From Islamic Revivalism to Universal Humanism: The Political and Philosophical Itinerary of Abul Kalam Azad

Ramin Jahanbegloo

Very few religious individuals show the daring and courage to criticize their own minds and to fight a battle against their own prejudice. Of the leading tolerant Muslims who have left a deep impact on the idea of pluralism in Islam, Maulana Azad stands out unique. Abul Kalam Azad was a man of constant introspection and critical self-examination. His contribution to Indian nationalism and Hindu-Muslim unity in India, but also to the idea of universal humanism is tremendous. As such Maulana Azad will not only be remembered in the history of India for the role he played in the national liberation movement of the country, but he will also be considered as a Muslim leader who stood for a dialogue among Muslims and Hindus. And yet, Azad started his career of politician and activist as a revivalist Muslim and as an upholder of pure Islam. His early career from 1906 to 1920 was influenced by his religious teachings. During this period Azad firmly believed that the Muslims were the leaders of the world. In his early writings and speeches which appeared in his journal Al-Hilal, Azad talked about the superiority of Muslims over the followers of other religions and called for an “Islamic Way” to independence. In these writings he appeared as a Muslim fundamentalist who is in favor of a linkage between politics and religion. His response to a correspondent of Al-Hilal in the issue of December 29, 1921 characterizes his fundamentalist tone in those days. “ You have suggested separation of politics from religion”, underlines Azad in his article. “ But if we do this what, then, is left with us? We have developed our political thinking from religion…. We believe that every thought which draws inspiration from any institution (including politics) other than the Quran is Kufr (infidelity).” [in Abdul Waheed Khan: India Wins Freedom, the other side, Karachi 1961, pp.22-23].

One can see clearly in the mind of young Azad at the same time an enthusiasm for Muslim nationalism and a passion for the Pan-Islamic theory of Jamaledin Al-Afghani. For Azad every Indian Muslim was first of all a member of  the world Muslim brotherhood. By advocating political separation of the Hindus and the Muslims, Azad declared: “ There is no greater shame for Muslims than to beg from others for political education. The Muslims must not join any political party. They were the leaders of the world. If they submit to God, the whole universe will bend to their will.” One will find it strange and astonishing that the same Azad, in the last two decades of his life, began writing on the Hindu-Muslim unity and gave speeches on the idea of a united nationalism. In his presidential address at Ramgarh session of the Indian National Congress in 1940, Azad came back on the issue of unity and affirmed: “ Our language, our poetry, literature, society, our tastes, our dresses, our traditions and the innumerable realities of our daily life bears the zeal of a common life and a unified society…Our social intercourse for over one thousand years has blended into a united nationalism.”

After 1920 a radical change appeared in the views of Maulana Azad and he ceased to be a revivalist Muslim and embraced Indian secular nationalism as a political philosophy. The evolution of Azad’s outlook from Pan-Islamic to secular nationalist, with no doubt, was determined by his friendship and collaboration with Mahatma Gandhi and by the rise of the communal problems in the Indian liberation movement. Through Gandhi, Azad learned that communal harmony played an important role in the future of India. He believed that in spite of religious, ethnic and linguistic differences, India was one nation.  Azad believed that the “two-nation theory” offered “no solution of the problem of one another’s minorities, but only lead to retribution and reprisals by introducing a system of mutual hostage.” [ Maulana Azad: India Wins Freedom, ]. Like Gandhi, Azad considered Hindu-Muslim unity as a necessary principle for the national reconstruction of India. In his famous address to the Agra session of the Khalifat Conference on August 25,1921, he referred to Hindu-Muslim unity as a moral imperative for the future of India. He proclaimed: “ If the Muslims of India would like top perform their best religious and Islamic duties…then they must recognize that it is obligatory for the Muslims to be together with their Hindu brethren… and it is my belief that the Muslims in India cannot perform their best duties, until in conformity within the injunctions of Islam, in all honesty, they establish unity and cooperation with the Hindus. This belief is based on the imperative spirit of Islam.” [quoted in Rasheedudin Khan: Portrait of a Great Patriot: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888-1958) in Grover, Verinder: op.cit. , pp.208-209].

Azad foresaw the idea of India in relation with the necessity of an inter-faith dialogue and co-existence among different religions. The idea of unity of religions was logically connected in his mind to his conception of one God and religious pluralism. Azad’s main distinction between the spirit of religion (Din) and its outward expressions (Shar’a) provided him a theoretical justification for his idea of oneness of God and the concept of unity of humanity. The foundation of Azad’s religious pluralism was that the Divine has many aspects, but the human and the divine are united in an expression of love. In his commentary on Surat-ul-Fatiha also called Um-ul-Quran (core of the Quran), Azad outlined the essence of his ideas on what he considered as “the God of Universal Compassion”. “ hatever view one might take” , writes Azad, “ this is clear that the mind which the Surat-ul-Fatiha depicts is a type of mind which reflects the beauty and the mercy of the God of Universal Compassion. It is in no sense fettered by prejudices of race or nation or other exclusive groupings. It is a mind imbued with Universal Humanism. This is the true spirit of the Quranic invitation.” [ quoted by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed: “ The Man Behind the Maulana”, in Grover, Verinder: Political Thinkers of India, vol.17, Deep& Deep Publications, New Delhi 1992, p.].  The entire argument of Azad was to present Muslims with the fact that the fundamental teaching of the Quran is mercy and forgiveness (Rahmat). Therefore, it followed for him that these attributes of God should also be uncalculated in humans. It is interesting to see up to what point Azad’s “tafsir” (interpretation) of the Quran keeps its closeness to the text, while at the same time it is inspired by the Sufi perception of God through “Kashf” (personal revelation). Azad’s faith in the essential unity of humanity and in the oneness of all religions stemmed essentially from the Sufi concept of “the unity of existence” (wahdat-al-wujud). Truth, for Azad, was one and the same everywhere. The mistake was to equate particular forms of Truth with Truth itself. In Azad's own words: “The misfortune is that the world worships mere terms and not their inner meaning”. Therefore, “though all may worship the same Truth, they will fight with each other on account of differences of the terms that they employ. If the veils of these externals and terms can be lifted so that Truth and Reality come before all unveiled, then, at once, all quarrels of this world will end, and all who quarrel will see that what all seek is one and the same”.

Read from this angle, Azad’s most important book, Tarjuman-ul-Quran illustrates Azad’s firm beliefs in tolerance and dialogue. It is in this book that Azad’s idea of religious pluralism is expressed powerfully by the concept of oneness of faiths ( wahdat-I-Din). For Azad, God as the “cherisher” and “nourisher” (Rabb) transcends all fragmentations and divisions of humanity in race, color and religion. As a result, the path of universal God ( Rabb-ul-Alameen) is “the right path” (Sirat-al-Mustaqeem), which belongs to no particular religion. In one of his celebrated works entitled Ghubar-i- Khatir, Azad drew a parallel between the Sufi concept of “unity of existence” and the idea of pantheism as formulated in the Upanishads. If, at root, all religions reflected the same message, then, for Azad, there was no room for Hindu as well as Muslim communalism.

Azad’s insistence on the Hindu-Muslim unity emanates, therefore, from his true spiritual convictions which are notably expressed in a speech at a special session of the Indian National Congress in 1923. “If an angel were to descend from the clouds today and settle on Delhi’s Qutab Minar and proclaim that India can win Swaraj (self-rule) within two hours provided that India renounces Hindu-Muslim unity, then I would renounce Swaraj and not unity. Because if Swaraj is delayed that is a loss to India, but if unity is lost that is a loss to humanity.” Reading this speech, one can understand the reason why Maulana Azad’s religious universalism was held in high esteem even by those who did not see eye to eye with him in matters of religion and politics. Pandit Nehru, in one of his tributes to Azad, once said: “ He represented and he always reminded me of what I have read in history about great men of several hundred years ago, say if, I think of European history, the great men of the Renaissance, or in a later period, of the Encyclopaedists who proceeded the French Revolution, men of intellect, men of action. He reminds me also of what might be called the great qualities of olden days the graciousness of them… He was a peculiar and very special representative in a high degree of that great composite culture which has gradually grown in India.” [K. M. Yusuf: “Maulana Abul Kalam Azad” in Grover, Verinder: Op.cit., p 371]. As a champion of Indian nationalism and democracy Azad sought a synthesis of modern secularism and spiritual traditionalism. He took his stand upon Truth by unifying the soul of Islam with the glory of his nation. “ I am a Muslim and this fills me with pride.”, he proclaimed in his Presidential Address in 1942 at Ramgarh. “But in addition to these feelings, I am also the possessor of another, which has been created by the stark realities of my external life. The soul of Islam is not a barrier to this belief: in fact, it guides me in this path. I am proud to be an Indian. I am an integral part of this unified and impartible nation.” [ibid, p.374]. Therefore, Azad considered religious communalism as a big obstacle in the way of Indian solidarity. For Azad, Hindu communalism, like Muslim communalism, was not at all happy with the concept of secular democracy and was a negation of pluralism. It was for this reason that Maulana Azad cautioned Indian Muslims against religious nationalism and suggested that the plurality of caste and communities makes India as the most democratic as well as challenging country as far as the process of nation building is concerned. For him, secular nationalism can be an effective antidote to religious fanaticism in India if Indian political processes were guided and controlled by political philosophy of secularism.

Nonviolence was also one of the ingredients of Azad’s secular nationalism. Azad held that the conviction of dialogue among faiths and the spirit of peace characterized Islam. According to him, nonviolence provided an effective strategy in the struggle for independence. Unlike Gandhi, Azad did not believe in nonviolence as an article of faith, but only as a matter of policy. However, he was against the use of violence by religion. In light of his religious humanism, Azad stated that there was no justification whatsoever for imposing one religion on another because the fundamentals of religion (Din) were one. Therefore, according to him every individual had a right to follow his own religious path. In other words, Azad viewed religion from the wider perspective of a universal humanist and his entire philosophy was free from any form of religious narrowness and dogma. It is in relation with this aspect of Azad’s thought that the comment of India’s President. Zakir Husain, finds all its relevance. “In my opinion” , says Zakir Husain, “ the greatest service which the Maulana did was to teach people of every religion that there are two aspects of religion. One separates and creates hatred. This is the false aspect. The other, the true spirit of religion, brings people together; it creates understanding. It lies in the spirit of service, in sacrificing self for others. It implies belief in unity, in the essential unity of things.” [quoted in Douglas, Ian Henderson: Abul Kalam Azad, Oxford University Press, Delhi 1988, p.276].

Azad owed his political inspiration to his knowledge of Islam. But as a defender of shared common values, he believed that religions were the common heritage of all mankind. His increasing receptivity to the message of other faiths led him to the recognition of the humanist element in religion. This is why for him the outward forms of religion were useless without moral actions. From his point of view, religion was not supposed to dictate specific political actions, but to mould one’s general principles in life. This is how Azad grew beyond the revivalism of Al-Hilal period to manifest the real relevance of spirituality, as a moral imperative, to politics. The awareness of other religions also encouraged him to formulate the idea of a humanist coexistence of faiths. Azad’s universal humanism led him on to fiercely oppose both Muslim as well as Hindu communalism that saw no place for a genuinely religiously plural and democratic independent India. His plea for religious humanism, communal harmony, however, fell on deaf ears as India descended into a blood bath in 1947. But Azad’s message is not dead. He was a man ahead of his time and his lessons of religious pluralism are yet to be learnt not only among the Muslims but also among followers of other religions.