Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and His Audiences

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was one of the prominent public men of the later half of the nineteenth century. Gradually, after the Revolt of 1857, Indians became used to meetings, public addresses, associations and conferences in the European manner, practices that spread from Bengal to different parts of northern India. This essay is a tentative attempt to portray the kind of audiences Sir Syed addressed and the ideas put forward there. The task has been simplified by the collection of lectures and speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in Urdu, first published as early as 1900 and now reprinted (in 2012).