The
Vicious Circle At
Aligarh Muslim University
By Mirza A. Beg
20 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
Vice Chancellor suddenly resigns – A student is shot dead in the
heart of the university. The sad happenings at AMU have all of us aghast
and lamenting. It keeps repeating every few years, the characters change,
but the malady remains the same. I plead guilty of being a distant observer,
but at times it is a picture is clearer from a distance.
Muslims around the world
feel beleaguered, Muslims in India have a tortuous uphill long journey
ahead, The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was supposed to be an antidote
to many of the ills that nip at our heels. AMU took root and grew making
Sir Syed’s dream a reality. It was one of the few modern Muslim
institutions to take root and gradually flower in barren times of the
late 19th Century
One of the unchangeable laws
of nature is that changes are inevitable with time; those who adjust
survive and flourish; the hidebound fail, or at best live a constrained
life.
AMU has seen many changes
and has adjusted to some extant. It is a Muslim institution with secular
values as envisioned by Sir Syed, and it has remained more or less true
to that ethos, through some trying times. In the present circumstances
it is almost totally funded by the Secular Government of India. Muslims
have not been willing and able to raise an endowment to afford independence
for the institution to pursue excellence, independent of political winds.
Muslims feel strongly, that
AMU’s primary mission is to educate Muslims and bring them in
the mainstream of intellectual and professional life of India and even
the world. In recent years AMU has expanded to keep abreast with the
multifarious educational disciplines and has become a huge multi- faculty
institution. As Muslim fortunes have declined AMU has been caught in
a bind - physically expanding with diminishing pool of intellectual
resources, resulting in coalescence of many problems.
For a few decades after independence
India was adjusting from a colonial economy to a command economy based
on socialist principles to bring new industries and education to India.
Overwhelmingly the government was the only employer for most of the
educated people. The jobs were few and competition hard.
Students were in the vanguard
of the political struggle against colonialism, with the pressures of
paucity of employment, they found political outlets to express their
dissatisfaction. Many found such activities to be a lucrative path to
power in a democratic system. Gradually the universities particularly
in the North Indian Hindi belt deteriorated, where education became
secondary to the political activity. With increase in government corruption
the universities became hot bed of control by the political parties
including in the appointment of faculty and the administrative positions.
It is desirable that the
universities reflect the democratic society but it is deleterious when
they become bound to the political fortunes of ideology bereft parties.
AMU was slow to fall in this
abyss but fall it did. By mid 1960s many centers of power had developed;
the two main ones were supposedly based on religious versus secular
divide, but there were many others, based on regional loyalties and
homage to shifting political and self serving blocks that effectively
carved out fiefdoms resulting in the corruption of the faculty. Many
departments became mired in destructive internecine group politics.
The Student Union that was
supposed to be a vehicle for practical education of budding intellectuals
to function in a democratic society, based on the heft of intellect
spiraled into practicing street politics of hoodlums. Instead of the
supremacy of the brain they from time to time resort to the strength
of the brawn. Instead of a debating society, the President of the Students
Union often tries to become an independent power center challenging
the authority of the faculty and the administration, with an eye on
a political carrier.
There are too many intellectually
bereft power centers for any one intellectually inclined to handle much
less govern. Therefore one after the other, Vice Chancellors were appointed
from the cadre of the administrators. Some were intellectually inclined
and tried their best while others were touts of the government in power.
The saddest commentary on the lawlessness among the students is that
some even consider the sadistic iron hand of Mr. Mahmoodur Rahman to
have benefited the institution.
An institution dedicated
to intellectual development and pursuit of the betterment through learning
can ill afford the present malaise, of vicious circle. Until the students
realize that they are at AMU to get the best education they can; the
members of faculty realize that they are there to intellectually serve
the institution the best they can and the community demands that of
its children, no one can be found to govern an institution where education
is treated as incidental. Most intellectuals will tend to shy away from
such an impossible task.
This is a microcosm of the
Muslim community as well. Great Leaders are born occasionally, their
appearance can not be willed. They are exceptions not a norm. Individuals
make a Community; we as individuals need to take up the challenge to
improve. Most societies improve with individual responsibilities not
with slogans shouted behind a time serving leader.
There are many who have taken
up this challenge and are doing the hard lifting, often unbeknownst
to others. The most important first step is that we should stop tolerating
strikes and brute force in all of our institutions particularly the
institutions of learning. They some time appear to be working, but they
always work to the detriment of a civil society.
Mirza A Beg can be contacted
at mab64 @yahoo.com
Click
here to comment
on this article