Darul Uloom Deoband - India's Independence Movement

India's Independence Movement

In the meeting of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind at Calcutta, in 1926, the participants included graduates of Darul ‘Uloom, Deoband and they supported the group which called for complete independence of India from the British rule. Indian National Congress was to declare complete independence as its goal three years later, in its session at Lahore. Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam or Majlis-e-Ah'rãr-e-Islam (Urdu: مجلس احرارلأسلام‎), also known in short as Ahrar, was a conservative Sunni Muslim Deobandi political party in the Indian subcontinent during the British Raj, prior to the Partition of India founded in December 29, 1929 at Lahore. Chaudhry Afzal Haq, Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, Maulana Habib-ur-Rehman Ludhianvi, Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan and Maulana Dawood Ghaznavi were the founder's of the party.The Ahrar was composed of Indian Muslims disillusioned by the Khilafat Movement, which cleaved closer to the Congress Party. The party was based in Punjab. It gathered support from the urban lower-middle class. The party was associated with opposition to Muhammad Ali Jinnah and establishment of an independent Pakistan as well as persecution of the Ahmadiyya community. The famous freedom fighter Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who visited Darul ‘Uloom during his visit to India in 1969, had said: "I have had relation with Darul ‘Uloom since the time the Shaiykhul-Hind, Maulana Mehmud Hasan, was alive. Sitting here, we used to make plans for the independence movement, as to how we might drive away the English from this country and how we could make India free from the yoke of slavery of the British Raj. This institution has made great efforts for the freedom of this country".