CONTENTMENT: THE SECRET TO SUCCESS

2. Now here’s another example of the same kind. This one goes back to the time before 1947, when the British still ruled the Indian subcontinent. It’s taken from the Urdu weekly Al-Jamiyat: Just a few days before the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind conference in Amroha (May 3-5, 1930), a senior member of the Viceroy’s Council, the late Sir Mian Fazl-i-Hussain, invited the renowned scholar Hazrat Maulana Ahmad Saeed Dehlvi and made him an offer. He asked the Maulana to ensure that the Jamiat didn’t pass a resolution supporting cooperation with the Congress at the upcoming Amroha meeting. In return, he said, he would work with the British government to grant the Safdarjung Tomb and the surrounding property and land to the Jamiat for its scholarly work. In his usual humorous style, the Maulana replied, “Mian Sahib, all the respected scholars and leaders won’t let me be fooled like this. We are about to pass a resolution aimed at gaining the entire country— and you’re offering us just a tomb, which is already Muslim endowment land.” Mian Sahib was deeply disappointed by this response. The Maulana personally told this story to the writer. (Fifty Years of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, by Sheikh Abdul Haq Pracha Dehlvi, General Secretary of Jamiat Ulama Delhi Province, published in Al-Jamiyat Weekly, Delhi, January 2, 1970, page 8)