This is the thirty-fifth year since Aboobucker Muhammad Abdul Azeez breathed his last, and the Sri Lankan Muslim community is yet to find a replacement to fill the vacuum left by that towering personality, an Iqbalian visionary, an exceptional intellectual, and a patriotic citizen.
As a keen student of Sri Lankan Muslim’s history, politics, and development; as a direct beneficiary of Azeez’s intellectual thoughts and vision; and perhaps with the benefit of historical hindsight I record regretfully at the outset that Azeez, while he was alive, did not win the recognition by his own community that his stature and services deserved.
Today, the unfailing contribution of the Eastern Province Muslims to the food stock of Sri Lanka, the glorious legacy of the Azeez-era of Zahira College, the Young Muslim Men’s Association and the Muslim Scholarship Fund that Azeez founded, the annual Iqbal Day celebrations that he initiated, and the numerous essays and books that he authored in Tamil and English languages speak eloquently the lasting contribution that he made to the development of the Sri Lankan Muslim community. He was indeed a towering personality second to no other Muslim leader in the history of the island.
The solitary palmyra palm that he Azeez nurtured at the entrance of his ‘Meadow Sweet’ home in Barnes Place, Colombo, constantly reminded the visitors of his Jaffna heritage. Haling from a very prestigious and highly educated family in Jaffna, Azeez was a proud product of Vaidyeshwara Vidyalayam and Jaffna Hindu College from where he went on to receive an Honours Degree in history from the University of London in 1933. He was the first Muslim to pass the prestigious Ceylon Civil Service Examination, and in 1942 he was appointed as an Assistant Government Agent and was posted to Kalmunai in the Eastern Province. Azeez’s services to his community and to his country began that year and ended only when he died after thirty-one years.
It was in Kalmunai that he came into direct contact for the first time with the life and conditions of rural Muslims. It was also while serving in that region that he realised with perspicacity that the future of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka lay in the development of the rural Muslims in the East. Steeped in rural poverty and deprived of proper educational facilities the Muslims of Karavakupattu, as the region was known then, were yearning for a breakthrough. His first attempt to ameliorate their condition was to make hundreds of landless Muslim peasants become land owners. “Azeez Thurai Kandam”, an area of paddy land named after him with a deep sense of gratitude by the Muslims of that region, is a silent testimony to his yeoman services. No wonder that Azeez described this part of Sri Lanka very aptly as “Muslimkalin kaazh poomi”, meaning Muslim’s rooted soil.
Another important event occurred while he was in Kalmunai, which was to change his entire outlook on Islam and the future of Muslims for ever. Azeez was a voracious reader to which his personal library of hundreds of volumes on history, politics, philosophy, religion and literature will bear witness. He was an acute observer of developments that were unfolding in the rest of the Muslim world, notably in Turkey under Mustapha Kamal and in the Indian sub-continent during the last days of the Raj. He became a regular reader of a then South Indian Tamil monthly, Tharul Islam edited by the well known Muslim journalist, P. Dawood Shah. One of the regular contributors to this paper from Sri Lanka by way of his poems at that time was the Late Abdul Cader Lebbe from Kattankudy. Lebbe’s poems, written under his pen-name Adhan, carried with passion Iqbal’s vision about Islam and Muslims, and about the true nature of the struggle for Pakistan.
Azeez, who was already an admirer of Muhammd Iqbal, found to his surprise that Poet Abdul Cader Lebbe was also serving as a teacher in Natpittimunai in the same region where Azeez was working. A casual meeting between the two made them the inseparable intellectual twins for the rest of their life. Azeez’s forward to Lebbe’s Iracool Cathakam, and Lebbe’s dedication of his Ceynampunachchiyar Manmiyam to Azeez, and later on an entire poem composed by him to the memory of his best friend speak volumes to this lifelong intellectual partnership.
Iqbal’s philosophy about tawheed, progressive Islam, his condemnation of the obscurantist and stagnant ‘Mullah Islam’, the unique role of man as God’s khalipha on earth, the crucial importance and the true nature of ilm as stressed by the Quran and the Prophet, the proud legacy of the glorious days of Muslim civilization centred in Medina, Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba, and Delhi, and the struggle for Pakistan became the thought ingredients shared by the two friends and moulded the vision of Azeez which set the stage for him to play an even more important role in his career.
Driven by Iqbal’s vision and imbued with a selfless desire to serve his community Azeez found government service too constricting. In his view education became the key to Muslims’ future in the modern world. Although he founded the Kalmunai Muslim Educational Society in 1942 and three years later successfully launched the establishment of the Ceylon Muslim Scholarships Fund, which until now has benefited thousands of poor Muslim children to continue with their education up to university level, he was looking for another position that would permanently tie him with education. The opportunity arose when in 1947 the then Principal of Zahira College, Dr. T. B. Jayah, had to resign his position to accept a ministership in the first independent parliamentary cabinet of the country. The Iqbalian visionary Azeez did not wait too long to throw away the civil service and assume duties as the principal of the premier Muslim educational institution in Colombo at the request of Dr. Jayah.
The year 1948 marks the beginning of the Azeez-era of Zahira that lasted for thirteen golden years until 1961. During his time Zahira became in his own words “the radiating centre of Muslim culture, thought and activities”.
As an educationist Azeez brought to Zahira College the efficiency of a civil service administration, the Iqbalian vision of Islamic thought and culture, and the grass root knowledge that he gained while serving in Kalmunai about the needs and conditions of ordinary Muslims. From this institution Azeez was able to continue serving the Muslim community from where he left as an Assistant Government Agent. In particular, Zahira College became the sole educational refuge to the children of the farming elite of Eastern Muslims. Mr. Izzadeen, the boarding master of Zahira College hostel at that time once remarked, “If the evening train from Batticaloa arrives at the Maradana station on the morning of the beginning of college term Zahira hostel will become full”. Azeez’s Zahira produced generations of brilliant students who later entered the university and became doctors, engineers, surveyors, agronomists, accountants, teachers, and other professionals. Azeez, a strong nationalist, kept Zahira’s gates opened not only to Muslims but also to the poor children from other communities.
Not only in the academic field but also in extra-curricular and co-curricular activities the success of Zahira during his time was envied by other leading colleges in Colombo. As a principal of a leading college, Azeez had one advantage over his counterparts, and that was his membership in the Peradeniya University senate. He used this position to pick and choose the most promising of the graduates who passed out of the university and recruited them as teachers at Zahira. It was a delightful sight to see every Monday morning at the college assembly a galaxy of able teaching staff standing behind the principal in a semicircle to listen to his thought provoking address for half an hour, to be concluded by the announcement of a list of achievements made by the college students during the previous week. Zahira College, like any other Boys school in Colombo, was usually a noisy place; but when Azeez stepped into the corridors of the college there would be pin drop silence. That was the sign of an astonishing respect that his students showed to him every time he walked in.
Azeez’s contribution to Muslim education should be assessed within a historical context. There were four leading Muslim personalities in this field, each playing a unique role to promote Muslim education. M. C. Siddi Lebbe of Kandy in the late nineteenth century was the pioneer who was instrumental in awakening the Muslim elite to realise that their children had to proceed beyond the traditional madrasa learning if they were to compete on equal terms with the other communities in modern Ceylon. The establishment of Zahira College in 1891 it self was a direct result of this awakening.
Second was Sir Razik Fareed in the nineteen fifties who worked tirelessly for the opening of two Government Muslim Teachers Training Colleges, one for men in Addalaichenai and the other for women in Alutgama. He realised the desperate need at that time to produce Muslim teachers to fill the professional needs in government public schools in Muslim areas, which until then remained a monopoly of the Tamils. He was, in many ways, the father of the government Muslim schools that has become the permanent feature of Muslim education in Sri Lanka today.
The third in line was Azeez, a visionary and a theoretician in addition to his practical capabilities, whose focus of interest was to promote tertiary education among Muslims and that too in the English medium. It was in university education that Azeez saw the key to produce a Muslim professional class in the future. Like Sir Seyed Ahmad Khan in India, Azeez dreamt of an Alighar University College in Ceylon and he wanted his Zahira College to grow up to that stature during his tenure as principal. Unfortunately, the government take over of private schools in 1961 and the subsequent events that engulfed the Muslim community left his dream un-materialised until perhaps the establishment of Jamia Naleemia in 1973.
The fourth personality of course was Dr. Badiuddin Mahmud, who as the Minister of Education was able to continue the momentum that was built by his predecessors and took Muslim education to an even higher level. Some cynics said that Badi single handedly turned a ‘business community’ into a ‘teacher community’.
In this history of Muslim education in independent Sri Lanka, which is yet to be written objectively, the role of Azeez, as both an intellectual and visionary, remains unique because he did not have the political clout that Razik and Badi had. While the others were more concerned about the quantity of educated Muslims Azeez was interested in their quality. Without any pomp and publicity but with great tenacity and dedication Azeez quietly equipped generations of Muslim youth with the tool that it desperately needed to achieve a competitive edge in the open market.
Although Azeez did not have much to do directly with Muslim women’s education he was passionate about improving their lot. He was alarmed at the low literacy rate among Muslim women and was forthright in condemning the traditional ulema for misleading the community on the role of women in Islam. Later, when Badi became the Minister of Education Azeez was constantly in dialogue with him on this issue and may have been the brain behind some of the minister’s radical initiatives on this matter, like giving teaching appointments to Muslim girls who had passed even five subjects in their General Certificate Examination.
Azeez was a student of history, a passionate lover of literature and arts, and a great thinker and writer. His article, “Ceylon”, in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, his book, The West Reappraised, his travelogues and other similar publications in Tamil reflect his acute research skill, historical objectivity and lucid presentation. In his last days he was seriously involved in collecting material to write the history of Muslims in Sri Lanka. He had an impeccable command over the English and Tamil languages, which made his oratory captivating and writings attractive. His speeches at the Parliamentary Senate were more than a political statement and reflected his own independent and objective analysis of various subjects under discussion, irrespective of political party considerations. It was Azeez’s intellectual capabilities and academic stature rather than his political affiliations that won him a place in the Parliamentary Senate. Even after that Senate was abolished, and Azeez’s career at Zahira College was over, the governments of the time needed his talent and services which made him to be recruited to the Public Service Commission.
In the field of literature, Azeez developed a nostalgic love toward Arabic-Tamil, a unique contribution by the Tamil-speaking Muslims to both Tamil and Arabic as well as to Islam. His essay, “Arapuththamil Enkal Anpuththamil” yearns for a revival of this somewhat ‘sacred’ dialect written in a modified Arabic script with a mixture of Tamil and Arabic vocabulary. For instance, when the controversy about official language erupted in the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, Azeez, whose grounding in the Tamil language was rock solid and who strongly believed that Tamil is the mother tongue of the vast majority of Sri Lankan Muslims, thought at the beginning of the controversy before giving up later, whether Arabic-Tamil would be an option to choose for the Muslims. His friend Abdul Cader Lebbe convinced him through correspondence that it would be too damaging for Islamic culture in Sri Lanka if Tamil were to be sacrificed in the interest of political expediency.
In spite of all his involvement in public life and sincere commitment to community service Azeez was a family man. He loved his wife Ummul and children Marina, Ali, and Iqbal, and once told me with great pride that he was picking up his Sinhalese speaking ability from a great teacher, his grand child. Azeez was always a smiling person and never allowed his anger to mar his judgement. He was humble, soft spoken, mild mannered, amiable, and generous. The untimely loss of his beloved wife Ummul was too much for his soul to bear. Azeez, who rarely fell sick and took great care of his health was broken-hearted after Ummul passed away. He did not live long after that.
Azeez was an institution and a walking encyclopaedia. His thoughts and vision were far ahead of his time. The visionary who introduced Iqbal to Sri Lanka, the educationist who produced a whole generation of English educated Muslim specialists and professionals, the public servant who rendered yeoman service to the struggling Muslim farmers in the east, the author who won recognition in national and international writers forums, and the patriot whose dedication to his country was beyond party politics is no more with us. It is a fitting tribute to this great intellectual and visionary that his name has been included in the 100 Great Muslim Leaders of the 20th Century, published by the Institute of Objective Studies in India.
(Dr. A.C.L. Ameer Ali hails from Kattankudy and is the son of the well known poet Abdul Cader Lebbe. He was a student of Zahira College, Colombo during the Azeez era , and graduated with Honours in Economics from the University of Ceylon in 1964. He obtained a M.Phil. degree from London School of Economics and Political Science and a Doctorate from University of Western Australia. He is a trained economist and has taught thousands of students in the University of Ceylon, the University of Brunei Darussalam and the University of Western Australia. His services were obtained by the South Eastern university, Sri Lanka as an academic adviser. He is now a senior academic in Murdoch University of Western Australia.
He has published many research articles and presented papers at many international conferences. In Australia he is a leading personality in the Muslim community holding many important post)
