Legacy of Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer
By Irfan
Engineer
A storm has
destroyed everything in my life. I am not even beginning to come to terms with
the loss in my life. Death, like storm, is God’s hand and you are so helpless.
Never knew that death would snatch my very loving father Dr. Asghar Ali
Engineer from us. I was not prepared yet for this colossal loss! But let me
remember what he has bequeathed to me. My sister Seema rightly told a reporter
that our father wanted us to inherit his legacy equally – legacy of his
teachings. In the lull after the storm I am trying to reflect on his legacy to
gather some pieces of my inheritance.
What is the
legacy that I have inherited from my father?
1)
The discipline and the punishing schedule that he followed.
He never budged from his daily routine which included morning walks to maintain
his health; working from morning 8:00 am till 10 pm in the night with a small
nap in the afternoon until he was hospitalized on 13th February 2013; divided
his day into four segments – administrative work, responding to e-mails,
reading and writing, and followed the time schedule meticulously. Office staff
was not allowed to violate. Visitors from outside city would be entertained
even in violation of the time distribution, but visitors from within city were
requested to seek appointment, but even then he would be considerate if they
came from far.
Even on Sundays and holidays, the schedule would hold for him and even
if he had to sit in the office alone. Sunday evenings sometimes was a time for
a little stroll or a drive. Frequent travels deprived us, his family members,
from his company.
However, he did not distinguish between the groups that invited him. His
commitment once given, he would honour it, even if later some more important
invitations arrived on his table. Even his ill health would not force him to
change his mind. He has conducted his peace and conflict resolution workshops
when sick. This discipline and long day enabled him to contribute so much to
the world but perhaps contributed towards shortening his life. How organized
and disciplined can we be?
2)
Nothing except the values of justice, equality,
love, dignity, and diversity were sacred for him. No rituals and no traditions
and no cultures. Cultures were only media through which humans made a sense of
the world. All cultures, all faiths were to be respected. Except the values, everything
else should be subjected rational scrutiny and reformed, reinterpreted,
re-understood and refashioned to serve the sacred values.
3)
His lifelong search for truth knew no limitations
and was checked by no sacred symbols, rituals, traditions, language or culture.
Truth could be achieved only through relentless and fearless pursuit. No cost
was high enough to attend truth. Truth required only an honest inner search
dictated by conscience. He paid a price for his search of truth – transferred
often and promotions delayed when in service of Bombay Municipal Corporation as
a civil engineer for his honesty and for leading Engineer’s Association, took
voluntary retirement to work full time for the cause, suffering great loss of
income, socially boycotted by Syedna’s establishment which meant being cut off
from his mother, brother, sister and other near and dear ones, his house and
office was attacked and completely destroyed by Syedna’s fanatical followers in
February 2000, was physically attacked 6 times by Syedna’s fanatical followers
with sharp weapons in order to kill him, often abused and threatened, but
nothing deterred him from his search for truth and no sacrifice was too high a
price to be paid for his principles. He was like a rock so far as his principles
were concerned. How honest and relentless can we be in our search for truth?
4. ) If one
realized any dimension of truth, it should be shared with people and without
fear of consequences and in language that people understand. He often told me
that the difference between a prophet and philosopher was that prophet
communicated his message in language that people could easily understand
whereas often philosophers spoke in language comprehensible only to a
privileged few. The latter made careers, the former brought about social change
and left a lasting impact and legacy. As an activist scholar, Engineer always
talked in simple understandable language through his writings and oratories. He
consciously chose that! He had begun writing in academic language initially,
but soon checked himself, for he wanted to work for social change! How
passionate can we be in our quest for social change? Will we walk the talk?
5 ) Dr.
Engineer often said that search for freedom required enabling environment. It
required freedom and democracy and free dialogue. Three Ds, he would say –
Democracy, Dialogue and Diversity. All were necessary for honest understanding
and knowing each other and more facets of truth in all its complexity. One had
to be a patient listener and open minded before we strive for truth. The
differences between two individuals and two or more groups can be made a bridge
to reach out each other and to enrich our understanding through dialogue with
those with whom one had differences.
Diversity was important as different cultures represent different systems of
meaning and visions of good life. Since each realizes a limited range of human
capacities and emotions and grasps only a part of the totality of human
existence, it needs other cultures to help it understand itself better, expand
its intellectual and moral horizon, stretch its imagination, save it from
narcissism to guard it against the obvious temptation to absolutize itself, and
so on.
This does
not mean that one cannot lead a good life within one’s own culture, but rather
that, other things being equal, one’s way of life is likely to be richer if one
also enjoys access to others, and that a culturally self-contained life is
virtually impossible for most human beings in the modern, mobile and interdependent
world. No culture is wholly worthless, that it deserves at least some respect
because of what it means to its members and the creative energy it displays,
that no culture is perfect and has a right to impose itself on others, and that
cultures are best changed from within.
6.) For a person who has realized truth, it was
absolutely necessary to be humble. More than anything, Dr. Engineer was a very
very humble human being. While returning home from office (when he could walk
home), often he would be stopped on road by a stranger and the insignificant
stranger would discuss or ask his doubts and even argue with Engineer on
various issues. He would passionately argue with the stranger his opinions for,
sometimes, hours. My legs would ache standing with him but until the stranger
was fully satisfied or decided to quit, Dr. Engineer would passionately keep
discussing with him. Later when I would inquire why he invested so much time,
he would reply, everyone was important. He was highly approachable and anybody
could contact him anytime of the day and night with their queries. He would
reply to abusive e-mails, and he could patiently reason with every opponent.
His humility
influenced even the most indoctrinated cadre who passionately opposed his
views. His patience in arguing with them and making them see reason was
remarkable. No case was beyond redemption for him. Each human being could be
made to see reason and convert her to be a justice and peace worker. Humility
was very natural for him and was the other side of coin of truth, but it was
also his tool to win over worst opponent! He has conducted his peace workshops
in challenging conditions that the organizers can afford. Sometimes in
conditions that would appall any decent person. People were important to him
and not luxuries and comfortable situations. He would easily trust people and
particularly those who were needy. Compassion for those needy, suffering and
victims of injustice was an important value for him which he followed lifelong.
He was softer than molten wax as far as marginalized, oppressed and persons
needing justice, or suffering or otherwise needy people were concerned.
7 ) Peace
with justice was another value to which Dr. Engineer was absolutely committed
to. There could be no peace without justice and justice meant not only
restorative justice where violators of one’s rights were brought to justice and
punished and the victims had the right to reparations. Justice for him also
meant distributive justice where class based inequalities were not to be
tolerated. In order to work for peace, he studied communal conflicts in depth
and understood the roots of the conflict were in economic, social and political
inequalities. He wrote extensively on major communal conflicts and explained
that though religion was used as a tool to promote conflicts, religion was not
the root cause of the conflicts. The real nature of conflict was competition
between elite to control socio-economic institutions, including the state and
establish one’s hegemony over the other. Religion was used as a tool to
mobilize large number of gullible people. Communal conflicts would not be
possible without wide spread prejudices against the minorities. Prejudices
against the minorities were the foundation on which the infrastructure of communal
conflicts was built. Dr. Engineer painfully gathered facts and data to counter
the prejudices against minorities convincingly. Many people have approached
this author to recall how the workshop and sound arguments and facts placed by
Dr. Engineer changed their attitudes towards minorities. One Haryana police
officer by the name Sharma met me while Dr. Engineer was in ICU to tell me how
attending Dr. Engineer’s workshop was life changing moment for him. He never
hated minorities from that day onwards and, more important, would never believe
in stupid propaganda like Aurangzeb would eat only after gathering 20 manns of
sacred threads of Brahmin.
8) One truth
that he arrived through his search was the need to liberate religions from the
clutches of the priestly establishments and restoring agency to a common
believer would rejuvenate the religion, but more importantly, reveal the hidden
meanings that we had failed to understand hitherto. Religion would become true
moral power in the hands of the oppressed to fight injustice and change the
oppressive status-quo. To him religion was not religion if it didn’t inspire to
question status-quo, question the dominant understanding, and taught the
followers to be rebels. He challenged the understanding of the left ideologists
for whom religion was opium of masses. Even to Marx, religion was not frozen
into single role of opium. Marx propounded that religion was also sigh of the
oppressed and heart of the heartless world.
9) Gender
justice and equality in general and for Muslim women in particular was a great
passion for him. He pressed his entire knowledge of Islam and understanding of
Quran, Islamic history, study of Islamic jurisprudence to service for the cause
of Muslim women. Quran, according to him talked only of rights of women and not
of men in Surah An-Nisa and reference to men was always with respect to their
duties and not rights. That was to set the social imbalance right where women
only had duties and no rights. He argued that during medieval period, as Muslim
rulers conquered territories and spread, and became an empire, patriarchal
culture snatched the rights given to women by Quran. Muslim Ulema seldom could
counter his Quranic arguments and would respond with and defence of patriarchal
cultural values on the basis of morals. He instructed me to give his daughter
and my sister her share in his property after him. He of course struggled for
equality of all and was part of struggle for implementation of Mandal
Commission Report much before we all knew about it.
10) Mission
of Asghar Ali Engineer was to liberate religion from religious establishments,
make it a tool to question established interpretations of religious scriptures
and make it a inspiration to search for truth and change the oppressive social
reality; to embrace diversity and learn to co-exist through dialogue of
cultures and equality, particularly gender equality and rights of Muslim women
and by bringing scholarly works to bear to achieve these objectives was the
mission of Asghar Ali Engineer. He expanded the horizons of knowledge and
values and opened up many avenues for us to achieve the goal of equality,
justice, peace, dignity for all and diversity. Asghar Ali Engineer was an
institution in himself. Are we ready to carry forward his mission with the
discipline and dedication that he had? We will strive!! May his soul rest in
peace.
