Towards the end...

Towards the end, Sayyid Ahmad devoted himself more and more to the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, which was, an imaginative educational experiment intended to develop into a character-building residential institution. The College produced a unique community of alumni and in due season Aligarh became the political and educational capital of Muslim India.

The cognate organization, the All-India Mohammadan Educational Conference, founded by Sayyid Ahmad in 1304/1886, became a lively forum for the discussion of social and educational questions and proved to be an important factor in promoting Muslim solidarity in the sub-continent. Sayyid Ahmad resolutely declined to be drawn into politics. “Educate, educate, educate...” was his watchword.

His decision to hold aloof from the political movement has been often maligned and caricatured as a counsel of political reactionism. The misunderstanding arises primarily from an attempt at studying his ideas out of context and disregarding the circum­stances of the times. A more realistic appraisal of his political creed in the context of contemporary events is urgently called for.

Be that as it may, Sayyid Ahmad’s political testament prevented the absorption of the Muslim community into Hindu nationalism and finally resulted in the partition of the Indian sub-continent into its Hindu and Muslim zones. He was knighted in 1305/1888, and after a long intellectual and political career passed away at Aligarh in 1315/1898 at the ripe age of eighty-one.

B: The Sayyid as a Historian Sayyid Ahmad had the intellectual make-up of a true historian and his entire thinking was coloured with a deep sense of obligation to the past. But he was seldom obsessed with it, and did not become, like Burke, one of its unreasoning worshippers. Indeed, he could distinguish between its healthy and injurious legacies.

He viewed political and social problems in the light of history and his ideas bore a close resemblance to the findings of the historical school in political science. As a historian he was concrete and objective. His monograph on the history of the Mutiny in the district of Bijnaur, entitled Tarikh-i Sarkashi-i Bijnaur , opens with the following observations about the responsibility of a historian: “The contents of this book mostly deal with what I saw with my own eyes and did with my own hands.

I have taken great pains to ascertain the truth of events and incidents beyond my own experience.