S. M. Ikram

S. M. Ikram

S. M. Ikram at his desk, c. 1935.
Native name شیخ محمد اِکرام
Born Sheikh Muhammad Ikram
(1908-09-10)10 September 1908
Chak Jhumra, Lyallpur, British India, now Pakistan
Died 17 January 1973(1973-01-17) (aged 64)
Lahore
Occupation Civil servant, historian, biographer and author
Citizenship Pakistan
Alma mater Government College, Lahore
Genre History, Biography, Urdu literature
Spouse Zebunnisa (1910–1991)
Children Hamid, Khalid, and Zahid Ikram, and Shahida Azfar

Sheikh Muhammad Ikram (Urdu: شیخ محمد اکرام; b. 10 September[lower-alpha 1] 1908 – 17 January 1973) better known as S. M. Ikram, was a Pakistani historian, biographer, and littérateur. He was member of the Indian Civil Service (which he joined in 1931). In 1947, when Pakistan emerged from British India, Ikram opted for Pakistan and served in the Civil Service of Pakistan. On July 1, 1966, he was appointed as Director, Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore, a position he occupied until his death in 1973, at the age of sixty-four.

Personal life

S. M. Ikram's parents were from Rasulnagar, a small town in the Wazirabad Sub-Division of Gujranwala District in the Punjab in present-day Pakistan. His father, Sheikh Fazal Kareem, was a Qanungo, a pre-Mughal hereditary office of revenue and judicial administration; his mother was Sardar Begum. Ikram was the eldest of five brothers and two sisters. Ikram's father wanted to name his son Abdul Qadir, after the name of the editor of the first Urdu language magazine, Makhzan, but his own father (Dasaundi Khan) prevailed to name him after his friend, the Assistant Editor of Makhzan, "Sheikh Muhammad Ikram".[lower-alpha 2] Ikram was married on December 30, 1936 in Gujrat to the elder of two daughters (Zebunnisa and Zeenat) of Mian Mukhtar Nabi ("Mianji"), at the time Deputy Director, the Punjab Agriculture Department. Ikram's wife passed her matriculation examinations from Delhi, and obtained her B.A. in Persian, English, and History from Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore. At his death in Lahore on January 17, 1973 he was survived by his wife, Zebunnisa (1910-1999), and four children.[lower-alpha 3]

Education

Ikram completed his primary education in Kacha Gojra (located between Faisalabad and Toba Tek Singh); his secondary education, from Mission High School, Wazirabad; his matriculation, in 1924, from Government High School (that later became Government Intermediate College), Lyallpur; from where also he passed the Faculty of Arts (F.A.) examinations in 1926. During these four years in Lyallpur (1922-1926) Ikram developed his taste and proficiency in the Persian language and poetry. From Lyallpur he moved to Lahore and graduated from Government College with a B.A. in Persian (cum laude), English, and Economics, in 1928; and an M.A. in English Literature in 1930.

Professional life

Although a full-time civil servant, S. M. Ikram is more famous for his prolific output as a published writer.

S. M. Ikram and Allama Iqbal, London, 29 December 1932.[lower-alpha 4]

After obtaining his M.A. (1930) Ikram appeared for the ICS examinations in January 1931 in Delhi. On selection, he was sent in September to Jesus College, Oxford for two years (1931-1933). On return from England in October Ikram was posted to various positions in the Bombay Presidency (November 1933 to September 1947). At partition, he opted for Pakistan and after attending an official farewell in Puna on September 18, 1947, he emigrated to Pakistan and took up his official position on September 29, 1947. He taught at Columbia University in New York (as a Visiting Professor in 1953-1954, and visited again in 1958-59 and 1961-62. It was here that he made the transition from literature to history and started writing in English rather than Urdu.

Major works

A major difficulty in reviewing the works of Ikram arises from the fact that he published interim works which he revised often, in the light of his new findings: correcting mistakes, adding, deleting, and rearranging sections, expanding one volume into two (changing the title of the work in the new edition and reverting to the old title in the next edition). In many cases the revisions were sufficiently major for the original and the revised to be treated as two separate works. A study of these differences is still awaited.[lower-alpha 5]

Works in the Urdu language

In their final versions, S. M. Ikram's major works in Urdu consist of biographies of two major literary figures in Urdu, and his magnum opus, the three-volume intellectual history of Muslim India and Pakistan, comparable in scope and method to Vernon Parrington's Main Currents in American Thought (1927):

Works in the English language

With the birth of Pakistan, Ikram took up his official duties in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and his attentions turned toward nation-building both in his official duties and his personal commitments.

In August 1953 Ikram took leave for one yearto take up the position of Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York, which he visited again in 1958-59, and 1961-62. At Columbia he encountered an entirely different (non-Muslim, English-speaking) audience and was introduced to professional historians and their methods which, with his sympathy with Islam, facility in the Persian language, familiarity with original sources, and learning acquired over years of reading, writing, and reflecting, he found deficient:

In 1953-54, when I undertook a year's teaching assignment at Columbia University, the need for a book in English, dealing with all aspects of Indo-Muslim history, was forcefully brought home to me. I felt this need particularly with regard to American students who, in the absence of anything better, had to fall back upon Vincent Smith's Oxford History of India or similar compilations.[lower-alpha 7]

Ikram's lectures at Columbia were the basis for three books:

Unfinished works

At the time of his death, Ikram had been working on the draft of two books: one, a candid history written after he had retired and could write freely, entitled A History of Pakistan, 1947–1971, was finished and was to have been published by June 1973; the other, A Biography of Quaid-e-Azam, in which he wished to remedy the gap between the scholarship on Gandhi in India and that on Jinnah in Pakistan, was at an advanced stage of preparation.[lower-alpha 9] Unfortunately in the disarray surrounding his death both manuscripts were lost.[lower-alpha 10]

Honors and awards

S. M. Ikram receiving an honorary D. Litt. from the Nawab of Kalabagh. Ayub Khan (President of Pakistan) is seated at right.

List of publications

The following list is based largely on Moazzamuddin (1994, and 1990).

Works in Urdu

Works in Persian

Works in English

Notes

  1. ↑ This is the date on his passport. According to Moazzamuddin (1994, hereafter Life), who interviewed close family members for his biography of Ikram, there is a minor dispute over his exact day of birth: according to Ikram's sister Surayya, it is September 2; while another report has it as August 21 or 22.
  2. ↑ Muazzamuddin, Life, 14, who relates this from Mrs. S. M. Ikram. In the opinion of one of Ikram's lifelong friend, it indicative of the father's expectations of the son: Professor Hameed Ahmad Khan (1973, cf. Muazzamuddin, Life, 16); Khan relates this from Ikram's brother, S. M. Iqbal.
  3. ↑ For more on S. M. Ikram's family members see Khaled Ahmed, S. M. Ikram: Saga of a family of extraordinary distinction, Friday Times, April 20–26, 2007.
  4. ↑ This photograph appears as the frontispiece in Ikram's first book, Ghalibnāma, which is dedicated to (tr.) "The interpreter of reality, Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal, May we live long under his shadow (mudda zilluhū--lit. may his shadow be extended, traditional expression of respect for revered elders)" and also in his anthology of Persian verse by poets of Indo-Pakistan origin, Armaghān-e-Pāk, from the 5th century Hijri (12th century CE) to Iqbal, first published c. 1950.
  5. ↑ A notable exception is: Muazzamuddin (1990).
  6. ↑ Maulānā Sayyid Sulaimān Nadvī, Hayāt-e Shiblī (Azamgarh, Dārul Musannifīn, n.d. c. 1943). In 1909, Shiblī had demurred when Maulvī Nazīr Ahmad's biographer, Maulvī Iftikhār `Ālam Mārharvī, had asked his permission to write his biography. In 1914, Shiblī wrote to Sulaimān Nadvī: "Some time, when you are done with all the other works of the world, you write it." (Makātīb-e Shiblī, vol. 2, 1966, 264-265, and vol. 1, 1971, 107).
  7. ↑ Preface to S. M. Ikram, Muslim Rule (2nd ed. 1966).
  8. ↑ The book is not ,as a distinguished American historian has been misled to believe: "a one-volume version of Shaikh Muhammad Ikram’s three-volume Urdu [Kausar] trilogy."Barbara D. Metcalf (2005). This may have been an echo of Abbott (1968, 233): "A. T. Embree has prepared an English edition of much of S.M. Ikram's three-volume Urdu study, Āb-i-Kauthar (Lahore, 1952), Mawj-i-Kauthar (Karachi, 1958), and Rūd-i-Kauthar (Karachi, n.d.), titled Muslim Civilization in India (New York, 1964)." Frances W. Pritchett (n.d.) states the correct position: "Muslim Civilization in India was edited by Ainslie T. Embree, ... He created it out of the author's 712-page History of Muslim Civilization in India and Pakistan (Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1993 [1961]), by removing most of the notes and many specialized passages, leaving a kind of bare-bones account."
  9. ↑ The outlines of this can be seen in the chapter on Jinnah in Ikram's Modern Muslim India (2nd ed. 1977, pp. 354-471, written in June 1965).
  10. ↑ For details, see Muazzamuddin, Life, 35.
  11. ↑ MRCAS probably refers to membership of the Royal Central Asian Society.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/28/books/adventures-in-abandonment.html?pagewanted=all
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