In a community where the women are educated, the children are education, said Akhtarul Wasey, former vice chancellor of Maulana Azad University, Jodhpur, while speaking on the topic 'Muslims of India: Past, Present, and Future' at the meeting organised by the Sarhadi Gandhi Memorial Society at Islam Gymkhana, Marine Lines, on Tuesday.

"The question to ask is not whether women are wearing a burqa or not, but whether they are educated," said Wasey who made the keynote address at the annual lecture to commemorate Badshah Khan, freedom fighter and Bharat Ratna awardee from the then North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan) who was called the 'Frontier Gandhi or Sarhadi Gandhi for his association with Mahatma Gandhi. "I am asking Muslims to remember this: Islam places no restrictions on education."

Wasey said Muslims should start a dialogue with Hindus so that the communities can work together as partners in nation-building. "For a thousand years, Muslims lived either as rulers or subjects in India. For the first time in 1947, they started living as equals," he said.

Like Wasey, other speakers said that educating the young generation was an imperative need. "Educate your children; end hatred and ignorance," said Dr Mohammed Ali Patankar who spoke about Badshah Khan's 'Red Shirts' or Khudai Khidmatgar movement which opposed the country's partition. 

Former Member of the Legislative Assembly, Nawab Malik said that Muslims should not join the clamour for government jobs but should use opportunities abroad like other communities. "If we continue to accuse others of discrimination we will never progress. Our biggest problem is that we do not obey the law and break it. Live as law-abiding citizens," he said, referring to demolitions of properties by different governments because the buildings were illegal. "If we break the law and cry injustice, it will not help our progress "

Idris Naikwadi, a Member of the Legislative Council, said that Badshah Khan who spent his life as a messenger of Hindu-Muslim unity and and as an advocate for education, was in jail for a major part of his life, first as a freedom fighter in British India and later as an opponent of Pakistan government's policies. "He was given a Bharat Ratna but has been forgotten," he said.

The Sarhadi Gandhi Memorial Society was set up in 2019 by advocate Syed Jalaluddin to preserve the memory of Badshah Khan when there was a worry that his legacy was in danger of being forgotten. Jalaluddin said that he formed the group after a hospital named after Badshah Khan in Faridabad built by former refugees from the 1947 partition of India was renamed by the Haryana government. "When partition became a reality and Hindus from the NWFP wanted to move to India he created a convoy of Pathans to escort them safely to the Indian border. The grateful refugees named the hospital after him," said Jalaluddin.