SIR SYED AHMAD KHAN AND ALLAMA IQBAL

IN SRI LANKA 

M. M. M. MAHROOF

The Muslims of Sri Lanka have been established in Sri Lanka upwards of a millennium and are since an important community in the Island.[1] The Muslims are, for Census-purposes at least, divided into Quasi-ethnic segments. The great majority of the Muslims of Sri Lanka are the descendants of the Arab settlers.[2] The Malays, some 40,000 in number, are the descendants of the exiles and soldiers whom the Dutch brought in from Indonesia or the Dutch East Indies, as they were called in the eighteenth century, as well as of the soldiers recruited by the British from Malaya.[3] There are several sub-communities among the Muslims. They include the Memons, Sunni Muslims from Sind and Gujrat and the Bohra Shi’ah Muslims from roughly the same area; they number only a few thousand.[4] The other branch of the Shi’ah the Khojas, are very small in number. There is also a minor sub-community of Faqirs, a group of ‘holy mendicants’.[5]

Sri Lanka underwent colonial occupation under the Portuguese (1505-1656), the Dutch (1656-1796) and the British (1796-1948).[6] The Portuguese and the Dutch occupations proved traumatic to the Muslims for both of these Powers were committed to the imposition of economic and religious constraints on the Muslims. In order to foresml! the religious thrust, for the Portuguese were fervent Roman Catholics and the Dutch were rigid Calvinists, the Muslims adopted a low profile, a defensive stance. This resulted in the creation of a ghetto-like environment’, advance to join state schools, and dissociation from national affairs.[7]

This defensive status quo continued even under the British dispensation, when there was an open economic policy.[8]

However, the later economic developments in Sri Lanka, the emergence of English language as communicating and social force, were not without their obvious impact and made the Western modes of education essential. The leaders of the Muslim community, headed by Mohamed Cassim Siddi Lebbe (lawyer; educationist, editor, literiate) were seeking a mode of introducing education to Muslims. One form it took was the establishment of ‘Special Mohammedan School’. In his Report for 1886, the Director of Public Instructions stated the nature and practice of these schools.

The experiment in the matter of education of the Mohammedans which I inaugurated, paid its dividends and the Kandy Government school has been fairly successful. An Arabic teacher was appointed to that school in January 1st 1885. The children of Mohammedan parents learn their Qur’an before the regular school begins. They then have an hour’s Arabic teaching for secular Arabic during school hours while for the rest of the school session they learn the ordinary subjects in Sinhala and Tamil. A very fair number of Moorish pupils also now attend the school under the friendly inducement of this compromise with their own system of teaching. Before this few came to school.[9]

While this was, according to the Muslim leaders, a step in the right direction, the anxiety of the ordinary Muslim was not so easily assuaged.

The ordinary Muslim correlated English and Western type of education by accepting Western values, especially Christian values. Although the Muslims of Sri Lanka were not the targeted population for the Christian missionaries, their stance was nevertheless forbidding to the lay Muslim mind. The Anglicans were the Established Chruch and had the requisite perquisites, including the superintendence of the schools. But over-confidence and inevitability of their success was common to all Christian missions and filled the ordinary Muslim with disquiet. Even as late as in the year 1909, the official journal of the Roman catholic Church in Ceylon could write,

 Nothing can check her (i.e. Roman Catholic Church’s) progress because she is endowed with. a divine vitality and a supernatural power… because she is the true religion and the truth will always win.[10]

The Muslims of Ceylon had two solutions to fall back on. One was the revival of the madrasahs, the centres of traditional learning. The other was the ‘Islamisation of higher secular learning’. Both schools of thought had their exclusive supporters. the former being favoured by the conservatives and the other by the younger more open-minded Muslims.

The 19^th century saw the revitalisation of the m.adrasah system in India and the inadrasah at luknow was one of the first to be instituted. Later institutionalized inadrasahs were established at Vellore, Madras, Kayalpattina. Porto Nuova and at many other places in India.

Muslim students of Ceylon studied at many of these institutions. When madrasahs were officially set up in Ceylon, many of the teachers in Indian madrasahs took up positions as principals and staff members of Ceylon madrasahs.[11] Solai Zavia in Galle on the southern sea-board of Sri Lanka, was one of the earliest Madrasahs to he set up in Ceylon.[12] The Madrasat ul Bari was established at welligama close to Galle) in 1884 and the Madrasat ul -lhrahimiyya at Galle in 1882.[13]

The educated middle class and the intelligentia (both were not mutally congruent groups) however, were convinced that ntudrasah education was not a complete answer. When learning was increasing among the other communities, Muslims had to make room for it, without being swamped with Western values. The educational efforts of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan seemed to be an effective solution. The realisation of Sir Syed dream in 1877, when Lord Lytton formally inaugurated the Aligarh College, filled the hearts of the Muslim intelligentsia in Colombo with hope and delight.

Sir Syed, appeared to the Muslim intelligentsia in Ceylon in different lights. He was, for instance, the descendant of Mogul functionaries and was able to adapt himself to the demands of the British bureaucracy but without tainting himself as an ‘assimilare’. While at home in matters English*, he dressed traditionally and practiced Islamic way of life. There was no posing and no ‘passing off. He could be ‘honoured by the British with titles and dignities and yet he was critical of them. He was treated as an equal by the British; he was not a fawning member of a subject race. Above all, he wanted to bring the Muslims into the mainstream of Indian life hut without their losing their own identity. His Aligarh achievement was seen in that light.

But the ground realities in Ceylon, nevertheless were different. There could not be a sense of Mogul supremacy or its benign government. There were no Muslim principalities, big or otherwise. There was no traditional Muslim bureaucracy. There was not even a broad base of Muslim landowners. There was, of course, no demand for establishment of higher secular education for Muslims in Ceylon, elementary education itself being so difficult to pursue by Muslims (There was, however, traditional education, vigorous and active but opposed to English and secular studies). The Ceylonese middle-class was, largely. composed of traders and rentiers who were heirs of affluent traders. The Ceylonese intellectuals saw Sir Syed in a Ceylon setting. A Muslim man Of letters and a committed Muslim activist in the opening years of this century, wrote, (Sir Syed) was recognized as their national leader by the Indian Mohammedans of the modern school, famous in history as the founder of the Aligarh College, about to be converted into a Mohammedan University. Sir Syed had done so much for the education and amelioration of the lot of the Muslims of India.[14]

 As education began to gradually perk up, from the beginning of the century the charismatic aura of Sir Syed as an educational reformer began to ascend. In 1906, for instance, the average attendance of Muslim pupils in Government English and Vernacular schools was 47,506.[15]

The classification of English schools in to elementary and secondary was first made in the Education Code of 1908 Regulation no 29 and 30 which dealt with this issue. Reg 29( I) made that bifurcation, and stated that in each school the work of the five lower classes should follow either Schedule A or Schedule B. Reg.29(2) stated that elementary schools were those which worked out Schedule A or B along with Drawing and Vernacular Literature. Secondary English schools were those which worked according to Schedule C of the Education Code and prepared pupils for any of the following examinations; Cambridge Junior and Senior Local Examination; the examination in Arts and Science of London University; the First in Arts Examination of any Indian University.[16]

The apparent Anglicizing of studies created two further issue. One was the possible erosion of Islamic values in a world of Anglicisation. The other was the creation of Islam-oriented schools. In both these instances, the exemplar of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan rose instantly in the minds of the Muslim intelligentsia in Ceylon. In a speech delivered at the Ceylon Muslim Association on February 1919 T.B. Jayah, educationist and later Cabinet Minister, expressed cogently the anxieties felt by the educated among the Muslims. After deploring the ineffective role of the Muslims in the national sphere on account of lack of education, he said.

…I welcome with feelings of genuine pleasure the moves made by my countrymen, my Muslim brothers, to start in right earnest a college in Colombo. We have talked much about it but as vet we have accomplished nothing. Of course, there are difficulties in the way. It is only craven hearts that will quail before them. The great example of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the father of English education, should inspire us to action. Ile set his hand to the plough and soon the Aligarh College was an accomplished fact. The question is who is going to be ‘Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’ of Ceylon and earn the lasting gratitude of the whole community.[17]

Subsequently, Zahira college came up in Colombo and Jayah himself was able in 1942 to establish four of its branches. The establishmehment of a new constitutional structure (the Donoughmire Constituion) in Ceylon in 1931, gave the Muslims some persuasive power and they were able to prevail upon the Minister of Education to provide Government Muslim schools in many parts of Ceylon.[18] Thus the vision of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan came to be realised at the level of secondary schools in Ceylon. Hence the ‘Islamisation’ of education was, to some extent, realised at the secondary school level Allama Iqbal and the Revivification of Islamic Culture in Sri Lanka.

The influence of Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal has been less specific. Allama Iqbal’s influence on the Muslims of Ceylon is an interesting one, for they have no immediate access to his works in Persian and Urdu. Muslims of Sri Lanka generally have Tamil as their home language. Since Tamil is the oldest and the most intricate of the Dravidian tongue, it is difficult to pick up the accidence and syntax structures of Persian or Urdu which are basically Aryan languages[19]. The perso-Aravic script is unknown to practically all Muslims (except perhaps the Memmons, the Bohras and the Khojas). Equally, while all Muslims can read the Holy Quran, Arabic without diacritical marks is known to limited number of Muslims of Ceylon. However. Muslims of Ceylon. like all Muslims, have a wide stock of Arabo-Persian words, mainly of religious import but this does not help, of course, to read Iqbal’s works. Yet the influence of Allama Iqbal is very much there, despite these seemingly insurmountable obstacles.[20]

Hence, Allama Iqbal’s works have been disseminated through English works and translations in Tamil, mainly from south India. About 3% of the population of Ceylon know English to some extent and in the case of the Muslims, the percentage is a little more. The English works are chiefly translations of his poetry and his Reconstruction and excerpts of these works in English books are of a general nature. The influence of Iqbal comes from these sources through percolation. Some Islamic history formed part of the Islam syllabus of the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination up to the 1960,[21] which helped a little. But it was the rationale of the situation that encouraged the appreciation of Iqbal’s works.

The translations of Iqbal’s poetry into Tamil was done in Madras, mainly as a poetical exercise.-These were done by Urdu speaking (but thoroughly competent in Tamil) Muslims Some times it was done through English translations only. In these cases, the result was mainly adaptation. But the message of Iqbal came through adequately.[22]

Yet the rationale of the situation was imperative. During the thirties and a little later, there was a cultural revival among the people of Ceylon. Since Ceylon is a small country there was predominant anxiety that Western values might sway the people. An appropriate Oriental cultural symbol was thus needed. A great many sinhalese felt drawn by the achievements of Rabindranath Tagore, as- poet, educationist and, a man of letters. In particular, his University Shansi Niketan Viswa Bharathi was well known in art circles and many sinhalese learnt there, while others took oriental Hidusthani music at Bhaktkande. (When the Art College called Heywood after the name of the house in which it was set up) was established in Colombo, its leanings were Tagorean. Likewise, the Tamils were entranced by the inspirational poetry of Subramaniya Bharathy, generally considered to be the greatest poet of the Tamil language in the first half of this century.

To the non Persian-Urdu world, which can comprehend neither the background of reference nor the literary wit, Iqbal’s poetry furnishes three dynamic elements. First, it emphasizes the notion of total obedience to Allah and advocates the view that Muslims have a great destiny and a noble role to play in the world. It is a bulwark against any personal obstacles or defeats. Secondly, Iqbal’s poetry glorifies the human spirit and portrays the world where a fine human sensitivity and enjoyment, within the limits set by Allah, could be pursued; indeed, should be cultivated. Thirdly, it exhorts each Muslim to develop his potentialities, subject to Allah’s will (and without crass self-seeking). To these .elements, are added the overtones of the rightful role of women. The rich as trustees of their riches for the needy and the sense of Islamic brotherhood. To the non-native reader who is used to the Bengalic poetry of Tagore celebrating idyllistic, innocent simplicity of the past or some Urdu and Hindi poets nostalgically praising the splendours of the Mughal past. Iqbal’s poetry, on the contrary, came as a breath of fresh air, ennobling the spirit and the innerself i.e. (khudi).

Iqbal’s poetry, even though diluted in translations and adaptations, affected the Muslims of Sri Lanka in four ways. First, it made them look at Islamic history not as a series of episodes from a hoary past but as a book of living history, from which precedents and encouragement could be &mil. For the English educated, used to the gloomy, subterranean views of Margolouth, Muir and even Ignaz Goldziher, Iqbal’s conception of Islamic history was one of dazzling light and shining deeds. Secondly, Muslims of Sri Lanka began to look upon the heritage of the Islamic world as their own to adapt and to use. Some of the affluent began to take an interest in carpets (though, carpets are uncongenial in a hot, humid environment which is Sri Lanka’s), calligraphy, fine tooled leather Even some houses built in Islamic architecture as seen, in the plates of E.W. Lane’s. Modern Egyptians, Londin, 1840 came up in some parts of Ceylon. Also, the Muslims came to know with a delightful surprise, that some of their daily food was Islamic in origin, such as halwa.[23]

Thirdly, Iqbal opened the eyes of the Muslims of Sri Lanka to worlds other than the political, which, as a minority of eight per cent of the population they could not ever conceive to dominate or encompass. These worlds included the cultural and the literary ones. Many Muslim magazines (both in the English and Tamil languages enthusiastically took up the cultural challenge that Iqbal offered. They treated their readers to history, biography, and to other social affairs of the Islamic world, close at hand and the world over. At least, one magazine published a comparative study of Iqbal and Tamil poets.[24] There were other worlds, as well. Islamic law in Ceylon had to be classified and codified and parts of it were compiled in the 1930s.[25]

But the greatest thrust of Iqbal’s influence on the Muslims of Sri Lanka was in his advocacy of a commitment to Islamic culture through education. In this he coalesced with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. If Iqbal’s concept was less nitty-gritty compared to Sir Syed, it was more flexible and up-lifting. It was a continuing education in idealistic surroundings, with doors which opened to the entirety of Islamic culture, with cross-fertilisation among young men, teachers, scholars and ordinary men. Particularly in the world of Muslim minorities, it had a great appeal and hence a great effect.

Among the Muslim intellectuals of Sri Lanka, who were attracted to the vision of Iqbal, was the late Dr. A.M.A. Azeez a former sometime member of the Ceylon Civil Service and subsequently Principal of Zahira College, Colombo (the premier Muslim educational institution in Ceylon), educationist and Senator. In 1947 Dr. Azeez had stressed, in a speech the importance of Urdu for Muslims of Sri Lanka as a vehicle to boost religion and culture.[26] When he became Principal of Zahira he lost no time in establishing an Iqbal Society. He had already named a Zahira College auditorium as Iqbal Hall. One of the purposes of the Iqbal Society was to invite distinguished visitors to speak on religio-cultural topics and later to bring these out as publications. Sometimes these publications reproduced lectures delivered elsewhere. For instance, the lecture delivered on Iqbal day at Lahore on 21^st April 1952 by the then Finance Minister of Pakistan, Hon. Chaudhri Mohammed ali, was published in a Tamil translation entitled Iqbal Kaatiya Vail (How Iqbal Showed the Way?) by Al-Haj S.M. Kamaldeen.[27] In his Tamil, Ilankaiyil Islam (Islam in Sri Lanka) a collection of essays Azeez wrote a final essay. Iqbal Atru Padai. (A Valediction for Iqbal) in which he encapsulated his views.[28]

Dr. Azeez’s vision of Iqbal’s conceptualization was a personal one. He was of the view that Iqbal had a lotto offer to the restructuring of Islamic thought in the Asian region. However, Azeez added some modifications of his own. He believed that Urdu should have pride of place in the intellectual environment of the Muslims. He realized, of course, that the ground situation in Ceyion determined otherwise. A Muslim student had to study familiar Shillala or Tamil and also be familiar with the other; English, he had to know for general communication. Religious duties ensured that he be familiar with at least reading ability of religious texts in Aabic Azeez also advocated the adoption of Arabic-Tamil (Tamil written in Arabic script) and widespread familiarity of Muslim tamil literature, based on Islamic themes written in chaste Tamil.

While his advocacy of the former fell short of fulfillment the second was successful.[29]

Allama Iqbal appealed to other Muslims in a different light. As I have written elsewhere,

It is an interesting fact that prominent Muslims in Sri Lanka have been influenced by the views of Allama Iqbal. Dr. T. B. Jayah was one, Mr. A.M.A. Azeez was another. Mr. Akbar too felt the influence of Iqbal. He cited him often as, for instance, when he wrote,

“My readers should read the undying memorable words of Iqbal regarding the psychological effect of prayer and how the inflexible timing of the Islamic prayer is meant to save man from the mechanical effect of sleep and worldly business occupations”.[30]

It is thus permissible to say that Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Allama Iqbal were important influences in the intellectual history of the Muslims of Sri Lanka.

 

NOTES AND REFERENCES