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October 24, 2004
REVIEW: An Indian through and through
WHEN in the aftermath of the armed revolt against the British in 1857, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) launched his crusade for the rehabilitation of his people, he was generally regarded with suspicion and mistrust. However, a handful of his contemporary writers, scholars and other members of what are remembered as the ‘sharif elite’ looked upon him as something of a messiah sent to deliver them from their snare of gloom and despair.
Among them were the pioneering novelist Maulvi Nazir Ahmad and the ardent educationist Munshi Zaka Ullah. The two were later to be befriended by an unusually dedicated Christian missionary, Charles Freer Andrews, who had come out to Delhi in 1904 and joined the teaching staff of Delhi’s famed St Stephen’s College. A scholar and orientalist himself, Andrews made a close study of Delhi and its rich cultural life and was delighted to find Nazir Ahmad and Zaka Ullah as his colleagues on the college staff. He was particularly attached to Zaka Ullah and his family.
Before leaving Delhi around 1910 Andrews decided to write an intimate biography of Zaka Ullah dealing with virtually every aspect of his personal, social and cultural life. His book Zaka Ullah of Delhi was first published in London in 1929 and has recently been republished by the Oxford University Press in New Delhi. The book now has two excellent introductory notes, one by the Indian scholar Prof Mushirul Hasan of Delhi’s Jamia Millia, and the other by the German scholar Margit Pernau of the Universities of Bielefeld and Erfurt.
These have immensely added to the book’s value for the readers. A more admirable and intimate account of an Indian Muslim scholar by a foreign writer would perhaps be difficult to find. During his stay in Delhi, Andrews acquired the deepest understanding not only of Zaka Ullah’s personality and intellectual eminence but also of the cultural environment of Delhi and its ‘sharif culture’.
Mushirul Hasan’s introductory note is absolutely indispensable reading as it provides the key to Andrews assessment of the great scholar with his incredible versatility as also of the Delhi culture with its undying vitality. Mushir informs us that Zaka Ullah started writing at the age of 19 and in the next 60 years until his death had published about 147 books. This was about 70,000 pages, published in about a hundred volumes. In addition, Zaka Ullah contributed about 10,000 pages to journals and periodicals.
The subjects of his authorship ranged from mathematics (a passion with him) to scientific texts to Hindu history and culture, Urdu grammar, Yunani medicine, and even chess and playing cards. Passionately attached to India which he invariably referred to as his motherland, Zaka Ullah also wrote a history of India. He studied the Vedas and the Upanishads for the purpose.
Andrews found Zaka Ullah passionately involved with national politics and with Urdu and despite his considerable proficiency in English refused to speak in any language but Urdu. Andrews says that the national movement, which had begun to develop a momentum at the time, powerfully interested Zaka Ullah but he was “instinctively and constitutionally a conservative... and drew back in horror when he saw anything approaching violence”.
Andrews also observes more than once that though a Muslim, Zaka Ullah was “Indian through and through in every fibre of his being”. Even more emphatically, Andrews says that Zaka Ullah “objected vehemently to Mussalmans.... regarding themselves as foreigners or making a line of separation between their own interests, as Mussalmans, and the interest of India itself”. However he also had his pensive moments when he accepted that “the difference between Hindu and Mussalman is too great for any permanent union”. He therefore felt that the British should stay on in India “as a balancing power”.
When Andrews seemed sceptical of such ideas, Zaka Ullah simply said: “Just as Mussalmans have grown to be a part of India so may also you. It is all within the will of God. He does as He pleases.”
Zaka Ullah admired the British for they had delivered him and his people from the turmoil which had prevailed before them. Andrews refers to this as a “unique trait” in Zaka Ullah’s character. Zaka Ullah’s attachment to his Hindu friends was most unusually strong. In the chaos of the early days of the Mutiny he left his home unmindful of his own safety in search of his friend, Prof Ramachandra, who had disappeared but was ultimately found alive. What would perhaps come as utterly incredible to the Muslims of today, particularly in Pakistan, was that Andrews was once told by Zaka Ullah’s son, Inayatullah (who also gained renown as a writer and scholar in his lifetime), that he was told by the son of one of Zaka Ullah’s Hindu friends, Pundit Tulsi Ram, that “every evening as they (his friends’ family) lighted the lamps as an act of worship in their ancestral home, they included the name of Zaka Ullah in their prayer along with the names of those who were nearest and dearest to them”.
Andrews’ book is perhaps one of a most delightful legacy of the British rulers to their erstwhile Empire. It is not merely the biography of a great Muslim literary person of the time they ruled India. It is much more and provides some of the most captivating glimpses of Delhi which, alas, is now no more. It is mind boggling how much Charles Freer Andrews could say in the space of a mere 114 pages.
Zaka Ullah of Delhi
By C.F. Andrews
OUP, New Delhi Available with Oxford University Press,
Plot # 38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area, Karachi
Tel: 111-693-673
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net Website: www.oup.com.pk
ISBN 019565909-0
114pp. Rs532
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