Maulana Azad: A Life review: The enduring legacy of a freedom fighter and nation-builder

A book on Maulana Azad could not have come at a better time. It was released just when references about him were omitted from school textbooks. In the great Indian debate on the nationalism of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, his Islamic, yet uniquely Indian, nationalism offers some grist to the mill. The book confirms that free India’s first Education Minister was an autodidact, with no university degree.

Unlike politicians of today, Azad was never asked to show his degree, perhaps, because he never claimed to have one, and he often left people awestruck with his eloquence in Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and English. He read Voltaire and Rousseau in original French. Maulana wrote with authority on literature, philosophy, religion, ethics, and politics. Many of his masterpieces were written in prisons. He rotated between subjects for the sake of ‘tehmiz,’ the Arabic word for changing the taste of the mouth.

 Scholar, politician, freedom fighter

S Irfan Habib’s book brings out the fascinating man behind the scholar, politician, and freedom fighter. It reveals many unknown facets of Azad’s life. As a human being, Maulana Azad loved solitude and disliked the idea of irrational hate for anything — even Wahhabism — for whose followers the faith was frozen in time. “I am not on the wrong path. Nor am I a Wahabi or a nechari (nature worshiper),” Azad once clarified to his father. As a man of faith, he was more like a poet and artist, and a smoker and drinker. He admired Iranians for their taste for music and embraced reason with a touch of romanticism: “Do not be offended, O Saki/I am young and the world is young with me…”

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To the author, Azad was, first and foremost, a confident and convincing commentator on Islam and a true believer who differed with the conventional Islamic thinking of the times. The book brings out this aspect of his personality through his disagreements with his father, Maulana Khairuddin, a renowned Arabic scholar, and a Sufi. Such was his father’s antipathy towards Wahhabism that, within the family, Wahabis were called mosquitos or rats. But Azad countered them not with abhorrence but with reason.

It was Azad’s immersion in the freedom movement and the fight against injustice and oppression that took him beyond theology, the author notes. He drew on fellow freedom fighters like Nehru and Sardar Vallbh Patel but was profoundly influenced by Gandhi even though he never treated non-violence as an article of faith. He joined Gandhi’s satyagraha movements and the Dandi March with enthusiasm.

Achievements as the first education minister

Azad admired Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s induction of rationality in matters of faith and adopted his rejection of blind conformity as a part of his own ideology. Like Syed Ahmed, he also tried to broaden the worldview of nineteenth century Indian Muslims and maintained that Islam was practised in diverse ways across the world and no singular interpretation could be imposed on all believers.

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His Congress Presidential address in Ramgarh in 1940 was a call for Hindu-Muslim unity: “Our languages, our poetry, our literature, our culture, our art, our dress, our manners and customs, the innumerable happenings of our daily life, everything bears the stamp of our joint endeavour.” The core of Azad’s composite nationalism was based on an understanding of identity which was uniquely Indian.

Through the story of Maulana, the author lets us in on the enormity of challenges before the Indian leadership in 1947 and how they were overcome. Almost two centuries of colonial rule had left the nation withered and it was further crippled by the pains of Partition. The task before the leadership was to rebuild the nation at war footing with meager resources.

As the first Education Minister, Azad focused his attention on basic education, promoting ideas of a united and prosperous India. He felt that the Macaulayan education failed to develop a national mind, besides other flaws. He introduced the singing of the National Anthem in schools and acquainted students with the elements of Indian culture. His policies were clear and far-sighted, without undermining the authority of the state governments.

The cultural reconstruction

Having taught himself English and French and travelled around the world, Azad was aware of the advances being made in the West and the value of scientific temper — ideas also close to the then Prime Minister Nehru’s heart. He founded numerous institutions, including the University Grants Commission, a Scientific Manpower Committee, the Higher Education Commission, and the first Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur.

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Another mission for Azad was cultural reconstruction after long years of decline of Indian art, music, and literature under the British. He once wrote to Sardar Patel about the poor quality of Indian classical music played on All India Radio. “It has…been a shock to me to find that the standard of music of AIR broadcast is extremely poor. I have always felt that AIR should set the standard in Indian music…” he wrote as a practitioner of Indian classical music.

Azad was also a journalist, scholar and an unusual freethinker. He brought out newspapers which were banned twice by the British for speaking truth to power. But he is best remembered as a frontline freedom fighter, a member of the Constituent Assembly, which founded the Indian Constitution, and the President of the Indian National Congress, twice. He yearned for inclusiveness and held that religion alone can never be the basis for nationhood. This made him a persona non grata for the leaders of the Muslim League. He was proved right in the end, a good enough reason for his relevance today. 

 (The author heads Common Cause, known for its democratic interventions)