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Context: American historian and internationally acclaimed scholar of South Asian history and Islam, Barbara D Metcalf received the Sir Syed Excellence International Award for 2022.

Details:

The annual award is given by the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on its founder Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s birth anniversary.
This year, AMU is marking the 205th anniversary of Sir Syed.

Who is Barbara Metcalf?

Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Davis, Metcalf completed her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974.
It was during her postgraduate studies that she developed an interest in the modern history of the South Asia ulema (religious scholars of Islam).
Her doctoral dissertation was on the history of the Muslim religious scholars of Deoband, a reformist religious seminary in northern India founded in the late 19th century
. According to the American Historical Association, her work on the Urdu writings of the ulema showed that they were not “traditionalists” or “fundamentalists”, as often portrayed, but instead inhabited a far more complex intellectual and institutional world. Metcalf served as the president of the organisation from 2010-11.
Metcalf’s writing has contributed heavily to the understanding of the history of India and Pakistan’s Muslim population, especially during the colonial period.
She has also worked on the the Tablighi Jama’at, the international Sunni missionary movement of religious reform that originated in the Indian subcontinent.
Apart from her academic scholarship on the group, she has given expert testimony on behalf of prisoners at the US detention camp in Cuba — Guantanamo Bay, who had been detained for attending a Tablighi congregation, according to TRT World.
Metcalf stated that her studies on the role of Indian Muslims and Islamic scholars in the freedom movement had shown that the ulemas are a social group that have “often been subjected to stereotypes just by looking at their physical appearance” and she appealed to historians to “rise above stereotypes”.

About the award:

The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) bestows a yearly International and National Sir Syed Excellence Award to noted scholars or organsations that produce seminal work in the areas of Sir Syed Studies, South Asian Studies, Muslim Issues, Literature, Medieval History, Social Reform, Communal Harmony, Journalism, and Inter-Faith Dialogue.
The international award, given to Metcalf this year, carries a cash prize of Rs. 200,000, while the national award of Rs 100,000 was given to the Maulana Azad Education Foundation in New Delhi.
The award is named in honour of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), one of the foremost social and political reformers of modern India.

About Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898):

He founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College in 1875, which was influenced by Oxford and Cambridge Universities in Britain, and sought to instill a scientific temperament in the Muslim community and allow Indians to access Western knowledge in their own languages.
He was a man of many distinctions, a civil servant, journalist, educationist, social reformer and historian among others.
He served the British administration before the revolt of 1857.
He has also written a pamphlet titled “The Causes of the Indian Revolt'' to explain the reasons for the revolt from an Indian perspective.
Sir Syed realised that Muslims could only make progress if they took to modern education. For this he started the Aligarh movement.
He also pushed for social reforms and was a champion of democratic ideals and freedom of speech.
Tahzebul Akhlaq (Social Reformer in English), a magazine founded by him, tried to awaken people’s consciousness on social and religious issues in very expressive prose.
In his later years Sir Syed encouraged the Indian Muslims not to join the National Movement. He felt that education and not politics was needed by them.
Sir Syed established the Scientific Society in 1864, in Aligarh to translate Western works into Indian languages to prepare the Muslims to accept Western education and to inculcate scientific temperament among the Muslims.
The Aligarh Institute Gazette, a magazine published by Sir Syed was an organ of the Scientific Society.