Sir Syed Ahmad Khan; The Pioneer of Independence Struggle
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan is one of the greatest names among Muslim philosophers. He was in 17 October 1817 in Delhi and passed away in 1898. In this frame of his life, he has contributed immensely and generously. He has been marked as a Muslim educator, jurist, author, and founder of the Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College at Aligarh which became the intellectual cradle of the Muslim League and later Pakistan. Aligarh was founded in 1875 and it was the first college in India in which Islamic and Western higher education instructed in English. The forecaster Sir Syed started his career as a clerk with the East India Company in 1838 and later served in the judicial department at different places. He was a religious sort of person and had written on many religious topics like “Life of Mohammed” (1870). The forecaster Sir Syed had focused on Education and had established schools at Muradabad (1858) and Ghazipur (1863). He aimed to educate the whole by any means and for that he founded the Scientific Society which published a translation of different educational texts both in Urdu and English.
He was working for the united sub-continent but the event at Benares altered everything. In 1867 a movement was started in Benares to replace Urdu with Hindi which was never acceptable for Sir Syed. And this movement turned the point and persuaded Sir Syed that the paths of the Hindus and the Muslims must diverge. After that, he worked for only Muslims and tried to bring social reform through his influential journal Tahdhib al-Akhlaq (“Social Reform”). After his retirement, he served in the college and made rapid progress. One of his major contributions was the organization of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference in 1886. This conference was to be held every year to gather Muslims in one platform till the foundation of the Muslim League in 1906. He always advised Muslims to get an education and to abstain from politics.
