Maulana Azad, Islam and the Indian National Movement

Maulana Azad was the first education minister of India and a dynamic individual with multiple facets to his personality. He is equally known as one of the foremost freedom fighters, an Urdu poet who also wrote treatises on philosophy and religion.

Azad had hoped to lead not only the Muslims but all Indians to freedom. From 1903, when he picked up his pen to launch his first journal, till Partition, he never lost sight of his larger constituency-all Indians, regardless of religion. Why then is one who aspired and worked for national leadership remembered only as the leader of the Muslims of India? Why then did he lose to Jinnah, an individual who generally stood for everything which ran contrary to his beliefs? In this thought-provoking work, Syeda S. Hameed takes a fresh look at the works, politics, and life of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.