Last week, we had the birth
anniversary of one of the icons of ‘Hindu Muslim unity’, someone whom Gandhi
put on par with Plato and Aristotle, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. It is celebrated
as education day in India since 2008. In 1923, at an age of 35, he became the youngest person
to serve as the President of the Indian National Congress, and post
independence became the first education minister of the country.
As usual, the cliched tributes
flowed in, like they have for every one of the numerous anniversaries that only
the bureaucracy seems to care about:-
He’s hailed as the stalwart who
laid foundations of education in India, a staunch nationalist, the
personalization of Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb, who made emotional appeals like:-
“If an angel descends from
heaven with the gift of freedom of India and declares from Qutub Minar that
India is a free country I would not accept it unless Hindus and Muslims were
united. If India does not get freedom it would be India's loss but if Hindus
and Muslims do not unite it would be entire humanity's loss.”
But did the Maulana see Hindus
and Muslims as equals when among his own people? Did he put patriotism on par
with his ‘deen’?
Following are the excerpts from
his speech to a rally in Kolkata on 27 October 1914, totally defy his image of a modernist:-
"One momin for another
momin is like one brick assisting another brick in a wall.This biradri (community of Muslims) has been
established by God...All relationships in the world can break down but this
relationship can never be severed. It is possible a father turns against his
son, not impossible that a mother separates her child from her lap, it is
possible that one brother becomes the enemy of other brother...But the
relationship that a Chinese Muslim has with an African Muslim, an Arab bedouin
has with the Tatar shepherd, and which binds in one soul a neo-Muslim of India
with the right-descendant Qureshi of Mecca, there is no power on earth to break
it, to cut off this chain…"
"If
even a grain of the soul of Islam is alive among its followers, then I should
say that if a thorn gets stuck in a Turk's sole in the battlefield of war, then
I swear by the God of Islam, no Muslim of India can be a Muslim until he feels
that prick in his heart instead of sole because the Millat-e-Islam (the global
Muslim community) is a single body."
"Then,
if it is true that a sword is being sharpened to strike in the heart of Islam,
then what hesitation that we be engaged in developing a shield. If the worship
of Jesus has ancient enmity against the worship of God, and this is not a new
Christian conspiracy, then the unity of brotherhood is not a new tactic of the
followers of Tawheed (Islamic monotheism) to defend against the attack of
polytheists."
"Remember,
today, for Islam, for Muslims, any national or local movement cannot be
fruitful. In my beliefs, all of this is an act of magic by the presager-Satan
who makes those asleep because it does not like those sleeping [ie Muslims] to
rise up".The most important matter is that we have to build a university
in Aligarh, have to collect Rs 30 lakh for this, it will serve as a kaaba
of Aligarh. The day the university is established, wahi
(revelation, of Quranic verse 5:3) … will land on the roof of the Strachey Hall
(of AMU)." In verse 5:3, Allah says: "This day I have perfected for
you your religion…"
How
different is this speech from that of any recruiting agents for Islamist terror
organizations today? How different is this from the similar toned speeches that
Mohammad Ali Jinnah and HS Suhrawardy
would make three decades later to initiate direct action day in the same city?
What
makes this speech look more dangerous is that it was made at the time of first
world war, when British Indian Army was fighting the Ottoman Empire which had
sided with the German Empire. The global islamist strategy of saving the Caliph
ie Ottoman Emperor, started much before the Khilafat movement.
There
were instances of mutiny among the Muslim soldiers in the British Indian army.
One prominent example is the 5th light infantry regiment stationed
in Singapore during Feb 1915
Pic:
Incited by pro-Turkish agents, the 5th Light Infantry regiment of the British
Indian Army, consisting largely of Muslim sepoys, mutinied in February 1915,
rampaging around Singapore until it was put down with the help of French,
Russian and Japanese marines. More than two hundred sepoys were
court-martialed, of which 47 were executed by firing squad.
Instances
like these were as much fuelled by the likes of the speech cited above , as by
the propaganda spread by the intelligence of the Ottoman intelligence. This
speech was a meticulously prepared one, and its speeches from the likes of him
which played a major role in more than
18,000 Muslims from India going to Turkey to fight the jihad against the British , and women sending
their jewellery for the same. Compared to this, the number of Indian Muslims
that have joined domestic or international terror organizations since
independence is microscopic. No Muslim from rest of India ever went to fight
the Pakistan fuelled jihad in Kashmir. We are in a much better situation as
compared to that in 1900-47, but that is no excuse to have false pretexts of
all being right.
Tawriya
is very difficult to spot. The same Allama Iqbal who wrote ‘’saare jahaan se
accha hindostaan hamara’’ also wrote tarana e mili which said “cheen o arab
hamara, hindostaan hamara, muslim hai hum watan hai, saara jahan hamara”. It
can hide murderous intentions under the veil of piety, fanaticism under the
veil of modernism.
What
has conveniently been looked over by liberals also is that Azad had made an
Islamist political party called Hizbullah in 1913. By this, he also inspired the
ultra-revivalist leader and founder of Jamat-e-Islami Maulana Maududi, before
getting disappointed by the response of a section of the Ulema on various
scores and deciding to enter the Congress in 1920. Today we know Hizbollah as a
Lebanese Shia terrorist organization that came up seven decades. But know that
they weren’t the first ones to use this name!
While its a
fact that Maulana Azad became an enthusiastic supporter of Gandhi's ideas of
non-violent civil disobedience, and worked to organise the non-co-operation
movement in protest of the 1919 Rowlatt Acts, was a polygot speaking in Urdu,
Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Arabic and English, it should not be forgotten that he
came into prominence in a public life as one of the Leader of Khilafat movement
(1919-22), which aimed at restoring the Ottoman empire (the Ottoman Emperor was
nominally the supreme religious and political leader of all Muslims across the
world. However, this authority was never actually used.) , aimed to build
political unity amongst Muslims and use their influence to protect the
caliphate. In 1920 an alliance was made between Khilafat leaders and the Indian
National Congress, with its leaders such as Dr. Ansari, Maulana Azad and Hakim
Ajmal Khan grew personally close to Gandhi. At first this so called Hindu
Muslim bonhomie was very successful, but it did not take long for the forces
rallied for Khilafat to turn into an anti Hindu movement, the most horrific of
which was seen in Malabar where over 10000 Hindus were done to death by
Moplahs. Others like Ali Brothers cast away Gandhi like a piece of crumpled
paper after using him like a ladder. Abul
Kalam Azad stayed on and was promoted for the cause of Hindu Muslim unity, but
he remained a pan islamist till his last day. Khilafat movment lost its reason
to exist with the victory of Mustafa
Kemal's forces, who overthrew the Ottoman rule to establish a pro-Western,
secular republic in independent Turkey. He abolished the role of Caliph and
sought no help from Indians. But the damage to India was done. In the greed for
political gains and self promotion, Gandhi and Co gave political legitimacy to
a bunch of rabid fanatics which would lead to the vivisection of the country in
less than three decades.
"There
is ample evidence now to prove that nationalist Muslims like Abul Kalam Azad
and the then Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind president Ahmad Hussain Madani opposed
Pakistan only because they felt that Partition would affect Muslim domination
in the sub-continent and Muslims would heavily lose. Plus they tried to extract
a heavy price from the Congress for their patriotism in the name of minority
protection. Congress leaders have tried to hide the fact that as Congress
president in 1945, Azad even went to the extent of agreeing to a proposal of
rotating Indian headship. It meant India would have a Hindu and then a Muslim
head of State and army chief by turns. So, eventually Gandhi and Nehru made
Congress a hostage to ‘Hindu-Muslim unity at any cost’ which Jinnah skillfully
exploited and got more concessions from the Congress to establish parity in
numbers between Hindu and Muslim representation."
-Yuvaraj
Kishen, Understanding Partition
Lets have a look at the opinions on Maulana Azad by
the secular and
lslamic scholars/leaders of Pakistan.
“The tradition of rationalism
suffered immensely at the hands of Qasim Nanotvi (founder of Deoband School in
1866 along with Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi) , Abul Kalam Azad, Anwar Shah Kashmiri (a top Deobandi preacher),
Syed Sulaiman Nadwi and Mohammed Ali Jauhar."
-Naeem
Ahmad
"The
Ulema (including Azad) opposed to Partition thought that Hindus didn’t pose
threat to the Muslims and that Muslims would be able to deal with the Hindus
very easily in United India. They also belived that division of India would
divide Muslim power".
-Israr
Ahmed
“"The
Pan-Islamic Khilafat movement (Azad was one of its leaders) backed by the
Congress and Gandhi capitalised on the Pan-Islamic sentiment amongst the
Deobandi Indian Muslims and undermined the secular leadership of the Muslim
League. Gandhi helped the Mullahs to set
up a political organisation of their own namely Jamat-e-Ulema-e-Hind (JUH),
which was later reincarnated in Pakistan as Jamat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, the extreme
hardliner fundamentalists who were instrumental in the rise of Taliban in
Afghanistan." ( Azad was one of the
main backers of the JUH in its initial years.). The Khilafat Movement has
been idealised as an anti-colonial movement. But the main achievement of the
Movement was the turning away of Indian Muslims from a secular understanding of
politics towards a religious and communalist one. It has left a legacy of
political activism of the Muslim clergy that bedevils India and Pakistani
politics to this day. In the same article he writes: "The Khilafat
Movement also introduced the religious idiom in the politics of Indian Muslims.
Contrary to some misconceptions (and misrepresentations) it was not the Muslim
League, the bearer of Muslim Nationalism in India, that introduced religious
ideology in the politics of Indian Muslims but the Deobandi Ulema. Muslim
Nationalism was a movement of Muslims and not a movement of Islam."
-Hamza
Alavi
In the
words of Maulana Azad himself on partition, and on how it will affect Muslims
of India:-
“As a Muslim, I for one
am not prepared for a moment to give up my right to treat the whole of India as
my domain and share in the shaping of its political and economic life. To me it
seems a sure sign of cowardice to give up what is my patrimony and content
myself with a mere fragment of it.” About possible consequences of the
partition, he says if India was divided into two states, “there would remain
three and half crores of Muslims scattered in small minorities all over the
land. With 17 per cent in UP, 12 per cent in Bihar and 9 per cent in Madras,
they will be weaker than they are today in the Hindu majority provinces. They
have had their homelands in these regions for almost a thousand years and built
up well known centres of Muslim culture and civilisation there.”
The Muslims who would be
left behind, he said, would discover that they have become alien and
foreigners. Backward industrially, educationally and economically, they would
be left at the mercy of what would become 'an unadulterated Hindu raj.' On the
other hand, their position within the Pakistan state will be vulnerable and
weak. Nowhere in Pakistan will their majority be comparable to the Hindu
majority in the Hindustan States. “In fact their majority will be
so slight that it will be offset by the economical, educational and political
lead enjoyed by non-Muslims in these areas. Even if this were not so and
Pakistan were overwhelmingly Muslim in population, it still could hardly solve
the problem of Muslims in Hindustan.”
“If
the nine-crore [90 million] Muslims were thinly scattered all over India, and
demand was made to reorganize the states in a manner to ensure their majority
in one or two regions [i.e. within the Indian union], that would be
understandable. Tell me, who can eliminate these populations? By demanding Pakistan we are turning our eyes away
from the history of the last 1,000 years and, if I may use the League
terminology, throwing more than 30 million Muslims into the lap of 'Hindu Raj.' The Hindu-Muslim problem that has created political tension
between Congress and League will become a source of dispute between the two
states.”
And since we had the honour of having him as the first education
minister of so called independent India, its not surprising that we have to
read about the Mughal rule in Delhi being golden age of India and many other
such perversions, that are too numerous to be quoted in one article.
To sum it up, ‘’nationalist’’ Maulana Abul Kalam Azad opposed
partition “till his last breath” because he saw it as an event which will
scuttle the islamic takeover of India as the Muslim populace will be divided
forever.
Almost
half a century before the Maulana Azad’s
speech in Kolkata, Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, had expressed his lamentation in the following words—
Woh
deene Ilahi ka bebak beda,Nishan jiska aqsa-e-alam mein pahuncha;
Mazahim hua koi khatra na jiska,
Na Amman main thithka na kulzam mein jhijhka;
kiya pashe par jisne saton samandar,
woh dooba dahane mein Ganga ke aakar
(The armada of the religion of Allah,
whose banner reached all over the world, which was undeterred by fear , which did not waver in the deserts nor
hesitated in the rivers, which crossed the seven seas unchallenged and
invincible, drowned when it arrived at the mouth of the Ganga. )
This
lamentation is what Maulana Azad, like thousands of Islamic bigots, took to his
grave with him.
And under
the name of secularism, the game of white washing bigotry continues, whether it
is calling Mahmud as ‘patron of arts’ , Akbar as ‘great’, ,Moplahs as freedom
fighters , Khilafat as a nationalist movement and Abul Kalam Azad as a nationalist.
References:-
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