Srinagar, Oct. 17 -- When we read the history of India after 1857, we usually read about a lost war. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan read something else - he read about a lost future. And he decided to rebuild it. The Birth of a Witness - 1817 to 1836 Born on 17th October 1817 in Delhi, Syed Ahmad Khan was not born poor. He was born into the nobility of the dying Mughal Empire. His maternal grandfather, Khwaja Fariduddin, was a former Prime Minister of the Mughal court. His father, Syed Muttaqi, was close to Emperor Akbar Shah II. Young Syed grew up seeing two worlds in one house. Inside, Mughal etiquette, Persian poetry, and Islamic theology. Outside, the rising power of the British East India Company with its English schools, its courts, its new po...