Sir Syed Ahmed | SabrangIndia

Happy Sir Syed Day!

Sabrang — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 03:55:13 +0000

First published on: 17 Oct 2017

On Sir Syed Day, when we remember that great stalwart, we must spare a thought for the future of the institution he built.

Way back in 1985, parents put me into to make me a doctor. But honesty and great humility I report that I left, or was rather forced to leave university, as a patient. Well, I was felled by an illness which, for want of a better expression, I call angrezi mania. Like a rebellious child who does everything that he is told not to do, I went against parents’ wishes.

They wanted me to learn science, get benefit of 50% reservation for internal students at ‘s MBBS entrance exam, become a doctor and earn loads of money. However, after a few months at ‘s leafy campus, fascination for science flagged. Having born and brought up in a remote village, I was awestruck when I first saw. It was love at first sight. Soon, I started seeing it as not a factory of producing professionals. To young sensibilities, the university appeared as a window to the world. Aligarians will tell you countless stories about boys loitering around Abdullah Girls College. They will recall the romance which begins in university canteen and ends at the steps of students’ union club.

But romance was a bit different. made me fall in love the firangi language. love the English language began inside the massive, air-conditioned Maulana Azad library. The romance never went to the rocks. The fascination for the firangi language never ebbed.

I didn’t do well in the 12th standard exam because I would bunk Biology and Chemisty classes to read newspapers. I would spend more time M J Akbar, Khushwant Singh, Neruda and Naipaul than in physics lab. father’s dream of seeing me as a doctor went for a toss. He pulled me out of .

After he brought me back from an intellectually fertile to an academically stagnant Patna, he thought he had purged me of the virus of English. He was miserably mistaken. He cursed himself for sending me to Aligarh which instilled in me an interest in a language which eventually led to journalism.

I don’t blame father for his conservative outlook. That’s how a highly competitive society prepares you to see the world. So a brilliant boy is doomed if he fails an exam. We seldom try to identify and nurture a child’s other qualities.

At hindsight, now I realise how nurtured me. I might have stayed there barely for three years, but I earned a lot. The university helped me discover myself. It told me about many missions of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. It introduced me to the fascinating world of Meer, Iqbal, Ghalib, Faiz and Firaq. It made me aware of a world beyond boring textbooks. It’s here that I understood the true meaning of Iqbal’s immortal couplet:

“Sitaron se age jahan aur bhi hain/Abhi ishq ke imtehan aur bhi hain”

It’s here that I first heard of Tagore’s evocative, lyrical line:

“Where the mind is without fear and the head held high.”

taught me to be patient and persuasive, rational and liberal. But the best lesson that it taught me is: to agree to disagree. Dissent is a democracy’s essence. And , above all, was created out of dissent.

It was one man’s rebellion against a set of norms. It was a voice of opposition amidst chants of conformism. When Sir Syed set out to establish Madarsatul uloom or the M A O College which later became Aligarh Muslim University, he had actully challenged an old mindset. He had dared to move against the stormy winds. He was opposed bitterly, mostly from the orthodox section which called him a stooge of the British raj. They thought his mission would eventually evangelise Muslims. A maulvi even went all the way to Mecca to fetch a fatwa of kufr against Sir Syed.

Undettered, the man went ahead. It would be unfair to confine Sir Syed’s services to just as a founder of . He was an educationist, a visionary, a reformist, all rolled into one.

Post-1857, Indian Muslims needed a panacea. A visionary, Sir Syed saw Muslims’ salvation in education. Pained at the community’s unfathomable ignorance, he once lameted (And I quote the original Urdu):
“Is mulk mein hamari qaum ka haal nehayat abtar hai. Agar hamari qaum mein sirf jahelat hi hoti to chanda mushkil na thi. Mushkil to yeh hai ke qaum ki qaum jehal-e-murakab me mubtila hai.” (In this country the condition of our community is highly deplorable. It would not have been difficult if they were just illiterate. But the difficulty is that we have generations of Muslims caught in deep ignorance).

Sir Syed’s observations sadly sound relevant even today. For that we just have to give a cursory look at the Sachar Committe Report which unambigiously said that the Muslims’s condition is worse than that of the Dalits.

Almost a decade after Lord Lytton laid the foundation stone of MAO college, Sir Syed and his companions founded Mohammedan Educational Congress in 1886. Later, it was renamed as All India Muslim Educational Conference lest the word Congress created a misconception that it was an offshoot of the Indian National Congress. The Educational Conference proved to be a clarion call for the Muslims. It awoke them from their slumber. It was not just a movement for education. It was a call to Muslims to reinvent themselves, to discard old customs and face the challenges of modern age. It told them to see the world from a fresh perspective, to judge and evaluate their strength and remove many weaknesses.

At the Conference’s inaugural session in Aligarh, Sir Syed had observed:

“Hamari halat-e-zaar ab is darja par pahunch gayee hai ke ghair quamein bhi ham par aansoo bahati hain aur hamare bachchon ki taalim keliye khairaat se roopiya jama karne ki koshish karti hain (Our condition has reached such a pitiable state that other communities lament our lot and agree to donate to the education of our children).

Apart from fighting to make the MAO college into a university, the Conference endeavoured to communicate the community in simple, cogent Urdu. Sir Syed influenced several companions to write impressive prose. Those who came under Sir Syed’s direct influence included Nawab Mohsinul Mulk, Deputy Nazir Ahmed, Maulana Hali, Shibli Noamani, Maulvi Zakaullah and Maulana Wahiduddin Salim. I am reminded of a well known story. Once Sir Syed joked: “When Allah asks me on the day of judgment what I did in the world, I will tell Him that I got Hali to write Musadas.” True, Hali’s Musadas is not just a fine tribute to the founder of Islam, it’s a running commentary on a great faith’s exciting journey.

The Conference fought battles on several fronts such as safeguarding of the wakf properties, caring for the sick in the community, establishing a network of educational institutions across the country.

On Sir Syed Day, when we remember that great stalwart, we must spare a thought for the future of the institution he built. I don’t need to tell this gathering what’s happening at . Recent events don’t seem encouraging. It has not lived up to Sir Syed’s dreams. Educated Indian Muslims cannot afford to sit back and see slip into a cesspool of anarchy. It’s not a feudal lord’s fiefdom. It is certianly not some petty politicians’ hunting ground. It’s a symbol of our composite, syncretic culture. epitomises Indian Muslims’ collective dream, their aspirations.

I am an obsessive optimist and I hope that will bounce back. At this point I sing the line in the beautiful tarana penned by Majaz:

“Zarrat ka bosa lene ko sau bar jhuka aakash yahan/Hai sare jahan ka soz yahan aur sare jahan ka saaz yahan

(The writer is a senior assistant editor, The Times of India, Mumbai)

The post Happy Sir Syed Day! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Syed Ahmed Khan: When Will We Stop Idolizing Him and Start Engaging With His Ideas?

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 06:58:02 +0000

It has become a yearly ritual to read something about Syed Ahmed Khan whose two hundredth birth anniversary was observed the world over on the 17th of October. However, it would not be incorrect to say that most of these writings are mere hagiographical eulogies.

There is hardly any attempt to critically engage with the ideas of Syed Ahmed Khan. There is also no reflection in the community as why after two hundred years; we seem to be grappling with the same set of issues which Syed Ahmed was beset with during his own time. The relationship with Islam and modernity, educational deficit and the impact of conservatism within Muslim society are all issues which we are confronted with even today. Syed Ahmed tried to wrestle with such issues during his time, but there is no denying the fact that his reformism has had very little impact on the Muslim society. In such a scenario, how should we evaluate his legacy?

It is often argued that Syed Ahmed Khan heralded the acceptance of modern English education amongst Indian Muslims. It is understood that before this great personality pleaded the Muslims to educate themselves in English language, they had kept away from modern and English education. Thus Syed Ahmed in this narrative becomes the saviour of Muslims and is projected as someone who brought the Muslims out of the morass of backwardness and steered them towards some kind of an enlightenment.

It was only because of his efforts that Muslims took to English education and came out of their stupor. While due credit must be given to the Syed for establishing the MAO college which eventually blossomed into the Aligarh Muslim University, it will be perhaps be too much to eulogize him as the saviour of Muslim community.

It is incorrect to believe that before Syed Ahmed came on the scene, Muslims were reluctant to take to English education. Higher education at that time was usually the preserve of the elite as the concept of mass education did not exist. Elite from all communities were embracing higher education and Muslims were not behind. In fact the data for higher education in the then United Provinces would show that Muslims were much more represented in higher education as compared to their share in population. This is natural because in the United Provinces, Muslims were landed and at least wanted to educate their sons in the ways of the British.

The question therefore is whether Syed Ahmed was the harbinger of modern education or whether he, like others before him understood the importance of English education and wanted Muslims to take to it. It is of course to the credit of the Syed Ahmed that he fought against the Islamic current propounded by the Mullahs that English education was forbidden for Muslims. He must be saluted for his courage that despite all odds, he persevered and in the end lived to see his dream fulfilled. But what one forgets often is that there were enough Muslims who were willing to make his dream come true. Without the students of Aligarh and the families who sent their sons to Aligarh, this dream would have been stillborn.

All this suggests that there was already an undercurrent within the elite Muslim society regarding the need for English education. Syed Ahmed became the medium to realise that goal and he did so with full conviction.

It is often argued that Syed Ahmed was trying to bring some kind of an enlightenment within Muslim society through modern English education. A closer scrutiny might reveal that this might not be so clear cut. His ideas on education were limited and he viewed the MAO college only as producing a class of educated Muslims who would be well versed with the manners of the British and consequently worthy of taking up positions in government bureaucracy. If the cornerstone of enlightenment is critique, then the Syed did not expect modern education to lead to any kind of critique of either the society in which Muslims were living at that time or even the religious worldview of Muslims.

There is nothing to suggest that Syed Ahmed critiqued the decadent and feudal life-style of Ashraf Muslims. Rather what we get is a positive estimation of the Ashraf worldview. Similarly, although Syed Ahmed did question some of the common-sense perception about Islam, he did not initiate the kind of critique which it required.

It is also common knowledge that he would drop his criticism of religion altogether when the Mullahs started to hit out on his source of funding. Thus modernity and its relationship with Islam was not his fundamental concern. Modern education existed to refine the religious knowledge and whenever there was a contradiction, it was religion which would have the final say. What was central to his worldview was the caring of small section of Muslim interests which were landed and wanted some respectability by sending their sons to Aligarh. Modern education for him had a utilitarian value: for access to jobs and services. This is no doubt a noble intention and Muslims should be thankful to Syed Ahmed for this very endeavour. But to suggest that he had wanted to inculcate modern outlook among Muslims is perhaps reading too much.

Syed Ahmed Khan was also indifferent to the education of Muslim women. He made no effort whatsoever from which one can deduce that he viewed the education of Muslim women as a desirable project. It remains a fact that women’s education was a late starter on the campus of Aligarh. Such indifference became active hostility when it came to modern education for lower caste Muslims. Syed Ahmed was positively opposed to educating the Muslim lower castes which formed the majority of Indian Muslim population. He did not think that the lower caste Muslims possessed the required mental faculty to go for higher learning through English language.

He actually advised them that a rudimentary learning of religious rituals and some mathematics would be all that should suffice for them. This also becomes clear when we see his opposition to the reforms of the provincial governments. He was opposed to such political reforms because he felt that even low caste Muslims and Hindus will get into such councils and stand at par with the upper castes. It is almost as if he thought that low castes were racially inferior to upper castes. It is not surprising therefore that he would blame the low caste Muslim Ansari for taking part in the revolt of 1857.

This is certainly not to suggest that there is nothing to learn from Syed Ahmed. His take on Islamic conservatism and his commentary of the Quran really need to be engaged with today. But we should also not put him on a pedestal and argue that in a sense he is beyond critique. His position on caste was in many ways similar to that of BalGangadharTilak, who was also similarly opposed to the political and social empowerment of lower caste Hindus. Syed Ahmed therefore must be understood as a product of his times. By placing him beyond the pale of history and writing nothing but eulogies on him, we are actually doing a great deal of disservice to him and the Muslim community at large.

Arshad Alam is a www.NewAgeIslam.com columnist.

Courtesy: NewAgeIslam.com

The post Syed Ahmed Khan: When Will We Stop Idolizing Him and Start Engaging With His Ideas? appeared first on SabrangIndia.