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ESSAY: THE MAN WHO BECAME A MOVEMENT

Raza NaeemUpdated October 15, 2017
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Born on Oct 17, 1817, Syed Ahmad bin Muttaqi Khan began his career in
service of the East India Company. After the war of 1857 he started working
for educational reforms for the Muslims of India. In 1888 he was made a
Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India and became known as Sir
Syed Ahmad Khan

This article was originally published in Dawn on October 15th, 2017, to mark
the bicentennial of the birth of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan emerged as a key leader of the Indian Muslim
community in the aftermath of the War of Independence of 1857, as a
thoroughly modern Muslim in a thoroughly pre-modern age. He is credited for
originating the two-nation theory, founding the Aligarh Movement and being
a founding father of Pakistan, but less celebrated are his achievements in
providing a modern, scientific and rational interpretation of Islam and the
Holy Quran, as well as his debates on culture that — in the face of stern
opposition from fundamentalists and detractors — sowed the seeds of
enlightenment and progress.

HIS VIEWS ON CULTURE

Sir Syed was probably the first intellectual to present the meaning of culture as
it was prevalent in the West in the 19th century. When defining the aims of his
journal Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq in its first edition, he wrote: “The objective of
issuing this journal is to persuade Indian Muslims to adopt a complete degree
of civilisation, meaning culture, so that the hatred with which the civilised
(cultured) nations view them should go away and they may also be said to be
[one of the] exalted and cultured nations of the world.”

October 17 marks the bicentennial of the

birth of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who exerted
a defining influence on Indian Muslim
thought. It is instructive to understand how
his thinking evolved and the strong
oppositions he faced during his time

Expounding on this, he wrote two detailed essays in Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq,

‘Culture and its Definition’ and ‘Civilisation or Sophistication and Culture’,
based on a book by British historian Thomas Buckle.

Buckle had tried to write the history of human civilisation in the light of
scientific knowledge and also fashioned a few ‘laws’ based on inductive
reasoning; for example, the law of seasons, that showed that the physical
environment greatly affected human culture. Although Buckle’s ‘ideologies’
went against historical facts (the physical environment of the ancient Indus
Valley, Nile River Valley and Mesopotamia was different from Europe, but no
one can deny the greatness of these cultures), the West enthusiastically
welcomed them because Buckle had fashioned the dominance of the white
nations and slavery of Asian nations into a natural law, thus presenting an
ideological justification for Britain’s imperialist interests.
What Sir Syed wrote about man and human culture 150 years ago continues to
hold true. For example, he said, “There is a close relationship between human
actions and the laws of nature,” meaning that the laws of human society and
the movement of nature are identical. Then, “human actions and the work of
their mutual milieu are subject to some predetermined law and not
coincidental.” Third, “Man’s actions are not the results of his wishes, but the
results of past events.” Fourth, “Any human society is not free of culture” and
fifth, “Man changes nature and nature changes Man and all events are made
from this mutual exchange.”

In mentioning the specific qualities of man, Sir Syed wrote that man’s “organs
and body are ... not his only superiority, but the work he is able to do with the
help of his intelligence, as well as with such hands, because of them he is able
to live a happy, comfortable life ... able to make his self into an artificial
existence and, compared to the status of his natural life, is able to provide it
with a lot of luxury.”

A comprehensive review of Sir Syed’s intellectual services is beyond the scope

of this essay. However, we must admit that he was the first Indian Muslim
thinker to explain changes in the world and human society in terms of the laws
of motion of society itself and its creation. He did not include the intent or
desire of any supernatural force.
A photocopy of the front page of the first issue of Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq, dated
Shawwal 1, 1287 Hijri, corresponding to Dec 24, 1870 | Wikimedia Commons

HIS OWN EVOLUTION

When Sir Syed was compiling the Aaeein-i-Akbari in 1848, and later when he
was writing Asar-us-Sanadid, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib wrote asking what
was of worth in the ancient texts. He desired to know why Sir Syed was
engaged in nourishing the dead. He demanded Sir Syed to come out of
worshipping the past and see the amazing scientific inventions the savants of
the West had pioneered, such as the steam-powered ship and other machines,
the electric wire, the matchstick and — even greater than these — a code, a law
and a system.

“Put aside the Aaeein, and parley with me/ Open thine eyes in this old world/
And examine the life of the Englishmen/ Their style, their manner, their trade
and their art,” wrote Ghalib, greatly upsetting Sir Syed.

Yet 20 years later, the very same Sir Syed set up the Scientific Society of
Aligarh, earning the epithets of kafir and zindiq from representatives of the
ancient ruins. This internal intellectual revolution was caused by the Western-
style administration, lifestyle and education; had Western influence not been
so dominant, perhaps Sir Syed would still be engaged with the ancient ruins.

One of Sir Syed’s ardent disciples, Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, wrote in
Hayat-i-Javed, his biography of the former, that at a time when Raja Ram
Mohan Roy was demanding the English language and modern education, the
Muslim ulema, by means of 8,000 signatures, proclaimed that the new infidel
education was not needed; teaching Farsi and Arabic was enough. Sir Syed
expressed his embarrassment at this organising of Muslims against modern
education in which religious scholars played a prominent role.

Sir Syed viewed the intellectual changes taking place at a level further than
Ghalib. He understood that without engaging in the new form of scientific
education, Indian Muslims would not only be left far behind, but might not
even be able to maintain their identity. When he set up the Scientific Society —
the basis of which was rationalist, or using reason — he was denounced as an
Anglophile and an apologist for the colonial masters. From the
fundamentalists came fatwas, while the nationalists called him a lackey who,
in his passion for adopting new visions, had become an ally and propagandist
of the British government.

This objection was, to a great extent, true. Sir Syed was politically
conservative, believing that India’s security lay in British rule and instead of
reconciling himself with India’s national aspirations, he saw Muslims as a
separate nation. But from a social perspective he was progressive. He ran a
proper campaign to organise views in favour of modern ideas and against the
worship of superstition. His own viewpoint had changed; from his 1848 essay
Qaul-i-Mateen Dar Abtaal Harkat-i-Zameen in which he tried to refute the
theory of the movement of the earth, his thought had adopted a scientific turn.

In religion, his basic inference was that there could not be a contradiction in
the Word and Work of God. He meant that nature could not be against the
Word of God and if it appeared to us as such, we were definitely making a
mistake somewhere in understanding the Word. That was why we needed to
have commentary and exegeses of the Word of God on new lines.
The Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College was founded in 1877 as one of
India’s earliest residential educational institutions. It was affiliated first with
the University of Calcutta and then with the University of Allahabad. By 1920
the college had grown and expanded into the Aligarh Muslim University |
Dawn file photo

Consequently, Sir Syed emphasised a new education of the Word (ilm-ul-

kalaam). He opened educational institutions and schools, but — in what could
be considered a flaw — kept Cambridge and Oxford as his models and gave the
leadership of his institutions to the British. As a result, his policy for
educational institutions was limited to being openly patronising of the British,
which was undoubtedly a great defect in his scheme. But all this was part of
his political thought.
The second major flaw in Sir Syed’s educational scheme was that he did not
pay attention to the teaching of industry, handicrafts and technology, although
a nation cannot progress economically without technical education. Until the
1930s and 1940s there was no arrangement at Aligarh for the teaching of
technology, engineering and medicine.

Even so, Sir Syed’s role in our cultural and intellectual history has been
undeniably unique. As for him being a British loyalist, that objection

is not really significant anymore because he turned our intellectual current

towards scientific thought, liberating us from a worship of superstition and
religious preconceptions. His personality and intellectual steadfastness drew
groups of enlightened people round him — even today we refer to them as the
Sir Syed School. The man proved to be much more than an individual; he was
a movement unto himself.

OPPOSITION

It has been observed above that Sir Syed was politically conservative and
socially progressive. But the movement he started also had both political and
social effects that led to reactions both against and in favour of the former. In
the literary domain there was a notable reaction against him, for example,
from the Lucknow school that included Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar and
Munshi Sajjad Hussain and which supported old values. The whole Awadh
Punch group disfavoured him and his comrades. Some detractors composed
poems calling him a new prophet of naturism: “He [Sir Syed] is the messenger
of ‘natural religion’/ This natural religion was indeed ‘revealed’ to him/ He
alone knows the secrets of the Book, because/ All the esoteric knowledge has
been vouchsafed to him/ The evidence of his prophethood is visible to all/ It is
visible in the pages of his Tahzeeb-ul-Akhlaq.”

Other notable opponents were the distinguished Pan-Islamist thinker and

activist Jamaluddin Afghani and the eminent humorous Urdu poet Akbar
Allahabadi. According to Allahabadi: “What our respected Syed says is good/
Akbar agrees that it is sound and fair/ But most of those who head this
modern school/ Neither believe in God, nor yet in prayer/ They say they do,
but it is plain to see/ What they believe in is the powers that be.”

One of Sir Syed’s disciples, Deputy Nazeer Ahmad, bitterly satirised his
mentor in the novel Ibn-ul-Waqt [The Opportunist]. Another disciple, Shibli
Nomani, abandoned his mentor and founded another institution, the Dar-ul-
Uloom Nadwa. Much was written against Hali’s Muqqadima-i- Sher-o-Shairi
that, “it is trampled like the field of Panipat.”

Writers and poets split into two distinct groups, one favouring enlightened,
progressive thought while the other favoured obscurantist and past-
worshipping ideas. As the noted Urdu poet Ehsan Danish observed in his
tribute, Sir Syed Ki Ruh Se [To Sir Syed’s Spirit]: “What was lit by the sparks
within your chest/ That secretly burning fire could not grow cold until now/
Your foresight has granted lamps to the future/ Despite which the air is
polluted by the smoke of the past until now.”

**All translations from the original Urdu are by Raza Naeem*

The writer is president of the Progressive Writers Association in Lahore, a

social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic
reader

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 15th, 2017

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