Can a 'closed' AMU be a model for Muslims?

If there is one obscure Latin word that the Aligarh Muslim University campus is quite familiar with, it’s ‘sine die’. I think it all started when former bureaucrat Mahmoodur Rahman, after assisting Governor Jagmohan in Kashmir where combing for militants meant forcibly vacating villages, started following the same logic at Aligarh. During the five-year tenure of Rahman (1995-2000), the university was closed at least thrice.

Since then, in my almost 18 years of association with the university, I have witnessed at least seven closures of the campus sine die. The incumbent Vice-Chancellor, P K Abdul Azis, has also closed the university thrice in his tenure. The regularity of its recourse at AMU has made the administration completely oblivious to the harm it does to the students. The unfortunate regularity of sine die closures has made them a rule at the AMU campus. There is an uncritical use of this most insane and insensitive act of closing the university when in fact the administration should have kept it open and resolved the crisis as early as possible. Sine die closure is basically a failure of the administration, and it’s about time they realise it.

The mainstream media too, comfortable with the narrative of two regional student groups firing at each other and thereby forcing the closure of the university, falls prey to certain essential images of a typical north Indian university where the students have easy access to weapons, where law and order remains a daily struggle and where academic pursuit is only incidental. And if it is a Muslim university, then the narrative gets aligned with a larger global narrative of certain essential images of Muslims. In the case of Aligarh Muslim University, its middle name becomes its own nemesis. “They must be like this only” is a common refrain. Well, why not? ‘They’ are like this everywhere in the world! Why should Muslims at Aligarh be any different?

In perpetuating the ‘violent’ stereotype of ‘those’ Muslims, the media failed to ask certain crucial questions behind the disturbance of the last few days. Let’s look at what actually happened in the last few days that forced the closure of the university. Two senior officials of the university – both related, and one holding the position with dubious credentials – try to get another official removed from the important office he has been holding; i.e. of examinations and admissions. Now it’s a known fact in Aligarh that admissions are one of the biggest ways of making quick money for senior officials. With almost 200 seats in medicine and more than 400 in engineering, not to mention hundreds others in intermediate in sciences, management, and other sought-after academic programmes, we can easily imagine the kind of money we are talking about here. Add to this mix a Vice-Chancellor, himself facing a plethora of corruption charges currently being probed by a two-member committee appointed by the HRD ministry, and you get a situation where the rot begins from the top. Justice A N Divecha and Justice B A Khan have already submitted their reports on March 21, 2011 to the HRD. They have indicted the high functionaries including the Finance Officer, the Registrar and the Vice Chancellor. The CAG report in November 2009 had already indicted them, having found huge financial irregularities. The government, reluctant to intervene in India’s largest minority institution, remains callous, and the V-C is having the last laugh.

The argument is simple. If the situation was really so critical, why didn’t the Vice-Chancellor cut his pleasure trip to Kerala short and take control of the situation? Why has the administration failed in checking certain rogue elements within it that threaten to subvert the functioning of the campus for their own interests? Why are students used as hired mercenaries by a few faculty members? Who will account for the students who only wanted to finish a few papers before joining their dream jobs? How can any sensible administration close the university when the exams are on? 

I am, however, more interested in asking a larger question that emerges out of a crisis like this at Aligarh. Recently, the government decided to open two more campuses of the AMU at Mallapuram in Kerala and at Murshidabad in West Bengal. The decision, in the context of the sorry picture the Sachar Committee report painted of the Muslim community in India, was welcomed by the Indian Muslims as an important step in the affirmative action programme of the UPA government. AMU saw it as another triumph of its national character and hailed the decision for being in line with the university’s historical role of being the intellectual and educational torchbearer of the beleaguered Muslim community. In its misplaced celebration of the decision, the university failed to ask a critically important and introspective question: can AMU really be a model for the community to be emulated at far-off centres like Mallapuram and Murshidabad?

It is a failure of the vision of community – and the university – when it laps up a decision like that. The Congress, in proudly displaying its affirmative programme for the Muslims by inaugurating branches of the university all over India, is only following the narrative of emotive issues of the Muslims which have nothing to do with the real development and upliftment of the community. Like Babari Masjid, Urdu, Waqf and Muslim Personal Law boards, AMU too is an issue which had played a largely emotive role in Muslim politics in India since the independence. In other words, both the government as well as the community feels a sense of fulfillment when AMU is given its due credence, however disputed it may be. Which is precisely why the government is more than happy in making AMU a model for the community, and not for example a more progressive and academically-oriented university like the JNU.

You will find numerous faculty and alumni who boast about AMU being a place where traditions and culture are prioritized over sound academics. It’s a misplaced feudal hangover which has outlived its logic. The realities of the 21st century India are far different from what a section of the Muslim elites in the 19th century had imagined when they founded the university at Aligarh. Myopic vision, inert culture, gender insensitivities and sterile academics hardly make a good model. By making a ‘closed’ AMU an example for Muslim education, the government as well as the community is only interested in sustaining a mediocre academic culture for the community. The university should first clean the rot within before it even dreams of emulation.

And, to begin with, let’s open the university as early as possible.

On the Ritual called AMU Hall Magazines

I hate Hall magazines in Aligarh! Well, most of them.

Surprised? Agitated? I won’t grudge it if you are.

In the spirit of democracy and my inalienable right to express myself, allow me to explain.

I have been following campus magazines in Aligarh ever since I joined as a wooly-eyed teenager in 1993. For various reasons. My love for writing was one, and a general interest in creative endeavours was always there. But a desire to explore the contours of the famous ‘Alig culture’ was the most important reason. And it still is.

Why would I look forward to the magazines every year?

I expected to be introduced to the history of the so-called Aligarh movement, its major protagonists, its limitations and of course, successes. I expected to be guided through the hallowed Aligarh Hall of Fame and be impressed by the distinguished line-up of its alumni. I hoped to read on Aligarh’s ‘contemporary history’ and gain some perspective on the place the university enjoyed in the larger universe of Muslim/minority politics and aspiration. I expected critical writings on the debates and issues within the Muslim/minority question – both national and global.

In fact, I would have been contented had they only contained good Urdu poetry!

In short, I expected interventions – intelligent, informed and insightful, as is natural to expect from a community that indulges in knowledge production and distribution.

But what would I rather get? Well, as I said, most of the times.

I will get the uncritical display of a ritual. The ritual of inviting contributions, of processing them and then putting them together, of publishing them through official funding, and finally, of archiving them – more as some sort of trophies than as dynamic pieces of writing intended to provoke discussions and debates.

It is this fixation with ritual that has been the hallmark of most of Aligarh’s activities. But I am going to limit myself to the Hall magazines and the frequent intellectual apathy they suffer from.

Let me explain the ritual. Open any of the more than a dozen Hall magazines published every year in Aligarh. You will inevitably find a picture of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan staring at you. The same portrait found everywhere on the campus, with an almost divine aura. Then you have the Vice-Chancellor’s portrait, followed by the Editor’s and then the Editorial team with the Provost of the Hall. 

I am yet to see a Hall magazine that dares to break this yawn-inducing and predictable pattern… or an editor who refuses to abide by the ritual.

Go to the contents now. Count the number of times you find Sir Syed there. Not that there is anything wrong in writing on Sir Syed. But it is precisely at such moments of tribute that the process of writing turns into a ritual. Fixation is contagious, and symptomatic of the inward-looking behaviour that Aligarh frequently demonstrates.

Look at the contents carefully. Essays on Sir Syed as a scientist, a journalist, or an architect! It’s amazing to see the different ways the Aligarh community has reinvented its founder, often stretching the eulogy to unreasonable and unfounded theories about his life and work.

In fact, I have a simple thumb rule for it. If the number of writings on Sir Syed exceeds those on other topics, close the magazine.

It is not only the Aligarh fixation with Sir Syed that is a problem here. The content is severely compromised because of a fixation with form. The magazines do not even pretend to engage intellectually. You often find engineering students blabbering on the latest on thermodynamics, or Unani medicine students on the benefits of neem leaves.

When writing becomes a ritual, banality creeps in. 

In Aligarh, it’s almost impossible to differentiate between two Hall magazines. That explains why most of them go unread. The ritual lies in collecting them (since you paid for them in your hall dues), but not in engaging with them.

So what is missing? My contention is simple. Hall magazines can – and should – be an exercise in critical intervention and thought. Rather than coming across as dull, boring pieces of literature, they should rather be dynamic enough to provoke discussions, encourage debates, probe the stereotypes, challenge the dominant, and question the present. They should be annual chronicles of political, social, educational and cultural churning that the university went through in the past year. They should live and breathe.

And of course, they should be an exercise in creativity. Not passivity. In short, they should be the barometers of what can be called the Aligarh life.

Anybody listening (or rather, reading)?

I hope somebody does.

On Aligarh's recent crisis

http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/219928.html

THREE MURDERS, A RAPE AND VIOLENCE

Posted online: Sunday, September 23, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST

‘A university is a university first, a cultural artefact later’

Nadim Asrar
AMU, 1993-2000

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

One of the comments on my story:

The Editor,
The Indian Express Online Media (Pvt) Ltd
Express Building,
9&10, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi-110002
India

Respected Sir,

The Sunday Express has published two articles on the affairs of the Aligarh Muslim University (September 23, 2007) Both two writer are former students and represent different fields. Dr. Mushirul Hasan's write-up is almost balanced and invites no comments but Mr. Nadim Asrar in his zeal of proving himself ultra secularist certainly deserved to be countered.

Nadim Asrar has based his arguments on few points. He is aforesaid that the cultural shift from 'khuda hafiz' to ' allah hafiz' is dangerous and "historically Islam is not one". Both comments are in poor taste and have no standing as far as the current turmoil of AMU is concerned. In fact AMU's history should be understand before making any comments.

AMU was established by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to enhance education among Muslim masses in india. He was a product of failed mutiny of 1857 and his educational philosophy was a by product of that bygone era. He emphasized that education itself is not sufficient to develop on individuals personality. Manners and etiquettes should be also a part. AMU has tradition of well manners and respect foe [sic] seniors.

Against this background, the AMU started its journey. As far as present situation is concerned, no doubt three murders have taken place in the campus. No doubt student violence thereafter has tarnished the fair name of the institution but just by there [sic] unfortunate incidents, the AMU cannot and should not be labelled in dark colours.

Asrar, perhaps unintentionally has also discussed Gujarat-2002 and
comments that, "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 a vision" I am unable to understand the logic behind such a generalised comment was Asrar expecting a bloodshed after the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat? As far as academically discussion is concerned that is going on in the campus ever today but Asrar's wish to indulge academicians into street fighters is nothing short of dream. As far as vision is concerned, AMU is trying hard to have it, restore it, and embark upon the fulfilling the mission set by its founder under the able guidence of present Vice Chancellor Prof. P.K. Abdul Azis.

When Prof. Azis took charge of the AMU, it was left by the former V.C. Naseem Ahmad like a sinking ship. As soon as he took over, he introduced several corrective measures in administrative and academic arena both. He emphasized on academic excellence. Hence, i [sic] feel that every body including Nadim Asrar should come forward to support Prof Azis instead of criticizing him or blackening the AMU.

I agree with him that," space for decent [sic]" should be there. But that space should not be enlarged to criticize each and every thing including religious beliefs.secondly that spare should not give liberty to any individual to use it for fathoming his or her own agenda. Perhaps Asrar has something in mind while penning the article in discussion. He also uses today's fashionable ward, "gender parity" what he means by that , i cannot say. But perhaps he will be aware that in the history of mankind, it was Islam who advocated gender parity far the first time. It by gender parity, he means by nakedness of the west, then i am sorry , AMU do not need it but if he means by that rights for the women, then certainly Islam has sanctioned it and it must be
understood in clear terms that AMU campus is an example of gender parity.

submitted for Condition by all readers.

Thanks

Jasim Mohammad

Research Scholar
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
email: jasimmd@gmail.com, thembmc@gmail.com
Cell no. 9997067778, 9319597135