October, 17 1817 Delhi
March, 27 1898 Aligarh
An Architect of Modern India.
In the history of India's transition from medievalism to modernism, Syed Ahmad Khan stands out prominently as a dynamic force pitted against conservation, superstition, inertia and ignorance. He contributed many of the essential elements to the development of modern India and paved the way for the growth of a healthy scientific attitude of mind, which is a sine qua non for advancement, both material and intellectual.

SIR SYED AS POLITICAL THINKER AND LEGISLATOR
(i) The failure of the Mujahidin struggle at Balakot (1831) and the terrible disaster that followed the movement of 1857 convinced Sir Syed that without western knowledge- which included science and technology also- all efforts at political emancipation would prove abortive. He told an audience at Amritsar:
"If the Government has not conceded some of our rights to us yet, for which we may have grudge, higher education is such a thing it will secure those rights for us, may be willy, nilly or against its wishes."
For the sake of organizing educational movement he cooperated fully with the British. So far as his political ideas and ideals were concerned, he once said clearly:
" I am a Muslim. I am a native of India and belong to Arab race. From these two facts that I am racially an Arab and am a Muslim, you can see that both from the political and the religious points of view I am a true Radical. The Arabs do not like that anybody except themselves should rule over them. Arab blood still flows in my veins and my religion, Islam, in which I have full and firm faith, teaches principles and is opposed to monarchy, nor does it accept limited monarchy. Islam likes a government in which the President is elected by the people. Islam does not like the accumulation of wealth at one people.... People who do not favor a constitutional government but look to the despotic government of the past are wrong."
(ii) Analyzing the causes of Indian Revolt he said:
" I believe that this Rebellion owes its origin to one great cause to which all others are but secondary. Branches so to speak of the parent stem... it is essential that the people should have a voice in its councils. It is from the voice of the people only that Government can learn whether its projects are likely to be well-received. The voice of the people alone checks errors in the bud, and warn us of dangers before they burst upon destroy us."
(iii) Sir Syed particularly criticized Act XXI of 1850 and Act XV of 1856.
(iv) In 1878 Lord Lytton nominated Sir Syed as a member of the Viceroy's Council for a period of two years. Lord Ripon re-nominated him in 1880. He remained a member for four years. While replying to an Address presented by the Indian Association of Lahore, Sir Syed said:
" You have also alluded, in your address, to my services in the Legislative Council during the period when I have had the honor of being a member of the council..... it was my earnest and sincere desire that I should faithfully serve my country and my nation. By the word nation, I mean both Hindus and Muhammadans. This is the way in which I define the word nation... I designate both communities that inhabit India by the expression Hindu nation; and while a member of the Legislative Council I had in my heart the prosperity of this very nation."
(v) It appears that his ideas on Representative Government and Individualism were mostly derived from John Stuart Mill whose works he got translated for the Scientific Society.

SIR SYED- AS THE GUARDIAN OF STUDENTS
Sir Syed took keen personal interest in the welfare of students. One day he addressed them thus:
"Dear students! You, your entire community, your teachers and parents and myself, all are too happy to see that you have assembled here from far off towns, may even from different countries, to acquire knowledge. You study various branches of knowledge and enjoy noble ideas, illuminating academic discourses and pithy moral sayings (of different authors). Your teachers cherish paternal affection and tender feelings for you. They always wish you well and desire your betterment. They teach you from excellent books composed by erudite scholars and eminent authors. But to-day I should like to teach you a lesson from a book which has neither been composed and written on paper by any author, nor has it been printed and published at any press. Nature alone has composed it and with all her consummate and generous hands. Its words has no doubt a form and an enchantment but it is a bit difficult to see and pursue these words. Its meanings are all too perspicuous but rather difficult to be got at. You need not open to read it. It always lies open before your eyes.
Don't search that book on your shelves or tables or in the college library. It is with you all the time. What is that book? It is, indeed, nothing but the corporate life of you and your classmates in this college. Thus you have to learn how to study this book and get at its substance.
Dear boys! The title of this book is: "College Life or New Life". This is the real book whose study and understanding is the be-all and end-all of your life in general and college life in particular. If you studied this book thoroughly and carefully and preserved its sanctity from getting tainted, your future life would be a life which a man should crave to live for. Otherwise, it makes no difference whether you are dead or alive, nay , death is better than life.
Now I should like to tell you how you should lead the college life and make the best of it?
First and foremost of all, mutual love and amicable conduct towards one another is the fountain-head of all bliss and blessings here. All the students, lying as they are on the lap of this Alma Mater, no matter whether they hail from Hindustan or the Punjab, East or west , North or South, are your brothers first and last. If you did not treat and love them like brothers, it would mean that you infringed the first principle of being the sons of one and the same "Wise Mother'.
Boarding house is a machine for making nation a nation in the true sense. If all of its parts operate properly, it will function well, otherwise it is altogether useless. You are parts of this machine, and therefore, you should make the best of it. Your fitness and capability to work fairly and well takes precedence over all other considerations.
All the activities you indulge in ( from dawn to dusk), be it boarding and lodging, getting together or moving in society, playing the games or attending the literary societies and forums, are essentially meant to foster fellow-feelings and strengthen the bonds of love and friendship, which is the true foundation on which an advanced nation should stand. Thus, if you offended against it, the entire odium will be laid on your shoulders. And people shall live to rue it that you want to demolish the edifice you the very bricks of."
Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru wrote about him:
"Sir Syed's decision to concentrate on Western education for Muslims was undoubtedly a right one. Without that they could not have played any effective part in the building up of Indian nationalism of the new type, and they would have been doomed to play second fiddle to the Hindus with their better education and far stronger economic position. The Muslims were not historically or ideologically ready then for the bourgeois nationalist movement as they had developed no bourgeois, as the Hindus had done. Sir Syed's activities, therefore, although seemingly very moderate, were in the right revolutionary direction."

FATHER OF MUSLIM INTELLECTUAL RENAISSANCE:
Maulana Azad Said:
"Sir Syed had established in Aligarh not only a College but an intellectual and cultural center in tune with the progressive spirit of the times. The center of this circle was Sir Syed himself and he attracted round him some of the best intellects of the day. Perhaps no journal in India has ever had such influence upon the mind of the generation as his Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq. He and his colleagues were its main contributors. In fact the journal laid the foundation of modern Urdu literature and so developed the language that today it is capable of expressing the highest and most abstruse thought. Perhaps there was not a single literacy figure among the Muslims of the day who was not influenced by his circle. The best Muslim authors of the modern age were nourished here. Here developed the new schools of research, interpretation and reconstruction of Muslims thought. Though modern Urdu poetry was born in Lahore, it was here that it found the atmosphere most conducive to the growth. Poems of a new style were composed and read at the sessions of the Mohammadan Education Conference. This was also the first forum of Urdu oratory. All the important speakers of the day were created or nurtured on this platform.

"...It was in Aligarh that these movements of reform were consummated. It was one of the regions which took the lead in the creation of a new India. The 19th century marked a period of renaissance for the Indian spirit and Aligarh was one of the centers of such renaissance.. The inscriptions which have been carved on the walls of ....Strachery hall may fade with the passage of time, but the inscriptions which written on the modern period of Indian history can never fade. Future historians will discover in Aligarh one of the main sources which had contributed to the evolution of modern India."

FOUNDER OF THE FIRST MODERNIST INSTITUTION IN ISLAM
H.A.R Gibb wrote:
"Believing, like Shaikh Mohammad Abduh, that Islam and science could not prove antagonistic in the long run, he (Sir Syed) took the further step of asserting that the true justification of Islam was its conformity to Nature and the law of science... In to encourage and develop this line of thought... he established the first 'modernist' organization in Islam."

A LEADER OF THE FORCES OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND PROGRESS.
Mualana Abul Kalam Azad said:
" Today, western education has become a part of our national life and we naturally think of it when we use the term education. It is, therefore, difficult to realize the opposition and struggle which a hundred years ago faced the reformers who wanted to introduce this new education to India... The prejudices superstitions of ages clouded the minds of the people. Accepted beliefs and age-long sentiments were both against such changes.... Thus usual cry was that Western education is opposed to the teachings of religion... Human thought has to face this conflict in different countries. Europe went through this struggle in the 17th and 18th centuries while the Eastern countries faced this conflict in the 19th century. The Hindus of India faced this struggles earlier and quickly ended it. Among the Muslims it took a longer time but in the end the inevitable happened. The forces of change triumphed and the new order had to replace the old. So far as Muslims of India are concerned, one can assert without fear of contradiction that the man who played the most important role in this struggle is the presiding spirit of the University. The battle was fought here in Aligarh and Aligarh is a visible embodiment of the victory of the forces of progress."

SIR SYED AS AUTHOR:
Alphabetical Arranged List of his Works:

Act No. 10 (Stamp Act 1862).
Act No. 14 (Limitation Act 1859), Private Press, Aligarh, 1864.
Act No. 16 (regarding registration of documents), Author's Private Press Aligarh, 1864.
Ahkam Tu'am Ahl-i Kitab, Nawal Kishore, Kanpur 1868, Matba-ul-'ulum, Aligarh 1899.
A'in-i-Akbari, edition with illustrations, Delhi.
Al-Du'a wa'l Istajaba, Mufid-i 'Am Press, Agra 1892.
Al-Khutbat al-Ahmadiya fi'l Arab wa'l Sirat al-Muhammadiya, Faiz-i 'Am press, Aligarh
1900; English translation, London, 1869-70.
Al-Nazar fi ba'z Masa'il Imam al-Ghazzali, Mufid-i 'Am press, Agra.
Asar-us-sanadid, (i)... Sayyid ul Akhbar 1847;
(ii)...Matba'-i Sultani, 1852.
Asbab-i Baghawat-i Hind, First published in Urdu in the year 1858 and translated into
English by his two European friends, Medical Hall press, Benares.
Description des monument de Delhi, D'a press Le Texte Hindostani De Sayid Ahmad Khan
(tr. by M. Gracin De Tassy), Paris Imprimerie Imperial, 1861.
Ik Nadan Khuda Parast aur Dana dunyadar Ki Kahani, Nizami press, Badaon 1910.
Iltimas ba Khidmat Sakinan-i Hindustan dar bab traqqi ta'lim ahl-i Hind, private press,
Ghazipur 1863.
Izalat ul-Ghain an Zi'al Qarnain, Mufid-i 'Am press, Agra, 1889.
Jam-i jam, Akbarabad 1840
Jila al-Qulub ba Zikr al-Mahbub, Delhi 1843.
Kalamat-ul Haqq, Institute press, Aligarh.
Khulq al-Insan ala ma fi al Qur'an, Mufid-i 'Am press, Agra 1892.
Khutut-i Sir Syed, ed. Ross Mas'ud, Nizami press, 1924.
Kimiya-i Sa'adat, 2 fasc. Institute press, 1883.
Lecture dar bab targhib wa tahris talim itfal-i Musalman, Mufid-i 'Am press, Agra 1896.
Lecture Indian National Congress Madras par Nami press, Kanpur 1887.
Lecture Madrasat-ul 'Ulum Aligarh Key Tarikhi halat aur jadid waqi'at par, Mufid-i 'Am press Agra 1889.