Reflecting on a Founding Father
By: Dr. Mir Baiz Khan
Fifty years ago, I left Chitral in the hope of continuing my education beyond 10th grade as a self-supporting student. Every time I found an opportunity to visit Chitral, I looked forward to being once again in my childhood environment and in the culture that shaped my formative age. Every time I visit, it is fascinating to observe and reflect on aspects of life that have changed or remained static.
Tracks where people in the past walked carrying loads on their backs or transported them on donkeys’ backs or traveling on horse backs, now are gone and replaced with vehicles on modern roads and traffic. Chitral town itself, once having single-lined mud-built shops, has now become a bustling city stretching from Jughor to the Chiew bridge and across the Chitral River bank in its entire length of the Denin area. But other things have changed little if any, such as the Cantonment of Chitral Scout, the Chitral Polo ground, the High School building, the Shahi masjid, and the Chitral fort among others. Whether I travel by air or by road, I never miss looking at some of these places which provoke and refresh my young age memories. For example, the cantonment reminds me of my father who was one of the early Chitral Scout soldiers after its formation, the school where I studied and the hostel where I lived, and the people with whom I interacted.
In August of this year, when I crossed the Jughor bridge, the first thing that appeared before me was a board on the boundary wall of the Chitral Scout Cantonment with portraits of our two national heroes, Qaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal who played crucial roles in the creation of the country.
As I further reflected, I felt that there was something amiss. Surely, the message behind the display was incomplete. Were there other personalities who played equally critical roles as the country’s independent movement enfolded. As I researched the Pakistan movement, I realized that the missing picture that should be aptly placed in the space in the middle should be of a leader who navigated the political minefield during the colonial era to ensure that the Muslims were recognized as a nation and their rights as such protected. This was a time when the conditions of the Muslims were appalling; once a governing authority now was desperate to find a leader who could restore their dignity. They found such leadership in a young prince of merely twenty-five years old. He was Sultan Muhammad Shah, Aga Khan III whose 145th birthday is today, November 2, 2022.
In 1896, His Highness, Aga Khan III paid a visit to Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, Aligarh which was founded and run by an aged leader Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Having visited the college, His Highness realized that there was great potential for the college to become a modern Muslim University and showed great interest in its development to the immense pleasure of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan who, at this visit, presented an address in Persian to express his gratitude to the young prince.
Six years later, years after Sir Sayyid’s death, His Highness the Aga Khan in his presidential address to the All India Educational Conference in 1902, referring to the deplorably fallen condition of the Muslims, urged the Muslims that they must unite in an effort for their redemption. The first and foremost of all, he asserted, was an effort to be made for the foundation of a University where Muslim youths can acquire, in addition to modern sciences, a knowledge of their glorious past and religion and where the whole atmosphere of the place must give attention to character formation, rather than merely passing examinations. In his long-term vision, he impressed upon the participants that the best way to help Muslims from Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere was to build a university at par with the University of Oxford where they can send their best students, not only to learn the modern sciences, but also values such as honesty and self-sacrifice which distinguished the Muslims of the first century of the Hijra. He assured his audience that by founding the University, it would be possible to arrest the decadence of Islam, and he forcefully put it by saying: ‘if we are not willing to make sacrifices for such an end, must I not conclude that we do not care whether the faith of Islam is dead or not?’ This was the first move to develop modern enlightened leadership among the Muslims. Unveiling his strategy, the Aga Khan asked the audience that there were in India 60 million Muslims, and of those, at least ten million could afford one rupee a head. He said: ‘from the head of every Muslim family we only ask for one rupee, whereas we all know well that there are people who can pay Rs. 1,000 or Rs. 10,000 with ease.’
Qayyum A. Malik writes: ‘The Aligarh University will remain a living monument of Prince Aga Khan’s educational activities in the interests of Islam. One may very well assert that without him, the M.A.O. College at Aligarh would never have evolved into a Muslim University and there would have been no adequate means of maintaining Islamic culture intact in India.’ He goes on to say that ‘if Muslim India has been able to carve out separate nationhood for itself, it is mainly and principally because of the Aligarh University. Qayyum Malik quotes His Highness himself saying: ‘…had there been no Aligarh, there would have been no Pakistan.’ He further states that ‘Sir Syed Ahmed founded the Aligarh College, but it was Prince Aga Khan who translated the dream of the Muslim University into a reality.’ He quotes the words of Maulana Shibli: “That which could not be achieved by six crore Muslims was accomplished by Prince Aga Khan”.
In 1911, when the plans for the start of the Muslim University were ready, His Highness was invited to Aligarh, and under his able guidance, a committee for the collection of funds was formed, himself as its Chairman. He, setting out on his fund-collecting campaign, the Aga Khan said: “As a mendicant, I am going out to beg from house to house and from street to street for the children of Muslim India”. Hearing these touching words the younger members of the audience, with tears of delight in their eyes, lifted him from the chair, and carried him to his carriage on their shoulders. The foremost among them to express their adoration were two young men whose names later became famous in Muslim India. These were none other than Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal and Dr. Ziauddin.
When visited Lahore in his drive for funds for the Muslim University, an unmatched welcome was extended to His Highness. As he arrived, the horses which were to drive his carriage were unharnessed and the carriage was drawn for miles by his enthusiastic admirers who had come in thousands to welcome him at the railway station. One little story can tell volumes of his determination to make the Aligarh Muslim University a reality. One day in Bombay he was out to collect funds and stopped at a wealthy person’s office who was his most bitter adversary. The man was shocked to see His Highness in his office right where he was sitting. Surprised and overawed, the man stood up in bewilderment and said: ‘Who do you want, Sir?’.
“I have come for your contribution to the Muslim University Fund”, replied His Highness. The man at once wrote a cheque of Rs. 5000 and, then, putting the cheque in his pocket, His Highness took his hat and said to the man: “Now as a beggar, I beg from you something for the children of Islam. Put something in the bowl of this mendicant.” Overwhelmed with tears in his eyes and hands shaking, he wrote another cheque for Rs. 15,000. He, then, asked His Highness, “now it is my turn to beg. I beg of you, in the name of the most merciful God to forgive me for anything that I may have said against you. I never knew you were so great.” His Highness simply told him: “Don’t worry; it is my nature to forgive and forget in the cause of Islam and Muslims”.
His Highness’ concern for the cause of Islam and Muslims, as he said, was in his nature and his services go far beyond the limits of the Indian subcontinent. As for his political role in the creation of Pakistan, he led the Muslims in achieving their political rights and sowed healthy seeds, not only for education and social development but also for the development of political leadership, which eventually resulted in the creation of an independent Muslim state, Pakistan.
He entered politics in 1902 when he was barely twenty-five years old. It was he who soon discovered that the Muslims of India was not a mere community but a nation in a special sense. In Maulana Salik’s observation, ‘It would seem the principles of the two nation theory were at the back of his mind much before anyone else had begun to think on these lines.’
It was mainly due to his efforts that in 1906 the All-India Muslim League came into existence. His untiring efforts to change the old attitude brought about a political consciousness among the Muslims and welded them into an effective organization for the protection of their rights. Before that in the same year, he had led a deputation of Indian Muslims to the Viceroy Lord Minto and pressed for adequate representation for the Muslim community in local bodies and on the legislative councils, the first step towards the formation of the All India Muslim League. In the same year in a meeting of Muslim leaders which was held on the 30th December 1906, at Dacca, the political organization of the Muslims in India came into existence and His Highness was voted to be its permanent President. Securing the right to separate electorates for Muslims was viewed as something of fundamental and far-reaching importance.
Again, when the Muslim League was split into two factions, it was under the guidance of His Highness that an All-Parties Muslim Conference congregated in Delhi in 1928 where ‘representatives of shades of Muslim opinion from the farthest ‘left’ to the farthest ‘right’ assembled under the presidency of Prince Aga Khan’ and consequently, unity of the only political organization of the Muslims was once again reinstated.
At the Round Table Conference, the entire British Indian Delegation consisting of senior Hindu, Parsi, Sikh, and Muslim leaders elected him as their spokesman. In Qayyum Malik’s words, ‘The fact is that the idea of federation was accepted mainly due to the personal efforts of Prince Aga Khan.’ Given the difficult, messy, and sensitive path on the Indian political landscape of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, His Highness led the Muslims in a manner where any inept decision could have risked their future.
In all fairness and within the principle of Islamic ethics, His Highness, Aga Khan III deserves to be acknowledged. Putting his portrait in the middle of the two leaders in the picture above will be a token of appreciation, nay, an ethical act of gratitude as the glorious Quran says: ‘And whosoever give thanks, he gives thanks only for his own soul’.
