In March 1986, the President of the Islamic Centre, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, visited the central Indian city of Pune. This was his fourth journey to Pune, his previous visits having taken place respectively in 1971, 1983 and 1984. Pune was then known as Poona. It was then a city of about one and a half million peoples, 100,000 of which were Muslims. The size of the congregations which gathered this time to attend Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s talks was indicative of a substantial increase in the number of AI- Risala readers in that town. A full account of the Journey was published in AI-Risala, (June 1986) and here we give an abridged version in translation.

Making up for Lost Time

ON the evening of March 19, 1986, I was due to travel from Delhi to Poona. I arrived at the airport at the correct reporting time and initially we were informed at the Indian Airlines desk that the flight would be on time. At the last moment, however, we were told that the plane was one hour late. During travels, there is always a chance of delay. All modes of travels such as cars, trains and buses are prone to delays. While there may be genuine reasons for such delays, it is not uncommon that such cases arise due to the behaviour of some unruly passengers or due to inefficient management of the schedules. All this involves a considerable waste of time and constitutes a substantial loss to the nation. Yet it is at times such as these that one realizes what a great blessing faith is, for it compensates for every loss. There is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad to the effect that one extraordinary thing about a believer is that everything turns out well for him. If everything goes according to plan, a feeling of thanksgiving is aroused in him, but should his plans go awry, he realizes that man can only propose; it is God who disposes. In this way he comes closer to the Lord.

Easier Said than Done

After an hour-long wait, we boarded the plane. After taking my seat, I picked up the Indian Airlines in-flight magazine (Swagat, March 1986) and began to read about how Indian Airlines is one of most widely ranging airline companies, possessing a big fleet, consisting of a variety of aircrafts. It provides a daily service of 240 flights, landing at 73 airports all over the country, besides which its planes also fly to Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangkok and Bangladesh. It has agreements with various international airline companies, “so wherever you are, Indian Airlines is within reach.”

The aircraft I had boarded was still standing on the runway, and I was reading all these impressive things in the in-flight magazine, when, all of a sudden, we heard an announcement over the loudspeaker that we should all alight from this plane. It seemed that we were to make the journey to Poona in another aircraft. So, all the passengers disembarked and boarded another aircraft. Clearly, more time elapsed in this process and the plane was eventually two hours late. The words, “We wish you a comfortable journey,” were written in bold letters in the in-flight magazine, which made me think how easy it is to say things, but how difficult to convert one’s words into actions.

Muslims in Poona

Muslims in Poona number one lakh (100,000) a sufficient number to accomplish any constructive work, should they set their minds to it. But, unfortunately, the state of Muslims in Poona is much the same as that of Muslims in other cities. Instead of applying themselves to constructive work, they waste their time and energy quarrelling among themselves and making futile demonstrations. Christians in Poona are fewer in number than the Muslims, but they far exceed their Muslim counterparts in the amount of constructive work they perform.

Negative Approach of Muslims

A Hindu building-contractor in Poona constructed a multi-storey apartment building. Immediately Muslims were alarmed that their houses were being exposed and their purdah violated, so they began a campaign against the contractor. He pointed out that there was a Muslim-girls’ school nearby, next to which the very Muslims whose children attended the school had built a multi-storey building similar to the one constructed by himself. The apartments in that building had then been rented out to the public. Did this not amount to a violation of their purdah? Why did they not launch a similar agitation in that case too? That was the end of the Muslims’ agitation and the building remained in its place.

A similar situation arose in connection with a mosque in Poona named Masjid Munshian. It is situated on one side of a road. On the other side of the same road and a little further down, a hotel by the name of Silver Inn has been built. This hotel includes amongst its facilities a Permit Room, or, in other words, a licensed bar. The Muslims, fearing that the sacrosanctity of their mosque was being violated by the consumption of liquor near at hand, decided to observe January 26, 1985 as a “black day”. Posters were fixed on walls, slogan raised, and on January 26, a number of Muslims put up a shed outside the hotel, vowing to observe a hunger strike until this liquor-dispensing tavern had been closed down.

A delegation of the Muslims went to the office of a local Marathi newspaper, Tarun Bharat, in order to register their protest. The editor pointed out to them that the owners had built their hotel at a considerable distance from the mosque, and that the bar in the hotel had been opened with Government permission. “Besides” he said, “in the other direction from your mosque, there is another mosque situated quite nearby. Right beneath the walls of that mosque, Muslims are engaged in the illegal sale of liquor. Why not launch a campaign against them to end their illicit trade?" So, once again, the Permit Room remained untouched, while the protest campaign of the Muslims fizzled out after just one day of noise and commotion.

Hindu Organizations in Poona

The last time I was in Poona, I went round Noble College, a large education institute, belonging to the Christians of Poona, while this time I had the opportunity of inspecting the building of a Hindu organization by the name of Jnana Prabodhini. Despite the large scale of its activities, this organization does not accept any help from the Government. Part of its programme is financed by fund-raising, while the remainder comes from its own industrial and agricultural projects. Jnana Prabodhini is engaged in a wide range of activities. One of its functions, for example, is to select talented individuals from Hindu youth and prepare them for the I.A.S. examination. These people later take over key Government positions, thus ensuring that a degree of influence is maintained in administrative circles.

There is another Hindu organization in Poona, called Sadhu Vaswani Mission, which is engaged in a wide range of academic activities. One of its schemes has been given the name: Life-beyond Project. This project can be described as a systematic effort to rationally and scientifically prove the validity of the doctrine of reincarnation. Research on this topic is being conducted on a worldwide scale. There is yet another institute here, Vasant Vyakhyanmala, in which lectures are held every year in the month of May, the holiday season, on a wide range of religious and historical topics. Highly qualified people are invited for these lectures from all over the country. To attend these lectures, one has to obtain a ticket, which is bought at a price. Even so the spacious auditorium is packed to capacity.

One special quality of the Hindu community is the diversity of their activities. Take, for instance, Gandhiji’s boycott of foreign cloth (1921). Muslims were as much a part of this campaign as Hindus, but there was one important difference between the approaches adopted by the two communities. If Hindu, on the one hand, burnt cloth from the mills of Lancashire, and Manchester, then they also established hundreds of cotton mills in their own country, whereas Muslims kept on burning foreign cloth, but did not establish any mills of their own. Such has been Muslims’ approach to every issue in modern times. They are easily incited to destructive activities, but, when called upon to perform constructive work, they remain impassive, as if they have not even heard the call. When anyone wishes to gain popularity among the Muslims, what he does is raise some negative slogan in their midst. To present a positive programme before Muslims is tantamount to sacrificing one’s own position, but it ought to be accepted that encouragement is the only way to breathe new life into the Muslim community as a whole. Since no Muslim leader of modern times has shown himself willing to make this self-sacrifice, the Muslims are caught in a rut of constant negativity.

Programmes in Poona

While I was in Poona, from March 19 to March 22, a total of nine meetings were held, in which I addressed audiences consisting of both Muslims and Hindus. Particularly noteworthy was a public meeting held in the hall of the Tilak Samarak Mandir, the largest and most famous Hindu temple in Poona. This meeting which took place on the evening of March 20, was attended by the Mayor of Poona, along with a considerable number of highly educated people. The topic of this address, laid down by the organizers of the meeting, was: The Prophet of Islam: Founder of the Modern Age.

I gave a one-and-a-half hour talk on this subject and the audience listened attentively from beginning to end. Some Hindu brethren afterwards offered comments such as these: “We have not seen a Maulvi like this before. We had no idea that this was the meaning of Islam.” Many bought books published in English by the Islamic Centre from a bookstall set up outside the hall, among these being” Muhammad: The Prophet of Revolution. Specially for the occasion, the organizers had printed some pamphlets consisting of articles from AI-Risala translated into Marathi. These were distributed among the audience.

Progress of AI-Risala Mission in Poona

AI-Risala, and the cause it represents, are by the grace of God receiving wider and wider dissemination in Poona. One of the programme organizers told me that, in comparison to previous trips, this time they had laid less emphasis on publicity, yet the attendance for my talks was much larger than on previous occasions. On Friday, March 21, a meeting was arranged in the Makkah Masjid of Poona prior to the congregational prayers. On reaching there I saw this sentence above the door of the mosque: “High station in life comes from raising oneself, not from raising slogans and banners.” There were at least twice as many people in the mosque as compared with the number who normally attend Friday prayers. In spite of this mosque being so large, it was filled to capacity. Similar audiences assembled for every meeting which was held.

One gentleman put forward a suggestion that AI-Risala be published in regional languages. He said that about three-quarters of Gujrati- and Marathi-speaking Muslims, for example, were able to read only Gujarati and Marathi script. They were not able to read Urdu. AI-Risala would not have to be translated into these languages. A transliteration would be sufficient, with the original Urdu rendered into Gujarati and Marathi script. He said that this would not only be beneficial to Muslims, but also to people of other faiths who were able to understand Urdu, but could not read it.

Another member of the audience said that nowadays only those newspapers and journals which had the backing of some major organization were able to last. Whichever publication you looked at, he said, appeared as if the person behind it were someone else. “AI-Risala has been coming out regularly for the last ten years, and with such an impressive format,” he remarked. “Who is its sponsor?” I told him that the sponsor of AI-Risala was God, and no one else. ‘‘Then this is no less than a miracle,” was his reply.

Advice to Youth

Some youngsters asked me for my autograph. This is what I wrote for one of them:

“In order to obtain something, it is not enough for one to desire it. There is a price for everything in life and until one has paid the required price, one will not be able to achieve the object of one’s desire.”

When one person asked me to give him some advice, I told him:

“Hardships are the price paid for living a principled life.”

Addressing some young people, I said: “Whatever is in your hearts, that is what you should utter with your tongues; whatever you wish for yourselves, you should wish the same for others too; when you are dealing with mortal men, imagine that your dealings are with Almighty God.”

One gentleman told me this quotable quote:

“In everything, look before you leap; But in charity, leap before you look.”

Return from Poona

On the evening of March 22, 1986, I returned from Poona to Delhi. On the plane I was given the Madras edition of The Indian Express to read. On page three, there was a report of the March 21 proceedings in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. The Budget was being debated. A Congress- I-member, A. Arumogam, rose and made a speech in which he laid emphasis on the need to promote Hindi in the State. Since he was speaking in English, Finance Minister Mr Nedunchezhiyan asked the member if he had any knowledge of Hindi, and he replied: “Chhota chhota maloom hai.” (I know a little)