Jamaluddin Afghani Invoked the land of “Hindustan as birth place of humanism”

Word For Peace

In his enlightening address to a large number of Indian youth in Calcutta, Jamaluddin Afghani hailed India as the land of ancient civilization, rich intellectual traditions and shared culture. “The land of Hindustan is the birth place of humanism and from where it spread throughout the world. It’s the land where, for the first time, min`taqat al-bruj (the Zodiac) was determined”, he said.

Syed Jamaluddin Afghani (1838-1897), noted Islamic theologian who travelled throughout the Muslim world during the late 19th century and stood for Shia-Sunni dialogue and Hindu-Muslim unity against the British colonialism. Born in Iran, he visited several Muslim countries like Afganistan, Egypt and Turkey apart from Russia, France, England, and India to explore possibilities of building up a federation of Muslim countries (Al-Wahdat al-Islamia) based on modern knowledge and national unity to resist the British colonial interventions in the Eastern countries.

Jamaluddin Afghani emerged more as a spokesman of the East rather than a Pan-Islamic political figure who led an intellectual Islamic movement against the Western colonisation.

In his Arabic and French weekly Al-‘Urwah al-Wusqa, which he published in Paris for a brief period in 1885-86, outlined his chief objective as to liberate the East from the clutches of the Western colonisation. He took up the cause of Muslim countries because the Muslim areas constituted a major part of the East where he belonged to. As a result, Afghani was condemned by the Western powers especially Britain as an ‘anti-West’ scholar with a ‘Pan-Islamist’ agenda.

Afghani was a contemporary of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who founded the Aligarh Muslim University. But he was critical to the total loyalty of Indian Muslims to the Indian British government. During his visit to India (1879-1882), he first stayed for about a year in Hyderabad where he wrote several articles in a local magazine on vital issues of political, social, educational and religious relevance and tried to show a progressive path to Indian Muslims.

Most notably, Jamaluddin Afghani paid a rich tribute to the cultural, philosophical and scientific heritage of India, as it is reflected in a lecture he delivered at Madrasa ‘Aliya, Albert Hall, in Calcutta on November 8, 1882. He received an invitation from the Principal of the Madrasa which he couldn’t attend probably due to a change of mind on part of the organising committee which decided not to host an anti-British Afghani.

Afghani expressed his displeasure on the Principal breaking his promise. However, he was keen to address the large number of young Indians who had come to listen to him. His lecture was delivered finally, and here’s an excerpt from his address:

“I am happy to see them who are the product of the land that was the birth place of humanism and from where it spread throughout the world. They belong to the land where, for the first time, the da’irah-yi mu‘addal al-nahar and, min`taqat al-bruj (the Zodiac) were determined. Everyone knows that achieving this was not possible without mastering geometry. Therefore, we can say, that mathematics and geometry have been invented in India. This same science of geometry reached the Arab lands and from there arrived in Europe.” He pointed out, “The youth of this same land have now to learn all laws and the culture of knowledge from Europe. If you deliberate you would find that the Code Roma, the source of all laws in Europe, had been drawn from the four Vedas and the Shastras. The Greeks were their disciples in poetry, literature and thought. Pythagoras, who spread arts and sciences and whose opinions were accepted as revealed truth needing no proofs, was also their disciple.

Now, the land of Hindustan is the same land and the air is the same and the youth who are present, now, the product of this same motherland.”

Jamaluddin Afghani averred, “I am happy that the Indian youth have come out of their long slumber and taking their own hereditary wealth back and receiving the fruits of the trees planted by them.”

It is to be noted that he was addressing an audience that was, mainly, ‘Indian’ and not ‘Muslim’. He invoked the pre-Islamic Indian philosophical and scientific heritage avoiding any reference to the Sultanate and the Mughal periods of Indian history. He was reminding the Indian youth that they should not be discouraged because of their being subjects of the Western rulers; the West’s superiority in knowledge was, in fact, built on their own, Indian, rich scientific heritage–and, so, what they were getting from the West was their own heritage.