A Raj loyalist or a social refor-mist, the conundrum hasshrouded the legacy of Syed Ah-mad Khan (1817-1898) for morethan a century. In Sir Syed Ah-mad Khan: Reason, ReligionAnd Nation (Routledge India),Professor Shafey Kidwai haspenned an objective analysis ofthe man who was undoubtedlymore than the founder of theMohammedan Anglo-OrientalCollege that grew into AligarhMuslim University more thantwo decades after his death.

With a foreword by ProfessorIrfan Habib, the book deals withSir Syed’s attitude towards Con-gress leaders, his shifting con-cepts of watan (nation) andqaum (community) and hisviews on girl education.

A seasoned professor of jour-nalism at AMU, Prof. Kidwai haswritten extensively on Sir Syed.In 2019, Sawaneh-e-Sir Syed: EkBazadeed, a biography of SirSyed in Urdu, fetched him theprestigious Sahitya Akademiaward.

Ahead of Sir Syed’s birth an-niversary this Sunday, Prof. Kid-wai says despite his Anglophilestreak, he refused to accept theprevalent culture of genufl�ect-ing. “His scientifi�c outlook re-quires a thoughtful explorationthat a simplistic, historiographi-cal work could not produce.”Edited excerpts:

Isn’t it diffi�cult to writeabout a personality whoespoused confl�icting ideasand took a long time toevolve?He was not a mere reconciler,and he made no eff�ort to wrapthe confl�icting ideas into asingle narrative. I havetried to put a premiumon showcasing howhe employed reasoneven in dealing withemotive issues relat-ed to faith and howrationalism never de-serted him. On thethorny issue of blas-phemy that frequentlysurfaced during SirSyed’s time, he made it clearthat the Koran does not pre-scribe corporal punishment forthe off�ender. The deplorable act

of desecration amounts to sedi-tion and Muslim caliphs imposecorporal punishment, but itcannot be implemented in anon-Islamic state. Sir Syed saidthat in India, the issue is to besettled according to the coun-try’s laws. It requires to be op-posed with a logical rebuttal,and noisy protest will serve nopurpose.

How does the book add tothe existing work on SirSyed?

Not much has been writtenabout how he strove for mitigat-ing the suff�erings of the belea-guered while being a member ofseveral apex bodies under theBritish rule. Notwithstandinghis occasional emotional out-bursts bordering on communal-ism, he unfailingly stood for allIndians as he was the fi�rst citi-zen who demanded that the en-try age of ICS aspirants be raisedto 23 instead of 21 as Indiansstarted education quite late.

He also demanded that thecoveted examination be held in

India. Later, the Con-gress made these

two demands itscentral plank. Si-milarly, he wasthe fi�rst Indianmember who in-

troduced thecompulsory small-pox eradicationvaccination Billand vehementlysupported Ilbert

Bill that empowered Indianjudges to hear the criminal cas-es fi�led against the British. Cu-riously, other Indian members

sided with the Anglo-Indiancommunity, which fi�ercely op-posed the Bill.

Do you fi�nd a dichotomy inSir Syed’s usage of qaumand watan, which, decadeslater, led a section ofPakistani thinkers toconsider him the Father ofthe Nation?

Sir Syed attempted to locatethe concept of nation in termsof faith, language and geograph-ical framework simultaneouslyand separately at regular inter-vals. It is a topic that still pro-vides ammunition to his admir-ers and opponents in almostequal terms. It is pertinent topoint out that Sir Syed was notswayed by the pan Islamismpropagated by Jamaluddin Af-ghani (1838-1897) and SheikhMuhammad Abduh (1849-1905),and he vehemently opposed itby writing several editorials inhis multilingual newspaper —Aligarh Institute Gazette.

Signifi�cantly, he never usedthe term ummah (Muslims allover the world are one) in hiswritings. For him the concept ofKhilafat had very little relevancein the Indian context hencesowing the seeds of separatismamong Muslims cannot be attri-buted to him.

Sir Syed asserted that all thereligious communities living inIndia form one unifi�ed nation.He did make a diff�erence bet-ween patriotism, nationalismand citizenship. He did repu-diate the territorial or race-based concept of nationalismand candidly talked about aMuslim identity that is both In-

dian and Islamic.

How do you make sense ofSir Syed’s shifting views ongirl education?Sir Syed’s concept of girl educa-tion seemed skewed and unpa-latable as he suggested tutor-based home education for girls.Taking a cue from Edward H.Clarke’s book, Sex In Education,or, A Fair Chance For Girls (1873)that favoured single (male) edu-cation, Sir Syed did plead for set-ting up government schools ex-clusively for boys andhome-based tutor education forgirls. He was not an opponent ofwomen education, however, hetried to off�er them a faulty mo-del. Though later on he relent-ed, his call for women’s educa-tion seems too irresolute andtoo late.

From the existing material,can we infer how would SirSyed have negotiated aHindutva-led India?It is a tricky question to answerhow Sir Syed would have res-ponded to the tremendousemotive appeal of ethnicity orreligion-based nationalism thatget at us but a closer look intohis writings prompts me to saythat Sir Syed would havepushed for an alternative mo-del of nationalism, resemblinghis indigenous model of moder-nism that he produced as an an-tidote to colonial modernism.He would have emphasisedconstitutional nationalism or inthe terms of Hannah Arendt,“civic nationalism” that drewsustenance from tolerance, plu-ralism and respect for diversity.

In Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: Reason, ReligionAnd Nation, Professor Shafey Kidwaicombines the rigour of a scholar and the fl�airof a scribe to evaluate a complex fi�gure whomerits an honest appraisal

Prof. Shafey Kidwai. * SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Anuj Kumar

‘Sir Syed unfailinglystood for all Indians’