Maulana Azad

Remembering Abul Kalam Azad on his birth anniversary: 

Azad was born on 11 November 1888 in Makkah, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. His real name was Sayyid Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al Hussaini, but he eventually became known as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. 

Azad  was a scholar, Islamic theologian independence activist, and a senior leader of the Indian National Congress during the Indian independence movement. Following India's independence, he became the First Minister of Education in the Indian government. 

He is commonly remembered as Maulana Azad; the word Maulana is an honorific meaning 'Our Master' and he had adopted Azad (Free) as his pen name. Throughout his life, he was known for his unqualified and uncompromising moral integrity.

His contribution to establishing the education foundation in India is recognised by celebrating his birthday as National Education Day across India.

Early life:

Azad's family settled  in Calcutta in 1890. Azad was home-schooled and self-taught.  Following fluency in Arabic as a first language, Azad began to master several other languages including  including Bengali, Hindustani, Persian, and English. 

He was also trained in mathematics, philosophy, world history, and science by tutors hired by his family. An avid and determined student, the  precocious Azad ran a library, a reading room, and a debating society before he was twelve; started  teaching a class of students, most of whom were twice his age, when he was fifteen; and completed the traditional course of study at the age of sixteen, nine years ahead of his contemporaries. He published a poetical journal and edited  a weekly at the age of twelve. Azad compiled many treatises interpreting the Qur'an and the Hadis.

Politics:

Azad developed political views considered radical for most Muslims of the time and became a full-fledged Indian nationalist. He fiercely criticised the British for racial discrimination and ignoring the needs of common people across India. He also criticised Muslim politicians for focusing on communal issues before the national interest and rejected the All India Muslim League's communal separatism. Against common Muslim opinion of the time, Azad opposed the partition of Bengal in 1905.

At the 1928 Congress session in Guwahati, Azad endorsed Gandhi's call for dominion status for India within a year. If not granted, the Congress would adopt the goal of complete political independence for India. Despite his affinity for Gandhi, Azad also drew close to the young radical leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Bose, who had criticised the delay in demanding full independence. 

Azad developed a close friendship with Nehru and began espousing socialism as the means to fight inequality, poverty and other national challenges. 

When Gandhi embarked on the Dandi Salt March that inaugurated the Salt Satyagraha in 1930, Azad organised and led the  raid on the Dharasana salt works to protest the salt tax and restriction of its production and sale.  Azad was imprisoned along with millions of people, and would frequently be jailed from 1930 to 1934 for long periods of time. 

When elections were called under the Government of India Act 1935, Azad was appointed to organise the Congress election campaign across India. Azad had criticised the Act for including a high proportion of un-elected members in the central legislature, and did not himself contest a seat. He again declined to contest elections in 1937, and helped head the party's efforts to organise elections and preserve co-ordination and unity amongst the Congress governments elected in different provinces.

Azad supported dialogue with Jinnah and the Muslim League between 1935 and 1937 over a Congress-League coalition and broader political co-operation. Azad nevertheless joined the Congress's vehement rejection of Jinnah's demand that the League be seen exclusively as the representative of Indian Muslims.

In 1938, Azad served as an intermediary between the supporters of Gandhi and the  faction led by Congress president Subhash Bose, who criticised Gandhi for not launching another rebellion against the British and sought to move the Congress away from Gandhi's leadership. 

Azad stood by Gandhi with most other Congress leaders, but reluctantly endorsed the Congress's exit from the national assemblies in 1939 following the inclusion of India in World War II. Nationalists were infuriated that Viceroy Lord Linlithgow had entered India into the war without consulting national leaders. Although willing to support the British effort in return for independence, Azad sided with Gandhi when the British ignored the Congress overtures. 

Azad's criticism of Jinnah and the League intensified as Jinnah called Congress rule in the provinces as "Hindu Raj", calling the resignation of the Congress ministries as a "Day of Deliverance" for Muslims. Jinnah and the League's separatist agenda was gaining popular support amongst Muslims. Muslim religious and political leaders criticised Azad as being too close to the Congress and placing politics before Muslim welfare. 

As the Muslim League adopted a resolution calling for a separate Muslim state in its session in Lahore in 1940, Azad was elected Congress president in its session in Ramgarh. Speaking vehemently against Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory—the notion that Hindus and Muslims were distinct nations—Azad lambasted religious separatism and exhorted all Muslims to preserve a united India, as all Hindus and Muslims were Indians who shared deep bonds of brotherhood and nationhood. In his presidential address, Azad said:

" Full eleven centuries have passed by since then. Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism. If Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousands of years, Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism, so also we can say with equal pride that we are Indians and follow Islam. I shall enlarge this orbit still further. The Indian Christian is equally entitled to say with pride that he is an Indian and is following a religion of India, namely Christianity."

In face of increasing popular disenchantment with the British across India, Gandhi and Patel advocated an all-out rebellion demanding immediate independence. Feeling that a struggle would not force a British exit, Azad and Nehru warned that such a campaign would divide India and make the war situation even more precarious. 

In the end, Azad became convinced that decisive action in one form or another had to be taken, as the Congress had to provide leadership to India's people and would lose its standing if it did not.

He served as Congress president from 1940 to 1945, during which the Quit India rebellion was launched. Azad was imprisoned, together with the entire Congress leadership:

Supporting the call for the British to "Quit India", Azad began exhorting thousands of people in rallies across the nation to prepare for a definitive, all-out struggle. As Congress president, Azad travelled across India and met with local and provincial Congress leaders and grass-roots activists, delivering speeches and planning the rebellion. 

On 7 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank in Mumbai, Congress president Azad inaugurated the struggle with a vociferous speech exhorting Indians into action. Just two days later, the British arrested Azad and the entire Congress leadership. While Gandhi was incarcerated at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, Azad and the Congress Working Committee were imprisoned at a fort in  Ahmednagar, where they would remain under isolation and intense security for nearly four years. 

Post WWII:

With the end of the war, the British agreed to transfer power to Indian hands. All political prisoners were released in 1946 and Azad led the Congress in the elections for the new Constituent Assembly of India, which would draft India's constitution. 

He headed the delegation to negotiate with the British Cabinet Mission, in his sixth year as Congress president. He attacked Jinnah's demand for Pakistan and the mission's proposal of 16th June 1946 that envisaged the partition of India. 

Azad had been the Congress president since 1939, so he volunteered to resign in 1946. He nominated Nehru, who replaced him as Congress president and led the Congress into the interim government. Azad was appointed to head the Department of Education. 

Jinnah's Direct Action Day agitation for Pakistan, launched on 16 August 1946 sparked communal violence across India. Thousands of people were killed as Azad travelled across  Bengal and Bihar to calm the tensions and heal relations between Muslims and Hindus.

Despite Azad's call for Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah's popularity amongst Muslims soared. Azad had grown increasingly hostile to Jinnah, who had described him as the "Muslim Lord Haw-Haw" and a "Congress Showboy." Muslim League politicians accused Azad of allowing Muslims to be culturally and politically dominated by the Hindu community. Azad continued to proclaim his faith in Hindu-Muslim unity:

"I am proud of being an Indian. I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without me this splendid structure is incomplete. I am an essential element, which has gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim."

Amidst more incidences of violence in early 1947, the Congress-League coalition struggled to function. On 3 June 1947 the British announced a proposal to partition India on religious lines, with the princely states free to choose between either dominion. 

The proposal was hotly debated in the All India Congress Committee, with Muslim leaders  Saifuddin Kitchlew and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan expressing fierce opposition. Azad privately discussed the proposal with Gandhi, Patel and Nehru, but despite his opposition was unable to deny the popularity of the League and the unworkability of any coalition with the League.

Faced with the serious possibility of a civil war, Azad abstained from voting on the resolution, remaining silent and not speaking throughout the AICC session, which ultimately approved the plan.

Azad, committed to a united India until his last attempt, was condemned by the advocates of Pakistan, especially the Muslim League.

Post-independence:

India's partition and independence on 15 August 1947 brought with it a scourge of violence that swept many other parts of India.  Azad took up responsibility for the safety of Muslims in India, touring affected areas in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and the Punjab, guiding the organisation of refugee camps, supplies and security. 

Azad gave speeches to large crowds encouraging peace and calm in the border areas and encouraging Muslims across the country to remain in India and not fear for their safety and security. Focusing on bringing the capital of Delhi back to peace, Azad organised security and relief efforts. 

Azad remained a close confidante, supporter and advisor to prime minister Nehru, and played an important role in framing national policies. Azad masterminded the creation of national programmes of school and college construction and spreading the enrolment of children and young adults into schools, to promote universal primary education. 

Elected to the lower house of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha in 1952 and again in 1957, Azad supported Nehru's socialist economic and industrial policies, as well as the advancing social rights and economic opportunities for women and underprivileged Indians. 

Azad spent the final years of his life focusing on writing his book India Wins Freedom, an exhaustive account of India's freedom struggle and its leaders, which was published in 1959.

As India's first Minister of Education, he emphasised  education of the rural poor and girls. As Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education, he gave a  thrust to adult literacy, universal primary education, free and compulsory for all children up to the age of 14, girl's education, and diversification of secondary education and vocational training.

Maulana Azad emphasised, "We must not for a moment forget, it is a birthright of every individual to receive at least the basic education without which he cannot fully discharge his duties as a citizen."

Under his leadership, the Ministry of Education established the first Indian Institute of Technology in 1951 and the University Grants Commission in 1953. He also laid emphasis on the development of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He foresaw a great future in the IITs for India.

Death:

Maulana Azad passed away after a sudden and massive stroke on 22nd Feb 1958. He was 69 years old at the time.

Awards and Honours:

The Ministry of Minority Affairs of the central Government of India set up the Maulana Azad Education Foundation in 1989 on the occasion of his birth centenary to promote education amongst educationally backward sections of the Society. 

The Ministry also provides the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad National Fellowship, an integrated five-year fellowship in the form of financial assistance to students from minority communities to pursue higher studies such as M. Phil and PhD.

In 1992 government of India honoured him by giving him the Bharat Ratna posthumously, more than three decades after his death.

Numerous universities and institutions across India have also been named in his honour. 

National Education Day is  an annual observance in India to commemorate the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first education minister of independent India. National Education Day of India is celebrated on 11th November every year in India. 

He is celebrated as one of the founders and greatest patrons of the Jamia Millia Islamia.

Azad's tomb is located next to the Jama Masjid in Delhi. In recent years great concern has been expressed by many in India over the poor maintenance of the tomb. On 16 November 2005 the Delhi High Court ordered that the tomb of Maulana Azad in New Delhi be renovated and restored as a major national monument. Azad's tomb is a major landmark and receives large numbers of visitors every year.

Mahatma Gandhi said that Azad was  "a person of the calibre of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras".