Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: The Scholar Who Built the Ministry of Education

He founded a newspaper the British banned within two years. Decades later, he ran the country’s schools for longer than any Education Minister since.

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The Scholar Who Built the Ministry

From a banned Urdu weekly to independent India’s longest-serving Education Minister

1888

Born in Mecca

Home-tutored in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and English.

1912

Launches Al-Hilal

The British ban his Urdu weekly within two years.

1923

Youngest Congress President

At just 35, the youngest person to ever hold the post.

1947

First Education Minister

Serves until his death in 1958, longer than any successor.

The throughline: a scholar who spent a lifetime writing, arguing, and building institutions — a newspaper, a party presidency, and finally a ministry that outlasted him.

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📑 Contents

1Timeline
2A Scholar Turned Freedom Fighter
3Youngest Congress President, Longest-Serving
4Test Yourself
5Independent India’s First Education Minister
6Legacy

Timeline

1888: Muhiyuddin Ahmad is born in Mecca. He later takes the pen name “Azad,” meaning free.
1912: He launches the Urdu weekly Al-Hilal from Calcutta. The British ban it in 1914.
1923: At 35, he becomes the youngest President the Congress has ever had.
1947: He becomes independent India’s first Education Minister, a post he holds until 1958.

A Scholar Turned Freedom Fighter Need to Know

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. CC BY-SA 3.0, National Repository of Open Educational Resources, via Wikimedia Commons.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was born Muhiyuddin Ahmad in 1888, in Mecca.
His family moved to Calcutta when he was two years old.
He was largely home-tutored, and mastered Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and English.
In 1912, he founded the Urdu weekly newspaper Al-Hilal, from Calcutta.
Al-Hilal criticised British rule, and urged Indian Muslims to join the freedom movement.
The British banned Al-Hilal in 1914, under the Press Act.
He later became president of the All India Khilafat Committee.

Youngest Congress President, Longest-Serving Good to Know

In 1923, Azad was elected Congress President at just 35 years old.
He was the youngest person to ever hold that post.
He was elected Congress President again in 1940, and served continuously until 1946.
That made him the longest continuously serving Congress President up to that point.
During the Quit India Movement, he was arrested on 9 August 1942.
He was imprisoned at Ahmednagar Fort, along with the rest of the Congress leadership, for nearly four years.
In 1946, he led the Congress delegation that negotiated with the British Cabinet Mission.
Azad opposed the Partition of India.
At the AICC session that approved Partition, on 3 June 1947, he abstained from voting.

Test Yourself

Independent India’s First Education Minister Great to Know

On 15 August 1947, Azad became independent India’s first Education Minister.
He served in that role for over a decade, until his death in 1958.
He advocated for free, compulsory primary education for every child up to age 14.
He helped establish the first Indian Institute of Technology, at Kharagpur, in 1951.
He also helped set up the University Grants Commission, in 1953.
He co-founded Jamia Millia Islamia, a university that began at Aligarh in 1920.
He died on 22 February 1958, in Delhi, following a stroke.
India awarded him the Bharat Ratna in 1992, more than three decades after his death.

Legacy

Azad’s tenure remains the longest of any Education Minister in India’s history.
Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, in Bhopal, and Maulana Azad Medical College, in Delhi, are both named after him.
His birth anniversary, 11 November, is observed in India as National Education Day.
His own book, “India Wins Freedom,” gives his account of the independence movement’s final years.

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