by A. G. NOORANI
Mahatma Gandhi (left) with Dr Zakir Husain. Gandhi was a steadfast friend of the Jamia from the beginning. PHOTO/The Hindu Archives
“The way Aligarh participates in the various walks of national life will determine the place of Muslims in India’s national life. The way India conducts itself towards Aligarh will determine largely, yes, that will determine largely the form which our national life will acquire in the future,” said Dr Zakir Husain as Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on the occasion of President Rajendra Prasad’s visit to the university.
It took a decade and a half for India to redress the wrong done to AMU in 1965 by the government’s dishonest denial of its hitherto unchallenged character as an educational institution established by a minority, the Muslims. It was entitled, therefore, to the protection of the fundamental right embodied in Article 30(1) to administer it autonomously.
Only a few years later, the Rajiv Gandhi government got enacted the Jamia Millia Islamia Act, 1988. It was an accurate reflection of the bogus secularism of a Prime Minister who had, among other things, got the locks of the Babri Masjid complex opened in February 1986.
By its very terms, the Act stands exposed as a palpable fraud. Section 2(o) says: “‘University’ means the educational institution known as ‘Jamia Millia Islamia’ founded in 1920 during the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation Movements in response to Gandhiji’s call for a boycott of all government-sponsored educational institutions which was subsequently registered in 1939 as Jamia Millia Islamia Society, and declared in 1962 as an institution deemed to be a University under Section 3 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, and which is incorporated as a University under this Act.” The tortuous phrasing, no less than the historical reference, reveals a guilty mind.
The Jamia Millia Islamia was a product of India’s movement for freedom and was blessed by Gandhi at its very inception. Even before Independence it won high praise internationally. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who lived in Lahore in the 1940s, was a socialist and a strong opponent of the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. His book Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (Gollancz, 1946) contains a long discussion of the Jamia’s striking achievements in the field of education and the work of its Vice-Chancellor (Sheikh-ul-Jamia) Dr Zakir Husain, who selflessly devoted long years to sustain and build it when it was gasping for breath.
Frontline for more