps the country achieve. Though in existence about eight years, it has already undergone some changes; like every institution it must be tested by trial and error. People must feel sanctity for the Constitution, but if it contains provisions preventing the country from becoming a Welfare State and bringing about a socialistic pattern of society, those provisions, however reluctantly, must be altered. However sacred a Constitution may be, the good and welfare of the people is even more sacred; if altered, it is altered by a national Parliament elected through adult suffrage, and we should be loth to hold that such a Parliament does not truly represent the people’s views.
The Sociology of Languages: A Memorial Volume
When the idea was mooted of presenting a volume of essays in honour of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad on his seventieth birthday, no one dreamt death would transform the birthday gift into a memorial volume. Destiny drew him into politics and made him an eminent political leader, but at heart he remained a profound scholar, a master of three languages—Urdu, Persian and Arabic—never so much at home as among his books. Though not given to speaking English, he could understand it, and no political leader was more alive to English’
Main Arguments
The volume advances several connected claims about Azad’s life and significance. The first is that he was, at bottom, a scholar and a man of religion who was drawn into politics by the logic of his own convictions rather than by ambition. Humayun Kabir’s Preface states this directly: Azad attained eminence as a writer and theologian in early youth, and his spirit of free enquiry led him into politics because man cannot fully develop except in freedom. He was essentially a scholar dragged into politics, who shunned publicity and preferred his study to politics. This is not a diminishment but an explanation: his shyness endeared him to the people, and the public grief at his death proved it. The volume repeatedly returns to the idea that the politician in Azad never submerged the scholar—that his intellectual detachment gave peculiar weight to his words, and that problems brought to him received solutions that seemed obvious once formulated but had previously gone unthought of.
The second argument concerns Azad’s political position. The volume presents him as the great challenger of the Aligarh policy of political subservience to the British. Since the abortive revolt of 1857, Indian Muslims had lived in despondency and lack of faith; Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had tried to restore the community’s fortunes by courting the favour of the ruling powers while keeping the community away from active politics. Whatever justification that policy had in the last century, it was outmoded by the time Azad appeared. Azad realized that Indian Muslims’ interests could be served only by taking part in the national struggle for independence, and that India’s liberation was necessary for the progress and prosperity of the entire Muslim world. He challenged the basic tenets of the Aligarh Party, repudiated co-operation with the British and separation from the Hindus, and urged Muslims to identify with the national movement and oppose British imperialism. Yet the volume is careful to note that it was Sir Syed Ahmed’s social and religious writings that first inspired Azad to think of reform and change—that Azad carried forward the reform process Sir Syed initiated, even as he rebelled against his political teachings.
The third argument is that Azad’s religious thought was itself a form of progressive politics. He was a ghair-muqallid, a non-traditionalist who challenged accepted Islamic thought, and he admitted the charge: he always hated tradition (taqlid), sought his own path, and owed guidance to no man, family, or syllabus but only to the Divine Throne. He held that traditional beliefs are the greatest obstacles to the human mind, preserved as jewels though they are chains. He distinguished religion from its followers, blaming two-thirds of disappointments on confusing them; the Quran, he argued, chose a third path declaring all religions correct but their followers deviated, yielding “unity in Truth” (mushtarik haq). He took two definite positions: the Quran must be understood naturally as the Prophet and Companions understood it, and medieval-category commentaries must be discarded. His commentary, the Tarjuman-al-Quran, was the elaboration of this position, and the volume treats it as a landmark of modern Islamic thought.
The fourth argument concerns Hindu-Muslim unity. P. Subbaroyan records Azad’s supreme idea from the founding of Al-Hilal: freedom of his country through Hindu-Muslim unity. He emphasized unity over freedom, believing freedom was bound to come. He said that if an angel descended from the high heavens and proclaimed from the heights of the Qutub Minar that discarding Hindu-Muslim unity would bring Swaraj within twenty-four hours, he would refuse the proffered Swaraj and not budge an inch—since refusal of Swaraj would affect only India, while the end of unity would be the loss of the entire human world. This matched Gandhi’s attitude, and the volume presents the Azad-Gandhi partnership as the practical embodiment of the principle. The two marched hand in hand from 1920 until Gandhi’s death in 1948.
The fifth argument is that Azad’s legacy is institutional as well as moral. The volume’s closing section on the Eastern Higher Technological Institute at Hijli, Kharagpur, is a case in point: in summer 1950 the Ministry of Education accepted the Government of Bengal’s offer of a site at Hijli, a 1,200-acre property that included a Collectorate building and residential quarters built about thirty years earlier, later used as a detention camp for political prisoners, and closed at Independence. The site became the Eastern Higher Technological Institute. The argument is implicit but clear: Azad’s work as first Education Minister was not merely administrative but foundational, and the institutions he helped to create are part of his memorial.
Key Concepts
Several concepts recur across the volume and give it its intellectual shape. The first is ijtihad—new interpretation—and its opposite, taqlid, the beaten path of tradition. The volume’s account of Islamic intellectual history turns on the closing of the door of ijtihad in the fourth century of the Hijri era. Thereafter, scholars rarely left the beaten path of tradition; anyone wishing to write a commentary first selected a leader to follow and then walked blindly behind him. A mistake made by a third-century-Hijra commentator was repeated by all commentators till the ninth century. Quranic scholars ultimately became so spineless that they could think of nothing beyond writing marginal notes on current commentaries—notes on the Baizawi and Jaldain merely white-washing an old building. Azad’s significance, in this account, is that he reopened the door: he attempted his own interpretation, later elaborated in the Tarjuman-al-Quran, and he insisted that the Quran is independent of artificial canons and has a natural method.
The second concept is fitrat—nature, or the natural constitution of things. Azad held that Quranic teachings rest on nature and simplicity, while learning and arts rest on man’s inventiveness (wod’ai). Devotion to inventiveness increased while natural understanding decreased. Canons of sciences (ulum) cannot be absolutely true; religion cannot rest on changing foundations. He lamented that commentators were lost in Aristotle’s Logic and Greek learning. The concept of fitrat connects to his larger argument that the Quran was revealed gradually over twenty-three years, that the Companions heard, recited, and inquired of the Prophet, and that later generations went against first-generation interpretations, declaring the first stronger in faith but ignoring their understanding.
The third concept is huda—guidance—in its extensive Quranic sense. Azad argued that God sent wahi to the bee to seek its house in the mountains; the wahi of prophets is only a developed form of guidance given to all creatures through instincts, sense-impressions, and reason. Quranic commentators took “guidance” and “truth” (haq) as wahi and religious truth, and Persian and Urdu commentators followed, losing the argument’s meaning. Since idolators believed in God but not the Prophet’s wahi, the argument loses meaning if guidance means the Prophet’s wahi. Huda here means guidance of instinct, sense-impression, and reason; haq means life’s correct path. This concept allows Azad to present revelation as continuous with natural guidance rather than opposed to it.
The fourth concept is Fitratul Lah—the law of Divine Purpose. Azad quotes Sir Oliver Lodge to the effect that everything, from the motion of electrons round the positively charged nucleus of an atom to the motion of the planets round the sun, points to a predetermined law. For Azad, however, this predetermined law is not merely a concatenation of material causes and effects but a cosmic or moral law. The world is Divinely guided. Before the appearance of protoplasm and living creatures there is progress to higher and higher unities; when life first appears, the process becomes better understood. Divine Guidance is given to the lowest creatures through intuition and instinct (wajdan), the capacity to learn from experience and transmit knowledge to offspring. At the higher animal level, guidance comes through sense-impressions and the capacity for thinking. To human societies, required to live according to a moral law, guidance is given through prophets or messengers of God.
The fifth concept is rahmat—mercy—as the principle governing the selection of societies. Azad accepts the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest (baqai anfa), but claims Divine Guidance for it; without that assumption the progressive movement of organic species cannot be explained. The law of nature’s selection applies to human societies as to animal species: as nature causes useful species to survive and eliminates useless ones, so only those societies are preserved whose preservation is useful for the human race; the useless are weeded out. God says this is His mercy; otherwise nothing would hinder oppression and disorder among mankind.
The sixth concept is mushtarik haq—unity in Truth. Azad distinguished religion from its followers, blaming two-thirds of disappointments on confusing them. The Quran chose a third path declaring all religions correct but their followers deviated. He said the greatest cause of conflict is the unity of truth amid varieties of names—one calls it shahd (honey), another asl (honey), yet none tells them they mean the same. If external forms were removed, religious differences would vanish. He distinguished hereditary, geographical, census-based, and custom-based religion, leaving “the true religion” whose way is lost; conflict is due not to religion but to followers’ evil deeds and worship of forms.
Themes
The most pervasive theme of the volume is the relationship between scholarship and politics—or, more precisely, the way Azad’s scholarship was itself a form of political action. The volume insists that Azad was essentially a scholar dragged into politics, that he shunned publicity and preferred his study, and that his intellectual detachment gave peculiar weight to his words. Yet it also insists that his scholarship was not withdrawal. His spirit of free enquiry led him into politics because man cannot fully develop except in freedom. His religious thought was a challenge to political subservience. His Quranic interpretation was an act of intellectual liberation. The theme is not the opposition of contemplation and action but their integration: Azad’s life illustrates the idea that the search and the attainment are one, as the Persian couplet he quoted in his Introduction to History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western suggests—those who follow this path never tire because it is both the way and the destination.
A second theme is the composite nature of Indian culture and the possibility of unity across difference. Nehru’s speech stresses that Azad represented India’s composite culture, especially in Delhi, Bengal, and Calcutta, a synthesis of cultures including Iranian, Persian, and Arabic influences. Radhakrishnan notes that Azad stood for national unity and communal harmony, making no difference between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian. The volume presents Azad’s commitment to Hindu-Muslim unity not as a tactical alliance but as a moral absolute—the refusal of Swaraj itself if it came at the cost of unity. The theme is given concrete form in the account of the Khilafat and non-co-operation movements, in which Azad felt his dreams fulfilled, and in the grief that followed the communal catastrophe of 1947, when every dagger one Indian thrust into another was a dagger into his own soul.
A third theme is the nature of true religion as against its distortions. Azad’s distinction between religion and its followers, his insistence that the Quran’s basis is not theological hatred but humanity, his argument that conflict is due not to religion but to followers’ evil deeds and worship of forms—these run through the volume. To Azad, religion was not self-confinement, nor merchandise bartered to lies or material gains; it is ethics and fine character, motivating goodness—like a traveller’s shade on a hot summer noon. Islam showers blessings and binds different peoples in one common ancestry. The theme is developed through the courtroom statement, where Azad declares that Islam emphasizes that right is not might; right is right; no people may enslave or exploit others. In Islam all human beings are equal, with equal rights irrespective of colour, creed, or race; one’s work, deeds, and conduct are the only criteria for advancement. Islam defined man’s rights centuries before the French Revolution.
A fourth theme is the relationship between religion and science, faith and reason. Azad’s position is that philosophy opens doubt but cannot close it; science gives proofs but not faith; religion gives faith but not proofs; we need both demonstrated truths and faith. His understanding of science and learning equals his understanding of religion. Education is not for amassing fortunes or squandering; it enlightens the mind, cultivates character, engenders the human touch, unravels the universe’s mysteries, and harnesses nature for mankind. He saw education as an effective weapon to propagate peace, knowing cultural contacts bind like parental ties; people meeting culturally become friends, rendering possible comprehensive human unity. The theme connects to his work as Education Minister and to his Inaugural Address at the first conference of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, where he said cultural co-operation was imperative internationally.
A fifth theme is the cost and meaning of commitment. The volume records Azad’s imprisonments, his internment at Ranchi, the confiscation of Al-Hilal‘s guarantee, the expulsion from Bengal, the refusal of admission by all governments except Bombay and Bihar. It records his refusal to retaliate against Jinnah, his silence about the scar on his own heart, his willingness to bear the agony of Partition in silence and set his mind to rebuilding India on new foundations. It records his firmness of resolve—what Maulana Mohammad Ali called “stubbornness”—and his refusal to compromise with evil. The theme is not martyrdom but endurance: the long, unglamorous persistence of a man who would not bend, and whose inner loneliness and characteristic reserve were sometimes misunderstood but conserved energy for potent expression in dire need.
A sixth theme, present throughout but especially in the later sections, is the relationship between the individual and the institution. The volume’s closing account of the Eastern Higher Technological Institute at Hijli is a reminder that Azad’s legacy is not only in his writings and speeches but in the schools, councils, and institutes he helped to establish. The Indian Constitution owes much to him; his advice was respected by all groups. The unity seen in India, the synthesis of religion and culture, and evolution along scientific lines owe much to his initiative as first Education Minister. Future generations will draw inspiration from one who embodied secular India and was an architect of Independent India. The theme is the translation of vision into structure—the way a life of thought becomes a life of building.
The Author’s Conclusions
The volume does not speak with a single voice, but certain conclusions emerge across the contributions. The first is that Azad’s greatness was of a kind unlikely to be reproduced. Nehru says the claim that a prominent person is irreplaceable was literally true of Azad; that peculiar greatness is unlikely to be reproduced. The volume’s final tributes echo this: we will not see his like again—a great man of stately presence, indomitable courage, and fearless behaviour. The conclusion is not merely elegiac but analytical: Azad combined deep learning, scholarship, oratory, and writing with the greatness of past and present—like Renaissance men or the Encyclopaedists—possessing graciousness, courtesy, tolerance, and patience now sadly lacking.
The second conclusion is that Azad’s life was both the search and the attainment. The Persian couplet he quoted in his Introduction to History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western—comparing the Universe to an old manuscript whose first and last pages are lost, so it cannot be said how the book began or how it will end—is applied to his own life. Finding the meaning of life and existence is the purpose of the philosophical quest; we may not succeed, but the pursuit is its own reward. He ends the introduction with another Persian couplet saying those who follow this path never tire because it is both the way and the destination. His life illustrates this: it was both the search and the attainment.
The third conclusion is that the best way to honour Azad’s memory is to adopt his ideals. The volume urges remembrance that he worked for national unity, probity in administration, and economic progress—ideals set before us; the only way to honour his memory is to adopt these ideals and daily question whether our acts promote national unity, integrity in administration, and economic and material progress. This is not a vague exhortation but a specific programme, and it connects to the volume’s practical bent: the royalties from the book fund prizes for essays on Hinduism and Islam, and the closing section describes the technological institute at Hijli. The conclusion is that mourning must become work.
The fourth conclusion is that Azad’s political legacy is the unity of India and the secular principle. The volume records that many Congress Muslims went over to Pakistan; Azad did not waver, showing the right path to the forty million Muslims left in India. The Indian Constitution owes much to him; his advice was respected by all groups. It is too early to evaluate his life; the unity seen in India, the synthesis of religion and culture, and evolution along scientific lines owe much to his initiative as first Education Minister. Future generations will draw inspiration from one who embodied secular India and was an architect of Independent India. The conclusion is that Azad’s life is not only a memory but a mandate.
The fifth conclusion, implicit throughout but explicit in the courtroom section and the religious essays, is that Azad’s religious thought was itself a form of liberation. He was a progressive revolutionary and believer in true freedom, classed among the ulema because his religious learning over-topped them all.
