Maulana Mohammad Ali
(1878-1931)
President - Cocanada (Kakinada), 1923

Mohammad Ali was born at Rampur in U. P. on December 10, 1878. He had his education at Allahabad and Oxford. He failed to get into the I.C.S. On his return from England he was appointed Chief Education Officer in the State of Rampur. He could not however, successfully adapt himself to "court politics" and soon resigned. After a few years service with the Gaikwad of Baroda, he discovered the journalist in him and started writing on contemporary issues in reputed English papers of his time. One of his long articles "Thoughts in the present discontent" which was serialised in The Times of India, Bombay 1907, won the praise of Lord Minto, the then Viceroy of India. His bosses, however, anticipating his involvement in politics, instructed him to have his writings censored before sending them to press. Mohammad Ali could not accept this condition and submitted his resignation to start his own paper.

In January 1911 his weekly Comrade appeared from Calcutta In 1912 the Comrade moved to Delhi and the first issue of the Delhi edition appeared on October 12. Almost every issue carried articles and editorials exposing the hostile attitude of the British to the Muslim world in general and to Turkey in particular. As a result, it was banned in 1914 under the Press Act. It was, however, revived in 1924 but could not live for more than two more years.

In Delhi Mohammad Ali also started an Urdu daily, the Hamdard in 1913 which in its 16 years of life maintained every healthy tradition of English journalism and was very much in demand. For his anti-British writings he was arrested in 1915 and remained a political prisoner till December 1919. When released, he was no longer a mere journalist but had been transformed into a national leader. He, however, realised that his objectives were unlikely to be achieved as long as the British power in India was not weakened. He, therefore, took up very seriously the cause of the Indian National Congress and within no times ably won the sympathy and support of Gandhiji in the cause of the Khilafat on the one hand and prepared the Muslims on the other, to accept Gandhiji as one of their own leaders, and to plunge with the Hindus into the struggle for freedom.

In the wake of the non-cooperation movement he founded the National Muslim University known as Jamia Millia Islamia, then at Aligarh later shifted to Delhi in 1920. He became its first 'Shaikhul-Jamia' the Vice Chancellor. His political pre-occupations did not permit him to stay in office for long, but he remained in close touch with the institution as long as he lived.

Mohammad Ali could compromise with no one on issues which he considered contrary to his convictions. The result was that the political and communal vicissitudes of the late twenties drew Mohammad Ali way not only from the Indian National Congress, of which he was once the President and was always considered its indivisible part, but also from many of his fellow Muslims in the Congress, who could not appreciate his outspokenness. The finale was pathetic. Mohammad Ali, once the uncrowned king of the national forces of Muslim India, was a lone soul in his last days, politically heart-broken and physically diabetic.

At the time of the first Round Table Conference of 1930, despite his knowledge of the possible fatal consequences of his journey to England, he decided to go there convinced in his own heart that he had to do his duty by his people. In his last speech at the Conference Mohammad Ali prophetically declared that he would never return to India alive if he was not freed of the British yoke. Within a day or two he died there (January 4, 1931) and his body was taken for burial to the sacred soil of Jerusalem.

- Mushirul Haq

I had long been convinced that here in this Country of hundreds of millions of human beings, intensely attached to religion, and yet infinitely split up into communities, sects and denominations, Providence had created for us the mission of solving a unique problem and working out a new synthesis, which was nothing low than a Federation of Faiths... For more than twenty years I have dreamed the dream of a federation, grander, nobler and infinitely more spiritual than the United States of America, and today when many a political Cassandra prophesies a return to the bad old days of Hindu-Muslim dissensions 1 still dream that old dream of "United Faiths of India."

From the Presidential Address - Maulana Mohammad Ali
I.N.C. Session, 1923, Cocanada.