Maulana Azad(1888-1958)
Indian scholar, author, journalist and politician. Azad's father was
Muhammad Khairuddin, a Sufi (mystic) saint. After the Revolt of 1857,
his father went to Mecca where he married the daughter of Shaikh
Mahomed Zahir Wetri. Maulana Azad was born in 1888 in Mecca. His early
years were spent in Arabia. In 1898, his father settled in Calcutta and
took his family with him. By then, Azad was fluent in Arabic, Urdu, and
Farsi. In 1905, Azad's father sent him to Egypt to study at the Al
Azhar University in Cairo, the most famous institution of learning in
the Moslem world. He returned to India in 1907 and became interested in
the Indian nationalist movement. In 1909, after his father's death,
Azad, with the help of a dictionary and a grammar, studied English. In
those days, he had leanings toward the anarchists and terrorists and
had already become an object of suspicion, watched by the Criminal
Intelligence Department. During World War I, he advocated a programme
of non-cooperation with the British, which influenced Mohandas K. Gandhi and for
which he was imprisoned. He was elected president of the Indian
National Congress in 1940 and was also president of the Congress Party
during negotiations for India's independence. After independence, he
was in charge of the ministry of education.