Syed Abid Husain (1896-1978) was a leading Muslim educator and author of books on Indian Muslim politics and society in the twentieth century. He was also one of the principal exponents of secular nationalism. He was born in Bhopal, the capital of the erstwhile Muslim princely state in India. He graduated from the University of Allahabad in 1920, one of the leading educational institutions of northern India in those days, and went on to study at Oxford and Berlin. He returned to India in 1926 to start his lengthy