Why India Must Remember its First Muslim Jurist

WHEN Justice Abdul Nazeer addressed the 16th national council meeting of the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad at Hyderabad last December, he said, "Great lawyers and judges are not born but made by proper education and great legal traditions, as were Manu, Kautilya, Katyayana, Brihaspati, Narada, Parashar, Yajnavalkya, and other legal giants of ancient India." In the symposium on "Decolonisation of the Indian Legal System", Justice Nazeer also said the "continued neglect of their great knowledge and adherence to the alien colonial legal system is detrimental to the goals of our Constitution and against our national interests…".

Perhaps Justice Nazeer should have also recalled 19th-century jurist Justice Syed Mahmood (1850-1903). A pioneer in bold assertions against the colonial judiciary, he produced incisive legal commentaries that reflect an audacious dissenter's point of view. Writing in an Urdu newspaper, his father, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, narrates Mahmood's resignation from the Allahabad High Court in 1893 to "protect the self-respect of Indians against the racism of British judges".

In that era, conceptions of nationhood were still evolving in India. Indian judges would not muster the courage to contest the racism of the imperial power or fellow European judges. But Mahmood did, in intrepid ways. Khan founded the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh in 1877 and figures prominently but contentiously, stereotyped as a British loyalist and separatist in debates on contemporary nationalism. Mahmood supported his father's modern education project, but unfortunately, his contributions are largely ignored by historians and the legal fraternity.

By 1920, MAO College, now Aligarh Muslim University, was the most prominent residential university in the country. Its history department has been a premier centre for advanced studies for a half-century. In 1889, primarily on Syed Mahmood's initiative and his gifts in terms of books, journals and cash, AMU established a law department. Yet, he was neglected in its research. Only in 1973, seven years after the centenary of the Allahabad High Court, the Aligarh Law Journal brought out Mahmood's contributions, and legal scholars reflected on his high calibre as a lawyer and judge.

The good news is, in 2004, Alan M. Guenther did his doctoral thesis on Mahmood at McGill University, Canada, which is available online for the public to access. His meticulous and well-researched account touches almost every aspect of Mahmood's public life. Guenther also published an extended essay in 2011 on Mahmood's views on English education in 19th-century India. (In 1895, Mahmood had written a book on the theme for his speeches at the Educational Conference.)