Azad: The Sole Saviour

Designating National Education Day commemorating the birth anniversary of Maulana Azad is a befitting tribute to his greatness. He was true to his name. Azad in the true sense of the term: liberated. Eloquent with his pen. Remember Ghubar-e-khatir.  His razor's sharp, and dispassionate, eye on the circumstances of his time. And prophetic with his predictions of the future. Describing him as a great freedom fighter or a politician is a disservice to his person. He was far greater than that. He is not just an analyst and commentator of the scripture- just a wonderful exegete and a theologian- but a profound intellectual.

He was well conversant in many languages from Arabic to English, Urdu to Hindi, Persian, and Bengali. He assumed the pen name ‘Azad’ as a mark of his intellectual deliverance from a constricted view of religion and life. He was Azad. Free and forthright. We are here to prove it. Is it possible that such a great man is in the midst and people ignore him? Just pause and think. Unfortunately, this has happened. At the time of partition, someone else took charge of Muslims. Azad was ignored. He is ignored now. Having been side-lined then cost us immense hardships as people. Overlooking him now will cost us our ‘future’ from now on.

Before many of us begin to claim that there was already a Muslim spokesperson instead of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad at the time, who was more creditable than him, let me remind you of the profound vision of Azad that was reflected in the form of his writings and interviews. It should demonstrate to a large extent that he deserved the seat more than anyone else. He deserved to be listened to because he was a visionary and a thinker, not just a shrewd politician. He had a stellar capacity to view the situation and the future synoptically. There may be other significant ways to prove it but I will simplify my task by displaying how clear he was in his thoughts and how true he was in prophesising the future. We can see it by the mere reference to some of his proclamations.

Here is his first declaration: “It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically, and culturally different. This comes from ‘India wins freedom’. Wait. Read it again. And let it sink in. It will strike you like lightning. Many of us would want to exclaim albeit in a muffled voice: how true! For us, it is now somehow easy to understand. We have been taught this now by the writ of time.

Now things have settled, and come to pass. But Azad understood this fact back then when Hindustan was experiencing pangs of labour. Truly great of him. Remember this statement doesn't come from a theologian that he surely was. No way. This is a seasoned thinker in Azad speaking. He would have needed to tear off his religious straightjacket to express this thought. And he did. ‘Sacrilegious’, conservatives will roar. Yet he was Azad! Spoke his mind. True to his name. He further makes a succinct admission: “It is true that Islam sought to establish a society which transcends racial, economic and political frontiers.” We Muslims have already made this belief a fundamental article of our faith. But Azad knows how to counterpoise faith in religion and a fact from history.

Now stomach this: “History has however proved that after a few decades, or at most after the first century, Islam was not able to unite all the Muslim countries into one state on the basis of Islam alone”. This is hearsay for most of us, but, he knew, this was a historical fact. He knew that Muslims could keep ignoring this fact but they couldn’t escape this historical verdict either. Even today, we do not even like to think about it. But Azad is Azad. An open mind, he fearlessly and forthrightly proclaims it. As he accepts this fact from history honestly, so very logically comes his verdict for his present: “This was the position in the past and this is the position today (about this historical analysis of the Muslim rule). No one can hope that East and West Pakistan will compose all their differences and form one nation.” Keep in mind he died more than a decade before 1971.

Now this one is as early as 1946, and this comes as an earnest plea to all Hindus and Muslims: “The creation of Pakistan would be no solution to the so-called Hindu-Muslim problem.” When many greats, at that time, believed, or were forced to believe that the partition should extinguish and put out all fire in the furnace, yet Azad believed the contrary.

Our common-sense resort to an analogy from a family feud could make it simple for us: When brothers rise in revolt their home is partitioned for good. All strife evaporates. The love that was lost resurrects slowly and steadily. Others may have taken recourse to this analogy, Azad chose to peek in the opposite direction. He has proved to be wiser. He foresaw what others couldn’t. Try to remember the wars behind us. See the conflict in front of us. Think of the bloodshed. The wasted lives. Hate amplified to the highest magnitude. Love lost permanently. This is called “paeshengoi” a term we Muslims usually, in the current era, are very enthusiastic about. This phenomenal ‘paeshengoi’ does not end here, it has more thread and beads.

Here is the other part: “The Muslims will not be able to achieve unity among themselves, and the divisions between various groups will become more pronounced.” Azad seems to have said things by living (not just looking) in the future. Deciphering this causal relationship synoptically explains his astuteness and wisdom. I pray you get into the time of partition and enter into the character of a fearful Muslim psyche of the time and then think about how Azad’s reason triumphed over fear.

Keep in mind it was the time when the capacity to reason had suffered a short-circuit, in not just the masses but in the heads of the most towering leaders. Here is a man, head and shoulders above, whose reason is too insulated to suffer this intellectual short-circuit. He provides a hint of this mental short-circuit thus: “If the right solution to the Indian problem could not be found by August 15, why take a wrong decision and grieve over it?” He goes on to further add: “I had done my best but my friends and colleagues did not support me.” He seems to be talking more about the people in Congress acquiescing to the inevitable.

Muslim league had raised the demand and finally created Pakistan as per Azad, and Congress, according to him, should have navigated the crisis preventing the partition. Congress, as per Azad, should have acted like a big bird of the storm.  “The only explanation I can find of their strange blindness to the facts is that anger and despair had clouded their vision.” He seems to indict almost all of them of becoming advocates of partition. In Chapter 17 of India Wins Freedom, he forthrightly speaks about this short-circuit using the terms ‘charm & hypnosis': “Perhaps also the fixation of the date--15 August--acted like a charm and hypnotized them into accepting whatever Mountbatten said.” So all of them were under the hypnosis of independence and partition at once.

The man of this capacity was ignored by his community. The purported sole spokesperson did what he wanted, but today we are living the prophecies of “The Sole Saviour”: Azad on both sides of the border: “Partition would put both Muslims and Hindus in difficult positions. The Muslims who remain in India will face troubles and the same will be true of Hindus in Pakistan.” This he says in an interview a couple of years before independence. If he and MK Gandhi had been successful in keeping India united, how would it have been now? Azad too confronts this question in his own time: “Some people hold that what has happened was inevitable.

Others equally and strongly believe that what has happened was wrong and could have been avoided.” Having opposed the partition of united India tooth and nail, Azad deliberately seems to make an indecisive statement at the end of ‘India wins Freedom’. “We cannot say today which reading is correct,” giving readers an impression that Azad too seems uncertain, which, I believe, he is not. Because he instantly puts forth the final appeal of the judgment in the court of history: “History alone will decide whether we have acted wisely and correctly in accepting the partition”. We know history does not speak, it whispers. People don’t have capacity to listen to whispers. But the present is a roaring testament. If we are deaf to the whispers of history, we cannot but escape the drumbeat of the present.