Shia Scholar, Journalist and Martyr of 1857 Moulvi Muhammad Baqir

Early Life

Born in Delhi in 1780, Muhammad Baqir received his early education from his father before enrolling at Delhi College in 1825. He came from a scholarly Shia family of the city and later joined Delhi College as a teacher around 1828, serving there for several years.

Moulvi Muhammad Baqir (1780-1857) was a Shia scholar, teacher and pioneering journalist of Delhi. Educated at Delhi College, where he later taught, he became one of the earliest figures in Urdu journalism when he launched the weekly Dehli Urdu Akhbar in the mid-1830s. Through the paper he covered the social, religious and political life of Delhi for roughly two decades. A devout Shia, he also founded a periodical dealing with Shia religious topics, built an Imambara near Kashmiri Gate and a mosque near Panja Sharif, and was known for promoting Hindu-Muslim unity in the city. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857 he used his newspaper to rally public opinion against British rule, renaming it Akhbar-uz-Zafar in tribute to the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. After British forces recaptured Delhi, Baqir was arrested for his nationalist writings and executed in September 1857 without trial. He is remembered as the first journalist to be martyred in the Indian freedom struggle. His son, Muhammad Husain Azad, went on to become one of the most celebrated writers and literary historians in Urdu.

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