In his short essay published in the Urdu quarterly Fikr-o Nazar, Khaliq Ahmad Nizami (1925–1997), an erudite scholar and eminent historian at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), makes an interesting observation: ‘Sir Sayyid, in India, had made efforts to prove the uniformity of conceptions of religion and scientific theories. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad has called it unnecessary and even though did not mention the name of Sir Sayyid but … [he] has referred to the same trends of thoughts.’ The ideas, thoughts, and movement represented by Sir Sayyid – as he is known popularly – continued to be debated, challenged, embraced, and opposed during and after his lifetime. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958) was barely 10 years old when Sayyid Ahmad Khan died in 1898. The reference to Azad in this context was but a small part of the engagement Sir Sayyid drew. Succeeding leaders continued to invoke Sayyid Ahmad's thoughts and legacies. One can critique the shortcomings of his work but can hardly disagree that the nature of the tasks he undertook during his time and in the space he inhabited was pioneering. The reception of Sayyid Ahmad's ideas has never been unilinear – neither in his times nor in ours. In fact, as he went along trying to convince his cohorts of the ideas he was deeply committed to in the late nineteenth century, he garnered adversaries and critics alike.

Sayyid Ahmad found strong support in some of his lieutenants such as Nawab Mushtaq Husain Viqar-ul Mulk (1841–1917) and Sayyid Mehdi Ali Mohsin-ul Mulk (1837–1907), both of whom were very close to him – the founder of the Aligarh Movement – and carried on his message shoulder to shoulder, even more vigorously after his death. Those opposing Sayyid Ahmad included both conservatives and liberals, who curtly disapproved of his engagement with Western learning, critiqued his opposition to the Indian National Congress (INC) politics, criticized his deism, and called him naicari (‘naturalist’), a pejorative term meaning someone who had swallowed European agnostic naturalism. Regardless of the support, criticism, or outright rejection, Sayyid Ahmad was a persistent worker, thinker, negotiator, writer, orator, and leader, who tirelessly worked towards his goals, determined not to be cowed down in his vision and mission.

In one of the first interviews I conducted in Aligarh, retired Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) professor of English Asloob Ahmad Ansari described Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan ‘as the greatest benefactor of the Muslims in the last several years’. He quickly edited the scope of his comment by adding, ‘or centuries, I should say’. This temporal slip of the frame is more than incidental, and it reappears in much of the current thinking among those sympathetic to Sir Sayyid's educational mission. It captures the perception that Sir Sayyid's work is temporally transcendent – it was born of his moment and remains relevant to the current one. He represented the Aligarh ideal – faithful, educated, generous, dedicated to the cause of Muslim uplift, and progressive – as he pushed against lurking conservatism within the Indian Muslim community. In the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College, which became AMU in 1920, Sir Sayyid sought to cultivate Muslim men, who embodied these characteristics and were well prepared for public life.

The lasting legacy of Sir Sayyid's work is best exemplified by AMU, as one respondent said, ‘He IS AMU.’ When graduates and well-wishers of AMU reflect on the role and legacy of Sir Sayyid, his objective of Muslim uplift seems as vital to Indian Muslims today as it was when he founded MAO College in 1875. Responses from surveys and oral history interviews with former students and professors demonstrate that Sir Sayyid's mission to develop a modern educational system for Muslims was both visionary and resilient. While the university has been indispensable in advancing the cause of Muslim education, through their attachment to the need to advance Sir Sayyid's educational agenda continually, these former students suggest that his goals remain unfulfilled.

AMU graduates, distinguished by the appellation, ‘Alig,’ are spread among all South Asian states, and indeed, the world. The oldest surviving generation of Aligs comprises those who were students during the upheavals of independence and partition in the 1940s, who settled in the newly independent states. The younger generations of Aligs, since the 1960s, are primarily Indian or they are from outside the subcontinent. Since the 1950s, few Aligs have been from Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Sir Sayyid considered both Hindus and Muslims as one qaum (nation) – arguing that qaum should be used to describe the inhabitants of India even if they have individual characteristics. Explaining further, he wrote, ‘By the word qaum I mean both Hindus and Muslims. That is the way in which I define the word nation (nation).’ This is in contrast to his opinion on the Hindi–Urdu debate and the participation of Muslims in the programmes of the Indian National Congress (INC). To understand the rationale underlying the positions of Sir Sayyid, situating his ideas in the context of the developments of his times is essential.

This chapter aims to understand Sir Sayyid's political thought by examining how Sir Sayyid responded to the political concerns of his times and contributed to a broader conversation about society, democracy, and political participation. The attempt is to investigate his ideas on two important issues: his response to the Hindi–Urdu controversy and his position regarding the INC.

The first part of this chapter discusses the Hindi–Urdu controversy. Through the Hindi movement, we discover an important facet of the growth of Hindu nationalism in north India and see how the Hindi movement was successful in differentiating Hindi from Urdu and making Hindi a symbol of the Hindu culture. It also shows how people like Sir Sayyid had practically no option but to oppose this movement.

The second part addresses the political participation of the Muslims of India. Sir Sayyid regarded the INC as a step towards the creation of a more advanced ‘nation’ of Bengali specifically, not of Hindus in general. Like many others, he considers this a consequence of the asymmetrical impact of colonial policies in different parts of India, which resulted in a significant section of Hindu and Muslim middle classes – including many zamindars and taluqdars – coming together to oppose the INC. Only a short time before this, many of these protesters had been standing against each other on the Hindi–Urdu issue.

Should religion and science be reconciled? As one of India's foremost public intellectuals of the nineteenth century, Sayyid Ahmad Khan inhabited the great transition, a hinge period in the shift from the Ptolemaic geocentric to the Copernican heliocentric view of the universe. Sayyid Ahmad Khan is highly regarded as the ‘Father of Modern Islam’ worldwide. His interests spanned across diverse fields of enquiry, and no study of this towering figure can be considered complete apart from a careful evaluation of his religious ideas. However, this is not an easy task. Sayyid Ahmad was a complex thinker living in a complicated context during a period when significant political, social, and intellectual changes occurred. The primary concern of Sayyid Ahmad was to articulate religious knowledge in the light of advancements in science; he attempted this through necharī philosophy, which is addressed in detail elsewhere in this volume.

Although numerous insightful studies have been conducted on Sayyid Ahmad's religious writings in general and on his rationalist and naturalist conclusions in particular, the purpose behind this ‘social revolutionary's’ concern regarding the interrelation of prophetic and natural revelation remains unclear. This concern persisted throughout his extensive literary career. Sayyid Ahmad examined nearly every aspect of religious practice in the light of the Qur’ān and of plain reason. He argued that if the clutter of tradition is removed, then pristine religion would emerge to be consistent with the ‘new sciences’ and compatible with the highest orders of human intellect. Pure (thet) Islam, which was understood and announced by prophets, was revealed through both prophetic and natural revelation. The prophetic revelation of pure Islam never contradicts its natural revelation.

Although prophetic messages provide instructions, the original sharī`ah, which is the nature's message, is no less recognized for being inarticulate. Then, the prophetic message must harmonize with the nature's message without contradiction. Thus, if a belief contradicted a basic common sense, then it was dismissed. If a scriptural passage contravened a simple reason, then that passage required a figurative rather than a literal interpretation.

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, a novelist and historian, captured the complexity of this legacy by stating that ‘Sayyid Ahmad Khan was a saviour, a sage, and a political-social leader of tremendous credibility. His theology didn't enter into the matter at all’.