Between the compassion of wrinkles, glimmer of experienced eyes and quiver of untired lips, one gets a glimpse of the genius that is Dr Moazziz Ali Beg.
Born on August 27, 1932, Dr Beg began his career at the age of 20, as a teacher of psychology at Aligarh Muslim University. The second milestone came two years later in 1954 when his first research paper was published from Delhi.
Now at 72, he has many memories to share. No wonder he has been a Member of UP Legislative Assembly, president of Urdu Academy (UP), and chairman of the Department of Psychology at Aligarh Muslim University, figuring in five prestigious international journals like Asia’s Who’s Who, New Delhi; Who’s Who of Contemporary Achievement, USA, and International Leaders In Achievements, England to name a few. Phew….!
Dr Beg is still an ambitious man. It’s just that the “wisdom that age and experiences offer have diverted my ambitions from myself to the outer world”.
He is working for a cause which is a desperate desire of many and a shattered dream of many others. Dr. Beg aims to bring about a secular revolution in the country by making a riot-free India.
“I have grown up seeing and believing in love of human beings irrespective of religion and that is what I want to see in the future,” he says.
{{/usCountry}}“I have grown up seeing and believing in love of human beings irrespective of religion and that is what I want to see in the future,” he says.
{{/usCountry}}Dr. Beg is actively involved in writing for peace and communal harmony in India.
Besides having penned his book ‘The Ideological Integration of East and West: an Enquiry Concerning World Peace’, he is also corresponding with various political and religious leaders of different leanings, along with his wife Dr Sangeeta… and, he tells you not to forget that both are Sufis.
Ask him about Life and he quotes Daag:
Kaabey ki hai hawas, kabhi kouney buton ki hai,
Mujhko khaber nahi meri mitti kahan ki hai.
(Sometimes I yearn for Kaaba, at other times for the lane of idols,
I don’t know where I actually belong).
Dr. Beg was among a handful of the members of his family who chose to stay back in India after partition. He attributes this decision to the love he had for his birthplace. And, that got him back to his present project. “It is so sad that from time to time a handful of people with selfish political ends are able to overpower the love all Indians have for each other and incite us against each other on religious grounds.”
His family history goes back to the time of the Battle of Buxar when his descendants came to India from Iran. His grandfather Mirza Irfan Ali Beg was one of the few Indians honoured with the Companion of the Imperial Service Order which granted him direct access to the British Crown. However his father, a staunch nationalist, declined to serve the British. His aunt Roshan Jahan became the first Muslim woman to go all alone to England for higher education in 1926 and later, served as the principal of one of the well-known colleges of the city.
And, thus, not very surprisingly the other side of Dr Beg too is that of an academician. A topper in M.A (Psychology), at the Aligarh Muslim University, he has to his credit 60 research papers published worldwide besides delivering lectures at internationally reputed universities like University of California and University of Munich to name a few. His work has been honoured by such thought leaders of the 20th Century as PA Sorokin of Havard University, FSC Northrop of Yale University and Munford of MIT University.
After being an educationist, writer and a leader “I think I have got almost every thing I asked from life. The only dream now is to make a difference in the way communal issues are dealt with in our country. And I am going to pursue it till my last breath. I wish to see our coming generations concentrate their energies on developmental works rather than waste them on issues that ours and our previous generations have wasted on,” he says.
Tremendous inspiration there… if only, India believed and heard.