Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, the founder of the Khaksaar Movement in the Subcontinent

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On August 27, 1963 AD, the prominent Islamic scholar, political theorist, and brilliant mathematician of the Subcontinent, Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, who founded the Khaksaar Movement against British colonial rule, passed away at the age of 75 in Lahore, Pakistan.
Born in Amritsar in undivided India in a prominent Rajput Muslim family influenced by such luminaries as Sir Seyyed Ahmad Khan of Aligarh and the famous Iranian pan-Islamicist, Seyyed Jamal od-Din Asadabadi, he showed a passion for mathematics from his childhood, and completed his Master's degree in mathematics from the University of Punjab at the young age of 19.
He then proceeded to London for higher studies and excelled there as well. On his return to India, he declined the offer of the post of prime minister of the princely state of Alwar, preferring to join the education department and becoming Under Secretary to the Government of India in this sector in October 1917. In 1924, at the age of 36, he completed the first volume of his exegesis of the holy Qur’an in the light of science, titled “at-Tadhkirahâ€‌ and was nominated for the Nobel Prize.
In 1932 he resigned, settled down in Ichhra, Lahore, and devoted his time to the Khaksaar Movement which he had founded two years earlier. He played a role in directing the Muslims towards the independence of British India, for which he was repeatedly imprisoned. He brought out the Urdu weekly “al-Islahâ€‌, and after partition, continued his political activities in Pakistan, where he was imprisoned several times before death closed his chapter.