KARACHI:
The British ruled India for over two centuries. Although they looted and plundered the wealth of the sub-continent, they established a good system of governance to strengthen and prolong their rule, during which there was relative harmony between different communities.
A British national laid the foundation of the All-India Congress because of which the Hindus flourished in the field of education. The Hindus very quickly understood the ulterior motives of their rulers and started getting close to them. They realised that the British needed educated people to govern through the locals. Hence, Hindus quickly embraced the modern British education system that changed the language of instruction to English, making the Madrassah-based education network obsolete. Muslims on the other hand were not open to such radical change. Soon, the British started giving preference to “educated” people as opposed to “illiterates”. Hindus started getting better opportunities while Muslims were left with lower-level labour intensive jobs.
In the midst of all this, it was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who felt that without education Muslims would soon be marginalised from the very place they had been living in. He established an educational institution with the intention to help Muslims get access to modern education. The students who studied in his institution soon started a movement for freedom from the British.
We should be thankful and eternally grateful to the contributions of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He was able to enlighten the Muslims at a time when they most needed it. Unfortunately, we as a nation seem to be stuck again in the same past, where we find it difficult to escape conservative dogmatic ideals. We still resist modernisation, science, and development, while labeling people at the helm of it as infidels or foreign agents. We are still not open to the idea of debate and free speech. We suppress voices of change and try to bury the voices of decent. We must learn to embrace differences of opinion and new ideas or we will soon witness the depredation of our culture and society.
Raja Shafaatullah
Islamabad
Published in The Express Tribune, January 21st, 2021.
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