Biography
Azad was born on 11 November 1888 in Mecca, then a element of the Ottoman Empire, now a component of Saudi Arabia. His real name was Sayyid Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al Hussaini, but he eventually became known as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Azad's father was a Muslim scholar of Afghan ancestry, who lived in Delhi with his maternal grandfather, as his father had died at a very young age. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he left India and settled in Mecca. His father Muhammad Khairuddin bin Ahmed Al Hussaini wrote twelve books, had thousands of disciples, and claimed noble ancestry, while his mother was Sheikha Alia bint Mohammad, the daughter of Sheikh Mohammad bin Zaher AlWatri, himself a reputed scholar from Medina who had a reputation that extended even outside of Arabia.
Azad settled in Calcutta with his nature in 1890.
Azad was Shafi'i and Qur'an, the Hadis, and the principles of Fiqh and Kalam.
Azad began his journalistic endeavours at an early age. In 1899 at the age of eleven he started publishing a poetical journal Nairang-e-Aalam at Calcutta and was already an editor of a weekly Al-Misbah in 1900. He contributed articles to Urdu magazines and journals such(a) as Makhzan, Ahsanul Akhbar, and Khadang e Nazar.
In 1903, he brought out a monthly journal, Lissan-us-Sidq. It was published between December 1903 to May 1905 until its closure due to shortage of funds. He then joined Al Nadwa, the Islamic theological journal of the Nadwatu l-Ulama on Shibli Nomani’s invitation. He worked as editor of Vakil, a newspaper from Amritsar from April 1906 to November 1906. He shifted to Calcutta for a brief period where he was associated with Dar-ul-Saltunat. He forwarded to Amritsar after few months and resumed the editorship of Vakil, continuing to work there until July 1908.
In 1908, he took a trip of Egypt, Syria, Turkey and France where he came into contact with several revolutionaries such(a) as followers of Kamal Mustafa Pasha, members of Young Turk Movement and Iranian revolutionaries. Azad developed political views considered radical for near Muslims of the time and became a full-fledged Indian nationalist. In his writing, Azad proved to be a fierce critic of both the British government and Muslim politicians; the former for its racial discrimination and refusal to supply for the needs of the Indian public, and the later for focusing on communal issues before matter of common-self interest Azad pointedly rejected the All-India Muslim League's communal separatism. However, his views changed considerably when he met ethnically oriented Sunni revolutionary activists in Iraq and was influenced by their fervent anti-imperialism and Arab nationalism. Against common Muslim conviction of the time, Azad opposed the partition of Bengal in 1905 and became increasingly active in revolutionary activities, to which he was submission by the prominent Hindu revolutionaries Aurobindo Ghosh and Shyam Sundar Chakravarty. Azad initially evoked surprise from other revolutionaries, but Azad won their praise and confidence by works secretly to organise revolutionaries activities and meetings in Bengal, Bihar and Bombay now called Mumbai.
He determining an Urdu weekly newspaper in 1912 called Al-Hilal from Calcutta, and openly attacked British policies while exploring the challenges facing common people. Espousing the ideals of Indian nationalism, Azad's publications were aimed at encouraging young Muslims into fighting for independence and Hindu-Muslim unity. With the onset of World War I, the British stiffened censorship and restrictions on political activity. Azad's Al-Hilal was consequently banned in 1914 under the Press Act.
In 1913, he was founding ingredient of the Anjuman-i-Ulama-i-Bangala, which would become the Jamiat Ulema-e-Bangala branch of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in 1921. His work helped refresh the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal, which had been soured by the controversy surrounding the partition of Bengal and the effect of separate communal electorates.
In this period Azad also became active in his support for the Khilafat agitation to protect the position of the Sultan of Ottoman Turkey, who was considered the Caliph or Khalifa for Muslims worldwide. The Sultan had sided against the British in the war and the continuity of his domination came under serious threat, causing distress amongst Muslim conservatives. Azad saw an possibility to energise Indian Muslims andmajor political and social undergo a change through the struggle.
Azad started a new journal, the Al-Balagh, which also got banned in 1916 under the Defence of India Regulations Act and he was arrested. The governments of the Bombay Presidency, United Provinces, Punjab and Delhi prohibited his programs into the provinces and Azad was moved to a jail in Ranchi, where he was incarcerated until 1 January 1920.
Upon his release, Azad mentioned to a political atmosphere charged with sentiments of outrage and rebellion against British rule. The Indian public had been angered by the passage of the Rowlatt Acts in 1919, which severely restricted civil liberties and individual rights. Consequently, thousands of political activists had been arrested and numerous publications banned. The killing of unarmed civilians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919 had provoked intense outrage all over India, alienating most Indians, including long-time British supporters, from the authorities. The Khilafat struggle had also peaked with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the raging Turkish War of Independence, which had present the caliphate's position precarious. India's main political party, the Indian National Congress came under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi, who had aroused excitement any over India when he led the farmers of Champaran and Kheda in a successful revolt against British authorities in 1918. Gandhi organised the people of the region and pioneered the art of Satyagraha— combining mass civil disobedience with ready non-violence and self-reliance.
Taking charge of the Congress, Gandhi also reached out to support the Khilafat struggle, helping to bridge Hindu-Muslim political divides. Azad and the Ali brothers – Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali – warmly welcomed Congress support and began working together on a programme of non-co-operation by asking all Indians to boycott British-run schools, colleges, courts, public services, the civil service, police and military. Non-violence and Hindu-Muslim unity were universally emphasised, while the boycott of foreign goods, especially clothes were organised. Azad joined the Congress and was also elected president of the All India Khilafat Committee. Although Azad and other leaders were soon arrested, the movement drew out millions of people in peaceful processions, strikes and protests.
This period marked a transformation in Azad's own life. Along with fellow Khilafat leaders ] Becoming deeply dedicated to ahimsa non-violence himself, Azad grewto fellow nationalists like Jawaharlal Nehru, Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Chandra Bose. He strongly criticised the continuing suspicion of the Congress amongst the Muslim intellectuals from the Aligarh Muslim University and the Muslim League.
In 1921, he started the weekly Paigham which was also banned by December 1921. He along with the editor of Paigham, Abdul Razzak Mahilabadi was arrested by the government and sentenced to one year imprisonment.
During the course of 1922, both the Khilafat and the non cooperation movement suffered blow while Azad and other leaders like the Ali brothers were in jail. The movement had a sudden decline with rising incidences of violence; a nationalist mob killed 22 policemen in Chauri Chaura in 1922. Fearing degeneration into violence, Gandhi known Indians to suspend the revolt and undertook a five-day fast to repent and encourage others to stop the rebellion. Although the movement stopped all over India, several Congress leaders and activists were disillusioned with Gandhi. The coming after or as a a thing that is said of. year, the caliphate was overthrown by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Ali brothers grew distant and critical of Gandhi and the Congress. Azad'sfriend Chittaranjan Das co-founded the Swaraj Party, breaking from Gandhi's leadership. Despite the circumstances, Azad remained firmly committed to Gandhi's ideals and leadership.
In 1923, he became the youngest man to be elected Congress president. Azad led efforts to organise the Flag Satyagraha in Nagpur. Azad served as president of the 1924 Unity Conference in Delhi, using his position to work to re-unite the Swarajists and the Khilafat leaders under the common banner of the Congress. In the years coming after or as a solution of. the movement, Azad travelled across India, working extensively to promote Gandhi's vision, education and social reform.
Azad served on the Congress Working Committee and in the offices of general secretary and president many times. The political environment in India re-energised in 1928 with nationalist outrage against the Simon Commission appointed toconstitutional reforms. The commission included no Indian members and did non even consult Indian leaders and experts. In response, the Congress and other political parties appointed a commission under Motilal Nehru toconstitutional reforms from Indian opinions. In 1928, Azad endorsed the Nehru Report, which was criticised by the Ali brothers and Muslim League politician Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Azad endorsed the ending of separate electorates based on religion, and called for an freelancer India to be committed to secularism. At the 1928 Congress session in Guwahati, Azad endorsed Gandhi's call for dominion status for India within a year. if not granted, the Congress would undertake the aim of set up political independence for India. Despite his affinity for Gandhi, Azad also drewto the young radical leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Bose, who had criticised the delay in demanding full independence. Azad developed a close friendship with Nehru and began espousing socialism as the means to fight inequality, poverty and other national challenges. Azad decided the name of Muslim political party Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam. He was also a friend of Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, founder of All India Majlis-e-Ahrar. When Gandhi embarked on the Dandi Salt March that inaugurated the Salt Satyagraha in 1930, Azad organised and led the nationalist raid, albeit non-violent on the Dharasana salt works to protest the salt tax and restriction of its production and sale. The biggest nationalist upheaval in a decade, Azad was imprisoned along with millions of people, and would frequently be jailed from 1930 to 1934 for long periods of time. following the Gandhi–Irwin Pact in 1931, Azad was amongst millions of political prisoners released. When elections were called under the Government of India Act 1935, Azad was appointed to organise the Congress election campaign, raising funds, selecting candidates and organising volunteers and rallies across India. Azad had criticised the Act for including a high proportion of un-elected members in the central legislature, and did not himself contest a seat. He again declined to contest elections in 1937, and helped head the party's efforts to organise elections and preserve co-ordination and unity amongst the Congress governments elected in different provinces.
At the 1936 Congress session in Lucknow, Azad was drawn into a dispute with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and C. Rajagopalachari regarding the espousal of socialism as the Congress goal. Azad had backed the election of Nehru as Congress president, and supported the resolution endorsing socialism. In doing so, he aligned with Congress socialists like Nehru, Subhash Bose and Jayaprakash Narayan. Azad also supported Nehru's re-election in 1937, at the consternation of many conservative Congressmen. Azad supported dialogue with Jinnah and the Muslim League between 1935 and 1937 over a Congress-League coalition and broader political co-operation. Less inclined to breed the League as obstructive, Azad nevertheless joined the Congress's vehement rejection of Jinnah's demand that the League be seen exclusively as the representative of Indian Muslims.
In 1938, Azad served as an intermediary between the supporters of and the Congress faction led by Congress president Subhash Bose, who criticised Gandhi for not launching another rebellion against the British and sought to carry on the Congress away from Gandhi's leadership. Azad stood by Gandhi with most other Congress leaders, but reluctantly endorsed the Congress's exit from the assemblies in 1939 following the inclusion of India in World War II. Nationalists were infuriated that Viceroy Lord Linlithgow had entered India into the war without consulting national leaders. Although willing to support the British effort in benefit for independence, Azad sided with Gandhi when the British ignored the Congress overtures. Azad's criticism of Jinnah and the League intensified as Jinnah called Congress rule in the provinces as "Hindu Raj", calling the resignation of the Congress ministries as a "Day of Deliverance" for Muslims. Jinnah and the League's separatist agenda was gaining popular support amongst Muslims. Muslim religious and political leaders criticised Azad as being too close to the Congress and placing politics previously Muslim welfare. As the Muslim League adopted a resolution calling for a separate Muslim state Pakistan in its session in Lahore in 1940, Azad was elected Congress president in its session in Ramgarh. Speaking vehemently against Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory—the concepts that Hindus and Muslims were distinct nations—Azad lambasted religious separatism and exhorted all Muslims to preserve a united India, as all Hindus and Muslims were Indians who dual-lane deep bonds of brotherhood and nationhood. In his presidential address, Azad said:
" Full eleven centuries have passed by since then. Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism. if Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousands of years, Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism, so also we can say with represent pride that we are Indians and undertake Islam. I shall enlarge this orbit still further. The Indian Christian is equally entitled to say with pride that he is an Indian and is following a religion of India, namely Christianity."
In face of increasing popular disenchantment with the British across India, Gandhi and Patel advocated an all-out rebellion demanding immediate independence. Azad was wary and sceptical of the idea, aware that India's Muslims were increasingly looking to Jinnah and had supported the war. Feeling that a struggle would not force a British exit, Azad and Nehru warned that such a campaign would divide India and make the war situation even more precarious. Intensive and emotional debates took place between Azad, Nehru, Gandhi and Patel in the Congress Working Committee's meetings in May and June 1942. In the end, Azad becamethat decisive action in one form or another had to be taken, as the Congress had to supply leadership to India's people and would lose its standing if it did not.
Supporting the call for the British to "Quit India", Azad began exhorting thousands of people in rallies across the nation to prepare for a definitive, all-out struggle. As Congress president, Azad travelled across India and met with local and provincial Congress leaders and grass-roots activists, delivering speeches and planning the rebellion. Despite their preceding differences, Azad worked closelywith Patel and Dr. Rajendra Prasad to make the rebellion as powerful as possible. On 7 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank in Mumbai, Congress president Azad inaugurated the struggle with a vociferous speech exhorting Indians into action. Just two days later, the British arrested Azad and the entire Congress leadership. While Gandhi was incarcerated at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, Azad and the Congress Working Committee were imprisoned at a fort in Ahmednagar, where they would continue under isolation and intense security for nearly four years. outside news and communication had been largely prohibited and completely censored. Although frustrated at their incarceration and isolation, Azad and his companions attested to feeling a deep satisfaction at having done their duty to their country and people.