Sir Syed Ahmed Khan And The Muslim Renaissance In South Asia – Analysis

This year marks the 207th birth anniversary of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, born into a prominent family with ties to the Mughal court in Delhi on October 17, 1817, and who passed away on March 27, 1898.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan played a pivotal role in the Muslim Renaissance of the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century. His family’s aristocratic background provided him with access to both traditional Islamic education and the evolving intellectual currents of his time. He was a pioneering socio-religious reformer, but his legacy is complex and subject to various critiques. His contributions primarily focused on modernizing the Muslim community, which was struggling in the aftermath of the fall of the Mughal Empire and the subsequent rise of the British colonial rule. One of his most remarkable contributions was in the field of education. He recognized that the Muslims had fallen behind due to their reluctance to accept the Western education and sciences, largely sticking to traditional religious studies.

The Muslim renaissance is said to have begun with Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He was a forerunner of socio-cultural transformations in the Muslim community through the Aligarh Movement (AM, hereafter). There have been a few individuals whose ideas, thoughts, beliefs and actions took so much time to evolve and reach their final shape as in the case of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. To bring a change in the Muslim attitude, he launched the Islamic Renaissance by means of his writings and the AM. For him, the Western science and technology strengthened Islamic convictions, since Islam was not dialectically opposed to reasoning and rationalism.

This article focuses on the contributions and legacy of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s AM in awakening the Muslim community in the Indian subcontinent, with special reference to colonial Bengal. To provide an appropriate context for this analysis, a brief discussion on the historical evolution is presented in the following section.

Before the arrival of the British, peace and order prevailed in Bengal in almost all religious, social and political areas. Bengal was known as one of the wealthiest provinces of the Mughal Empire, as Muslims ruled Bengal for approximately five centuries, spanning from 1204 to 1757. The British East India Company (BEIC, hereafter) initiated the Bengal Government Opium Monopoly in 1763 and the land under poppy cultivation expanded to 303,500 hectares in 1767. BEIC officials such as Lord Clive plundered massive wealth and resources from Bengal, resulting in foods scarcity, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and famines. For instance, a total of 10 million people died in the Bengal Famine of 1770.

The Permanent Settlement of 1793 further introduced a quasi-feudal relationship between landlords and tenants. The Permanent Settlement broke the personal ties between the zamindars and the ryots or peasants. The Permanent Settlement, known as the Zamindari system, was a thus manifestation of the British divide and rule policy regarding Hindus and Muslims. The system widened the class and communal feuds between the few landed oligarchy and the many landless or underprivileged peasants. The BEIC took over the realm of state power in 1757 through the mysterious and treacherous defeat of Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah in the Battle of Plassey. Since then, the Muslims in the Subcontinent became systematically marginalized, impoverished and powerless. The upper caste Hindu Badralok were mostly privileged, educated and loyal to the British colonial regime. On the other hand, a large segment of the Muslim population were peasants, and they were largely under-privileged, illiterate, poor, and unorganized.

The Muslim discontent against the alien domination was expressed in such as incidents as the Fakir-Sannyasi resistance in the time of Warren Hastings and the movements of Titu Mir and Haji Shariatullah’s Faraizi movement. These movements directly or indirectly affected the BEIC’s administration. After the 1857 revolt, the British colonial government had become aware that they had not been quite fair to Muslim interests. The irony was that the Muslims suffered from underrepresentation at the central and provincial legislatures. For instance, the Muslims constituted about 23% of the total population, but the percentage of the “elected” Muslim members from 1893 to 1903 was only 12%. A similar anomaly existed also in the provinces: in Bengal the Muslims, for example, constituted nearly 52% of the population, but only 5.7% of the elected representatives were Muslims (Rashiduzzaman, 2019: 8).

Perhaps it was the failure of the Muslims to get adequate representation in the Councils that caused frustration or distrust about the vast Hindu majority in India. On October 1, 1906, a Muslim deputation under the leadership of Aga Khan met the Viceroy and demanded a separate electorate for the Muslims and ultimately that was granted which raised a vehement criticism by the Hindu leaders of the Congress as well as the Hindu elite of the Indian civil society. The Muslims in Bengal were, thus, lagging behind Hindus in terms of education, employment, and empowerment. The Hindu-Muslim tensions increased throughout the 1920s and 1930s, which soared in the 1940s. W. W. Hunter also pointed out that the Muslims had suffered grave injustices particularly, in the areas of administrative and judicial jobs.

The revolt of 1857 was one of the turning points in Syed Ahmed’s life. After the revolt, many protesters mostly the Muslims, were killed and persecuted by the British government. Sir Syed clearly understood the necessity for Muslims to become proficient in English and acquire modern scientific education to maintain their social, economic, and political powers in India. His academic and journalistic writings sparked an informed debate on the social, cultural, religious, and political dynamics between Muslims, Hindus, and the British. In her newly published memoir namely, Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century, noted historian Joya Chatterji observed that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was the first to claim Indian Muslims as a separate nation (Chatterji, 2023: 47).

Although not advocating partition, Sir Syed’s political philosophy can be seen as laying the foundation for the Two-Nation Theory, which held that Muslims and Hindus were two separate nations with different cultures, religions, and interests. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All-India Muslim League and the founding father of Pakistan, was also influenced by Sir Syed’s political philosophy. We can, therefore, argue that Sir Syed’s emphasis on the distinct identity and political interests of Muslims laid the groundwork for the development of the Two-Nation Theory, which Jinnah later championed to justify the demand for Pakistan. The Two-Nation Theory became the foundation of the 1940 Lahore Resolution, known commonly as the Pakistan Resolution, which was presented by the then Chief Minister of undivided Bengal, A. K. Fazlul Huq. Professor Ayesha Jalal noted that with the passage of time the Lahore Resolution emerged as a significant milestone in the political history of British India. (Jalal, 1985).

Sir Syed maintained that Muslims should collaborate with the British government. He viewed the British as protectors of Muslim interests and encouraged Muslims to refrain from participating in the Indian National Congress, which he feared would align with Hindu interests at the expense of Muslim political representation. Sir Syed was devoted to the causes of liberal education in the subcontinent. In his 1858 monograph namely, The Causes of the Indian Revolt, Sir Syed identified five major reasons for the 1857 rebellion: the lack of Indian representation in legislative councils; forced religious conversions to Christianity; poor management of the Indian Army; British negligence of Muslim interests; and various other misguided policies that led to widespread dissatisfaction among different sections of society. He was too much impressed by Western rationalism and wanted to show that every doctrine of Islam could measure up to all principles of science, reason and common sense (Sayeed, 1960: 13). He believed that Islam is compatible with liberal values and religious tolerance.

Sir Syed Ahmed established the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875. The foundation of the Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh served as tangible evidence that Sir Syed’s ideas had been embraced by the Muslim community, as the institution was largely funded by their donations. The College was later transformed into the Aligarh Muslim University which became the main vehicle of Muslim education. Sir Syed urged the Muslims to remain loyal to the British government and not to take part in the nationalist movements spearheaded by the All-Indian National Congress, a political party formed in 1885. He felt that the Muslim community should remain aloof from all kinds of political agitation because by taking active part in the anti-colonial Mutiny of 1857, they had already placed themselves in danger by arousing British antagonism.

So, the only path that lay before the Muslims, according to Sir Syed, was that of equipping themselves with English education. Sir Syed asserted that the well-being of every individual is of paramount importance. As he said, “The government must provide all sort of rights related to property, employment, freedom of religion, speech, and life. It must protect them, and the unequal powers should not be allowed to harm anyone. The government must shield the weak and deserving from the undeserving mighty. Everyone should be allowed to get the full benefit from his property and skill” (Cited in Kidwai, 2021: 6).

The impact of AM on the Bengali Muslims could hardly be underestimated. Sir Syed’s overall influence upon Bengal was part of his broader attempt to promote the upliftment of Muslims across India, although his direct involvement with Bengal was more limited compared to his impact in North India, particularly in Aligarh. Before this AM took place, fewer Bengali Muslims had received English education. It was the AM which introduced some Muslims with western education and science. It was a matter of pride to those Muslims who once could go to Aligarh to receive higher education in modern western lines. In the meantime, Lord Curzon executed the partition of Bengal in 1905. Dacca became the capital city of the newly created ‘Eastern Bengal and Assam’. The Partition of Bengal was a momentous phase in the development of Muslim nationalism in Bengal. The Muslim leaders became very optimistic after the partition scheme in 1905.

As a result, in 1906, the Muslim leaders formed a new political party, namely All-India Muslim League to safeguard the political interests of the Muslim community in Bengal. As we have mentioned earlier, the Simla Deputation, led by Aga Khan, met with Governor General and Viceroy Lord Minto in Simla in October 1906. This deputation marked the first organized effort by the Muslim community to present their demands to the British government in India. Muslim leaders put forth two primary demands: first, the allocation of a fixed number of seats for Muslims in municipal and district boards, as well as in university governing bodies like the senate and syndicate. Second, they requested that Muslim representatives be elected separately to the Provincial Council, based on their political significance rather than their proportion of the population. Sir Syed’s ideas on the separate electorate were rooted in his broader vision for Muslim political representation and protection within the British colonial system. His idea of separate electorates for the Muslims can be viewed as evolving from some of his political beliefs and concerns for the Muslim community. In Bengal, institutions like the Islamia College followed Sir Syed’s model of blending Western and Islamic education. Muslim intellectuals in Bengal, such as Nawab Abdul Latif and Syed Ameer Ali, advocated for educational reform among Muslims in line with Sir Syed’s liberal approach.

The Hindu Bhodrolok feared a loss of economic and political power in Calcutta, and they accordingly began the anti-partition or Swadeshi movement led by Surendranath Banerji, Arabinda Ghosh, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and so on. Out of the prevailing atmosphere of terrorism and fear, the British government annulled the partition scheme in 1911, resulting in Muslim discontent. The Muslim leaders including Nawbab Khaja Salimullah and Nawbab Ali Chowdhury could no longer remain satisfied with the British annulment of the partition of Bengal and the British government’s shrewd implementation of the divide and rule policy. It is to be noted that the separate electorate for the Muslim community was formally recognized in the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909. Moreover, Maulana Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, two prominent leaders of the Khilafat Movement in the early 20th century were both students at Aligarh Muslim University and were deeply influenced by Sir Syed’s ideas on Muslim education and political awareness. The Ali brothers took forward Sir Syed’s emphasis on the importance of Muslim unity, although they were involved in the anti-colonial struggle, unlike Sir Syed’s pro-British stance.

The constitutional recognition of the separate electorate for the Muslims was a milestone in several important ways. First, the separate electorate facilitated the growth of a set of Muslim leaders like Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq. The establishment of the University of Dacca in 1921 had also a big impact on the promotion of Muslim culture and political consciousness. Several societies and periodicals came into existence. The demand for education of the Muslims created an enabling environment for the Freedom of Intellect Movement (Buddhir Mukti Andolan), a Bengali Muslim-led renaissance advocating rationality against religious fanaticism and social dogma in Bengali Muslim society. It was spearheaded by several Dacca university intellectuals such as Kazi Abdul Wadud, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Abul Fazal, Muhammad Shahidullah, Qazi Motahar Hossain, Mothahar Hossen Chowdhury, and Abdul Quadir. Shikha was the mouthpiece of the Muslim Sahitya-Samaj or Muslim literary society founded in Dhaka in 1926.

In his 1926 speech, Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah said, “The Hindu Shahitya is fed with Vedant, Gita, Hindu history and life. Hindu literature gathers flavors from Hindu society. It is through this literature that the Hindu and Muslims of Bengal will recognize each other. Cognition is the basis of love (Cited in Rahim, 2011: 219). The main slogan or motto of the Shikha was: “Where knowledge is limited, intellect is inert, freedom is impossible”.

Second, the separate electorate expanded the job opportunities and economic well-being of the Muslims. It eventually contributed to the political ascendency of A. K. Fazlul Huq who became the chief minister of undivided Bengal after the 1937 elections. Huq formed the Krishak Praja Party for the betterment of the peasants. He abolished the exploitative zamindari system. Once A. K. Fazlul Huq in the 1940s, called upon the people not to apologize for being Muslims (Rashiduzzaman, 2021). Huq’s call refers essentially to the perennial revivalism of Muslim identity and religious nationalism in Bengal.

Third, the rise of the Muslim middle class was the cumulative outcome of the historical awakening and empowerment of the Muslims. The masses belonging to the rural and urban middle classes played key roles in the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. Thus, Syed Ahmed’s influence extended beyond his lifetime, with his ideas continuing to resonate during the struggle for independence. He inspired later political leaders, including those involved in the formation of the All-India Muslim League, a party established in 1906, following the partition of Bengal, which played a meaningful role in the demand for Pakistan. But the main domestic problem of separate electorates was overcome with Congress agreeing to Jinnah’s plea to allow weightage of seats in the legislative councils of certain provinces where the Muslims were in the minority. This became known as the historic Lucknow Pact, and it made Jinnah a leader of the Indian Muslims. The atmosphere of Lucknow, where once again the All-India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress met to hold their annual sessions, was even more cordial. Jinnah was the main architect of the Lucknow Pact, and he was thereafter hailed as an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. The Lucknow Pact acknowledged the provision of the separate electorate that was later incorporated into the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms of 1919. In this way, we came to learn that the separate electorate system was introduced by the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909, recognized by the Montagu-Chelmsford report of 1919 and further extended by the Government of India Act of 1935. All the elections to the local bodies and Legislative Council from 1909 to 1946 were held on the basis of the separate electorate system.

It is here to be noted that the ideology of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was subject to criticism and limitation. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958) was a scholar, freedom fighter, and proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity. A close reading of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s autobiography titled, India Wins Freedom reveals that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had a decisive influence on Azad. Sir Syed’s emphasis on rationalism, scientific inquiry, and social reform significantly shaped Azad’s worldview. Azad was inspired by Sir Syed’s calls for a modern and progressive interpretation of Islam, advocating for reforms within Muslim society to align with contemporary realities. As Azad wrote, “Suddenly a new way opened before me. I refer to the writings of Sir Sayyid [Syed Ahmed Khan]. Because this experience had a very great influence on my religious and intellectual life” (Cited in Douglas, 1988: 51). Although Azad recognized Sir Syed’s contribution to Muslim education, he disagreed with many of his views. Maulana Azad believed that Sir Syed’s policy of loyalty to the British Empire was shortsighted and flawed as well. Azad argued that this stance diminished the role Muslims could play in the larger Indian freedom movement. He believed that Muslims, like Hindus, should oppose colonial rule, which was unjust and exploitative. To Azad, aligning too closely with the British harmed the political future of Indian Muslims.

In conclusion, this paper reiterates its central thesis that as a visionary political leader and socio-religious reformer of the 19th century, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan played a vital role in empowering Muslims through the enlightening efforts of his Aligarh Movement. He recognized the importance of English education in empowering the Muslims and fostering fruitful interactions with the British ruling elite. While Sir Syed’s efforts to modernize Muslim education and social thought had a lasting impact, his critics argue that his loyalty to the British colonial government, his communal outlook, and his elitist approach to education contributed to a fractured Muslim identity. He was an early advocate of the separate electorate for the Muslim community. The demand of and recognition for the separate electorate in 1909 ignited a crucial debate during the anti-colonial nationalists as well as the Pakistan Movement leading to the emergence of two independent states namely, India and Pakistan in 1947. In a nutshell, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was a key figure in the awakening of the Muslim community in the subcontinent.