Maulana Azad

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.