Saiyid Hamid

The death of noted educationist and intellectual Saiyid Hamid in New Delhi on Monday has left the Indian Muslim community in a state of bereavement.

In a series of tributes by high-ranking Indians, the 94-year-old Saiyid Hamid was described as an unflinching advocate of modern education.

Salman Khurshid, the former foreign minister, said the sad news comes at a time when many of the causes that Saiyid Hamid selflessly and relentlessly strove to preserve and promote are once again under stress.

“As an honest administrator, uncompromising educationist, institution builder, and the constant conscience of people, committed to improving the lives of the deprived and dispossessed, he leaves us all with a sense of irreparable loss,” said Khurshid.

He said everyone would miss Saiyid Hamid’s amazing zeal matched only by his command over several languages, Urdu, Persian and English. “His gracious sons, Samar and Farhaz, with whom I shared a school and college must be inconsolable, but upon their shoulders must rest a heavy legacy of service and vision they inherit from their departed father,” said Khurshid in his touching tribute.

Well-known Canada-based Indian writer, author and journalist Tariq Ghazi described him as a great man and a giant. “For more than three decades, Saiyid Hamid served, or tried to serve, his community and his nation to the best of his ability, despite his old age,” he said. “In his frail constitution resided a restless soul.”

According to Ghazi, Saiyid Hamid was noted for a charisma that would draw intellectuals around him, many of whom he would turn into social activists, but he was not a man of the masses, overfed on raw emotionalism.

Syed Zafar Mahmood, president of the Zakat Foundation of India, recalled the good deeds of Saiyid Hamid. “I learned from him to be the first to say salaam,” he wrote. “He always managed to do so unfailingly while he was more than double my age and quite superior in the government hierarchy.”

Saiyid Hamid, he said, valued long term community interests much more than short term personal ones. “After completing his tenure as vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), coupled with his high bureaucratic clout at national level, it was easy for him to grab a gubernatorial assignment and pass the rest of his life in maximum luxury at public expense in the precincts of sprawling Raj Bhawans cutting ribbons and inaugurating exhibitions,” said Mahmood. “But he chose to be different.”

In an interview with Arab News in February 2006, Saiyid Hamid spoke about his missionary zeal to inculcate the values of modern education into the Muslims of India, especially north India. He also spoke about the failure of his fortnightly newsmagazine Nation and the World. The project was started with great fanfare and it was supposed to be a daily newspaper initially.

“Our intention was to take the middle road. We thought let us be accommodating, let us be tolerant of the other point of view also. An English daily would have served that purpose very well. Unfortunately, it was a failure in resource mobilization,” he said. “People didn’t realize in the late 1980s that having their own newspaper was vitally important for a community.”

Pointing out the problems facing Indian Muslims, he said: “The world is so competitive and educationally our country is so advanced that unless we Muslims attain a similar standard by dint of organized hard work, we have no future.”

[wpResize]