by Raza Rumi
Despite Azad’s exhortations, many Muslims had turned a deaf ear to his views on the two-nation theory. And, as he had predicted, it was not long before upheavals occurred that were to change the destiny of Indian Muslims. Sticking to his position, he reiterated that Partition was a ‘fundamental mistake’. He asked whether Muslims were capable of any constructive thinking and if Indian Muslims were going to lead the ‘life of escapism’ that they had ‘opted for in the sacred name of hijrat. Azad’s words in Urdu were lyrical:
… where are you going and why? Raise your eyes. The minarets of Jama Masjid want to ask you a question: where have you lost the glorious pages from your chronicles? Was it only yesterday that on the banks of the Jamuna, your caravans performed wuzu3? Today, you are afraid of living here! Remember, Delhi has been nurtured with your blood. Brothers! Create a basic change in yourselves. Today, your fear is misplaced as your jubilation was yesterday.
Noting that politics had undergone a major shift, Azad urged Muslims ‘to take their cue from history and cast themselves in the new mould.’ There were still many ‘blank pages in the history of India’ and Muslims had to be ‘worthy of filling those pages’. That the bright etchings of Delhi all around them were indeed relics of the qafilas of Muslim ancestors. He wanted them to be fit inheritors of this legacy.
I’m struck by Azad’s words. The area around the Jama Masjid is, in chillingly real terms, a Muslim’s ‘own surroundings’ and their ‘own world’—different and a wee bit cut off from the rest of the city. While Delhi expands outwards and eats into the fields of Haryana and tracts across the Jamuna, the Muslim slum grows inwards and backwards into time and the lost world of fleeting glory.
Azad remained ahead of his times and his prediction that Indian Muslims would end up divided finally came true when, after a bloody war of liberation, East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Now the Muslims of the subcontinent are located in almost equal numbers in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In his 1946 statement on Muslim issues in India, in the classic document of Indian Muslim nationalism, India Wins Freedom, Azad had warned:
Let us consider dispassionately the consequences which will follow if we give effect to the Pakistan scheme. India will be divided into two states, one with a majority of Muslims and the other of Hindus. In the Hindustan State there will remain three and a half crores of Muslims scattered in small minorities all over the land… They will awaken overnight and discover that they have become alien and foreigners. Backward industrially, educationally and economically, they will be left to the mercies of what would become an unadulterated Hindu Raj… even if Pakistan was overwhelmingly Muslim in population, it still could hardly solve the problem of Muslims in Hindustan.
He had also foreseen that ‘two states confronting one another, offer no solution to the problem of one another’s minorities, but only lead to retribution and reprisals by introducing a system of mutual hostages.’ Like Jinnah, Azad was also inclined towards the 1946 Cabinet Mission proposals of creating a confederation once the British left India. But events were unfolding so rapidly that his lonesome voice was drowned in the beating of jubilatory drums for India and Pakistan respectively. Azad, however, remained optimistic and worked until his death in 1958 for the larger secular agenda, especially in education and culture.
Today, much of Azad’s ‘community’, to use the construct we are hostage to, remains uneducated and locked in a different time zone. They evidently ignored Azad’s advice to be part of history’s advance. Ironically, Azad’s fellow Congressmen, even today, continue to use secularism merely as an electoral strategy. Instead of deepening real secular values and education, they focus on the politics of appeasement and patronage. Often, in this process they seek the support of retrogressive clerics mistaking, that for some sort of representation of millions of Indian Muslims.
Decades after Azad’s death, his granddaughter, Najma Heptullah, earlier a senior Congress leader, joined the BJP. What could be more ironic than that?
The single most important indicator of the Muslim plight has to do with their educational standards and illiteracy, and that too in Delhi, once home to strong movements towards education.
Aurangzeb, like his grandfather Jahangir, was fond of reading and writing. In the early 1700s, in memory of one of his loyal generals, he established the Ghaziuddin Madrassa near Ajmeri Gate. The well-known nineteenth-century Delhi College now named after India’s first President, Dr Zakir Hussain, emerged out of the eminent Ghaziuddin Madrassa. The tradition of madrassas, however, was already well entrenched. The first madrassa in Delhi was established by Firoz Tughlak close to Hauz Khas.
In Shahjahanabad, the Emperor’s wife (hailing from Fatehpur) built a masjid and therefore it is known as the Fatehpuri Masjid. I could not help but notice that its space looked inwards much like the women’s quarters of Shahjahanabad. In 1875, the mosque was converted into a madrassa when Lord Northbrook was the Viceroy of India. The fountain of Chandni Chowk was also renamed after Lord Northbrook. In 1878, the madrassa expanded its scope by accepting students from outside Delhi.
Today, this madrassa is locked in time. Young men in topis and ankle-length pyjamas sit on the ground and, with shaking heads, rote-learn Urdu lessons and religious instruction. Like several such madrassas across South Asia, this is a quaint world unaffected by the rapidly changing world. The Fatehpuri Madrassa carries a practice that is increasingly looked upon with fear by non-Muslims who perceive it as a new lexicon of terror and terrorism, and consider it a threat.
The madrassas of Delhi were evolving in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Delhi College was an innovative example of the re-emphasis of education among Muslims, led by visionaries such as Sayyed Ahmed Khan. A vast network of Muslim scholars, educationists and officials led by Khan, urged the Muslim population to acquire modern education and catch up with changing times. During the early years of this movement, also known as the ‘Aligarh Movement’, women’s education was not a priority; however, by the twentieth century it would emerge as a pressing priority. The famed Aligarh School, College and later Muslim University were concrete results of this movement.
Delhi’s intellectual elites joined forces with British zeal to reform Muslim education, resulting in the setting up of the Delhi College, a meeting ground of British and Oriental cultures.4 By the mid-1800s, the College emerged as a strong institution of quality learning. English and Oriental branches of study existed side by side.
It was the famous principal, Alois Sprenger, who provided much dynamism and intellectual energy to the institution. Leading faculty members, products of the changing times, were Maulvi Zakaullah, ‘Dipty’ Nazir Ahmed, Master Ram Chandra and Maulvi Karimuddin. They became the foremost proponents of modern education in Delhi. The poet, Ghalib, was also considered for a job at the Delhi College but he turned it down as he felt that he was not given due respect on his visit for the interview.
Nazir Ahmad was also a novelist and his reformist stories still remain popular in the Urdu language. His works were included in the syllabus at my own school, the Aitchison College, in Pakistan. Munshi Zakaullah, an eminent writer, published over 140 books on diverse topics ranging from history to the rules of chess. The gifted Master Ram Chandra was hailed as a genius because of his ground-breaking work on algebra titled A Treatise on Problems of Maxima and Minima solved by Algebra.
The British viewed the Delhi College as a modernizing influence on the ‘natives’ who, with the acquisition of western knowledge, would form a class that was better acquainted with colonial priorities. Gradually, the curricula of traditional sciences underwent changes. Students were given the option to learn Arabic through compilations of the hadith or via the fables of The Thousand and One Nights. But this was also becoming a dangerous trend as the gulf between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ was to widen and ‘knowledge’ became compartmentalized. In South Asia, these parallel streams of learning exist side by side even today, and bridging them has now become a
daunting challenge in public policy. The reform of Muslim education, especially to bridge the gap between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge, has been a recurrent theme in the writings of South Asian Muslim reformists since the nineteenth century.
This conflict remains unresolved and is now a contested political matter exploited by traditionalists as a bargaining chip for further patronage, and by right wing Hindu groups such as the Sangh Parivar as another ruse for Muslim bashing.
In Old Delhi, I look for ‘Dipty’ Nazir Ahmed’s house. Nazir Ahmed was a civil servant by profession who had held the post of deputy collector. I have always found such linguistic amalgamation (‘Dipty’ being the Urdu version of ‘Deputy’) most fascinating—in the case of Nazir Ahmed it was even more symbolic. Ahmed belonged to the Muslim elite which was trying to save its losing position by aligning with the Raj. So, quite aptly, his title was a combination of the Urdu language and Raj bureaucracy.
Ahmed was given an award of Rs 1,000 and a watch by the British government for his novel Mirat-ul-Urus (The Bride’s Mirror), authored in 1869, when he was thirty-eight. This prize was for a book, which ‘shall serve some useful purpose (and) shall be written in… Oordoo or Hindee… Books suitable for the women of India will be especially acceptable, and well awarded.’5
Written for his daughters, it became the first Urdu bestseller of sorts by selling over 100,000 copies. In 1903, it was translated for the first time into English. The canvas was a bit like Jane Austen’s—dealing with the inner and domestic lives of women. These were tales that were born during the afternoon sunshine, by kitchen lamplights and from the domestic harmony (or turmoil) of Delhi’s courtyards. Ahmed thus created a lovely literary work—a miniature of the life of women, timeless and intimate.
I recall many minor details of the novel on my visits to various parts of Shahjahanabad, since the novel is set there—that Turkman Gate sold cheaper grains and vegetables sold at Chandni Chowk, close to the Sabzi Mandi, were less expensive.
But I am disappointed with Ahmed’s haveli. I am denied entry by the current residents of the ramshackle structure which has been rebuilt in a most unpleasing manner. They are not too pleased with a Pakistani visitor making silly inquiries. An old man with a long beard and a cap opens the door but he is hard of hearing. I don’t wish to struggle too much, so I give up.
The 140 million Muslims in India have no credible secular leadership and, worst of all, no direction to move out of their ‘inner siege’ as I find out in Sadia’s living room while watching a TV show which reveals some uncomfortable truths. Over 55 per cent of Muslims lived below the poverty line within the national average of 35 per cent. Not to mention that 45 per cent are illiterate compared to 36 per cent of all Indians. Nazir Ahmed would be horrified to know that in 2006, 55 per cent of Muslim women were still illiterate (against the 40 per cent of all Indian women). And the total share of Muslims in the civil services is a little over 2 per cent. Indeed, those Sultans and Mughals of yester-empires would never have imagined, while immersed in their splendours and silly little indulgences that, centuries later, over 40 per cent of their inheritors would be called ‘Other Backward Castes’ (OBC) in post-modern India. Sadia’s favourite line would have smacked them with irony, ‘The singular places where Muslims are over-represented and constitute nearly 35 per cent are in jails.’
Such a huge underclass provides ideal fodder for electoral politicking and vote bank swings. Secular parties such as the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Communist Party of India and others find the Muslim community to be a convenient ally in constituency-based politics. The Sachar Committee6 (2006) is just the latest of countless commissions with the ‘correct’ recommendations. The demand for OBC reservations that should include Muslims has now emerged. For instance, the Committee’s report states that in several states and at the centre, the Muslim groups ‘who are included in the OBC list are eligible for reservation benefits’. The report rationalizes this demand by stating that the condition of Muslim OBCs is ‘lower’ than other communities in the same category.
I raise this issue with many academics and Delhi intellectuals but have never got a clear reply. There is sufficient appreciation of the problem; erudite additions are made to my skin-deep observations, but the will to publicly advocate this is lacking. This could be a time-bomb, politically speaking, I insist dramatically, an impending cleavage that could be a nightmare not just for India but also for the whole region. I am reminded, of course, that the Dalit situation is a priority in the public discourse and this issue is now unwittingly intertwined with the larger issues of the politics of caste and backwardness.
Sadia is always cooking up inventive ways of ‘doing something’ for the community. From the ‘Save Urdu’ campaign to employment generation and social work in the Nizamuddin Basti, she does her bit. Delhi was once a place where individuals were tireless in their efforts to ameliorate the condition of Muslims. Today, given that India is a fabulous arena for civic action and leadership, this kind of civic contribution does not necessarily have to be Muslim-centric, but rather, poor or backward-centric.
While in Shahjahanabad, I remember Hakim Ajmal Khan, the eminent doctor and philanthropist. These were times, just after Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914), the poet, had equated the fortunes of the Muslim qaum or community with the fortunes of the city—‘Delhi’s glory and the glory of the qaum are the same’—Hali mused in one of his pamphlets.
A luminary of pre-Luytens Delhi, Ajmal Khan, who epitomized such a ‘glory’, embodied Delhi’s urbaneness. Khan advocated the notion that the preservation of Muslim culture was in everyone’s interest and this was only achievable through inter-communal cooperation in medicine, politics and culture. Thus he brought together Unani hakims and Ayurvedic practitioners in an attempt to revive traditional medicine and wed it to modernity. While speaking at the first Tibbi conference, Hakim Ajmal narrated how ‘Greek medicine travelled from Greece to Egypt, then to Spain from where it reached Baghdad. From Baghdad it came to Iran where it made tremendous progress… From there it came to India and flourished here.’ Both Unani and Ayurvedic systems emanate from the concept of ‘the elements’ (fire, water, earth and air) in the human body. Thus the remedies are often similar in the two traditional practices which use several common herbs and foods.
From the start of the Delhi Municipality in 1863 to the early twentieth century, various hakims took part in activism and politics. Ajmal Khan and his fellow reformers opposed the misuse of unregulated folk medicines and raised awareness about spurious treatments. However, a century later, quacks still abound and one marvels at the most interesting advertisements in Old Delhi promising miraculous treatments for all ailments.
By early 1920, Ajmal Khan had created three lasting institutions—the Central College in Delhi, the pharmacy to produce indigenous medicines and the Tibbi Conference, which was later renamed the All India Ayurvedic and Unani Tibbiya Conference. Ajmal would visit various princely states to provide medical advice. The Nawab of Rampur, who treated him as a general guide, patronized him. Ajmal Khan was a supporter of the Khilafat movement and Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, returning the title ‘Haziq-ul-Mulk’ given to him in 1907 by the British. After serving as the chairman of the Congress Reception Committee, he was elected president of the Congress Party in 1921.
Medicine and politics were his bedfellows throughout his life. Congress included the protection of indigenous health systems as part of its programme. Khan’s lasting contribution lay in his vision of evolving the nationalist Muslim school and university, the Jamia Millia.
C.F. Andrews wrote on Ajmal Khan’s practice of medicine:
My first visit to the waiting room brought home a shock to the opinion I carried from England that Hindus and Muslims could not mix. (Ajmal Khan) treated all alike, Hindu and Muslim, rich and poor.7
In a similar vein, Nehru wrote in his autobiography:
He brought the Hindus and Muslims muc
h nearer to each other, for both honoured him and were influenced by his example. To Gandhiji he became a trusted friend whose advice with regard to Hindu-Muslim matters was the final word for him. My father and Hakimji had naturally taken to each other.8
In the communal riots of 1919, Ajmal Khan and Swami Shraddhananda saved the city from destruction though their mediation and unity. Andrews testifies, ‘I saw the Hakim Saheb in all the true greatness of his character. Night and day, he laboured for peace.’9
Ajmal Khan wrote, ‘What culture I possess or whether I possess any at all, is a little difficult for me to say. Persian as a language, unhappily, I do not even know. But it is true that my father had grown up in an Indo-Persian cultural atmosphere which was the legacy in North India of the Old Delhi court and of which, even in these degenerate days, Delhi and Lucknow are the two chief centres. Kashmiri Brahmins had a remarkable capacity for adaptation… Even now there are many distinguished scholars in Persian among the Kashmiris in India…’
Ajmal Khan’s death, ten years before India’s partition, was in the words of Nehru, ‘a great blow to Congress’. He lamented, ‘for all of us, there has been something lacking in a visit to Delhi, for Delhi was so closely associated with Hakimji and his house in Ballimaran.’10
Delhi was a poorer place after Ajmal Khan, perhaps never to recover from the absence of such a luminary who blended Muslim heritage with the political reality of his times, and despite his personal faith, upheld staunch secularist credentials.
Contemporary Delhi has its own brand of activism. Lawyers and courts have saved the environment through public interest litigations (PILs). A decade of public activism led to the conversion of public transport to a less toxic compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel. Some hold a grouse against the ‘tyranny’ of the courts saying that they order demolition of shops and livelihoods. My friend Mayank says, ‘They first force tribals to move out from their jungles and when they settle in Delhi’s slums, the courts order their slums to be razed.’