AMU: Little Biographies

In February 1989 the air in the Muslim world was hot and virulent. Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses had stirred a hornets’ nest. How could Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) have sidestepped the novel? Even someone like Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi speaking at the campus at a sports event touched upon it. He condemned Rushdie for trampling upon religious sentiments. ​Unsurprisingly his remarks received a thunderous ovation from the large gathering. Urdu poet Shaharyar, Marxist critic KP Singh, journalist Rahat Abrar, and many in the university agreed that freedom of expression shouldn’t be abused to hurt religious sentiments. Others like former student union secretary Salim Peerzada supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s extreme stance.

Are the instances like AMU students and faculties assailing ‘Verses’ in 1989 a political history or a social history? A social history of our educational institutions is elusive. We haven’t studied ordinary people’s daily lives on campus, including their social, economic, and cultural interactions. Everyday life on a university campus includes classrooms, caste and class conflicts, power struggles between the Vice-Chancellor and departments, student politics, corruption in appointments and infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, canteens and cafes, discussions, dissent, and more.

Anil Maheshwari and Arjun Maheshwari (hereafter authors) rise to the occasion to fill a crucial gap in this regard. Their everyday account of AMU reads like a journal, a weblog. It is part history, part memory, part ethnography. The authors have roots in western Uttar Pradesh, and they live in Noida. They grew up near Muslim friends. They know the inside and outside of Aligarh and Aligs well. Since they do not have any stake in academics, they have said things which insiders know well but never dare to speak. Their writing is avid, logic is lethal, and humour is polite.

The elegant paperback turns out to be a candidly written narrative account that spreads in 29 chapters of even length. A well-thought-out glossary at the end illustrates the measure of ‘Muslim-ness’ in the book.

Ather Farouqui (Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu) in his laconic ‘Foreword’ provides readers with a historical perspective on AMU. He suggests how with the merger of All India Muhammadan Educational Conference (AIMEC) with the Muslim League in 1906 “the movement spearheaded by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan stopped being educational.”

Learning or Identity?

The authors start with an aphorism: “AMU lost its status as an institution of higher learning even in pre-Partition days; it instead transformed into a movement.” Did any other university in India become a movement of sorts? If not, why not? The authors answer the question in the first ten chapters but with deep caution. We are told and explained through many examples how the ‘Aligarh Spirit’ cannot be confined exclusively to Islamist interests. We see several instances when Aligarh emerges both as a constituency for Muslim leaders and as an opportunity for knowledge and social mobility for youth.

The authors have tried their best to tap these tensions among different representations of the institution through a wide variety of citations. For its “ups and downs” authors have drawn on Nirad Chaudhuri, Neyaz Farooquee, Frank Islam, Najmul Hoda, Syed Ubaidur Rahman, Ibn Khaldun Bharati, Tabish Khair, and so many more. The book depends on archival sources, academic works, memoirs, contemporary sources such as newspapers, and most importantly on personal interviews with likes of PV George, VS Rekha, Rahat Abrar, Syed Hashim Ali, Tariq Jilani, Ather Farouqui, and others. Both English and Urdu sources have been tapped well. Authors have even not spared the Facebook timelines of many Aligs and categorically scrutinized them. Such an openness about source material is something that academics could learn from.

The first few chapters read like a reiteration of well-known academic positions. For instance, while documenting Sir Syed’s struggle to synthesize modernity with Islam, the authors side with assimilation and neglect conflicts. Akbar’s Sulh-e-kul (universal peace) and Deen-e-Elahi have been discussed without asking how many followers the new faith attracted in real numbers. The conversions, we are told, were “more political than based on any tremendous religious conviction.” Interestingly, authors cite the much-forgotten Iswari Prasad (1888-1986) to call Sir Syed “a liberal and a believer in Hindi-Muslim unity.” The choice of citation is interesting since Prasad was an alumnus of AMU and one of its first graduates.

Little biographies

In the book, a “humanist” technique of weaving individual life stories into its narrative structure is at full display. In Maheshwaris’ account, the history of AMU reads like a tragedy. The characters in the book are neither entirely evil nor purely good but rather fall between these extremes. Their misfortune is caused by an error or frailty, not vice or depravity.

By Chapter 5, Sir Syed dies a bitter and frustrated man. He leaves the institution to his successors. We read about an active contestation of power among different stakeholders at the campus. Non-Muslims aptly sum up the chaos. For instance, the French professor of mathematics, Andre Weil compared then VC Ross Masood (1889-1937) to a prince remarking how “everything was hung upon the whims of the prince and plots were constantly… spun and unravelled around him.”

We are reminded how clouds of separatism hovered over AMU in the 1930s and 40s. However, the authors also remind us of Tufail Ahmad Manglori who criticised Muslim demands for separate electorates. Names like Hasrat Mohani, Sajjad Hyder Yaldarim, Josh Malihabadi, Asrarul Haq Mazaz, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, and others are listed to argue how Indian nationalism sat comfortably with socialism in a campus like AMU where separatism was the other facet.

The administrators have more tragic ends. Sir Syed, Dr Ziauddin, Ataullah Butt, Zakir Hussain, Col. Bashir Husain Zaidi, Badruddin Tyabji, Abdul Aleem, MN Faruqi and others share the common fate: they did something else; they ended up somewhere different. Not to say that most of the VCs of AMU also share something common which is a ‘majoritarian homogeneity’ of ‘UP-Hyderabad-Urdu’ with a “solitary exception of a VC from Kerala.”

On tragic heroes. An instance. In Chapter 9 titled ‘Hindu and Muslim Bigots Join Hands’ we are told about Abdul Aleem, a Sunni, a scholar of Arabic with Communist leanings. The authors recount how Aleem, as vice-chancellor of AMU, is remembered for being the most non-communicative. More than 60 of his relatives worked in the university at the same time. He embarked on a purging exercise and superannuated as many as 27 persons including senior teachers. He was hounded by a hostile crowd in the campus and was compelled to walk back to his residence barefoot.

In another chapter ‘Fake Morality Finds a Scapegoat’ we are told about the well-known yet hushed-up tragedy of SR Siras at AMU who was suspended for having consensual sex with a male partner at his residence. He was later found dead after being coerced crudely. Was it a murder or suicide? Asma Javed, a postgraduate student, is mentioned who took a stand against the alleged lecherous advances of a faculty named Mohammad Sharif. Farah Aziz Khanum finds place who was verbally threatened for wearing a T-shirt and jeans. In another instance, we get surprised to know how the famous historian SAA Rizvi was slapped by a librarian on campus. Departmental politics or something else?

Academic Feudalism

The book shines between Chapters 14 and 19. These are exposé of academic corruption at its best. The authors talk about “the tsars of AMU” who “form cliques to preserve and perpetuate their hegemony.” Who are they? Members of certain families who go on dominating the university. In 1961, the Chatterji Committee reported 61 appointments of family members. We are told that at one point, as many as 93 members of one family were employed in different capacities on the campus. The authors haven’t filed an RTI to uncover this fact. So, if they know, and many insiders of AMU know about it, so do various governments. Was something done about it?

The case goes on. Illegal appointments of faculties like Nafees Ahmad who was made the Director of the Institute of Ophthalmology without an MBBS degree is one among many. The academic Council of the university continued the appointment, but the Medical Council of India (MCI) recommended Ahmad’s removal. The criminals are not far away. One Mohammad Shabbir who was a member of a committee examining cases of the use of unfair means in university examination was abducted from his residence. All this while, Aligarh Muslim University Teachers Association (AMUTA) remained a leisurely club for teachers who only “swing into ‘action’ whenever a vice-chancellor reaches the second half of the term.”

Stories of how teachers often exploited their research scholars are in abundance. Examples of Imran Khan and Rizwan Ahmad are case-in-points. Khan enrolled for a PhD in Botany under SK Saxena in 1984 but couldn’t complete the degree even after 11 years. Ahmad joined MPhil in biochemistry in 1993 and his supervisor Zafar Beg refused to check his dissertation.

The most thrilling case of academic swindle relates to eminent historian Irfan Habib. We are told (pp. 251-254) how in 1968, the Department of History (AMU) was recognized as the Centre for Advanced Studies in Medieval Studies (CAS). Habib manipulated his position in the university to retain himself as the Coordinator of CAS from May 1988 to May 1996 despite not being the head of the department and securing successive re-employments for himself. A clear case of violation of Statute 29(9) b. When Habib was finally removed from the position, his followers in the university unleashed a virulent campaign against the VC Mahmud-ur-Rahman calling him a BJP man. IH Siddiqui, the then head (chairman) of the department was accused of being a member of the ‘RSS-sponsored History Congress’.

Case after case, the authors have exhibited the presence of a ‘clique of teacher-politicians’ at AMU who work with their sole aim “to ensure that teachers drew a fat salary but did the least amount of work.” It is obvious that in such a sorry situation many prominent and hard-working teachers left the university. Examples of historian SAA Rizvi and chemist Aziz-ur-Rahman are striking. Others who kept to themselves and cared only about teaching and research like historian Ahsan Jan Qaisar, saw just a little turn out at their burial ceremony.

Everyday Living on Campus

The book brilliantly captures both crime and coffee on campus. We are reminded of news reports that alleged the different lobbies of teachers were patronizing criminal elements. Incidents of finding a cache of arms including .22 bore rifle and cartridges and arrest of students Syed Mobin and Maruf Ahmad in September 2000 for Agra bomb blasts are to be found. Rampant violence on campus gets reported. In one instance, at least 75 cases of teachers getting beaten up or threatened by students were reported during the reign of VC MN Farooqi.

But in the end, it’s not all that bad. The authors register the good when the bad becomes blatant. An endearing chapter on ‘Fading Wit, Humour and Graciousness’ narrates tales about the Aligarians and their love for pranks, culture, adab and tehzib. Tea culture on Indian campuses could be a brilliant cultural history. Maheshwaris devote a whole chapter on it bolstering the oft-repeated phrase, ‘Aligarh key bachcho ki ragho mein khoon nahi chai daudti hai’. Different cafés and dhabas have been explored in detail.

Maheshwaris also document the unjust vilification of the university and retrieves its students from communal stereotyping by the media. Thus, when AMU was in the news for the wrong reason regarding Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s portrait, Maheshwaris did not forget to mention the placards of AMU students declaring ‘Jinnah itihas hai, Aastha nahi’. (Jinnah is history, not an article of faith)

In conclusion, the book is a treasure trove for those who care about universities. The book particularly stands out for three reasons. It has been written through sources that emanate from within the university. The book is full of long citations from historical and contemporary sources. Thus, it also acts as a sourcebook. Secondly, the book never only criticizes or celebrates the university. It does both. Lastly, the book captures the contradictions of an institution that many miss out on. When a university is a product of history how it could be free from the contradictions of the past? We will have pessimism of the intellect but can optimism of the will evade us.

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