Sir Sycd Ahmad Khan was born in Delhi on 17th October 1817. He belonged to
an aristocratic family of 18th century Delhi which had close relations with
Mughal court. Sir Syed's ancestors, from both sides i.e. maternal and paternal
had acquired great prominences in the religious as well as worldly life. His
paternal ancestors originally came from Herat (Central-Asia) during the reign of the Mughal emperor, Shahjahan (1628-1657). After their arrival in India up to the reign of Akbar II (1805-1837) they were conferred royal titles. In the
reign of Alamgir II (1755-1759) Sir Syed's grandfather Syed lladi was awarded the title Jawad ud Doula Jawad Ali Khan, and the rank of Commander of 1.000 fool and 500 horsemen. Syed Mehdi, brother of Sir Syed"s grandfather was awarded the title of Qubbad Ali Khan, made Commander of 1000 foot and 500 horsemen, and was appointed to the post of Qazi and Muhtasib (a quasi -religious, quasi-judicial post). Sir Syed's maternal grandfather Khawaja Farid- ud -Din was the Prime Minister of Mughal Emperor Akbar II and was awarded the title of Nawab Dabir-ud-Daula Aminul Mulk Khawaja Fareed ud Din Khan Bahadur Mushleh Jang .He served Mughal court with dignity and power and earned great respect and titles from Mughal court .He had so profound impact
that Sir Syed wrote small treatise on his life and his achievements i.e. Serat-i-Faridiya. Sir Syed's father Mir Muttaqi had a very close and intimate relations w ilh Akbar II, and the post of Prime Minister was earlier offered to him. but he suggested it to his father in law Khawaja Farid ud Din who served the British Government and at that time was in the court of Ava in Burma as a political agent of British Government and by that time had returned from Ava and accepted the post of Prime Minister.Sir Syed was the youngest of the three children of Syed Muhammad Muttaqi (d. 1838) and Azizunnisa Begum (d. 1857) and his lineage goes back to Hazarat Hussain, the son-in- law of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in 36th generation. At Sir Syed's birth his father requested Shah Ghulam Ali to name his son. Shah Ghulam Ali named the elder son of Syed Muttaqi as Syed Muhammad and the younger one as Syed Ahmad. Sir Syed was brought up by a lady named Man Bibi, who had been a maid servant in the family of Sir Syed
e
for a long lime and Sir Syed loved her very much and when he was five years old she died. Sir Syed received his early and traditional education with the inception old his Bismillah ceremony, which was performed by Shah Ghulam Ali. and after it Sir Syed started to read the Quran. His family at maternal home arranged a respectable and Purdah observing lady to teach Sir Syed the holy scriptures of the Quran and elementary Persian. After reading the Quran, he started attending a school also and later Moulvi Hamiduddin taught him. Sir Syed also studied Mathematics from his maternal uncle Zainul Abedin. He also
a studied medicine with Ghulam Haider Khan who was a physician of considerable note. During the age of 18 or 19 Sir Syed got opportunity to meet the learned men of Delhi particularly the poets of Delhi viz. Sahbai. Ghalib, and Azurda and even Sir Syed participated in the meetings of the learned
society of Delhi.After the death of his father Sir Syed joined the British East India
Company 's service much against the wishes of his family in 1838 A.D. because
whatever his father had been drawing salary from various sources from the
royal court were stopped with the death of his father, only a small amount in
the name of his mother continued to be received, and all sources to his father's
income were closed. Even some revenue free grants which were for the life
time of his father were also withdrawn. Sir Syed's maternal uncle Maulvi
Khalilullah Khan who was posted as Sadre Ameen of Delhi who got appointed
Sir Syed in his court as Sareshtadar for minor criminal cases. Later on he was
appointed as Sareshtadar of Session Court by Sir Robert Hamilton, but considering this work difficult Sir Syed continued to work in the court of Sadre Ameen. In 1839 Sir Syed became Naib Mmishi (deputy' reader) to the office of
the Commissioner of Sir Robert Hamilton in Agra and here he learnt the laws related to the revenue and prepared a manual for the procedure of work in that office. In December 1841, he was appointed as Mimsifai Mainpuri and from there he w as transferred to Fatehpur Sikri in 1842 and same year he came to
Delhi, where he was honoured by the Mughal Kmperor Bahadur Shah Zafar
with the hereditary title of Jawad-ud-Doula Arif Jang. 'While he was in the service of British (lovernment he started his literary
career and w rote a booklet, Jam-e-Jam containing a history of forty three kings
from I uman. the first Mughal ruler of Central Asia down to Bahadur Shah
Zafar II. the last of the Mughal ruler in India. Then he prepared a summary of the rules and regulations prescribed in the civil courts entitled Intekhabid Aklmain which was introduced to help the new entrants to the Judicial services. .And ihc most commendable and scholarly work produced by Sir Syed was
Asar-us-Sanadid , which made him known even in the European countries.With this masterly work, Sir Syed was introduced to the European countries and was made a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and thus Sir Syed became a
scholar!) person not only in Indian sub-continent but also in European
society." In 1855 Sir Syed was transferred from Rohtak to Bijnore where he stayed till the outbreak of revolt of 1857 which changed Sir Syed's life totally.Maulana Mali records the changed life of Sir Syed due to revolt of 1857 asfollows.
"After the Revolt I was grieved neither on account of the plunder of my house nor the loss of property thai I had suffered. What
shocked me was the misery and destruction of the people... When Mr. Shakespeare offered to me a laliiqa of .lahanabad which
originally belonged to a distinguished Syed family which yielded an annual income of more than lac rupees, as a reward for my
services, my heart was deeply hurt. I said to myself how I can
accept this Jagir when all my people are in a miserable state. I declined to accept it and said that I no longer wish to stay in India.
I could never think that the people would be able to retrieve their
bygone prestige and status. The condition of the people at that
time was extremely deplorable. For some days I was under the spell of grief Believe me this grief had disheartened me and turned my hair grey. When, I came to Moradabad, a town full of sad memories of the destruction of our aristocracy, my grief increased all the more. But at that time, I thought that it would be extremely unmanly and cowardly on my part to find refuge in some safe corner and leave the people helpless and in distress. No! I should share their distress and strive hard to avert the calamity by lifting up their hearts. I gave up the idea of migrating and chose to work for my people'".Thus Sir Syed decided to stay back in India and to work for the betterment of the Muslim society that had reduced to the lowest rank of the hidian society due to victimization of taking part in the revolt of 1857 against the British Government and subsequent treatment meted out by the British government which made them deplorable.
The lifetime of Sir SyedAhmad Khan (“Sir Syed”) (1817–1898) spans profound transformations introduced to India and the wider world by the twin forces industrial capitalism and
British imperialism. Syed Ahmad’s intellectual responses to a changing world and hisleadership in the establishment of educational institutions, voluntary associations, and abroad public sphere all played a significant role in defining what it means to be Muslim,especially in India and what would become Pakistan but also in wider cosmopolitan andglobal networks.The development, compromises, and contradictions of Syed Ahmad’s ideas and projects
over time track the challenges he faced. If these efforts pointed the way to some sort ofmodernity, it was rooted in the Indo-Persian and Islamic formation of his early years anddeveloped by selectively adopting bits and pieces of European ideologies, technologies,
practices, and organizational arrangements. He has been claimed or condemned by advocates and opponents of a wide range of ideological and political tendencies under circumstances that he would barely have recognized in his own time: nationalism, democracy,
women’s equality, and religious and literary modernism. At different points in his careerone may find mysticism, scriptural literalism, and daring rationalism with respect to religious texts; charters for Muslim “separatism” and calls for Hindu-Muslim unity; demands
for autonomy and political representation and opposition to it; bold critiques of British
rulers; and proclamations of “loyalty” to the colonial state. A major figure in the advancement of the Urdu language, he later argued for the superiority of English, of which hehimself had little, for the purposes of education and administration. Most of all, he helped establish an intellectual and institutional framework for contemporaries and future generations to debate and pursue collective goals based on religion, language, social status, or class interest.
From Mughal Sovereignty to British Dominance, 1817–1857
Although the East India Company had already seized control of much of India, it was stillpossible to imagine, at least in Delhi, where Syed Ahmad was born in 1817, that Mughalsovereignty prevailed symbolically over the practical administrative and military agencyof the British.If effective power had long ago drifted away from the RedFort, the culture associated with Mughal rule was alive and well, newly resplendent in theflourishing of Urdu poetry and the intellectual vitality of Muslim thinkers. In the words of
Ghalib, the leading poet of the age, “it was as if the captive bird still gathered twigs forits nest.
Family and Education
With a patrilineal genealogy as a Syed, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, Sayyid Ahmad could claim a certain if hardly uncommon sanctity. His lineage was displayed fromhis earliest publications to the inscription over his grave. An ancestor had migrated from
Herat to India in the late 17th century and participated in Aurangzeb’s military campaigns in southern India, and his father had been a personal friend of the second-to-lastMughal ruler, Akbar II, in the early 19th century, but there is little evidence in his family
background on his father’s side of any special prominence in the Mughal ruling class. As
a boy, Syed Ahmad participated in court ceremonies and had access to some of themore restricted areas of the Red Fort, and he used this familiarity to good purpose in his
later literary projects. Syed Ahmad’s father was also a close disciple of Shah Ghulam `Ali,
shaikh of the influential Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Sufi circle, a spiritual connection thatthe son honored throughout his life.
It was his mother’s family, however, that was most significant in Syed Ahmad’s upbringing. Throughout his life he took pains to assert his close connection to his maternal
grandfather, Khwaja Fariduddin Ahmad (1747–1828), and late in life he wrote a short biography of Khwaja Farid as a self-made man of impressive achievements.
The book included an emotionally charged account of Khwaja Farid’s daughter and Sayyid Ahmad’smother. Khwaja Farid’s paternal grandfather, though also of a prestigious religious lineage, had come from Kashmir to Delhi as a merchant of silks and handicrafts in the 18thcentury, a period of sharp decline for both Delhi and the Mughals. Khwaja Farid himselfleft Delhi for Lucknow sometime in the late 18th century to study mathematics with the celebrated Allama Tafazzul Husain Khan, who among other things is said to have translated Isaac Newton’s Principia into Persian. From Lucknow, Khwaja Farid had gone on to Calcutta, held various positions under the East India Company that included foreign travel and a lucrative post as tahsildar in Bundelkhand. When he returned to Delhi in 1814 after long absences, he was unknown in Mughal court circles but well recommended by influential British associates. His appointment as “Ameen of the Household,” or vazīr ,theposition he held when Syed Ahmad was born, was negotiated with British approval, buthe left it soon afterward for a life of study and contemplation.Syed Ahmad was raised in the sprawling household of his maternal grandfather’s, nothis father’s, extended family and the attached home of his mother, both of whom oversaw his early education in Qur`an, Arabic, and Persian texts. His maternal uncle instructedhim in mathematics and astronomical instruments, and he also studied traditional Islamic medical texts. But much of his early life was taken up with the pleasures of archery, swimming, and attending gatherings of poetry, music, and dance. In 1838, at the age of twenty-one, Syed Ahmad began a career in the East India Company administration, first in Delhi, then in Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, and other localities, returning to Delhi in 1846 as a munsif, a lower court judge. It was only then that he took up more advanced studies in religious texts with some of the leading scholars in the tradition of the great 18th-centurytheologian, Shah Wali Ullah. On this basis he was able to claim an isnād
, a pedagogicalpedigree like his biological one, reaching back to the Prophet Muhammad.
Writing and Printing
Syed Ahmad’s entry into East India Company service coincided with the adoption of Urdu in place of Persian as the official language, alongside English, of administration andthe courts of northern India and the rise of lithographic printing, which made it possibleto supplement and carry forward the manuscript traditions that till then had dominatedthe production of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu texts.
In response to this stimulus or opportunity, Syed Ahmad took up an array of writing and publishing projects, sometimes atthe behest of British patrons, sometimes as independent efforts. He wrote administrative handbooks and Urdu-language instructional material as well as pamphlets on mathematical, scientific, and religious themes. He also shared with his elder brother the publishing of one of India’s first Urdu newspapers Among his early works was an Urdu translation of his grandfather’s Persian treatise on the proportional compass and an illustrated text on mechanics. In 1845 he set out to prove on the basis of principles of motion, if not quite Newtonian ones, that the sun revolves around the earth. What is interesting about this essay is that it makes practicallyno reference to God or scripture.From his early years in Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, Syed Ahmad was drawn into religious controversies among Muslims as well as the aggressiveefforts of Christian missionaries and their disputations with Muslim scholars.In 1852, hepublished a Persian treatise that responded to the condemnation by Muslim reformists ofcertain Sufi practices. Love, he declared, is a condition of receiving divine inspiration,and one can cultivate the love of God by taṣawwur-e shaikh, silent meditation visualizing one’s spiritual guide.Most of all, Syed Ahmad focused his attention in his early writings on the Indo-Islamic past, particularly centered on the Mughal dynasty and the city of Delhi. His first publication, Jam-e Jam (the cup of Jamshed, the magical goblet that confers ruling insight andpower), 1840, was a lithographed chart of the rulers of Delhi from Timur to Bahadur ShahII.Written in Persian, the publication was prepared for Robert N. C. Hamilton, Syed Ahmad’s supervisor and mentor. It starts with a detailed account of the author’s own Syed lineage as well as the distinguished career of his maternal grandfather. The workgoes on to provide information about the chronological sequence of forty-three Timurid
rulers under such headings as father’s name, mother’s name, qaum (ethnicity mostly Chaghtai), various relevant dates (in the Hijri calendar), place of burial, and a brief comment. It notes that though the‘amaldari , that is, practical dominance, was now in the hands of the “company,” the throne was still occupied by its present Mughal incumbent.The rulers of Delhi continued to occupy Syed Ahmad’s attention. Following the exampleof his elder brother, he made a manuscript copy of Jahangir’s memoirs based on a collation of ten manuscripts in library of Bahadur Shah II and commissioned by a British official.Other scholarly editions of Indo-Persian historical classics followed: the A’in-e Akbari and the Tarikh-e-Firoz Shahi But the most substantial project of his early life wasthe production of a historical account and guide to Delhi, Asar al-ṣanadid(Traces of theheroes), which appeared in two substantially different versions, first in 1847, then in
1854. The first edition was richly illustrated with lithographic prints of the major buildings of Delhi and vicinity, lengthy extracts of Persian poetry, and a mixture of registers inPersian and Urdu. It was in many respects a collaborative process, much of it probablywritten by a more senior literary figure, but also contained charming passages in what
was to become Syed Ahmad’s literary style, describing the pleasures and attractions of
the living city as well as the ruination of cities past. The title, from a 16th-century poem
by ‘Urfi Shirazi, captured the mixed message of the book, a celebration as well as a warning:
az naqsh o nigar-e dar o diwar-e shikasta
ār padid ast ṣanadid-e `ajam ra
(The marks and decorations of ruined gates and walls/ reveal traces of the princesof Iran).
Responding to the suggestions and criticisms of several British officials, duly acknowledged, the second version of
Assar al-ṣanadid was a substantially different book, stripped
of the illustrations, most of the poetry, as well as the personal, informal voice of the author. Delhi is presented as a thing of the past, devoid of its contemporary life. Instead thesecond version of the book was arranged according to chronology, with dates carefullynoted according to Christian, Islamic, and where relevant Hindu calendars. In place ofthe numerous illustrations that pervaded the first version, this one ends with replicationsof inscriptions in various languages and scripts, from the Sanskrit of the Iron Pillar to
Arabic ones on mosques and tombs. The book presents a table of the rulers of Delhi, expanding on the earlier Jam-e Jam, this time starting with Yudishtara from the
Mahabharata, and leading all the way to Queen Victoria, who appears on the chart to supersede Bahadur Shah, though he too is listed and the book was actually printed at the Red Fort.Both monarchs assumed their thrones in the same year, 1837.
Syed Ahmad and the 1857 Rebellion
Early in 1855, soon after the publication of the second version of Asar al-ṣanadid, Sayyid Ahmad accepted a promotion to
sadr amīn, a higher-level judge, in the fairly rural and remote town of Bijnor north-east of Delhi. For over two years in that quiet setting, he supplemented his judicial duties by working on his comprehensive, not-quite-complete, illustrated edition of the A’in-e Akbari and gathering information for a book about the newlyformed Bijnor District. Then in the hot, dry month of May, in the midst of the Ramadanfast, word reached Bijnor of a mutiny among the Indian soldiers based in nearby Mirat (Meerut). According to Syed Ahmad’s later account, the challenge to established authority set off a spate of robberies and raids in the surrounding countryside, with different groups taking the opportunity to settle old scores. In the following weeks the various
Rajput and Pathan magnates of the district began to mobilize their forces. “Our greatest
anxiety was for the English officials and memsahibs. . . . A great flame of love arose in our hearts and . . . we resolved [to] sacrifice ourselves like moths [to protect them].” When a
large contingent of well-armed Pathans appeared in the town, Syed Ahmad took it onhimself to negotiate with the Nawab of Najibabad for safe passage across the Ganges forthe British personnel and their families.
After the departure of the British, the conflicts in Syed Ahmad’s account are increasingly glossed as Muslim versus Hindu rather than caste or location. People were killed simply for being Hindu or Muslim. Syed Ahmad himself was allied with and protected bythe Hindu Rajput zamindars and thus labeled an enemy of the Muslims. The conclusionhe drew from this was that communal harmony relied on strong external authority, thekind of authority that only the British could provide. It used to be said, Syed Ahmad wrote, that the people are God’s, the country is the badshah ’s, and rule is the Company Bahadur’s:khalq khuda ki, mulk badshah ka, hukm kampani baha durka. Until 1857, hemay have been content with that formula. By the end of the rebellion, he had concludedthat mulk malika viktorya shah-e landan ka, the land was Queen Victoria’s. If his ideas about loyalty and betrayal till that time were with respect to particular persons, thisamounted to a claim for the legitimate power of a unified state.It was in the spirit of a more broad-ranging politics that he wrote his next importantwork, An Essay on the Causes of the Indian Revolt Syed Ahmad demonstrates a confident knowledge of Mughal and British administrative history and offers a remarkably hard-hitting indictment of the ways in which British rule had failed to live up to the culture and traditions of the earlier Mughal rulers. Denying any single cause, he nevertheless complained that the British had failed to communicate with the larger public and pursued policies that were bound to offend Indian sensibilities, particularly among higher-status sections of the population, most of all Muslims. Aggressive Christian missionaryactivity, including establishment of schools, and interference in family law with respect to women and inheritance caused, he said, widespread offense. Taxation policies that over turned previous criteria (tax on land rather than on the actual harvest), restricted accessto higher positions in government, and most of all insensitivity and even disdain in theirinteractions with Indians, all served to undermine British authority. In this book and asubsequent set of pamphlets, Syed Ahmad took pains to absolve Muslims in particularfrom responsibility for the uprising. Written just after the rebellion and addressed to the British rulers, the work displayed extraordinary courage at a time when Indians, particularly Muslims, were subject to vicious punishment for “disloyalty.” The Urdu original,however, was not available to an Indian public until after Syed Ahmad’s death, when itwas reproduced as an appendix to Altaf Husain Hali’s biography.
In Search of Reconciliation and Emulation,
1860–1870
When Syed Ahmad returned to Delhi, he discovered a scene of devastation. Close associates, including his uncle, had been shot by British soldiers and his mother was on thebrink of starvation. The rest of his family, his wife and three children, had escaped, andhe was able to bring them all to safety in Moradabad, where he had resumed his judicialand other administrative responsibilities, especially famine relief. His younger son, Syed Mahmud, by then ten years old, later recalled being summoned by his father and in formed that from then on he must be loyal to the British queen and, what is more, hemust learn English.
Christianity and Science
At about this time, Syed Ahmad drew on the reward money he had received for rescuingthe British party in Bijnor to purchase a printing press that used moveable type ratherthan lithography.He purchased print fonts not only for Urdu but also for Arabic, English, and Hebrew so that he could produce a multilingual text, a Muslim commentary on the Bible. He also employed a British assistant to translate from English and a Jewish tutor to interpret passages in the Torah, which he proposed to study in light of both Islamicthought and contemporary European scholarship.His concern here was to establish aclaim that the Bible, despite questions about the accuracy of its textual transmission, isfundamentally consistent with the Qur`an, which is by definition the true and eternal
word of God: “whatever has been revealed by God to his prophets is all true.”By 1863, however, Syed Ahmad began to alter his approach by applying the English word “nature” as a criterion for interpreting the Book of Genesis and reading scripture, at least in part, as allegorical (tamsili) and figurative (tashbih,misal) rather than factual. Since the purpose of divine revelation, he says, was “to regulate our morals” (tahzib-e akhlaq), themessage had to be “available to all mankind in proportion to their capacities” and remain valid and understandable “in every stage of the gradual progress of learning and science.”
But, he said, there was really no contradiction.“We acknowledge that Nature [naicar ] is the Work of God, and Revelation [
waḥi] is his Word [
kalām]; that no discrepancy should ever occur between them for asmuch [sic] as both proceed from the same Source.Turning then to the “progress of learning and science,” Syed Ahmad temporarily putaside his religious studies and turned his attention to a new kind of public activism. Late in 1863, he travelled to Calcutta to address a newly founded Mohammadan Literary Society. Speaking in Persian, he described the destruction of the great centers of learning andthe circumstances of those who used to be the leaders of society. What is required now isa new energy, he said, motivated by ḥubb-e qaumi , the love of one’s community. Here he used the word qaum in a new way—not Pathan, Chaghtai, or German like the rulers ofDelhi—but ham kaishān and ham kishwarān, solidarities based on belief and place. Although speaking to a Muslim group, there is only passing reference explicitly to Muslims,whereas place is defined as the region from the Bay of Bengal to Sindh.
The Calcutta lecture and a pamphlet Syed Ahmad published at the same time called for
a concerted effort to translate contemporary knowledge from English to Urdu, on the as
sumption that works in other European languages were likely to be available in English.The organization for pursuing this project had its first meeting in early January, 1864, inGhazipur, where Syed Ahmad was then posted. The following year it shifted to Aligarh,when Syed Ahmad was transferred there. Called the Scientific Society, it was funded bybsubscriptions and donations from British, Hindu, and Muslim supporters, mostly government officials. It employed one translator for English and a “maulvi” for Arabic, Persian,and Urdu. With an elaborate structure of by-laws and publication of its proceedings, the society was Syed Ahmad’s first venture as an institution builder. Syed Ahmad movedhis printing press to a new “Institute” building at Aligarh, where there were meetings,lectures, and a demonstration garden. Unfortunately it only managed to publish about fifteen books, mostly history. It deliberately avoided religious books.The most important production of the Scientific Society was its weekly, later bi weekly, journal, started in 1866 as the
Aligarh Institute Gazette, or in Urdu, Akhbar-e Scientific Society . With a two-column, partially bilingual format, it closely resembled the layout of the official government gazette. Despite a small circulation, numbering in the hundreds,
the journal appears to have been influential in stimulating debate and spreading information about a wide range of topics. Sayyid Ahmad used the journal for a variety of issues,including representation of Indian concerns to the British Parliament, the establishment of an Urdu-medium university, promotion of village schools, and the shortcomings of passenger facilities on the railways. It championed the cause of Urdu in response to the earlychallenges of those who wanted Hindi or at least the nā gari script to supersede it, butthere was little in the way of religious discussion or expressions of Muslim concerns.Syed Ahmad himself contributed frequent essays and the texts of lectures that covereda wide range of topics and exemplified a new, idiosyncratic style of Urdu prose. Alongwith these articles there were short bulletins of news received by telegraph, governmentnotices, and commercial advertisements .
Pilgrimage to England
Probably the most influential, perhaps notorious, articles that appeared in the journal
were Sayyid Ahmad’s account of his journey to England in 1869. When Syed Ahmad set
off on a journey to England in 1869, one of his projects was to produce a book about whathe would see and experience. The plan was to send in articles to the Aligarh InstituteGazette
, then revise them, adding suitable illustrations, all by way of inspiring the Urdu reading public to learn the secrets of Britain’s worldly success. His younger son, Syed
Mahmud, had won a government scholarship that would allow him to study at Cambridgeand qualify as a barrister. The account of the voyage out, written as a diary, is filled withhigh spirits and close observation. He describes with pleasure the friendly and helpfulpeople he interacts with, Indian and British, first in Bombay then aboard the ship, andgives detailed accounts of the speed of the ship, the technology of navigation, bathing and
toilet arrangements, as well as ship board games. He took particular note of the prevalence of Urdu (as opposed to Hindi). In Aden and Egypt, Syed Ahmad was able to use
his knowledge of Arabic, but his command of English by his own account was rudimentary.
It was on this journey that Syed Ahmad took steps to adapt to European lifestyle, starting with the way he dressed. The contemporary Ottoman style of a well-tailored, high-buttoned frock coat, European trousers and shoes, plus a red fez served as a good compromise and became the mark of a modern Muslim. European table manners made it possible for him to share meals with his European fellow passengers. Critics back in India noticed and condemned his insistence that it was permissible for a Muslim to eat chicken
slaughtered by Christians. By the time he had been in England for half a year, his correspondence had turned into a fiercely emphatic affirmation of British cultural superiority.The British were justified, he said, in treating Indians with contempt. In comparison to anEnglishman a person at any level of Hindustani society could be considered a
maili kuchaili vaḥshi janvar (dirty, ragged, wild animal). At the same time and in the spirit of his earlier analysis of the 1857 Rebellion, Syed Ahmad was aggressively critical of some influential British authorities and policies with respect to education and hostility to Muslims. In a pamphlet published in London soon afterhis arrival, he condemned government-run English-medium schools for undermining the language and intellectual traditions of India and preparing students for jobs as ticket collectors on the railways and post-office clerks.He also responded to newspaper articles,later compiled into a book, by W. W. Hunter, an influential British official in India,The Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel against the Queen?
In his response, published first in a British Indian newspaper as well as the Aligarh Institute Gazette, Syed Ahmad rebutted the idea that Islam was incompatible with British ruleand that English education was the best way to uproot the religious commitments of India’s Muslims.Alongside this public expression of alarm and disillusionment, Syed Ahmad was writinganguished personal letters to his friend, Syed Mahdi `Ali, later known as Nawab Muhsinul-Mulk.These letters document Syed Ahmad’s preoccupations during his journeyabroad: an anxious defense of the historical origins and ethical principles of Islam in response to the Islamophobic writings of Sir William Muir, the lieutenant-governor of theNorth-Western Provinces, who not only was the chief executive of the government in which Syed Ahmad served but also the main patron of his journey and his son’s scholarship.While visiting schools and factories and socializing with more- or less-prominent British counterparts, Syed Ahmad devoted most of his time to writing, with assistancefrom his English-knowing son and others, an uncharacteristically prolix apology for Islam, published in English and Urdu and aimed both at a British public and also at the relatively few English-educated Muslims, whose faith may have been challenged.
Aligarh: The College and the Movement
While in England, Syed Ahmad Khan conceived of a plan for Muslims in India to takethe task into their own hands of establishing and running an educational institution andan intellectual movement based on contemporary knowledge. He called on Syed Mahdi`Ali to help organize an association to promote these goals by establishing a school andstarting a new journal to be devoted to the religious and practical betterment of IndianMuslims. The journal was to be called by the traditional name Tahzib ul-akhlaq (the purification of morals) or, in English, the Mohammedan Social Reformer .
The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College
The college that Syed Ahmad and his colleagues established differed radically from hisearliest intentions and in many ways turned out to be, at least for him, a disappointment.During his time in England, he had imagined a whole system of education reaching acrossall sections of Indian Muslims and delivering scientific knowledge and technologicalskills. He also wanted the education of Muslims to be independent of British governmentcontrol, though open to private British and other non-Muslim benefactors. The college that he wanted would have an enlightened religious foundation, free of sectarian conflict,respectful of both Sunni and Shi`a traditions. And though students would learn English, there would be an Urdu-medium “oriental” track, as indicated in the college’s name.Syed Mahmud elaborated these goals in a scheme that emulated the latest reforms at Cambridge University, and like Cambridge, the college would be primarily residential.The first thing that had to go was Syed Ahmad’s own religious ideas, especially the notion that it was possible to interpret religious scripture in the light of contemporary science. Almost from the outset, Syed Ahmad’s personal association with the project invited fierce opposition from influential Muslims who opposed his naicari (naturist) approachto God and his creation. In rules adopted for religious instruction, Syed Ahmad and his writings were explicitly excluded. What Syed Ahmad could do was help recruit respected religious scholars who stood at some distance from his own more radical ideas, toteach Arabic and Persian.Much as he was devoted to the success of the college at Aligarh, he considered its education inferior to the achievements of Islamic scholarship of earlier times. For the present day, however, he came to the conclusion that Urdu was ultimately too poetic to develop the precision of contemporary European knowledge.Perhaps Syed Ahmad’s most heartfelt motive for establishing the college at Aligarh washis belief that only Indians could properly run their own educational institutions with thenecessary cultural and religious sensitivity. He wanted the college to be autonomous. Very soon, however, he and his colleagues were persuaded that they needed British government funding to supply a significant portion of the college’s expenses. This was supplemented by substantial assistance from so-called native states like Hyderabad, Bhopal,and Rampur, which were impelled or constrained by British official control. British certification was believed to be necessary to recruit students, most of whom hoped for careers in government or law. That meant setting the curriculum to prepare for examinations administered by the provincial educational authorities for the lower school and the Calcutta and later Allahabad Universities. Aligarh’s participation in the British educational systemstood in contrast to the madrasa at Deoband, founded in 1867, which devoted itself entirely to Islamic studies and retained its independence. Syed Ahmad also came to relyincreasingly on recruiting British faculty, particularly from Cambridge, to teach and in his last years to essentially run the college. In 1889, this commitment to retaining and elevating the British faculty provoked a serious split among Aligarh’s co-founders, many of whom seceded from the college.But if the Aligarh College did not live up to Syed Ahmad’s hopes, he remained committed to its success. The college was designed to promote an ethic of self-confidence, solidarity, and civic service, and to raise up a new generation of leaders in the far-flung Muslim community of India. Students were drawn largely from similar backgrounds, the sonsof literate, Urdu-knowing professional fathers, now preparing for newly required English-language skills, but they were geographically dispersed and had diverse ethnic and sectarian backgrounds.The college had a significant number of Hindu students, a few large landholders, but it was not open to artisan or peasant classes, and not, during
Syed Ahmad’s lifetime, to women.
It was Syed Ahmad who was largely responsible for the design and construction of thecampus and its buildings, for the hiring and firing of faculty, for managing and raising
funds, and for the general supervision of most aspects of college life. If he didn’t interferewith the curriculum, he made his presence known in extra-curricular activities and ceremonial occasions. He attended and sometimes participated in the college debating society, and he was the ultimate authority in matters of student discipline. Syed Ahmad maintained a wide correspondence and toured the towns and cities of northern Indiamaking speeches at sizable public gatherings, fund raising and recruiting students. For many of the students, as for the wider public, during his own lifetime and well into the future, the Aligarh College (and in 1920, twenty-two years after his death, the Aligarh Muslim University) looked to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan as its presiding genius.
Intellectual and Literary Achievement
In the Aligarh Institute Gazette and Tahzib ul-akhlaq, the journal that started publication
upon Syed Ahmad’s return from England in December 1870, and in many other publications, usually printed on his own press, Syed Ahmad’s prodigious literary output covered a wide range of topics and inspired others to write along the same lines or in contrasting ways. Syed Ahmad himself relied on translators, including his British-educatedson, to acquaint him with the form and content of English writing. Some of his essayswere based on older English examples of the sort Indian students were studying in school.English made its influence felt in his free use of English words and even in someof his sentence structure. Along with his essays, he became famous as an orator and setan example for the numerous public meetings that became part of the life of much of India in the late 19th century. Some of his writing was humorous and some was imaginatively lyrical, but most of all it was presented in the form of logical argument for a particular cause. A good example of Syed Ahmad’s clarity and moral seriousness is his essay,published as a pamphlet, in condemnation of slavery.After his retirement in 1877, he devoted much of his time to religious studies, especiallyhis commentary on the Qur`an. Printed on his press with Arabic on the left, an Urdu translation on the right, and commentary on the bottom, Syed Ahmad advanced his
principles for reading scripture in the light of contemporary knowledge as well as the influence of the great Islamic thinkers of the past. His commentary on Sura Yusuf, for example, relies on “physiology” and “psychology,” how the brain and the nervous system process perceptions into images and memories. He moves on to selective quotations (in Arabic with Urdu translations) from Ibn Sina, Al-Razi, and Shah Waliullah, all in supportof his general proposition that whatever one dreams must be based on prior experience.Following Shah Waliullah, he argues that some people are particularly perceptive andable to make more of their dreams. If Hazrat Yusuf (Joseph in the Old Testament) was able to predict famine and plenty, it was because he understood the nature of Egyptianagriculture and the flood patterns of the Nile River. Syed Ahmad’s enterprises in the form of publications and public gatherings drew in asignificant number of followers, antagonists, and participants in ongoing debates on religious, literary, social, and political issues. Mohsin ul-Mulk, a close friend and benefactorof the college, engaged in intensive, if friendly debates with Syed Ahmad on religious issues. Altaf Husain Hali, Syed Ahmad’s biographer, was inspired to take up the cause of“natural poetry,” the overthrow of ghazal aesthetics and the call to a new historical consciousness among Muslims.Shibli Numani, who taught Persian and Arabic at the college, benefitted from Syed Ahmad’s support and example even while he was a severecritic of his religious ideas. Nazir Ahmad, another critic of Syed Ahmad’s religious ideas, participated by writing novels and delivering speeches closely associated with the Aligarh intellectual milieu. From farther afield, there were journals and other publications devoted to denouncing Syed Ahmad, even to the extent of declaring him a heretic,but by their very activity they participated in the public sphere that he had done so much to galvanize.
Muslim Politics
From his response to the 1857 Rebellion, Syed Ahmad called for active Indian participation in government as well as the maintenance of autonomous sectors of Indian-run institutions. His writings and speeches, his journals and organizations, were all means to mobilize an active public life that would give Indians a voice in the exercise of power. Whothese Indians would be varied over time, but his most important efforts were on behalf ofa relatively privileged minority of people literate in Urdu and usually Muslim, reachingacross northern India from Patna to Lahore, but also connected to Hyderabad, Bombay,and Calcutta. In the 1860s, his organizational efforts, such as the Scientific Society andthe short-lived British Indian Association, were largely regional and included significantHindu representation. Frequently critical of specific British official policies and practices, Syed Ahmad had allies as well as opponents within the British ruling establishment. After Syed Ahmad returned to India in 1870 his activities focused on an idea of the Muslims of India as a qaum, a word that used to mark ethnic identity but now came to mean something like a national community. He claimed for this community the prestige of foreign origins and a history of past rulership that entitled it to be represented beyond thepopulation statistics that the British census had compiled. Drawing on British socialanalysis, he argued that the upper castes among Hindus were also foreign and that lowerclasses in general were not prepared for political participation. In this respect, his ideas
were not much different from dominant British attitudes with respect to their own society. The experience of 1857 and the subsequent rise of the Hindi-Urdu dispute, anti -cow slaughter agitation, and other assertions of social conflict glossed as Hindu versus Muslim convinced Syed Ahmad that India could only be held together by a superior external force. When the Indian National Congress was first convened in 1885, its leaders expected Syed Ahmad to join the cause. He had long ago called for Indian representation in thegoverning councils of India and access to the highest levels of the civil service. Despitehis linguistic limitations, he had himself served on the viceregal council in the late 1870s.He vigorously supported the Ilbert Bill that would give Indian judges power over European defendants, and his son, Sayyid Mahmud, had reached the high position of judge onthe Allahabad High Court.His decision, late in 1887, to oppose the Congress was influenced by a hostility to anything like popular democracy, though it could hardly be said that this was what the Congress was calling for. If there were to be elected representation, Muslims would inevitably come out as a minority in most of India and in India as a whole. Furthermore theCongress had antagonized the ruling British establishment and the press, and joining it would threaten British patronage of the Aligarh College. When Badruddin Tyabji, a Muslim from Bombay, became president of the Indian National Congress, Syed Ahmad saw
this as a threat to his own and Aligarh’s aspiration to be the leading force in Indian Muslim politics. His response was to create an alternate congress, the Muhammadan Education Congress, later Conference, that would eschew politics altogether in favor of promoting Aligarh’s educational project to a wider Muslim public. At the same time, Syed Ahmad delivered a blistering speech denouncing Hindu Bengalis as unworthy of political leadership. Theodore Beck, the British principal of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, then became chief organizer and propagandist for this campaign of opposition, enlisting students during vacations to gather petitions against the Congress .Syed Ahmad’s own anti-Congress politics were short-lived, but others carried them forward after his death, when the Muslim League was spun off the Muslim Educational Conference in 1906 and was to claim for itself political representation of the Muslims of India, leading decades later in 1940 to the demand for the creation of some sort of a separate Muslim state. Aligarh students and alumni were to play a role in the nationaliststruggles of later times, including many supporters of a secular and undivided India, butall that was well beyond the political goals that Syed Ahmad had in mind. For him, as for the early founders of the Indian National Congress, the goal had been enfranchisement within the British Empire as a way of maintaining a wider pluralism in a very pluralsociety. That goal has remained relevant in the Republic of India, where Aligarh MuslimUniversity remains a center and symbol of Indian Muslim presence in a different world ofruthlessly competitive capitalism and popular democracy. And in India, Pakistan, and the wider world Syed Ahmad’s commitment to reason, experiment, debate, and independent judgment has opened up fresh ways of being Muslim in a changing world.
Discussion of the Literature
Study of Syed Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement has concentrated on politics andreligion. Before and after partition of India and the birth of Pakistan in 1947, it became
important to scholars to understand the roots of political “separatism” among Indian
Muslims, and books and articles were largely partisan, divided between those who con
sidered Pakistan to be a hopeful opportunity or a tragic mistake. Others were concerned
with Sayyid Ahmad’s religious ideas and the formulation of Muslim “modernism.” Wilfred
Cantwell Smith, a Canadian scholar of Islam, wrote some of the most interesting early
studies in two rather different books, the first somewhat Marxist, the second more concerned with the relationship between religious ideas and social thought among Muslims throughout the world. In both books, he considered Syed Ahmad, along with Muhammad Iqbal and others, as seeking to discover in Islamic sources an ideology for the modern world.There is a good deal of literature that seeks to blame Syed Ahmad and Aligarh for undermining the cause of Indian nationalism by assembling the most damaging quotations,largely out of historical context.
On the other hand, Syed Ahmad has been celebratedfor initiating a separate Muslim politics and mobilizing a following to pursue politicalgoals. Pro-Pakistan historiography treats him as a hero but also do some people who arecommitted to recognition of Muslims as full members of the Indian polity.Scholars of religion have been interested in the ways in which Syed Ahmad reached in to the Islamic scholastic past and developed new, independent approaches for textualanalysis. The politics of partition still loom over some of even the best work, but much of it reads Syed Ahmad’s work in its own terms.Other work on Syed Ahmad Khan has been concerned with his role in the developmentof Urdu language and literature. Also of relevant interest are studies of the history ofthe Aligarh College and its relation to other institutions among Indian Muslims in thesame era of late British India.
