INTRODUCTION
(Written by Anwar Sidiqi in Urdu “Taaruf”)
By: Abbas Ali
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1896) was an epoch-making personality. However, like all epoch-making personalities, his epoch had a significant influence upon him, and he influenced his epoch in a meaningful way. We observe impressions of his religious, cultural, literary, educational, and social ideas in various spheres of life. Even today, people find mental solace in ideological interpretations; in this way, his ideas and vision continue to enlighten thousands of minds. The literary activities are seen in connection with his ideas and persona. One reason behind that is the grand tradition of scholarship he established in Aligarh through Madrasat-ul-Uloom. The meaning of the expansion and development of that tradition is that every student belonging to Aligarh may take an overview of the mental resources of his time by following the personality and achievements of Sir Syed Ahmad. This phenomenon happens because each generation judges the accomplishments of its ancestors based on its own standards.
Furthermore, the dynamic elements of his thoughts have entered our lives in such a way that sometimes, the need arises to know their origin. This need leads our minds towards Sir Syed, and this activity has attained the status of permanent continuity. This selection of his essays is a part of that continuity.
Before taking an overview of the multifaceted achievements of Sir Syed, it seems necessary to let us inscribe that pen-sketch that Ismail Panipati has dexterously created with the help of a few words. Obviously, like any other picture, that is incomplete.
“Color: red and white; serious face; high forehead; large head; separate brows; eyes of the same size and very bright; small nose; long ears; a large lump in the throat concealed by a long beard; fat body structure; extended height; broad bones; solid hands and feet; muscular and robust body; handsome face; the weight of 3 ½ maunds; Turkish attire; English society.” “He was Jawad-ud-Dawla Arif Jung, Dr. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of Aligarh College, the revitalizer of the Urdu language, and the inspiration for Hali’s Musadas.” (Naqoosh, Lahore, Shaksiyat Number)
Anyway, his physical picture or identity only gives an impression of a tall, muscular man; it does not point toward his intellectual stature. His mental beauty was no less than his physical beauty. Concentrating on the vastness of his achievements and various topics, we get the first impression of surprise and admiration. At least in today’s times when specialisation is in vogue, this impression is pertinent. Even in his time, men of comprehensive quality were only a few. He would write on civilization, religion, medicine, jurisprudence, Seerat, theology, commentary on the Quran, and Hadees with the same confidence he used to write on politics, education, and literature. His mental breadth and ideological accessibility will influence you if you listen to any collection of his speeches and writings. At times, I feel as if the curious minds of ancient Greek philosophers have taken a new form in Hindustan. Or maybe the collective wisdom of the French encyclopedists has found a new mould in the persona of Sir Syed.
Based on the vastness of his cleverness, he was outstanding among his contemporaries. And maybe that is why he succeeded in influencing the intelligentsia of his time. Hali, Shibli, and Azad got their light from this luminous persona. One more aspect of Sir Syed’s personality made him influential and impactful. He was not only an intellectual but a successful reformer, revolutionary, and holy soldier. Generally, there is a weakness in the personality of intellectuals that they spend their lives as thinkers only and keep themselves limited to thinking and contemplating, considering themselves safe and secure. In the history of human thought, you will find many who had big dreams and talked significantly to people. However, most of them had no capability of translating their dreams into reality. In the case of Sir Syed, we find the subtlety and brightness of dreams and the capability to convert them into reality. He was a practical intellectual. If we contemplate both capabilities separately, we will necessarily face a little bit of dissatisfaction. In that situation, his intellectualism will seem to have been borrowed from the West, and the sincerity of his active struggle will appear to be mixed with occasional compromise and cheap reconciliation. However, this standard of gauging his personality is neither healthy nor beneficial. We cannot compartmentalize personalities like him; we must see him in totality.
Therefore, we need to keep in view his comprehensive vision while taking an overview of his practical efforts because this vision shapes the mantel aptitude and influences the modus operandi. Unfortunately, in the case of Sir Syed, the tragedy is that we gauge him on the previously mentioned double standard. Therefore, it is necessary to restructure his vision. Only then can we decide about the success or failure of his practical accomplishments because his practical accomplishments have the status of an unfinished portrait of his vision. There are two civilizational influences prominent in the personality of Sir Syed. A civilization called the Medieval Civilization of Hindustan, in the lap of which he got his early education and training.
This characteristic is prominent in his early writings, for example, the magazine in which he wrote against the movement of the earth. In addition, his inherited civilization legacy was representative of stagnant thoughts and deteriorating mental aptitudes and was a companion of imitations. Traditionalism was in his grain, and initially, he took refuge in the same traditional thinking. However, this mental refuge or search for safety was temporary. After the mutiny of 1857, this safety net started disappearing.
Not only did the mutiny bring an end to a political system, but it also brought to the fore a massive civilizational challenge, which, in the first place, gave birth to dissatisfaction with the ancient cultural system and ideological legacy and demanded a rethinking of the traditional way of thinking. Among the Hindustani Muslims, for the first time, Sir Syed’s consciousness perceived the approaching of this cultural revolution. He sensed that the time had come when we needed to rediscover the dynamic and life-giving elements of ancient Muslim thought and harmonize it with the rationality of western culture.
This situation resembled the situation the West had faced during the Renaissance; it had torn the warp and weft of the Medieval culture of the West. A large segment of the Western intelligentsia worked hard to reconcile Christian cultural concepts with newly discovered Greek knowledge. In such kinds of struggles, there is always an aspect of intimidation, which sometimes takes the form of being apologetic. Some people perceive the same style in Sir Syed’s case. Sir Syed tried to figure out how to deal with the new cultural and ideological challenge by looking at how Muslims thought in the past. What was that ancient Muslim thought that Sir Syed used as a shield for himself? The question was raised during the epoch when Muslim thought was at its climax as to which extent, we should take the support of mind while dealing with religious affairs. This question has echoed for centuries in the spheres of Muslim thought.
Many emphasised the inaccessibility of the mind, and many advocated the superiority of the mind. Ibni Rushud supported the concept of mind, and Gazali opposed it. It is the greatest tragedy of Muslim history that the mind was a loser in this mental conflict or warfare. The secret of Sir Syed’s greatness was that he brought together the army of the defeated mind and inserted the colours of new rationality into Ibni Rushud’s rationality. In the words of Prof. Rashid Ahmad Sidiqi, “Observing and evaluating the issues of life in the light of mind and experiment is one of the traditions of Islam, which Sir Syed kept intact and carried forward.” On an intellectual level, this struggle is prominent in “Khutbat-i-Ahmadiya” and “Tafseer.” On the practical level, it can be perceived in the establishment of the Scientific Society, the publication of “Tahzeebul Akhlaq,” the foundation of M.A.O. College, and in all those mental and practical pursuits he undertook with utmost sincerity during his lifetime. Sir Syed undertook the struggle for a new civilization and a comprehensive mental change; this struggle has many facets.
Observing any of them in isolation from his fundamental civilizational goal is not appropriate in any way. And those who see the contradiction in his thoughts and beliefs and guess it to be the cheap reconciliation of his deeds are suffering from the mental dereliction of trying to evaluate him without considering his civilizational goal. Although Sir Syed’s civilizational concept was not very comprehensive, he had only a model of English civilization in mind; despite that, the civilization he portrayed is far better than the prevalent eastern civilization. In the first issue of “Tehzeebul Akhlaq,” he wrote the following about the reason for his struggle:
“This journal aims at motivating the Muslims of Hindustan to adopt the perfect civilization so that the hatred with which the civilised nations look upon them is done away with and Muslims will be known as a respected and civilised nation in the world.” By civilization, we mean all intentional actions, manners, affairs, social civilization and ways of civilization, utilisation of time and knowledge, and advancement of all types of arts and skills to perfection. And using them with excellent and cheerful manners will provide real happiness and physical beauty, satisfaction, dignity, value, and status and can differentiate between wildness and humanity. It is a fact that the religion of a nation has a significant role in making a nation civilized. Undoubtedly, some religions are an obstacle to civilising a nation. Hence, it needs to be observed whether the Muslim religion is that type of religion. ”
To complete this civilizational mission, Sir Syed used education as a tool. He was aware of the secret that without a critical and far-reaching mental revolution, social and civilizational changes could not come into existence. With this goal in mind, Sir Syed established M.A.O. college, leaving no stone unturned in its construction and development. He believed in the utilitarian concept of education. Sir Syed had a hatred for the ancient educational system in Hindustan. He desired the introduction of education, which had the potential to improve both religion and the world. Sir Syed had expressed in a speech that if the world is lost, religion will also be lost. Hence, he wished to make education a confluence of religion and the world. In one of his lectures, Sir Syed said:
“For the nation’s sake, there is no material available within our nation required for the education and training of the nation. There are small Maktabs, which people have established with the help of little monthly or six-monthly donations; they provide unplanned and useless education, and older people teach Kafiya and Muniya Kadwari over there. They get their meals either from the mosques or from people’s homes. Is this material enough for our national education, national training, and national respect? Absolutely not! Although this is insufficient, I accept that they are beneficial to the extent they are taught.
Nevertheless, otherworldly knowledge, which is essentially like food for our life, what is the arrangement for them? And what do they teach? Now is not the time to spend hours debating concepts, confirmations, monsters, and accidents. The scholars who have learned ancient knowledge and are alive kindly tell me what their use is in this world and what the benefit of their personalities is to the nation, country, and people of the country. ” (Collection of lectures, lecture no. 8, Lahore, 1873, pg.80)
Similar voices echoed during the Renaissance in European thought and the sensitivity echelons. Many people had the same concept regarding the knowledge of Medieval Europe. Those people of Europe, whom we call the torch bearers of humanism, were similarly uncomfortable with ancient knowledge and were ready to welcome modern knowledge. To modernise the Muslim mind of Hindustan, Sir Syed played the role that the European humanists played during the fifteenth century. Forgetting that Sir Syed made the most significant contribution to the Muslim Renaissance in Hindustan would be the worst disrespect.
To complete his civilizational mission, he took the route of literature and journalism. Even in this department, his achievements are significantly far-reaching. His most outstanding achievement is that he strived to establish Urdu prose on the correct lines and succeeded in his efforts. Sir Syed was the most successful in making our prose competent to express crucial and scientific issues. He was aware of the point that prose is not the medium of expressing a person’s self but a resource to express ideas. Good prose is always impersonal. Sir Syed offers a multitude of such examples. He succeeded in constructing and organising the impersonal style of his prose, perhaps because of the reason that his mindset was more constructive than creative. The difference between creation and construction is fundamental in poetry and prose.
The most extraordinary beauty of Sir Syed’s prose is that it is free from the dominance of poetry. Some of Sir Syed’s semi-allegorical essays are such that one would have easily inserted poetics into them. Still, even there, the expression is significantly like prose and is closer to the material and utilitarian foundation of thought. Rasid Ahmad Sidiqi has emphasised the fundamental style of prose. For the first time, we witness the same fundamental style in Sir Syed’s prose. In Sir Syed’s essays, we observe the evolution of language and style, which can be taken as a topic for research. In his foremost endeavours to write prose, you will observe conservatism and unevenness in the construction of sentences. However, one can feel that, gradually, his language becomes easy, flowing, and smooth. Even his style seems to become impersonal to a great extent. In his writings, you will find numerous models of different appearances of prose; journalistic, scholarly, symbolic, narrative, and essay prose can also be observed.
In this selection, I have tried to make sure that all his resources for expression in prose get due representation. Because of this diversity of style, I call his style mixed-style. In the present selection, you will find the representation of his ideological and civilizational mission. The present selection can prove highly helpful in knowing about his ideas regarding different essential topics. In selecting Sir Syed’s essays, I have used Moulana Mohammed Ismail Panipati’s collection of essays published in many volumes by Majlis Tarki Adab Lahore. In the collection of Majlis Tarki Adab Lahore, God knows how this demerit has crept in that many such essays written by other people at the request of Sir Syed have been included. It is improper to include such essays in the collection of Sir Syed’s essays. I have tried not to include any such essay which does not belong to Sir Syed.
Anwar Sidiqi’s Intikhab Mazameen Sir Syed (pg. 5-13)
