April 24, 2005

BEFORE me is a bulky volume, running into a thousand pages, bearing the title The Mohammadan commentary on the Holy Bible. It is a historic work of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and is among those of his books that are now not available to his readers in the market. Sir Syed Academy, which is working under the auspices of the Muslim University in Aligarh, has planned to re-publish all such works so as to make it available to the readers and researchers engaged in the study of Sir Syed. The present edition, is a reprint of the original edition, whose print line tells us that it had come out from Ghazeepore “Printed and Published by the Authors at the Private Press-1822 AD. 1278 H.”

It is divided into three parts, the first two being bi-lingual, Urdu and English while the third has been presented in Urdu alone.

Sir Syed was an active worker and at the same time a prolific writer. And all he wrote bears the stamp of a mission he was devoted to. This work too, which at one time kept him engaged for day and night, was the outcome of his missionary zeal. In his quest to what the Bible actually says, he took pains to learn Hebrew from a Jewish teacher and thus managed to read the sacred book in its original. And not finding a publisher for this work, he staked all the money he had received from the government as a compensation to the loss of his property during 1857 on the purchase of a printing press for this purpose.

At the moment I can only say this much about this book. It in fact demands from us to devote long hours for its study, while I would like to focus more on the books on or about Sir Syed published by Sir Syed Academy and about their significance. So I come to the Academy’s next publication Alkhutbat ul Ahmadiya. This in fact is a collection of the articles, Sir Syed wrote as an attempt to counteract the misleading picture of Islam and our Prophet (Peace be upon him) as painted by Sir William Muir in his book. He has in these essays presented a rationalistically convincing picture of Islam and the life of the Holy Prophet divesting it of elements which don’t tally with reason and have no backing of historical evidence. In case of events such as that of ‘Mairaj’, he has his own interpretation rationalistically convincing. He interprets it as a vision seen in a dream. This interpretation was challenged by the clerics thus leading to a heated controversy.

Sir Syed was not content to write the articles in Urdu. After all they were a rejoinder to William Muir’s book. So he got them translated in English by his son Syed Mahmood and managed to get the volume published in London under the title A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammad (PBUH). This English edition, published in 1870, later inspired Syed Amir Ali to write his own book under the title Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammad (PBUH). It was soon followed by Maulvi Chiragh Ali’s book Mohammad, the true Prophet (PBUH).

The other book Dastavaizat Muslim Educational Conference brings before us a picture of Sir Syed’s mass campaign for the English education among the Muslims of undivided India. The present is the first volume of the book, which comprises letters from the nook and corner of the country addressed to Sir Syed welcoming his newly founded Muslim Educational Conference and their eagerness to join it.

This organization had been conceived on an all-India basis with an ambitious plan of establishing Muslim educational institutions in every city and town of the country. The idea seems to have sent a wave of enthusiasm among the Muslims as these letters show. We have here letters not only from big cities such as Calcutta, Lucknow, Lahore, and Delhi but also from distant towns such as Gilgit, Pind Dadan Khan, Jhelum, Garkwal, Las Bella. And a large number among them belongs to the lower middle class, who somehow manage to send a money-order of five rupees as membership fee!

So while one section of the people, mostly orthodox Muslims, were deadly opposed to Sir Syed’s educational programme, a large number of Muslims were enthused by the idea of modern education for their children.

The Educational Conference was found in 1886. The present volume covers the period of first ten years, say from 1886 to 1896.

However, this volume should better be read in conjunction with Iftikhar Alam’s book Sir Syed Aur Scientific Society.

The scientific society had been instituted in 1884, that is two years prior to the birth of the Educational Conference. The account of the society, as recorded by Iftikhar Alam, acquaints us with the idea of education Sir Syed had in his mind. He did not aim at simply producing Muslim graduates. He nurtured in him the ambition of borrowing the whole tradition of modern knowledge from the west.

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