THREE MURDERS, A RAPE AND VIOLENCE

The events of the past week at the Aligarh Muslim University have been upsetting. But what has been most distressing is the draconian decision of the administration to close the university sine die. It would have made some difference had they stayed together and pondered over the concerns and confusions that mark AMU today. Closing the university at a moment of crisis, and hence any possibility of a dialogue, is at the root of what ails the institution today.
Having hinged my argument at the literal and figurative closing of the university as its fundamental predicament, I want to pull myself back from the immediate context of three murders and a rape within an outrageously ridiculous span of six months, and try and probe the larger questions that such unfortunate incidents raise. Why is AMU like any university in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar today? What went so drastically wrong that an institution that boasted of its historical-political significance for more than a century is now a hotbed of chaos, crime and mediocrity?
I firmly believe in the idea of a university, Muslim or otherwise. For me, an academic institution is defined by its inherent logic of intellectual freedom. Any credible academic pursuit has to have such an ideal as its cornerstone. In this case, AMU finds itself in a strange spot. On the one hand, it has to be celebrated as the assertion of more than a century of struggle by the largest minority in India in a majoritarian state. In doing so, notions of the community and its cultural exclusivities are amplified to the extent that they become a parallel ideal within the campus. Anxiety over preserving a particular identity forces the community to resort to “traditions” and “culture” as the sacrosanct concepts, against which even academic excellence is often compromised.
It is this apparent contradiction that has been AMU’s greatest misfortune. How can an institution pursue academic and intellectual goals if it simultaneously puts an embargo on certain questions that can never be asked? Why is it that Islam, for example, as a social formation can never be put to any humanist academic enquiry in the campus? After all, historically speaking, there is not one Islam. People moving from the more culturally specific ‘’Khuda Hafiz” to the Wahabi totalising “Allah Hafiz” have to realise this shift, if not question it.
By limiting discourses within the campus, the University is bound to find itself outside the academic mainstream, and thus deprived of its dynamism. It is for this reason that the largest Muslim institution in India has continuously failed to come out with authoritative or groundbreaking researches on the status of Muslims of India.
The academy here has been largely unsuccessful in responding to phenomena like the rise of the Hindu Right or the globalisation of the Indian economy. Internal assertions like caste-conflicts within Muslims have been hardly addressed within the academy in Aligarh. In fact, the glaring silence of the campus during the period when Gujarat graduated from being a state to a statement is the best example of the institution’s academic sterility and a failure of its vision.
As a witness to that episode, I have to say that an extravagant dinner on Sir Syed’s birthday succeeded in doing what Gujarat could not do in 2002, i.e. constitute Aligarh as a community. It is this myopia and a suicidal obsession with its past that blinds AMU on its way to progress and enquiry.
It is like Bush’s violent closing of the dialogue: “You are either with us or with them.” The binary has no opening. It forecloses any alternative. You are either a slave of the dogmatic AMU mentality, or you are an enemy of Muslims belonging to anywhere from the Hindu Right to the evil West (or if they are a little kind, then you must be a Communist!). The schizophrenia of minorityism can have strange effects.
Against this backdrop comes the question: how can AMU be reclaimed as a brand? While I am uncomfortable with the idea of a brand that the New Economy of India dreams of turning every entity into, I do realise the intent behind such a question.
To begin answering this question, let me state the obvious—a university is a university first, and a cultural artifact later. This is not an inane statement. History best serves its purpose when it shows us the way ahead. The ideals of a movement that Aligarh proudly declares itself to be premised upon have to be perpetually internalised and acted upon, instead of them remaining some hollow slogans reserved for certain jingoistic occasions. The movement that Aligarh was is not over; it cannot be allowed to be either declared dead (or accomplished depending on how you see it) or hijacked by the self-seeking satraps of the campus.
The students have the highest stake in the institution. Their politics has to rescue the university, and hence the movement, from the self-seekers. Simultaneously, they have to be conscious of their historical role in representing a community that needs immediate attention from its intellectuals. Justice Sachar committee report is only the most recent damnation of India’s scorecard, a nation well on its way to be a superpower. The university has to come out of its self-imposed exile and start relating. The faculty and administration in AMU have to respect dissent, for there is no other way to sustain academic discourse. Conditions for dialogue and debates have to be created. Gender parity and justice is absolutely essential. In short, it has to live up to its claims of being a vanguard of Muslims. Merely claiming the status will not do.
It is high time AMU refused to be an island.
The writer, a MacArthur Fellow and research scholar at the University of Minnesota, US, was president of the AMU Students Union in 1999

‘ The university was the site of mushairas; they don’t happen any more ’
MUSHIRUL HASAN

amu, 1964-69

In an ideal world a vice-chancellor should devise plans for the growth and expansion of the university. Instead, the head of the Aligarh Muslim University is forced to seek the Central Government’s intervention and the presence of paramilitary forces to control violence and unruly student lumpenism. Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of the MAO College, expected a renaissance of sorts to occur in Aligarh. Maulana Azad described the university as “the visible embodiment of the victory of the forces of progress”. One wonders if it is the same today. The VC’s appeal is symptomatic of what ails a premier centre of learning.
In the late 1960s, we lived in the shadow of some outstanding scholars. One of them was Mohammad Habib. Few teachers of history and political science could ever have so many pupils who were later to win distinction as scholars. His son Irfan Habib was, of course, the rising star on the intellectual firmament. He used to ride a bicycle then, as he does now. His colleagues rewarded him by denying him an Emeritus professorship. So much for Azad’s “victory of the forces of progress”.
I remember Moonis Raza, an exuberant man who seemed to put all his strength into whatever he said or did; his brother Rahi Masoom Raza, the scriptwriter for B.R. Chopra’s television series Mahabharata, was then a bohemian, radical and revolutionary. Both wrote my English and Urdu speeches for the debates in the university. Interestingly enough, left-wing scholars manned the Arabic and Islamic Studies department: one of them had been a leading light in the Progressive Writers’ Movement. Today, of course, one can merely bemoan the dead legacy of the firebrand Hasrat Mohani—the first to introduce the ‘Complete Independence’ Resolution in 1921—Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Sardar Jafri and Sibte Hasan, all Aligarians.
Although the Tyabji family was probably the first to break away from established family traditions in Bombay, only a handful of middle class families in north India, mostly from the qasbas (small towns) of what was formerly Awadh, educated their girls in colleges and universities. Women teachers and students, therefore, could occupy the cultural space in Aligarh. The presence of the three Zaidi sisters, as they were known, brought the much-needed relief on a campus that could be stifling at the best of times. They symbolised Aligarh’s break with its past in so many ways. One of their colleagues was Ghazala Ansari; her brother Ziaul Hasan worked with the Patriot for years.
Kennedy House, with its imposing mural by M.F. Husain, was the hub of cultural activism. One could listen to Beethoven and Mozart or Indian classical music. My brother took the part of Tiresias in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the lead role in Galsworthy’s She Stoops to Conquer and acted the Gentleman Caller in Tennese William’s Glass Menagerie. Lest I forget, the star performer then and later was Naseeruddin Shah. He and I took part in a Mock Parliament Session in Delhi, and in a debating competition held in Jaipur.
The university was the site of several mushairas; they don’t happen any more. I recall Makhdoom Mohiuddin reciting Ek Chambeli ke Manwa tale; Firaq Gorakhpuri prefacing his ghazal with ‘Bhaiyya-re’; and Akhtar-ul Iman, the poet from Anglo-Arabic College (now Dr Zakir Hussain College in Delhi) and Aligarh-educated, reciting the following lines from his poem ‘The Footprint’ or Naqsh-i Pa:
Where have life’s travellers gone?/Nobody knows/What is this world?/No beginning, no end/The shackles of time yet bind it so fast/Where can I stand free of those chains?
Yet, Aligarh had its pitfalls. Facilities at the university were excellent; yet, with few notable exceptions, the institution did not produce scholars or scientists of excellence. Most people were obsessed with the preservation of the university’s ‘minority’ character, and their conversations centred on the future of the minorities.
There were no bookshops, except the Naya Kitab Ghar, run by Kishen Singh, an enthusiast communist. Social life too was restricted. There were no restaurants and no decent cinema halls, except for Tasvir Mahal, which screened English films only on Sundays. With limited avenues for self-expression, faculty members developed lazy habits. Comfort and leisure was all that mattered to them.
Segregation of boys and girls was maintained in lecture rooms-though the winds of change were beginning to alter attitudes. More and more young students from the Women’s College would hop on a rickshaw and travel to the campus to take part in cultural and literary activities. The forces of traditionalism were entrenched but hardly visible to us.
I had a taste of their strength much later in 1968, when the traditionalists, accusing me of being a communist and a pseudo-secularist, mobilised their resources to defeat me in the Student’s Union election. Of all persons, Muzaffar Alam, a Deoband alim and now Professor at the University of Chicago, issued a fatwa in my support. Whether this or the hard work put in by my liberal/secular friends tilted the balance in my favour or not is hard to tell. What brought comfort to all of us was the narrow margin of my defeat. Liberal and left-wing teachers, who had predicted my defeat by a huge margin, expressed much joy at my performance.
Dr Zakir Hussain, the vice-chancellor, claimed in 1955: “The way Aligarh works, the way Aligarh thinks, the contribution Aligarh makes to Indian life … will largely determine the place Muslims will occupy in the pattern of Indian life.”
For this to happen, Aligarh needs to be shaken out of the ennui that has set in. With India’s largest population of educated, intelligent Muslims collected in one place, the university can provide, by its example and its ideas, the lead to the rest of the community.

The writer is Vice-Chancellor,
Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi