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Chapter
6:
Further Work
Links
present on this page:
Diversified
Work ||
Guru
Nanak’s Chola
|| Prosecutions
|| Visits
to Important Cities
|| Scope
of Writings
|| Universality
of Divine Revelation
|| Death
and Crucifixion of
Jesus ||
Advent
of Messiah and Mahdi
|| The
Review of
Religions
||
Diversified
Work
The years that followed were
years of the greatest tribulation for Ahmad, and, at the
same time, years of the greatest activity in his life. He
was fifty-five years of age, the age at which a man in the
Indian climate is supposed to have exhausted his energy;
but, in Ahmad’s case, the time of his greatest activity
begins just where it ends for others. His work became so
diversified that it can hardly be supposed that he could
find time for writing books. He received a large number of
guests and visitors from all parts of India and he attended
to them personally. He had to educate his disciples, to
satisfy enquirers and to meet opponents, and he passed hours
with them at meals, in regular daily walks and after the
five daily prayers. As he was at the zenith of his
reputation when he laid claim to Promised Messiahship,
enquirers were addressed to him in very large numbers, and
his mail bag, although very heavy, was disposed of by him
personally till very late in life. He had to undertake
journeys to meet his opponents in controversial discussions
- Muslims, Christians and Arya Samajists; and, the most
repugnant of all duties, he had to appear in courts to
answer criminal charges and defamation suits brought against
him by his opponents. Yet in the midst of all those varied
occupations which would hardly seem to leave any time for
serious literary work, he produced, during that period of
seventeen years, over seven thousand pages, much of which
was original research work, of closely printed matter in
Urdu, Arabic and Persian in book form alone, while, before
the age of fifty-five, he had produced only about eight
hundred pages. An inexhaustible store of energy seems to
have been pent up within his heart; and all this in spite of
the fact that, from early youth, he was afflicted with two
diseases, syncope and polyuria, which at times weakened him
very much, but, when the attack was over, he was again at
the helm, quite like a young man.
A few facts may be noted here showing
the diversity of Hazrat Ahmad’s occupations. His
controversies with the orthodox ‘Ulama, held at
Ludhiana, Delhi and Lahore, in 1891 and 1892, each lasting
for several days, have already been mentioned. In 1893, he
was engaged in a very important controversy with the
Christian missionaries at Amritsar, and that occupied him
for over two weeks. It was in that controversy that he laid
down the principle that every claim as to the truth or
falsehood of a religious doctrine, and the arguments for or
against it, should be produced from the sacred book which a
people followed, and he showed with great vigour that the
Holy Quran alone fulfilled that condition. The proceedings
of this controversy are published in a book entitled Jang
Muqaddas, which means "Holy War".
Guru
Nanak’s Chola
In 1895, he turned his
attention to Sikhism, another offshoot of Hinduism, which
had gained considerable strength in the Punjab. His
enquiries into the religious scriptures of the Sikhs led him
to the conclusion that the founder of Sikhism had not only
come under the influence of Muslim Sufis, but that he was in
fact a Muslim, though the movement started by him took a
different turn owing to political reasons. To set a seal on
this conclusion, he undertook a journey to Dera Nanak, a
village in the Gurdaspur District, and one of the sacred
places of Sikhism. A chola (cloak), which is a relic
of Guru Nanak himself, and which is in the custody of his
descendants, is preserved there. It is a long cloak with
short sleeves and is made of brown cloth. A tradition in the
Sakhi of Bhai Bala, more commonly known as
Angad’s Sakhi, states that the chola was
sent down to Nanak from heaven and that upon it were written
the words of nature in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hindi and
Sanskrit. Upon Nanak’s death, the chola passed
to his first successor, Angad, and thus to successive Gurus,
till the time of the fifth Guru, Arjan Das. In his time, the
chola was obtained by Tola Ram, in recognition of
some great service done. After some time, it fell into the
hands of Kabli Mal, a descendant of Nanak, and, since then,
it has remained in the hands of his descendants at Dera
Nanak. On account of the high repute and sanctity in which
the chola was held by the followers of Nanak, the
practice became common at an early date of offering
coverings to protect it from wear and tear. The mystery
which surrounded the chola became deeper by the
increased number of coverings, which hid it altogether from
the eye of the worshipper. Only a part of the sleeve was
shown, but, by constant handling, the letters on that part
became quite obscure.
As the founder of the Ahmadiyya
movement had already come to the conclusion that Guru Nanak
was in fact a true Muslim, he also thought of solving the
mystery enshrouding the chola. Accordingly, on the
30th September, 1895, he started, with some of
his friends, for Dera Nanak. By special arrangements made
with the guardian of the chola, the numerous
coverings, mostly of silk or fine cloth, were taken off one
by one, and the actual writing on the chola was
revealed. This was nothing but verses of the Holy Quran, and
they were at once copied. This wonderful disclosure of the
writing on the chola showed clearly that Nanak was a
Muslim at heart. The result of the investigation was
published in a book, called the Sat Bachan; and,
though the orthodox Sikhs were greatly excited when it
appeared, yet the truth of its statements concerning the
chola has never been questioned.
Prosecutions
After this, Ahmad had to leave
Qadian on several occasions in connection with certain cases
brought against him by his opponents. In 1897, he had to
appear in the court of the District Magistrate of Gurdaspur
to answer the charge of abetment of murder, brought forward
by Dr. Henry Martyn Clarke of the Church Missionary Society.
The allegation was that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had deputed one
of his disciples to murder Dr. Clarke. The orthodox Muslims,
represented by Maulvi Muhammad Husain of Batala, and the
Arya Samajists, represented by Chaudhury Ram Bhaj Dutt, the
President of Arya Samaj, Lahore, who offered to conduct the
case free of charge, joined hands with Dr. Clarke. The
District Magistrate, Capt. M.W. Douglas, after a thorough
inquiry, found that the chief witness in the case had been
schooled in his evidence by certain Christian missionaries
who worked with Dr. Clarke, and he acquitted Hazrat
Ahmad.
In he next year, he had again to go
several times to Gurdaspur and to Pathankot to answer a
charge of breach of the peace, which, it was alleged by the
Police, he had threatened by the publication of certain
prophecies. The other party in this case was Maulvi Muhammad
Husain of Batala. In January 1903, he had to appear at
Jhelum to answer charges in two cases of defamation brought
against him by Maulvi Karam Din. Both these cases were
dismissed at the first hearing. At Jhelum, he was received
with great enthusiasm by the public, and nearly one thousand
persons entered into his bai’a in a single day.
During the latter part of the year 1903, he had to appear
several times at Gurdaspur in connection with another
defamation case brought by the same complainant who had
failed at Jhelum. On account of the academic discussions to
which it gave rise, the case was protracted for nearly
eighteen months. For about five months, it had a daily
hearing, and, during that time, Ahmad had to take up his
residence at Gurdaspur. This case also ended in his
acquittal on appeal. Thus, during the eight years, 1897 to
1904, a great part of his time was taken up by the various
cases in which his opponents tried to involve him
criminally, but in all of which they signally
failed.
Visits to
Important Cities
After that, he again paid
visits to certain important towns to remove the
misunderstandings created by false propaganda against him.
He first went to Lahore, in September 1904, and there
delivered a lecture to an audience of over ten thousand
people of all classes and creeds. After that, in November
1904, he went to Sialkot, where he delivered the famous
lecture in which he explained his mission to the Hindus,
stating that the Hindu prophecies relating to the advent of
a reformer were also fulfilled in his person. The underlying
idea was clearly the unification of all the great nations of
the world. Almost every nation expected the advent of a
reformer in the latter days, and the fulfilment of the hopes
of all nations in one person was certainly the best means of
unifying them.
In October 1905, he went to Delhi,
where, in private gatherings, he spent about two weeks in
explaining his mission. On his way back from Delhi, he
stopped at Ludhiana and Amritsar and delivered lectures at
both places. The lecture at Amritsar had, however, to be
curtailed, owing to the interference of some fanatics, and
the mob outside pelted him and his companions with stones as
they left the lecture-hall. His last journey was again to
Lahore, in the closing days of his life, in April, 1908. For
about a month, he continued at informal meetings to explain
his position to the gentry of Lahore and to other visitors.
The late Mian Sir Fazl-i-Husain, who was then practising as
a barrister in Lahore, attended one of these meetings and
asked him pointedly, whether he did or did not denounce as
kafir all those Muslims who did not accept his
claims, and he gave a categorical reply in the negative.
[Note
1 (Starts): About
four years earlier the same question had been put to him at
Sialkot by the Mian Sahib, who was then practising there. At
that time, Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal also was present, and
about two years ago, he bore testimony in a letter written
to a friend that the same reply was given then.
[Publisher's
Note: "Two years
ago" refers to 1935. In connection with Iqbal's testimony
about the reply given by the Founder of the Ahmadiyya
Movement in 1904, please see Maulana Muhammad Ali's booklet
Sir Muhammad Iqbal's Statement re: the Qadianis.]
Note
1 (Ends)]
At several meetings he
explained that he laid no claim to prophethood, and that in
his writings he had used that word in only a metaphorical
sense, to imply one who made a prophecy, in which sense it
had previously been used by the great Muslim
Sufis.
Scope of
Writings
In the midst of all this
distraction, worry and harassment, and in spite of the
persecution, which sometimes took a very serious form, he
went on wielding his pen with incomparable facility and
added seven thousand pages of very valuable literature to
the eight hundred pages written in his earlier life which
had gained him the reputation of being the greatest
religious writer of his time. The value of this achievement
is, however, immensely enhanced when it is realised that it
deals with almost all the important religions of the world -
with all the offshoots of Hinduism, such as Arya Samaj,
Brahmo Samaj, Sanatan Dharm and Sikhism; with Buddhism,
Judaism and Baha’ism; with all the prominent sects of
Islam such as the orthodox, the Shi’as, the Kharijites,
the Ahl Hadith and others; and last but not least
with Christianity, which was his most important theme. He
fought even against Atheism and Materialism.
The immense variety of the subjects
dealt with is not, moreover, the only distinguishing feature
of Ahmad’s religious literature. It is the originality
and thoroughness with which he handles every topic that
marks him out as the greatest religious writer of his time.
Entirely fresh light was thrown on many Islamic subjects.
Islam’s outlook on religion was most liberal, and the
Holy Quran laid down in precise words that prophets had
appeared among all nations; yet the Muslims recognised the
Divine origin of only the Jewish and Christian religions. It
was Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who laid stress on the point that
every religion had a Divine source, though its teachings may
have undergone corruption in its later history, and that,
though Islam recognised the termination of prophethood in
the person of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, it did not mean
that God had then ceased to speak to His righteous servants,
because speaking is an attribute of the Divine Being and it
can never cease to function. Similarly, Ahmad threw new
light on the conception of jihad, which was
mistakenly supposed to mean "the killing of an unbeliever
who did not accept Islam". This he showed to be an entirely
mistaken view. Jihad, he showed, in the first place,
conveyed the wider significance of carrying on a struggle in
any field, in the broadest sense, and the struggle required
for carrying to the whole world the Divine message contained
in the Quran was the greatest of jihads, jihadan
kabiran, according to the Holy Book itself. War against
the unbelievers was only one phase of jihad, and it
was allowed, he further showed, only when it was defensive.
Such abstruse problems as those relating to the next life,
heaven and hell, reward and punishment, resurrection, the
physical, moral and spiritual conditions of man, and a
number of other similar matters were discussed with a
freshness and originality which drew words of praise from
some of the greatest thinkers of the time. He dealt fully
with all these subjects in a lecture delivered at the
Conference of Religions, held in Lahore in December 1896, to
which a mixed audience of all religions listened with rapt
attention for two days. That lecture was translated in the
Review of Religions, and, when that paper was sent to
Count Tolstoy, he replied that he was deeply impressed by
the originality of the writer. That lecture has to this day
been recognised as the most powerful exposition of the
teachings of Islam.
Universality
of Divine Revelation
In his criticism of other
religions, he was equally original and forceful. Take as an
example his discussion of the different offshoots of
Hinduism. To Brahmoism, which denied revelation from God, he
offered his own religious experience, claiming that not only
did God speak to different nations of the world through
their great sages and prophets in the past (which
established the fact that Divine revelation was the
universal experience of all nations of the world), but also
that speaking was an attribute of the Divine Being and that
He spoke even now as He spoke in the past, Ahmad himself
being a recipient of Divine revelation in this age. The idea
of the universality of Divine revelation was, however,
carried to its furthest limit when it was further explained
that in its lowest form - in the form of dreams coming true
and of visions - it was the universal experience of
humanity.
Another modern Hindu reform movement,
the Arya Samaj, arose as a revolt against Hindu idolatry and
against its millions of gods, but it was Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
who pointed out that polytheism and multiplicity of gods was
an idea so deep-rooted in Hinduism that even the Arya Samaj
could not get rid of it, and that the doctrines of
co-eternity of matter and soul with the Divine Being, and
the belief that they were uncreated and self-existent like
God Himself, were remnants of polytheism. On Sikhism, a
three-hundred years old Hindu sect, he shed entirely new
light by showing not only that its conception of Divine
Unity and its other fundamental religious ideas were taken
entirely from Islam, but also that its founder, Nanak, was
actually a Muslim.
Death and
Crucifixion of Jesus
It was, however, in the sphere
of his controversy with Christianity and in questions
relating to the death and second advent of Christ, matters
over which hung a great pall of mystery, that Ahmad showed
masterly originality and thoroughness. Muslims and
Christians both believed that Jesus Christ was alive in
heaven. The former held that he was taken up alive just
before the crucifixion and that his semblance was thrown
upon someone else who was taken for Jesus and crucified in
his place. The latter believed that Jesus himself was
crucified but that he was raised to life on the third day
after crucifixion and then taken up to heaven. Both further
believed that he would come down to earth again before the
Resurrection and destroy the Anti-Christ. The mystery
surrounding Christ’s death was solved by showing that,
although he was nailed to the cross, he did not remain on it
for a sufficiently long time to expire, that he was taken
down alive and placed in a spacious room where his wounds
were attended to, that by the third day he had recovered and
gained sufficient strength to be present at a secret meeting
of the disciples, that he then left for Afghanistan and
Kashmir where the ten lost tribes of Israel had settled, and
that he ultimately died a natural death, at the age of about
a hundred and twenty years, in Srinagar, where his tomb is
still known as the tomb of Yus Asaf. This was quite an
original solution of the mystery hanging over the
crucifixion and the post-crucifixion appearance of Jesus
Christ. Every link in this long chain of fresh facts was
established on the basis of the Holy Quran and Hadith, of
the historical elements contained in the Gospels and of
other historical, ethnological and geographical evidence,
which undoubtedly required immense research work. While the
mystery relating to the crucifixion of Christ was thus
solved, and the central assumption that Jesus took away the
sins of the world by his death on the cross, on which rested
the whole structure of Church Christianity, was thus
demolished at one stroke, and it was shown that the
historical elements in the Gospels belied the religious
doctrines attributed to them.
Advent of
Messiah and Mahdi
A still deeper mystery hung
over the second advent of Jesus. This subject was rendered
the more complicated by its association with many others,
such as those relating to the Anti-Christ, Gog and Magog,
the coming of the Mahdi, the rising of the sun from the West
and so on. Ahmad’s solution of this mystery was also
original. The second advent of Jesus Christ was to be taken
in exactly the same sense as was the second advent of Elijah
before him, which Christ himself had explained as signifying
the advent of one in his spirit and power. It was a very
simple explanation, yet it had never occurred to any
Christian or Muslim thinker before him. The explanation of
the coming of the Mahdi was also original. The Mahdi was no
other than the Messiah, an idea which had never previously
occurred to any Muslim in spite of the Prophet’s hadith
which had plainly stated that there was no Mahdi but the
Messiah.
These matters having been settled, the
Anti-Christ had next to be discovered. In this case, too, he
was original. In the Hadith, the Dajjal was clearly
spoken of as coming forth from a church, and this gave Ahmad
the clue to his discovery. The Church had indeed represented
the teaching of Christ as just the opposite of what it
actually was, and, therefore, the Church was the real
Anti-Christ. The Anti-Christ being identified, there was not
much difficulty in discovering the Gog and Magog. These were
the two great races, the Teutons and the Slavs, who, as
represented in this age by the English and the Russians, had
become predominant in the world. The rising of the sun from
the West meant, in symbolic language, the sun of Islam,
whose shining in the West was bound up with the second
advent of Christ. The West proper had remained unaffected by
the message of Islam; it was through the Promised Messiah
that the Anti-Christ had to be vanquished and the way opened
for the propagation of Islam in the West.
The
Review of Religions
All these great truths were
not the laborious discoveries of a great scholar which
should have taken years, though a scholar Hazrat Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad undoubtedly was; they blazed in upon his mind
suddenly through Divine inspiration, when he was required to
proclaim that Jesus Christ was dead and that he himself was
the Messiah whose advent was promised in the latter days.
Nor were these just the visions of a great seer. These were
the grand realities, the realisation of which was the great
aim of Ahmad’s life. Therefore, in the midst of all
those occupations and harassments to which reference has
been made above, he laid with his own hands the foundations
of the work of carrying the message of Islam to the West.
The Review of Religions, a monthly magazine in
English, was started in January, 1902. It was the first
religious magazine in English to deal with Islamic matters,
and it was conducted on rational lines which appealed
equally to enlightened Muslims and to non-Muslims, and was
well-suited for presenting Islam to the Western
mind.
The following judgment of this paper
is from the pen of a very hostile writer, H.A.
Walter:
"One of the cleverest of
Ahmad’s followers, Maulvi Muhammad Ali, M.A., LL.B.,
was called to the editorship of this periodical, and at
one time he was assisted by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din . . .
This paper was well-named, for it has given its attention
to a remarkably wide range of religions and to a great
variety of subjects. Orthodox Hinduism, the Arya Samaj,
the Brahmo Samaj and Theosophy; Sikhism, Buddhism,
Jainism and Zoroastrianism; Bahaism, Christian Science
and Christianity have all received attention, as well as
Islam in all its ramifications, both ancient and modern,
such as the Shi’ites, Ahl-i-Hadis, Kharijites, Sufis
and such representative exponents of modern tendencies as
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Syed Amir Ali."
The Review of Religions had
thus become the mouthpiece of the Ahmadiyya movement both
for removing the misconceptions that prevailed against Islam
and for making a comparative study of religion. It was a
preliminary step for carrying into practice the grander
ideas of establishing, in the West, Muslim missions for the
propagation of Islamic literature, and of translating the
Holy Quran into European languages, ideas to which Ahmad
himself had given expression, as early as 1891, when he
claimed to be the Promised Messiah, but which were carried
into effect only after his death. The translation of the
Holy Quran was taken in hand within a year after his death,
while the first Muslim mission in Europe was established
three years afterwards. These were the natural developments
of the lines on which Ahmad led the movement. He had nothing
to do with the minor sectarian differences among the
Muslims, and prepared a band of devoted followers for the
spiritual conquest of the West. The seed was sown, the men
were prepared who should take care of the tender plant, and
the time had come for the master to depart.
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