Maulana Mohammad Ali

Muhammad Ali Jawhar (10 December 18784 January 1931) was a Pashtun pan-Islamist politician and leader of the Pakistan Movement.

Born into an anti-colonial family, Jawhar was a member of the Aligarh movement. He was elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1923, but his tenure lasted only a few months owing to disagreements with the organization—particularly with Gandhi—over the abrupt ending of the Non-Cooperation Movement. In the following years, he ended up being antithetical to it and accused Gandhi and Motilal Nehru of succumbing to the appeasement of Hindus as they regarded Muslims "the minorities" in India and refused to accommodate Muslim demands in the political representation. Being one of the founders and the 10th president of the All-India Muslim League, he represented the party in the first round-table conference held in London.

Jawhar was a Pashtun Muslim freedom activist, an Islamic scholor, early leader of the Pakistan Movement, co-founder of the All-India Muslim League, a pre-eminent member of Indian National Congress, a journalist and a poet, a leading figure of the pan-Islamist Khilafat Movement and one of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia.

Early life and career Muhammad Ali was born in 1878 into a into a Pashtun family of the Rohilla Yousafzai tribe at Rampur in North-Western Provinces, British India. He was born to a wealthy family with roots in the city of Najibabad. His father, Abdul Ali Khan, died when he was five years old. His brothers were Shaukat Ali, who became a leader of the Khilafat Movement, and Zulfiqar Ali. His mother Abadi Begum (1852 – 1924), affectionately known as 'Bi Amman', inspired her sons to take up the mantle of the struggle for freedom from the British colonial rule. To this end, she was adamant that her sons were properly educated. Due to the efforts, determination and sacrifice of their mother, he and his brothers were able to get a good quality education.

Upon his return to India, he served as education director for the Rampur state, and later joined the Baroda civil service. He launched the English weekly The Comrade in 1911 in Calcutta. It quickly gained circulation and influence internationally. He moved to Delhi in 1912 and there he launched an Urdu-language daily newspaper Hamdard in 1913.

Jawhar worked hard to expand the Aligarh Muslim University, then known as the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, and was one of the co-founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia in 1920, which was later moved to Delhi.

He represented the Muslim League delegation that travelled to England in 1919 to convince the British government to influence the Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal not to depose the Sultan of Turkey, who was the Caliph of Islam and the presumed leader of all the Islamic nations of that time. British government's rejection of their demands resulted in the formation of the Khilafat committee which directed Muslims all over India to protest and boycott the British government.

He restarted his daily Hamdard and left the Congress Party. He opposed the Nehru Report, which was a document proposing constitutional reforms and a dominion status of an independent nation within the British Empire, written by a committee of Hindu and Muslim members of the Congress Party headed by President Motilal Nehru. It was a major protest against the Simon Commission which had arrived in the Subcontinent to propose reforms but having no local member nor making any effort to listen to the local voices and aspirations. Mohammad Ali was put in jail. He became a critic of Gandhi, breaking with fellow Muslim leaders like Abul Kalam Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, who continued to support Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. which is near the Dome of the Rock, says: "Here lies al-Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Hindi."

Commemorative postage stamp

The Pakistan Postal Services issued a commemorative postage stamp for Muhammad Ali Jawhar in its 'Pioneers of Freedom' series on his birth anniversary in 1978.

Speeches "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 I still dream that old dream of 'United Faiths of India.'" —Mohammad Ali Jauhar; from the Presidential Address, I.N.C. Session, 1923, Cocanada (now Kakinada).