A Fortnight in Calcutta

Victoria Memorial Calcutta, India

A City of Millionaires

I was quite familiar with the well-known verdict of the Gospels that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. But the full extent of the truth underlying this had never dawned on me until my recent visit to Calcutta. I had taken it to be no more than the characteristic parabolic way of Jesus putting things. But from my Calcutta experience it seemed to me as if the denunciation were true to the very letter.

Calcutta is known to all of us as the second largest city in the British Empire. But only those who have been there know that it is also a city of millionaires and multi-millionaires. Thinking that if we could just enlist the sympathy of one such big man, he alone could run the proposed mission in Spain, a Calcutta friend pressed me to visit the place. In obedience to his summons, I went there with the beggar’s bowl to see if we could make up the balance of the requisite 10,000 for Spain Fund. It was while knocking about in this connection that I came to realize the profound wisdom underlying Jesus’ aphorism. I found that an average millionaire’s mind was so chocked up with his millions that it had not even so much as the eye of a needle of opening to let in a ray of Divine Light. To him life was money and money life. Any talk of God or His Kingdom simply fell flat on him. All the use he had for religion was that he should have some Pir to do the needful for him and ensure for him a sale conduct to Heaven, forgetting that Heaven is nothing of a business proposition, that it is only another name for opening one’s heart to Light Divine. Truly has a saying of the Prophet put it that he who is blind in this life will be blind in the life to come. It may indeed be said that perhaps I have been too sweeping in my conclusion and that I did not approach all or could not put the thing properly before those I did approach. For, has not the history of Islam known millionaires who were saints at the same time? There were millionaires among the companions of the Prophet. The great saint of Baghdad, Shaikh Abdul Qadir had a regular mercantile fleet of his own plying. To this I can only say that it is really a miracle of Islam that it produced millionaire saints. I know there are some such even to-day. But exceptions only prove the rule and it was my misfortune that in Calcutta I came across the rule and no exceptions. Whatever help I could secure for the Spain Mission was from the middle-class friends who even promised that if I could spare at least a month for the purpose, they would see to it that Calcutta alone supplied all the money needed for the proposed mission.

The two Calcutta Youths

Though not much of a success from financial point of view I had the pleasure of meeting friends which alone was enough of compensation. Our readers have read about the ”Two Calcutta Youths” whose manly response to the Spain Call was published sometime ago in these columns. It naturally was no small pleasure to meet these two devoted sons of Islam in the flesh and enjoy face to face long talks with them. Perhaps it would be inadvisable to lift the veil of anonymity from them. They are the type of men who believe in silent solid work and the limelight of publicity has no fascination for them.

A Knight Saint

We all ask the prayer in our five daily prayers: “Lord! Grant us the felicity of this life as well as the felicity of the life to come.” This in fact is the sum and substance of the teachings of Islam. It is wrong to say that Islam and worldly greatness are incompatible. It is equally wrong to let worldly greatness make us blind to the higher issues of life. Islam is another name for a happy combination of both. In Calcutta I met distinguished son of Islam who struck me as a walking illustration of this essence of Islam.

Sir Syed Saadullah

This was Sir Sayed Saadullah who was for long the member of the Assam Government. He has risen to the topmost rung of the ladder to which an Indian can aspire but his simplicity of life and his living faith in the Higher Purpose of life was reminiscent of the Musslamans of yore. While a member of Assam Government he would not keep even a chaprasi at his door, so that the poor people who wanted his help might have access to him without let or hinderance. It is very seldom that one finds a big Muslim in a mosque. He considers it beneath his dignity. But Sir Saadullah misses no Friday congregation prayer and clad in plain dress of the man in the street, you can see him rubbing shoulders with the meanest of Muslims, bowing and prostrating before the Rabbil- Alamin Who has created not the big ones alone but the poor ones as well and is as much interested in them. As an old subscriber of the Light, he went out of his way and grudged no personal inconvenience to go with us, from door to door.

A Grand Old Man

Another very inspiring personality from whom I received great encouragement, sympathy and help was the well-known. Those who know anything of Bengal will appreciate that I have fitly described this venerable old gentleman, whose silvery Islamic beard and general Islamic fervour are reminiscent of that great school of Sir Sayed Ahmad, Hali and Shibli, as the Grand Old Man of Calcutta. There is hardly any public activity in Bengal in which, you do not find Maulvi Abdul Karim figure. If you go to Calcutta and come back without meeting this elderly patriarchal personality you may take it that you have missed half the public life of Calcutta. Having retired as an Inspector of Schools, Maulvi Sahib has devoted, not only his old worn-out limbs to the service of his people but also the hoarding of a lifetime. He has made waqf of Rs. 5000, the proceeds of which are spent on the education of the poor, on the relief of the orphans and the widows and on Ishaat-i-Islam. Here is an old man who should serve as a model and inspiration for many a youth of Islam.

An Enlightened Maulana

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad´s name is a household word in Muslim India. It is so refreshing to come across such a beacon-light of learning and enlightenment in the midst of the mush room of theologians in this country, who as a rule are so thoroughly bereft of the true light of Islam, its breadth of vision, its strong common sense and its universal sympathies. I could not help remonstrating with that the Maulana for confining himself to the closet of his study while the Mussalmans were tearing one another to pieces by mutual mudslinging and kafir-making. He was the one man, I reminded him – he who had put up a brave fight for political independence of the country – to take the field against the corrupt benighted Mullas with whom Muslim India was infested and whose one pastime was to undermine the solidarity of Islam. It was a rare intellectual pleasure to listen to the Maulana’s illuminating discourse on this topic. If there was any section of the Mussalmans which was farthest away from the spirit of Islam, in the Maulana’s opinion, it was this very section of the Mullas. As regards kafir-making, he referred to the well-known rule of the Fuqaha of Islam:

نکفر من یکفرنا ولا نکفر من لا

The curse of disbelief returns to the one who said it; if that person he labelled as a disbeliever was not worthy of that name.

(Agreed upon – in both Bukhari 10/427 and Muslim 60)

He could not possibly understand by what authority the tenets of the Lahore Ahmadiyya could arouse the kafir-making fury of the Mullas. He recalled how in the columns of Al-Hilal, he had strongly supported the late Hazrat Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din in his propagation activities in England. One wishes there were many more of such Ulema in Islam. It is a pity, however, that this one over-towering personality who can certainly do wonders in the way of reconstructing the house of Islam is constrained perhaps for lack of appreciation on the part of the community to divert his energies in other directions.

Other Friends

I wish I were free to mention and acknowledge the attention, sympathy and support that I received from several other friends in my mission. Among these are three Khan Bahadurs and an Engineer friend. I was surprised to find such Islamic fervour in their hearts. I am sorry that I could not stay longer, as they wished me to, in order to popularize the cause of Spain Mission. They offered, however, to pre-pare the ground for my next visit, when, they hoped, a well-organized befitting response might be expected from Calcutta. I must not close without mentioning a remarkable lady who needs no introduction to the readers of the Light. This was Rajkumari Jawed Banu whose acceptance of Islam some-time ago created quite a stir throughout India and whose illuminating articles have since been appearing in the Light from time to time. All I may say of her is that I have seldom met a more accomplished, more cultured or more enlightened lady, with a wide outlook on life and a wider knowledge of men and matters. My sincere thanks are also due to brother Badr-ud-Din Khan. He placed his wide acquaintance at my disposal and spent whole days, with me, going about. And last but not least, my thanks are also due to the reverend Dr. Basharat Ahmad Sahib whose constant company cheered up so many of the dull and at times depressing moments that are not infrequent in a campaign of this kind. His unshakable faith in the face of apparently dismal prospects and his cheerful chartings I still enjoy when I recollect them. And his subsequent experience at Cawnpore is, of course, a theme fit for some film and makes me still roar with laughter.