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Thinkers and political figures

Photographic portrait of Abul Kalam Azad in a cap and sherwani.

Portrait: Photograph, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

Abul Kalam Azad

Country
India
Era
1888–1958
Tradition
Composite nationalism, Islamic modernism

Islamic scholar and Congress president who argued from within Islamic theology that Indian Muslims belonged in a united India, and who opposed partition to the end as the greatest disaster for the people it claimed to serve.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Argued on theological grounds that Islam permits Muslims to live as equal citizens in a religiously plural state
  • Opposed the partition of India, predicting it would leave Muslims weaker and divided across three regions
  • Served as Congress president through the Quit India movement and the negotiations preceding independence
  • As education minister, established the university grants system, the IITs and national academies of art and letters
  • Advocated free and compulsory primary education and state investment in scientific research
  • Rejected the two-nation theory as a betrayal of both Indian nationalism and Islamic universalism
02

Where it sits on each dimension

The state in the economy

32

Evidence: Documented

Personal liberty

70

Evidence: Documented

Tradition and change

72

Evidence: Documented

Nation and the world

45

Evidence: Well documented

Religion and the state

55

Evidence: Well documented

Power and its limits

82

Evidence: Well documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Wealth and inequality, Environment and growth, Crime and punishment

Sources

  • Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom · 1959
  • Ian Henderson Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography · Oxford University Press · 1988

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