The distinctive leadership class, the spellbound artistry talent of oration, the extraordinary writing proficiency, the unique persuasiveness in his speeches or writings, the surprising intellectuality, the rare memory power, the strange fearlessness when it comes to fight for the rights of his countrymen, a boy, imbibed with all these qualities had been sent to earth in the holy city Makkah on November 11, 1888, who, later, grew up to become an eminent guide for his people and led them to the world of freedom from the days of their hardships and got famous as Maulana Azad.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s real name was Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin. He was popularly known as Maulana Azad. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was one of the foremost leaders of Indian freedom struggle. He was also a renowned scholar, and poet. Maulana Azad was well versed in many languages viz. Arabic, English, Urdu, Hindi, Persian and Bengali. Maulana Azad was a brilliant debater, as indicated by his name, Abul Kalam, which literally means “lord of dialogue”. He adopted the pen name ‘Azad’ as a mark of his mental emancipation from a narrow view of religion and life. Maulana Azad became Independent India’s first Education Minister.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was born in Makkah and lived there till he was about seven. His father Khairuddin, a scholar-sufi and pir originally from Calcutta (now Kolkata), was persuaded by his disciples to return to that city. Under the strict tutelage of his father, Azad continued his Islamic studies though he resented the restrictive and authoritarian manner in which this syllabus was taught. Therefore, on his own, Azad furtively cultivated a taste for Urdu and Persian literatures and even learnt to play the sitar.
Imbued with an astonishing memory and encyclopaedic information, he was, indeed, a precocious child and young prodigy who was eager to write biography of Ghazali when he was only twelve. Two years later, he began to contribute learned articles to Makhzan, the best-known literary magazine of the day. When Shams-ul-Ulama Shibli Nomani met him, he was so much impressed by his intellectual skills that he took Azad to Lucknow and made him prominent in national circles by offering him editorship of Al-Nadva. In 1906, he became the editor of a very popular biweekly, Vakil of Amritsar.
By the time he was thirteen, Azad was disillusioned with his Islamic training due to modernist writings of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He fell into a phase of atheism which, according to him, lasted from the age of 14 to 22. During his later teenage years he came into close contact with the Hindu revolutionaries of Bengal. A combination of brief travel to the Middle East and his Arabic reading also exposed him more deeply to the reformist ideas of Sheikh Abduh of Egypt and the uncompromising nationalism and anti-imperialism of Mustafa Kamil Pasha. His spiritual homelessness, however, came to an end in 1910 when an emotional/mystical experience renewed his faith in religion and galvanised his personality in a dramatic fashion. Following his queer ‘conversion,’ Azad’s career really began to take off in 1912 with the appearance of his Urdu journal Al-Hilal. Equipped with literary pursuit, breath-taking language and auxiliary attractions, the journal simultaneously meant to preach ‘pure’ Islam and Indian independence. Through his unique style, Azad sought to bring Indian Muslims onto the platform of the freedom movement and to work in cooperation with Hindus. Despite his earlier admiration for Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Azad was then a harsh critic of the loyalist politics of Aligarh University.
In 1930, the Congress declared complete independence as the goal of the national movement, and civil disobedience continued in vigour following Gandhi’s famous Salt March. Azad was imprisoned twice in a row during this period, and then released in 1936 along with other Congress leaders. It was during these periods of imprisonment that the Maulana was able to complete the first edition of his famous Tarjuman al-Quran, his Urdu translation and commentary on the Qur’ān.
Following the passing away of M.A. Ansari in 1936, Azad became the most prominent Muslim member of the Congress and in 1939 he was elected President of the Congress. His presidential address at the Ramgarh session of the Congress in 1940 occurred just a few days before the Muslim League’s historic Pakistan Resolution. It was negation of the two-nation theory and articulated his oft-repeated ideology of secular nationalism. Azad was severely criticised by influential Muslim political leaders as well as so many religious and modern educated classes who earlier in his career had adored him and his revivalist ideas. Azad was imprisoned for a fifth time in 1940, following a limited campaign of civil disobedience, and released a year later.
By 1942, and following the more comprehensive Quit India Movement, he, along with other Congress leaders, was once again imprisoned. He was released in 1946 and continued to be the president of the All India National Congress throughout the War years. During his presidency, he tried to persuade the Congress to make some concessions and come to terms with the Muslim League to avoid division of India but both Jinnah’s single-mindedness and certain Congress mistakes prevented any settlement thereof. On occasions, his own party colleagues thwarted his initiatives and turned him into just a titular Congress head during, for example, his vital negotiations with both the Cripps and the Cabinet missions. The Maulana reluctantly relinquished the Congress presidency in 1946, hoping that this would open an avenue between the Congress and the League. He kept out of the coalition government formed that year, but in 1947, at Gandhi’s urging he became Minister of Education. Though, like Gandhi, he was forced to accept Partition, he could never reconcile himself to it and was rather heartbroken by the event and its bloody aftermath.
After Partition, he held the post of Minister of Education of India for ten years. Though he was not a particularly effective administrator, he did perform some important services such as cultivating technical, adult, and women’s education, and an academy of literature, as well as opposing the ejection of English as a national language. Meanwhile, his belief in religious pluralism and the need for a humanistic outlook broadened even further, and he openly identified parallels between Vedantic and Sufi thought in some of his addresses.
He was a great literary figure and essentially a thinker and the chief exponent of Wahdat-i-Deen or the essential oneness of all religions, Azad played around with a variety of ideas on religion, state and civil society. Among his works Ghubar-i-Khatir is considered not only his masterpiece but also an illustration of great Urdu literature. Soon after his death, an English book, India Wins Freedom appeared, based on his Urdu account as translated and edited by Humayun Kabir. It gives valuable information regarding the political history of the subcontinent at a crucial period.
Maulana died of a stroke on February 22, 1958 and was entombed in a dignified corner near Jama Masjid in Delhi and his memories remained buried deep inside every Indian’s heart forever.