Hundred Great Muslims

254 Hundred Great Muslims
over the country. At the time of the partition of the Indian subcontinent,
the Anjuman had assets worth Rs. half a million. More than 250 books were
translated and compiled by it.
The most ambitious programme of the Anjuman was the Compilation of
the Dictionary of Scientific Terms which was started in 1917 and was completed
under his supervision in 1925, when the Anjuman published this invaluable
dictionary. The Anjuman, under his Editorship, started three journals, including
the quarterly "Urdu ", which was launched by Maulvi Abdul Haq at Aurangabad
in 1921 and was soon recognised as the best literary journal in the country.
Most of the literary researches about Urdu, conducted under the auspices
of the Anjuman, specially about the early Urdu literature, were done by Maulvi
Abdul Haq himself. He had taken up the early development of Urdu literature
of a period several hundred years before Wali.
With the assumption of power by the All-India National Congress, first
in the Provinces, and later at the Centre, Urdu-Hindi controversy had taken a
serious political turn and assumed an unusual importance. Hindi was patronised
by the Hindu Congress and backed by its unlimited fmancial resources and
powerful press. Urdu, which was backed by the Muslim League had one man
behind it, Maulvi Abdul Haq-who had made it as his life mission. It was at this
stage that he came in contact with Quaid-e-Azarn Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who
extended him his whole-hearted support.
In September 1947, when Delhi was in the grip of communal frenzy, the
Head Office of the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu in Dariyaganj, was set on fire and
many invaluable manuscripts were reduced to ashes. This has only one parallel,
though on a much bigger scale, in the burning of the invaluable literary treasures
of Baghdad by Hulaku Khan in 1258, of the magnificent library of Tripoli
(Syria) by the Crusaders, and of the famous library of Alexandria (Egypt) by
Julius Caeser.
This act of vandalism broke Maulvi Abdul Haq's heart but. not his
indomitable spirit. He had to migrate to Pakistan, to start his work afresh in the
newly-born country.
He settled down at Karachi and started the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu,
Pakistan, which founded the Urdu College, a unique experiment in the country
of teaching all sciences and arts through the Urdu medium. In this, he was very
successful as was abundantly clear from the splendid results of the Urdu College
in the University examinations which brought home the fact that students could
learn difficult subjects better through the medium of their mother tongue, and
that Urdu was capable of teaching all subjects. His ambition was to establish a
Urdu University in Pakistan on the lines of the Osmania University of Hyderabad,
but he did not live to realise this ambition.