Indian Muslims Prioprities - Education : Key To All Success

It is widely accepted fact that present-day Muslims are faced with serious problems.  It is also generally understood that the reason for this is the lack of leadership among the Muslims. But when we view this issue in the light of the facts, we come to realize that this is a totally baseless supposition. The actual problem besetting Muslims is not the lack of leadership but the failure to follow the right leadership. Many leaders capable of giving sound guidance have been born among Muslims, but the community has ignored their words of wisdom. When a community does not follow an inspired guide, how can it benefit from the leadership he offers?

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) is one such example of a good leader, who have clear guidance to his people, but who was not followed by the community as a whole – barring a handful of individuals. Later events testified to the validity and importance of his guidance, but his fellow Muslims, having dubbed him a Kafir (infidel) and an enemy agent, were not at all inclined to give credence to his words. As such, they could not, and did not benefit from his advice.

In 1857, the Muslims waged a war against the British only to have a crushing defeat inflicted upon them. Not only did they fail to benefit in any way, but they also lost whatever had survived previous upheavals. As a community the Muslims found themselves in an utterly ravaged condition. At the time of this tragedy, Sir Syed, who witnessed all the horror of it with his own eyes, was already a mature man of forty. He remained deeply affected by what he had seen, and in 1869-70, decided to travel to England to inquire into the reasons for the continuing dominance of the west and the state of subjugation of the Muslims.  During his stay, Sir Syed learnt that the Muslims predicament was traceable not to enemy plots but to their own shortcomings, not the least of which was their failure to keep up with the rest of the world in the field of modern education.

It became plain to Sir Syed that the modern age was one of scientific revolution, a revolution in which European nations had already marched ahead.  The Muslims, on the contrary, were in such a sorry state of backwardness that they could not even enter this field.

When Sir Syed returned from England, he found Muslims religious scholars and intellectuals busily propagating the notion that the Muslims’ real problem was political. That is, all their woes stemmed from the political dominance of the British, a dominance which would later he transferred to the Hindus. All Muslims were preoccupied with this thought and each was engaged in his own way in resolving the problem as it it were indeed political in nature.

Sir Syed was the first notability in modern India who pointed out that the Muslims’ real problem was not political but educational. He therefore advised Muslims against actively joining in politics and urged them to concentrate instead on education. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1/369). This was the best possible guidance. But Muslims rejected this very proper advice. Instead of exerting themselves in the field of education, they persisted in political struggle. And when guidance goes unheeded, what benefit can accrue from it ?

Let us compare this with developments in Japan. In 1945 Japan had an atom bomb dropped on it by the US, the latter country thus gaining political supremacy over it. Hirohito, who was at that time Emperor of Japan, consulted his country’s intellectuals and military officers on what their course of action should now be. The majority of them were of the view that, although their air force had been destroyed, the army had emerged unscathed, which meant that the war could be continued until political supremacy was regained.

Hirohito was a wise and educated person. He maintained that there was no use in continuing political and military confrontation and that they should rather devote all their energies to the educational front. Peace was a prerequisite if this goal of education were to be achieved. Delivering a speech on the Japanese radio, Hirohito said: ‘We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.’

After initial differences, the entire nation heeded the guidance of Hirohito. According education supreme status, they started on a grand scale the struggle towards its acquisition. As a result, within a period of just forty years after the second world war, Japan has become the most educated society of the world, and in consequence, the most developed and aware society too.  In 1945 Japan had become on the weakest countries of the world.  Today the world is compelled to acknowledge it as one loft the most powerful. It has, in fact, become an economic superpower. And all this was achieved by dint of a 50-year struggle made in the right decision as advised by a right-thinking leader.

The advice to abandon political confrontation and to work hard in the field of education was given to the Japanese by Hirohito in 1945.  Exactly the same advice was given by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in undivided India to Indian Muslims 125 years before, in 1870. Yet the Japanese have now become a superpower, while Muslims are yet to become even a mini power.

The reason for this difference is not lack of leadership but failure to follow leadership. The Japanese accepted the direction given by their leader, paying full attention to the achievement of the goal he set them, but all Muslims could do was blame their leader.  They rejected him on the score that his advice reeked of enemy plotting.  The Muslims continued to seek their future in the field of politics, instead of seeking it in the field of education. And those who are today engaged in this futile exercise will meet the same fate as that of the previous Muslim generations.

This problem will be solved if Muslims stop blaming others, refrain strictly from entering the arena of confrontation and fully engage themselves in the acquisition of education.  Learning is the key to all kinds of success. It is the only ladder to all kinds of progress. With learning, all else follows: without learning there is much to lose.