Asghar Ali Engineer, the renowned religious reformer and peace activist breathed his last on 14th May 2013 at his residence in Mumbai. Unlike most people he did not leave behind just two children but thousands of heirs to his ideology and legacy in India and other parts of the world who will carry forward his mission for a just, equal and harmonious world.
A soft spoken, gentle and unassuming person- always clad in a simple white kurta- pajama, Dr. Engineer had become an institution, a legend and the icon of religious reforms and communal harmony even during his life time. His extraordinary contribution to society received widespread acknowledgement and critical acclaim from across the globe and he was conferred many national and international awards including The Rights Livelihood (Alternative Nobel Prize), jointly with Swami Agnivesh (one of the author of this Tribute) in the year 2004 at Stockholm Sweden.
Acknowledged as a walking encyclopedia on the Holy Quran and related Islamic literature and practices, he emerged as a leading religious reformer in the Muslim community, especially in India. Accepting the centrality and inviolability of the Holy Quran for a Muslim, he was able to revolutionise the understanding and practice of Islam by initiating reformist processes even amongst the most conservative sections of society by developing and propagating the method of Creative Interpretation that took as an operating framework the values of equality, justice and contemporary social issues and dynamics. This novel approach of reading the Holy Quran reclaimed the essence of its original teachings to demonstrate that Islam is indeed a religion of peace that emphasizes the values of equality and justice. With this method, he was also able to establish the egalitarian and progressive teaching of Islam on issues of human rights, women, marriage, respect for all religious, communal harmony etc.
Son of a religious priest but a civil engineer by training, Dr. Engineer plunged into the issue of communalism after the riots at Jabalpur in 1961 that had a great emotional impact on him to change the very course of his life. Ever since, he has been traveling relentlessly all over India and other parts of the world to orient, train and motivate thousands of people including policy makers, religious leaders, politicians, police officials, academicians, journalists, students, youth and representatives of civil society etc, on issues of communal harmony and national integration.
The year 1974 brought the second revolution in his life when in response to unrelenting repression of the Bohra Community by their religious priest, Dr. Engineer took up the cudgel of religious reforms to free the community from medieval oppression and thus became an authority on religious matters. But taking on an established and powerful clergy had its price and Asghar Ali Engineer was attacked 5 times in which he was seriously injured and his house totally ransacked in the year 2000. But after each attack he exhibited exemplary courage and strength of his conviction and redoubled his opposition to the reactionary forces to weaken them more and more.
Apart from conducting hundreds of workshops and seminars on issues of communalism and religious reforms, Dr. Engineer amazed every one by his prolific writing that enabled him to publish over 70 books and thousands of articles on communalism and religious reforms at an average of at least 2 articles very week that were published in renowned national and international journals. In the year 2011 he published his autobiography titled “A Living Faith: My Quest for Peace, Harmony and Social Change” that was an instant success and was reprinted in 2012 and translated into Urdu and Marathi. Translations in many other languages are expected to come out soon.
Asghar Ali Engineer and his wife (who died a few years back) not only struggled against oppression and injustice through their lives but also paid a price in death. Though Bohra Muslims, they were denied burial in the grave yard of their community and had to be laid to rest in a Sunni graveyard. But their sacrifices shall not be in vain. Even in death, Dr. Engineer has inspired countless individuals who will continue to take forward his mission of engineering social transformation to doctor society to attain a state of perfect harmony and enlightened religious practices.
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