[Reader-list] A good article-Maulana Azad As A Role Model For Contemporary Muslims

[Rajkamal Goswami]

Maulana Azad As A Role Model For Contemporary Muslims

By Muqtedar Khan

24 August, 2010
Countercurrents.org

On 15th of August, India celebrated its independence from British
Colonization. Congratulations to India. For nearly 200 years the
British occupied and exploited India and its resources. But we all
know this aspect of the British culture first hand and it does not
need much elaboration here.

India too has emerged as a democracy after independence. It used to be
a great civilization, now it is on its way to becoming a great world
power. India is not only a successful democracy and an emerging
fountain of knowledge for the World; it is also the other Holy Land.
There are only four religions with over a billion adherents, two come
from the Middle East (Islam and Christianity) and the other two were
made in India (Hinduism and Buddhism).

Whether it is Indian software engineers, doctors, or professors,
Indians are not only scripting a phenomenal story of growth in India,
but are also driving growth everywhere in the World.

In the U.S. too Indians and their progeny are making an incredible
impact. Bobby Jindal the Governor of Louisiana, Fareed Zakaria and
Sanjay Gupta of CNN, Deepak Chopra, 11 Nobel Laureates, and thousands
of scientists and entrepreneurs are making America a more scientific
and prosperous nation. Kalpana Chawla the brave astronaut who died in
the Space Shuttle accident was an Indian-American. And then there is
yours truly.

One of the most important reasons for India’s tremendous
post-Independence success is its unwavering focus on education. One of
the earliest architects of India’s freedom struggle and its focus on
education was a Muslim scholar – Maulana Azad, a close companion of
Mahatma Gandhi and the first Minister of Education of free India (from
1947-1958). His educational policies that created the world-renowned
Indian Institutes of Technologies and brought education to women very
early on played a big role in India’s social and economic development
and its ability to nourish its democracy.

Maulana Azad was a remarkable man by any standards. He was a freedom
fighter, a journalist, a scholar, a politician and a statesman. He was
born in Mecca in 1988 in a family of Islamic scholars, who taught
Islam in Mecca and Calcutta. He received a traditional education in
Islamic sciences but in his early teens he recognized that much of his
education was religious indoctrination. So he rebelled against it and
declared his intellectual freedom and took the nom de plume – Azad.
Azad means free.

He became a prominent player in India’s freedom struggle, motivated
millions of Muslim Indians to join the movement through his various
magazines and led the Indian National Congress during the crucial
years from 1940-1946. He was an Indian Muslim leader and Islamic
scholar who believed in Hindu-Muslim unity and opposed the partition
of India on religious grounds. He believed that a secular, democratic
India would safe guard the freedoms of both Muslims and Hindus.

Azad’s faith in communal harmony came from his belief in the
fundamental unity of all religions. Based on his reading of the Quran
which claims that God has sent prophets with the divine message to all
people, some of them known to Prophet Muhammed others he was not aware
of (40:78) and that all religions are but one (23:52). It was this
belief that made him reach out to Hindus, Christians, and Parsees,
successfully.

In spite of his political responsibilities, Azad found time to write
books on India and on the Quran. His magnum opus was a thirty-volume
commentary on the Quran and several other treatises on the Quran and a
history of India’s struggle – India Wins Freedom. No leader in the
Indian subcontinent, Hindu or Muslim, could match him in erudition and
scholarship. No contemporary leader in the entire Muslim World is able
to combine political leadership and Islamic scholarship like Azad.

Muslims who live as minorities need leaders like Azad who emphasize
respect for pluralism, believe in democracy and eschew mental and
social ghettoes. Leaders who use religious identities as political
instruments not only undermine the social harmony of societies but
also do more harm than good for the very minorities whose interests
they claim to advance. We live in an age of globalization, where
boundaries are gradually losing their salience, in this age, politics
of religious boundaries are artificial and counter productive.

I hope that American Muslims will discover Azad and learn how to live
and lead in a secular democracy; and non-Muslim Americans learn that
not all Muslim leaders in history were divisive and partisan. Many
like Azad, seek political and religious unity.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor at the University of Delaware
and a Fellow of the Institute for Social policy and Understanding.
-- 
Rajkamal