The Aligarh Movement

In the previous issue we discussed the concept of “Simorgh” as presented by Sheikh Fariduddin Attar in The Conference of the Birds, how the concept represents the collective ego of societies (and perhaps the humankind), and how Sir Syed Ahmad personified it as a beautiful houri who says, “I am the spirit of all human beings.”

In 1875, Syed took a practical step towards the realization of this collective ego by opening Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental school at Aligarh (India), which became a college two year later. Three misconceptions need to be clarified:

• The purpose of the Aligarh College was not to introduce modern education, since that was already being done through so many schools run by the British; the purpose was to include religious instruction in a modern curriculum in order to attract Muslim elite who had remained aloof so far
• The purpose of ‘English’ education was only material progress which was necessary if Indian Muslims were to survive as a community; the purpose was not enlightenment, since Syed believed that true enlightenment could come only through a holistic interpretation of Islam itself
• Since the elite was bonded with conservative scholars of religion, who were opposed to Syed’s interpretation of religion (including his idea of “the collective ego”), Syed agreed to exclude these from the curriculum of the college

This is what went wrong. Aligarh offered a concoction of secular modern education of the highest standard possible in India in those days along with basic religious instruction as advised by conservative religious scholars. This conservative version of religion was insufficient to hold its ground before the glamour of new ideas – just as Syed had suspected.

Consequently, many among the next generation of the educated youth failed to appreciate Islam as a source of enlightenment and came to regard Western learning as synonymous with enlightenment - whether they opposed it or embraced it. After the First World War (1914-18), when Western arts and literature became pessimistic and decadent (as explained by A.J.P. Taylor so succinctly), our “new intellectuals” followed the pessimism of the West faithfully and downward into the valleys of fascism, communism, existentialism and any other “ism” that they could lay their hands on.

There were exceptions – trend-setting journalist Muhammad Ali Jauhar (1878-1931), poet-philosopher Iqbal (1877-1938) and dramatist Agha Hashr Kashmiri (1879-1935), to name just a few. These thinkers did not severe their connections with the masses of their society. While they produced work which was “modern” in many ways, they accepted the consensus of their own community to be the final judge and arbiter on their art rather than the opinion of any Orientalist or the glamour of any Nobel or “Ig”-Nobel Prize (When Iqbal’s first English translation appeared in 1920, the novelist E.M. Forster wrote, “Tagore was little noticed outside Bengal until he went to Europe and gained the Nobel Prize, whereas Iqbal has won his vast kingdom without help from the West”).

Consequently, the tradition of Jauhar, Hashr and Iqbal has lived in the popular culture of India and Pakistan – countless films from the mainstream cinema of the two countries, their songs and stereotypes can be quoted as evidence while detective writers like Ibne Safi also put the lines of Iqbal into the mouth of their heroes. The so-called “high culture” in India and Pakistan – include art, media and letters – never failed to offer lip service to Iqbal, sarcasm to Jauhar and outright insults to Hashr but on the whole it tried to remain indifferent to this common legacy.

Invariably, we find that all these thinkers allude to “the collective ego” or they build up on its explanation until it finds the most concrete expression in the last paragraph of the Presidential Address delivered by Iqbal in Allahabad on December 30, 1930 (the same year when Hashr wrote his last play and Jauhar delievered his last public speech):

“I do not mystify anybody when I say that things in India are not what they appear to be. The meaning of this, however, will dawn upon you only when you have achieved a real collective ego to look at them.”

Why did it happen that artists like Iqbal, Jauhar and Hashr who remained close to the heart of their society ended up alluding to the collective ego involuntarily despite being self-acclaimed champions of Islam? Perhaps the answer lies in the significance of a small incident that occurred in Aligarh on December 27, 1886.