Vakkom Moulavi, a pioneer of Kerala renaissance and founder of Swadeshabhimani is being recognised for the first time in his hometown, Vakkom—in the district of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, the South Indian State—with a Memorial and Research Centre. Vakkom Moulavi Memorial and Research Centre (VMMRC) is being set up in Vakkom as part of initiating various programmes and activities, according to a press release issued by VMMRC on his birth day.
VMMRC is having a Board of Patrons which include Sri. BRP Bhaskar, a senior journalist, Prof. Rajan Gurukkal, Vice Chairman, Kerala State Higher Education Council, Sara Jospeh, writer, Prof. P.K. Michael Tharakan, Chairman, Kerala Council for Historical Research, Prof. MN Karasseri, scholar and writer Dr. B. Ekbal, former Vice Chancellor, University of Kerala and Member, Kerala State Planning Board, Prof A. K Ramakrishnan, Senior Faculty, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Sri. Shajahan Madampatt, writer and senior journalist, Adv. Irfan Engineer, Director, Centre for Study of Secularism, Mumbai, Sri. M. Mohammed Rafeek, former teacher, Dr. Mohamed Sayeed, medical practitioner and social activist, and Sri. K.A. Suhair, Chairman, Vakkom Moulavi Foundation Trust. Prof M. Thahir (President), Sri. Sabin Iqbal (Vice President), Sri. Sameer M. (Secretary), Sri. Nahas Abdul Haque (Joint Secretary), Smt. Shaheen Nadeem (Treasurer) are the office bearers of VMMRC. Prof S. Ayoob (Pro Vice Chancellor, Kerala Technological University), Dr. Ravi Raman (Member, State Planning Board), Dr. A.K.Ramakrishnan (Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University), Dr.K.M. Seethi (Professor and Dean, Mahatma Gandhi University), Sri. Sivanandan are among the Members of the Governing Board.
The VMMRC seeks to set up a modern digital archives to reckon the contributions of the renaissance leaders. The Centre is also intended to make the Memorial a centre of studies and research in the areas of social and cultural renaissance of Kerala, social justice and equity, social inclusion, media, culture and inter-faith dialogues. The memorial will institute an endowment in the name of Vakkom Moulavi for arranging Annual Memorial Lectures every year on 28 December.
The Memorial will offer consultancy services by initiating studies and analyses on the social issues aforesaid, facilitate internships in the specified areas of social policy, undertake specific research programmes, project studies, surveys, and production of documentaries, etc; collaborate with governments, universities and other centres of learning, local bodies, quasi-government agencies and state level, national level institutions and associations in their socio-economic development programmes devoted to social policy making and institute awards and fellowships in recognition of merit or for encouraging talent.
The Governing Council also resolved to commemorate 150th Anniversary of Vakkom Moulavi with a series of programmes during 2022-23. Prof. M. Thahir Presided over the Council meeting.
According to M.A. Shakoor, former journalist who worked with Morning News (Calcutta), The Statesman (Calcutta), The Pakistan Times(Lahore and London), and Dawn (Karachi), who was also a nephew of Vakkom Maulavi,
The Islamic renaissance in Kerala, in the real sense, began with Maulavi Abdul Qadir. His was essentially a Muslim socio-religious movement. He had not only initiated it, but provided it inspiration, dynamism and correct leadership. During the first three decades of this century, which were the last three of his life, he devoted all his time and energy as well as most of his considerable inherited wealth to the movement. His name became synonymous with the movement he had founded and led. The obscure village of Vakkom in Travancore State, which was his family settle where his movement had taken birth, became a place of renown and he himself was known as “Vakkom Maulavi.” Maulavi Abdul Qadir was born in 1873. There were neither colleges nor many schools at that time in Travancore. As a boy he was of a studious nature. His enlightened and wealthy father, who was a prominent merchant and influential leader, engaged a number of scholars from distant places, including an itinerant Arab savant, to teach him every subject he wished to learn. Spurred by his thirst for knowledge and helped manner his own self-study the boy made such rapid progress that some of his teachers soon found that their stock of knowledge was exhausted and at least one of them admitted that had learnt from his student more than he could teach him. Maulavi Abdul Qadir in a short time mastered the Arabic language and acquired profound knowledge of the Quran, Sunnah, logic and Islamic jurisprudence as well as Islamic history. He studied the Malayalam language, in which he became an elegant and powerful writer and eloquent speaker. He had learnt Tamil, Sanskrit, Persian and Urdu and acquired a working knowledge of English and Germinate Early in his career he had started subscribing to Arabic language daily newspapers and periodicals from Cairo, Damascus and Mecca. He was greatly influenced by the radical reformist journal of Cairo, “Al-Manaar” which was edited by the eminent writer and savant, Rashid Rida, and which reflected the views and ideals of the nineteenth century liberal thinker and religious reformer, sheikh Mohammad Abduh. Maulavi Abdul Qadir had preserved in his library the beautifully bound volumes of A1Manaar and he was in correspondence with Rashid Rida. He was greatly influenced by Mohammad Abduh’s ideas. Maulavi Abdul Qadir had devotedly studied Al-Ghazzali’s works, one of which (AlKimia alSaadah) he had translated into Malayalam. Although Al-Ghazzali’s philosophical thinking had some early fascination for him he had steered clear of his Sufistic path. He never accepted nor approved of the Pir Mureed system. In his burning zeal to rid the decadent Muslim society of his day of all un-Islamic accretions and to rescue it from the evil influence of the reactionary Mullahs he had drawn great inspiration from the life and teachings of the early nineteenth century Arabian reformer, Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab and his thirteenth century ideological preceptor, Ibn Taymiya. Early in his career Maulavi Abdul Vakkom Maulavir had intelligently analysed the problems and correctly diagnosed the malady afflicting his community. Although the Muslim masses of Kerala were intensely religious their idea of Islam was distorted and corrupted over the years by the obscurantist Mullahs who seemed to be still living in the medieval times unaware that the world had entered the twentieth century. A form of hagiolatry, the very antithesis of monotheistic Islam, was promoted and patronized by the Mullahs among the ignorant masses. Many superstitions and empty rituals associated with grave worship were sedulously fostered by the Mullahs mainly for their own gains. These were, however, no special features of the Muslim society of Kerala, but were perhaps even more rampant in other parts of India. The Mullahs performed exorcisms and sometimes even usurped the functions of doctors on the ground that Muslim females could not be seen by male doctors, particularly if they happened to be “infidels”! Their worst crime was that they made Islam appear to be an enemy if progress by preaching to the ignorant masses that it was a “sin” to send children, particularly girls, to school, whereas Islam had made education (acquisition of Knowledge) “obligatory on every Muslim man and woman”. The Mullahs even declared that learning ~ English was “haram” or forbidden There were many other evil practices in the Muslim community of the time, such as the dowry system, extravagant expenditure on weddings, celebration of annual “urs” and Moharrum with bizarre unIslamic features bordering on idolatrous rituals, visiting shrines in fulfillment of religious’ vows and making votive ‘offerings. Maulavi Abdul Qadir launched his campaign against all these evils and unIslamic practices with the help of his devoted disciples and with the cooperation of other learned men who shared his views and ideals. A frail thin man in a plain muslin “kurta” and turban, he traveled up and down the country addressing meetings and exhorting people to seek education and to discard un Islamic practices. He was no demagogue. He did not play on the emotions and sentiments of the people, but only appealed to reason. His gentle voice and measured words had great power of persuasion, and his learned addresses carried conviction and authority. His audiences listened to him with rapt attention. In a few years the unIslamic festivals associated with `dargas’ and “saints” ceased to exist everywhere except at two places where the vested interests were too entrenched and the financial profits too massive to be easily swept away. Similarly the Moharrum “festival” with its unIslamic rituals was stopped throughout Kerala except in one city where one solitary committed family kept it going, but there the whole thing degenerated into a bizarre carnivallike event in which the Hindu scavenger class joined for the petty financial gain it brought.
Shakoor writes:
Many organizations were set up at local levels and many schools were founded at his instance, some of which developed into higher educational institutions . At every meeting he tried to awaken the people to the danger of social stagnation and falling a prey to unIslamic practices. As the campaign developed into a powerful movement strong opposition was mounted by the Mullahs supported by vested interests. As they lacked the depth of authentic learning and the intellectual caliber to meet him on the intellectual as a first resort. Some issued “fatwas” that he was a “kafir”. Some others branded him as a “Wahhabi”. In their dictionaries the two words perhaps had the same meaning. Although Moulavi Abdul Qadir was greatly influenced by the principles enunciated by Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab and by the reformist movement led by him, he never regarded himself as anything but a Muslim. After all, the name “Wahhabi” itself was coined by the orthodox religious adversaries of Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab as a pejorative term to be derisively used against him and his followers. These medieval minded old Arabian Mullahs of the time, not much dissimilar to our own indigenous species, were hard put to it in their search for an apt nickname. Had they chosen as their label the word “Mohammadi” as directly derived from Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s own name, they wouldhave failed in their object. So they had to content themselves with his father’s name from which they forged the counterfeit “Wahhabi”. Neither Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab nor his followers (who include the ruling dynasty of Saudi Arabia) had ever acknowledged this title. It is true that Moulavi Abdul Kadir had drawn inspiration from Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s movement, but he never regarded himself as a “Wahhabi”. He was at one with Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab on his basic approach such as rigorous adherence to Islam’s uncompromising monotheism, which completely excludes the doctrine of intercession, visiting of tombs in fulfillment of religious vows, invoking the aid or blessings of saints or making votive offerings to them, graveworship and priesthood. Maulavi Abdul Qadir did not accept the puritanical excesses, petty intolerance and the violent methods of enforcement often associated with Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab and his movement. The central idea of Moulavi Abdul Kadir’s movement was restoring Islam to its pristine purity and utter simplicity and interpreting the Quranic principles in the light of companions in one single sitting has now been rendered so complex that fifteen years’ continuous study can hardly complete it.
No doubt it was the lamentable condition of his own community that had kindled in Moulavi Abdul Kadir the reformist flame and brought him into the field of action. But for a man of his moral courage, democratic convictions and burning patriotism , it was possible to confine his attention to the needs of his own small community and shut his eyes to the wider problems affecting the coterie as a whole. At the best of times Travancore was no better than an autocratic Princely State, it compared favorably with other States elsewhere in India. At this particular time, under the authoritarian rule’ of Sir P. Rajagopalachari, a lecherous and perverse power rampant bribery and corruption in the administration, the scandalous debaucheries that went on at the top and the palace intrigues of the 0 courtiers, which had brought the Government and the “Royal Court” to disrepute, called for a courageous champion to take up the suffering people’s cause. Although there were a few periodicals of a sort, which made their appearance here and there, none of them never dared even to make a reference to these sordid goings-on. Moulavi Abdul Kadir was the first, and the only one, to answer this popular call and the first to suffer its inevitable consequences.
SWADESHABHIMANI
He gave priority of attention to this problem. He man managed to import, directly from England, an automatic flatbed printing press, the latest type available then, in l9O5. He then launched a weekly journal under the title SWADESHABHIMANI~’ of 8~bexpa~xio~ THE Patriot”, to spear head the fight against corruption and to struggle for the democratic rights of the people. Right from the start, “THE Patriot” became a powerful organ of public opinion. However, the dual task of running “The Patriot” and leading the Muslim reformist movement at the same time soon proved an unmanageable and Moulavi Abdul Kadir looked for an editor for “The Patriot” who would measure up to the high standard o£ integrity, courage and political principles he had set for his journal. He was lucky to have found such a man in a young graduate called Ramakrishna Pillai who had just then been sacked by his own uncle from the editorship of his weekly journal because of his views and uncompromising adherence to principles. A personal interview and discussion of matters of principle convinced Moulavi Abdul Kadir that he had found just the man he wanted. Ramakrishna Pillai was equally lucky to have found just the right man to work with. Moulavi Abdul Kadir placed implicit faith in Ramakrishna Pillai’s integrity, patriotism, and political ideals, which were identical of his own. Not once throughout the stormy life of the journal did Moulavi Abdul Kadir find the need to interfere in the editorial policy of his journal to keep it on course he had charted for it. This political collaboration which began in 1906 between two young radical democrats forms a glorious chapter in the political history of Kerala. The saga of Moulavi Abdul Kadir, “SWADESHABHIMANI” and Ramakrishna Pillai still remains to be told in full.
Sabin Iqbal, Moulavi’s grandson and senior journalist wrote that “It is rather unfortunate, if not an injustice, that Vakkom Moulavi has been neglected or pushed into a single column in the annals of Kerala’s social reformation as a mere religious reformer.” Sabin noted that Moulavi was “the man who sowed the first seeds of democracy and civil rights in Kerala society.”
References
M.A. Shakoor “VAKKOM MOULAVI: THE MAN WHO LED ISLAMIC RENAISSANCE IN KERALA,” available at http://vmmrcblogspotcom.blogspot.com/
Sabin Iqbal, “Vakkom Moulavi: My Grandfather, the Rebel,” https://openthemagazine.com/essay/vakkom-moulavi-my-grandfather-the-rebel/
K.M. Seethi, “Why Vakkom Moulavi Matters Today?” https://www.sabrangindia.in/article/why-vakkom-moulavi-matters-today
