Haji Syed Sajjad Husain was born in 1893 in Shahpur, District Fatehpur, India. His father died while he was still a child, and from an early age his life became one of sustained struggle. He advanced through hard work, courage, self-respect, and perseverance. His formal education was limited, but through determined self-study he acquired an unusual breadth of learning. He had a strong command of Urdu and Persian and also developed a working familiarity with English. His private library, by the end of his life, held thousands of books on history, politics, religion, and general knowledge.
The story of his economic progress or personal standing alone would not have justified a book. What deserves preservation are the other dimensions of his life: his political activity; his concern for Muslim social welfare; his work for the advancement of the people around him; and his relationships with figures who shaped the political life of India in that period. He was an active worker of the Muslim League and the Khilafat Movement and later took an energetic part in the Pakistan Movement. He gave freely of his resources. Although wealth, social standing, and public recognition came to him, pride and arrogance did not. He remained accessible to the needy and concerned, to the end of his life, with the welfare of ordinary people.
His character was a remarkable example of patience and self-command. In India he had known landed property, influence, prosperity, and social honor; the upheavals of the age overturned much of it. Yet he endured loss with dignity. In Pakistan he continued his life in modest circumstances, and in his final years he lived in small quarters — grateful rather than bitter.
Worldly position, wealth, and outward grandeur never became his measure of a person. Even after having once enjoyed considerable status, he did not complain when his own circumstances became simple. Friends who visited him in his last years found him thankful to God, cheerful, intellectually alert, and able to fill even a modest home with warmth and conversation.
The death of his young son, Abdul Hadi, whom he loved deeply, was an especially severe blow. Even then he displayed extraordinary patience and control over his emotions. His life repeatedly illustrated the conviction that what God entrusts to a person is ultimately returned to Him, and that hardship should be met with patience.
Haji Syed Sajjad Husain was my grandfather. The memories associated with him are among the greatest treasures of my life, and I cannot adequately describe my pride in that relationship. I was about seven years old when I came with my grandfather from India to Pakistan. We were among the first in our family to migrate. My childhood and youth were spent in his company. His affection, guidance, and love remain inseparable from my memories, and I still feel their presence today.
— Syed Sajid Husain