Ahmad Khan, Sir Sayyid (1817-1898), was an Indian social and religious reformer. He was an important leader of Indian Muslims in the late 1800’s. Ahmad Khan was a supporter of continued British rule in India, and he also favored advancing the position of Indian Muslims through modern education. Much of his work was devoted to bridging the gap between the Indian and British cultures and societies. He helped found the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh (now the Aligarh Muslim University).
Ahmad Khan was convinced that an independent educational system for Indian Muslims was necessary for their advancement in Indian society. At the time, Hindu educational institutions were far better developed than Muslim ones. He supported Western-style education, especially in the sciences, and a modernized approach to Islam. He felt that Islam had to accept Western science as a manifestation of reason, arguing that the concept of reason was central to both Western religion and to Islam. Ahmad Khan faced opposition from orthodox Muslims who opposed his liberal views on religion.
Although Ahmad Khan at first supported Hindu-Muslim unity, he came to oppose the Indian National Congress, which called for greater Indian participation in government. He feared that such participation might work against the interests of Indian Muslims, because Muslims were vastly outnumbered by Hindus. He campaigned against the Congress and discouraged Muslims from joining it.
Ahmad Khan was largely responsible for the rise of Indian Muslims as a political movement. The Muslim League was founded in Dhaka (formerly Dacca, now in Bangladesh) in 1906, a few years after his death. Forty years later, this movement led the way to the partition of India and to the formation of the independent Muslim nation of Pakistan. However, Ahmad Khan himself did not call for the establishment of a separate state.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan was born on Oct. 17, 1817, into a family of Mughal officials. Rather than follow the family tradition of service to the Mughal court, Ahmad Khan chose to work as an official of the British East India Company, a trading company based in the United Kingdom. He had no university education, but he spent much of his time studying and writing. He wrote Athar al-Sanadid (1847), a study of the architecture of Delhi, as well as commentaries on both the Bible and the Qur’an. After the Indian Revolt in 1857, he wrote Causes of the Indian Revolt, which criticized aspects of British rule. He founded a number of schools besides the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College. He also founded a weekly newspaper, one of the first to be printed in the Urdu language. Ahmad Khan was knighted in 1888. He died on March 27, 1898.
