The Great Reformer

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful Praise and blessings be on the Holy Prophet.

It was most dearly that Dr. Basharat Ahmad wanted the third volume of his book, Mujaddid Azam, to be expeditiously printed after he had completed its manuscript, but a shortage of paper, the result of the ongoing Second World War, temporarily delayed its printing. In the interim, he proceeded to Bombay in January 1943 to spend some time with his son, Mian Naseer Ahmad Faruqui, who was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and was serving at the time as the Collector of Bombay. Dr. Basharat Ahmad wanted to utilize this time to illumine the heart of his son, a faithful young man, with the knowledge of the Holy Quran. However, soon after reaching Bombay, he fell critically ill. He had been unwell for long but had been bearing his illness with remarkable fortitude. But this latest onslaught proved fatal, and on the afternoon of April 19th, 1943, he left this earthly abode to meet his Creator. His remains were transported the same day to Lahore by train, the Frontier Mail, and he was interred in the Miyani Sahib cemetery on April 21st after the Friday prayer. O Allah! Forgive him and have mercy on him, pardon him and overlook his faults. O Allah! Honor him just as a guest is honored and widen his grave for him and elevate his status in Paradise!

Dr. Basharat Ahmad retired in 1931 after a long period of government service. It was probably in 1932, as I recall, that he was offered a job in one of the princely states, and he wrote to me for advice. I replied with a Persian couplet of Hazrat Mirza Sahib:

Life has gone by and nothing remains but a few days;

‘Tis better to devote them in remembering someone (meaning Allah) from dawn to dusk.

His heart had always been inclined towards Allah, but after receiving my reply, he gave up all his worldly engagements and firmly resolved to serve Islam. He had the above verse framed and hung on the wall in front of his desk and devoted the rest of his life to writing articles based on his vast

knowledge. He had already written a series of articles for the newspaper, Paigham-e Sulh (Message of Peace), but now he broadened the scope of his writings. Besides continuing with writing articles for the Paigham-e Sulh, which were so brilliant in their exposition and so spiritually uplifting in their impact that readers searched for them before they read anything else in the periodical, he also wrote a number of booklets in those days. The titles of some of these booklets are, Al-Ruh (The Spirit), Tanasukh (Transmigration of Souls), Taqdir (Divine decree), Quran Karim ka Alamgir Paigham-e Hurriyat (Quran’s Universal Message of Emancipation), Wiladat Masih (The Birth of Jesus).

In 1934, Dr. Basharat Ahmad wrote a detailed commentary of the thirtieth part of the Holy Quran, which was published under the title, Anwar-ul-Quran (The Light of the Quran). What a remarkable commentary! It transformed faith from a mere belief into practical everyday experience. Whoever read this commentary felt a new spirit in his belief in the existence of God and the Day of Judgment. Soon afterwards, he published the second volume of Anwar-ul-Quran, which was a commentary on the twenty-seventh part of the Quran. Dr. Basharat Ahmad loved the Holy Quran with such passion that wherever his government employment took him, he gave lessons to people in the understanding of the Quran and instilled in them a deep love of the Holy Book. His last public exposition of the Quran was at the annual gathering of the Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam Lahore (in 1942). This rendering was so full of wisdom and so spiritually uplifting that I expressed my heartfelt wish at the same annual gathering that he (rather than I) should have been the one to write Bayan-ul-Quran (Exposition of the Quran)!

But his love of the Quran now took him in another direction. Dr. Basharat Ahmad’s great love and understanding of the Quran had developed under the tutelage of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, the Mujaddid (reformer) of the fourteenth century Hijrah. Dr. Basharat Ahmad was greatly pained to see his mentor’s name being sullied by friends and foes alike. Both were misrepresenting Hazrat Mirza Sahib’s status and claims, the opponents motivated by prejudice and hostility and misguided friends by their exaggeration. The result was the same in both cases—a tarnishing of the fair name of this saint of Qadian. The heart of this righteous man, Dr. Basharat Ahmad, bled at this injustice and he decided to write a detailed biography of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Mujaddid (reformer) of the fourteenth century Hijrah, which would record his real life and dispel all false imputations.

Given his advanced age and several chronic illnesses, this seemed like an impossible task, but he embarked on this venture in 1936 with the same fortitude and trust in Allah as Prophet Noah had shown when he embarked on the ark with the prayer, “In the name of Allah be its sailing and anchor-

ing.” His work was often interrupted by bouts of severe illness that left him incapacitated for months, but it seemed that the Almighty had a purpose, which needed to be fulfilled through him. After every bout of illness, the mighty hand of God lifted him up and put him back on his feet as if to say, “There is yet work to be done for which this persevering man is needed.”

We were very close in the last years of his life and conferred several times daily. This enabled me to observe his labor of love from close quarters. I too have been involved with publishing from the early age of 25, and have written thousands of pages; even so, I was astounded at the productivity of the author of Mujaddid Azam. He labored like a scholar in an exam, who races with time to complete his paper. Dr. Basharat Ahmad’s paper was finally completed, and the Examiner was so pleased with him that He lost no time in summoning him to His Presence to give him a great reward.

The first volume of Mujaddid Azam was published in December 1939 and the second volume followed in December 1941. Despite his indifferent health, Dr. Basharat Ahmad personally supervised all aspects of the publication of these two volumes, including the proof-reading of the 1400 pages that comprised these volumes. At times, Dr. Basharat Ahmad questioned the need for the third volume of Mujaddid Azam because the material he intended to present in the third volume had mostly been included in the two earlier volumes. However, he had announced at the start of this project that the biography would comprise of three volumes, and so Allah enabled him to complete the project as conceived. Had it not been for the shortage of paper, the third volume would have been published by December of 1942 (in the lifetime of the author and under his care and supervision). (Because of the untimely death of the author), the Ahmadiyya Movement assigned the work of publishing the third volume, including proofreading, to Maulvi Dost Muhammad. The latter carried out this work conscientiously, and may Allah reward him for that, but perhaps not to the same high standard as the author would have done himself. If the readers find any errors or shortcomings in the current volume, they are kindly requested to bring them to the attention of the undersigned for correction in future editions.

Muhammad Ali

President, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam Lahore.

January 10, 1944