PM pays tributes to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad on his Jayanti

• Every year, 11th November is celebrated as National education day, which commemorates the birth anniversary of independent India’s first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
• In 2008, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Now Ministry of Education) decided to celebrate Azad’s birthday as National Education Day.
• Educational institutions across India mark the event with seminars, essay-writing, workshops etc to highlight the importance of education.

Early life of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad:

• Maulana Azad was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia to a Muslim scholar from Bengal with Afghan ancestry, Maulana Muhammad Khairuddin and his Arab wife.
• The family had moved to Saudi Arabia after the Revolt of 1857. In 1890 they returned to Calcutta.
• Azad mastered several languages like Urdu, Persian, Hindi, English, Bengali and Arabic.
• He showed erudition at a young age and was contributing articles to magazines and teaching while in his teens itself.
• He was publishing a popular monthly magazine Lissan-us-Sidq when he was just 12.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad – Role in Independence Struggle:

• He developed an interest in nationalism quite early itself. He was a vehement critic of the British government for its racial policies and its blatant disregard for the needs of the common Indians.
• He was also for Hindu-Muslim unity. He was vehemently against the Muslim League’s idea that Muslims were a separate nation and so was against the partition of India.
• He censured the League leaders for putting their own interests ahead of the country’s.
• He was influenced by revolutionaries like Aurobindo Ghosh and Shyam Sunder Chakravarty. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad protested against the partition of Bengal which went against popular Muslim sentiment of the day.
• Even though he was educated towards becoming a cleric, he steered towards journalism and politics.

His journals Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh were banned by the government.

• He supported the Khilafat Movement. He also took part in the non-cooperation movement against the Rowlatt Act of 1919.
• He supported Mahatma Gandhi’s views of non-violent satyagraha and was committed to the civil disobedience movement. He also promoted Swaraj and the Swadeshi movement.
• In 1923, he became the youngest president of the Congress Party at the age of 35.
• He was an active leader of the party and was imprisoned by the government many times.
• Azad believed in the unity of the country along with its diverse inhabitants. He said, “I am proud of being an Indian.
• I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without me this splendid structure is incomplete. I am an essential element, which has gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim.”
• He also took part in the Quit India movement for which he, along with most other Congress leaders was arrested.
• M A Jinnah was antagonistic to Azad and famously referred to him as ‘Congress Showboy’.
• He was against separate communal electorates and said that Islam too had a ‘claim on the soil of India’.
• A staunch proponent of a united India, he believed that partition would become a permanent barrier between the two countries.
• He said, “The politics of Partition itself will act as a barrier between the two countries. It will not be possible for Pakistan to accommodate all the Muslims of India, a task beyond her territorial capability.
• On the other hand, it will not be possible for the Hindus to stay especially in West Pakistan. They will be thrown out or leave on their own.”
• Azad was appointed the minister of education under the Nehru government. Under his stint as education minister, the University Grants Commission and the Indian Institute of Technology were set up.
• This champion of national integrity passed away on 22 February 1958 owing to a stroke.
• Maulana Azad’s birth anniversary is celebrated as National Education Day in India.

He was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1992.