Reading this powerful and highly emotive book is enough to make any Indian nationalist to weep. Consider this: After ruling India?or at least a large part of north India?for almost nine centuries, the Muslim elite suddenly finds itself without power or glory. Frustration leads to bitterness.
The new British rulers weren'taccommodative to the ex-ruling class either. For nearly two years after 1857 no Muslim was granted permission to enter the boundaries of Delhi. The failure of the revolt of 1857 invited a terrible retribution on the local populace.
According to a British officer'sreport, ?thousands of innocent villagers between Ambala and Delhi were slaughtered and their bodies pierced with bayonets?. According to another British writer, Thompson, describing the plight of Muslims at Delhi, ?they were stripped naked and branded with burning pieces of copper and then sown in skins of swine? and yet another report noted that ?in Delhi thousands of women threw themselves in wells from fear of the Army?.
The decline of the Mughal Empire led to crisis of confidence among the Ulema. Habituated to political patronage for more than five centuries, the Ulema (Muslim theologians) failed to come to terms with the emerging reality of a decadent and corrupted feudal structure.
It was under such circumstances that the so-called Aligarh Movement was born under the leadership of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, primarily reflecting a sub-conscious yearning of the Indian Muslims to emerge from the morass of their post-Mughal decline.
There was another leader thirsting for social reform: Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi whose movement was focused on religious reform but had no connection with the revivalist puritanical ?Wahabi Movement? launched by an Islamic radical group, which was ultimately to turn into an anti-British stir. The Barelvi movement, says the author of this well-researched book Tariq Hasan, can to a limited extent be described as the forerunner of the later movement for Muslim social and educational reform known as the ?Aligarh Movement?.
The trouble was that in some ways (though Hindus were prominently a part of the 1857 revolt) Hindus felt relieved by the discontinuance of Islamic rule. Persian had been imposed upon them. Tariq Hasan quotes another Muslim author Altaf Husain Hali as saying that the new British-sponsored history books ?biased and extremely unfavourable to the Muslims whose cruelty and defects were knowingly or unknowingly given great prominence in them? were the seeds of hatred ?which had taken roots in the hearts of the Hindus? and ?had slowly grown into a thickly leaved tree?.
In the circumstances Hindus took to English education in a big way and succeeded in the bargain while, in the words of Altaf Husain Hali, ?The Muslims had been deprived of these honours through their own pride, bigotry, idleness, carelessness and poverty?. The misfortunes of the Muslim elite were compounded by their reluctance to learn English.
It was at this point that Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan came on the scene. He was a liberal and a true secularist and his ?main thrust had been to rid Islam of a number of aberrations that had seeped into its fundamental principles.
His views on Hadith were liberal to the point of being controversial. He was bitterly opposed by an influential section of the Muslim clergy and fatwas were issued against him. Such was the hostility of the Muslim clergy towards him that leading Muslim families were reluctant to send their wards to study at the Aligarh College whose precursor was the Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO College). The object of the College was ?primarily the education of the Mohammadans, and so far as may be consistent, therewith, of Hindus and other persons?.
Sir Sayyid did not want to be left behind Hindus and when the MAO College finally became Aligarh University in 1920, the then Vice Chancellor Sahibzada Aftab Ahmad Khan went out of his way to promote the teaching of Sanskrit on the grounds that ?Sanskrit literature is a record of Hindu civilisation and culture and it is our aim to produce Muslim scholars who would enrich our culture by a contribution to this source?. He also proposed to award special scholarships to Muslim students for the study of Sanskrit.
It is well to remember that in 1865 out of a total number of 1,578 Indians attending college all over the country, only 57 were Muslims. But in the early days, the relations between Hindus and Muslims at Aligarh were ?excellent?. After the formation of Aligarh University Hindu-Muslim relations followed the traditions set up by Sir Sayyid. When the Department of Muslim Theology was facing a financial crisis it was a Hindu, the Maharaja of Alwar who sanctioned an annual grant of eight thousand rupees for the Department. But later things were to deteriorate. How this came to pass and the role of Bengali intellectuals, Mahatma Gandhi, Lala Lajpat Rai, Surendranath Banerjee, the Khilafat Movement, Jawaharlal Nehru and a host of others has been succinctly brought out by the author. Much blame is laid on Hindus and the Indian National Congress and while the author makes a heroic effort to be fair and objective, sufficient explanation is not given to what went into their attitudes and reactions. What went into the formation of the Muslim League? Who was responsible for the feeling of separatism that engulfed the Muslim community?
The author says that the Aligarh Group led by the Agha Khan tried its best to work out an understanding with the Congress but failed to cut any ice. ?The result? he adds, ?was the birth of the Muslim League. Buried deep in the pages of history of that phase lie the roots of the Partition of India.?
This book is extremely important because it tries hard to explain ?the making of the Indian Muslim mind?. The Aligarh Movement, in its earliest years was nurtured by the yearnings of a decadent society to re-invent itself in the modern world. It wasn'tsectarian when it started but was to end upto ?Muslim exclusivity? with the passage of time. This is a book for political policy-makers to read because it provides some clues to the situation at present that needs urgent attention.
Let it not be said that the majority community does not care for the economic and social growth of Muslims. Tariq Hasan'sbook is an important addition to the social studies of our times. As the English poet Shelley wrote: ?The One remains, the many change and pass.? We must see that the One, Bharat, remains in true greatness and goodwill towards all.
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