Halcyon Days at AMU 12-8-8

Halcyon Days at AMU &

Reflections on Riots of Oct.1961

By

Mirza A. Beg

August 8, 2012

Published; October 17, 2012

Sir Syed Day magazine of Aligarh Alumni association

Introduction

Life at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was much simpler in the early 1960s. Or so it seems, from the vantage of five decades in the evening of a long life. Those days are reminiscent of a long autobiographical movie, with panoramic scenes rich in the cast of characters; some intimate and essential to the story; others make cameo appearances as markers of time. Occasionally when I hear about old friends, images emerge from the enveloping mist of a bygone era, sporadically crisp and clear, often as apparitions communicating in the quietness of thoughts.

At the time AMU was considered a large residential university with about 5,000 students. It has been dwarfed by the present strength of more than 30,000.  Of the 5,000 students, about 3,000 lived in the hostels, and about 2,000, were non resident students. Students living adjacent to the university were classed as (NRSC-A) and those living in the old Aligarh city, a couple of miles away were (NRSC-B).

Though large, AMU had a quality of a small cozy place, because of its unique tradition. A simple act of salutation to strangers when our paths crossed broke the ice. Salamwlaikum, answered by an almost simultaneous Salamwalikum was amazingly binding. Strangers were strangers no more, the strangeness melted away. Those with whom our paths crossed every day, hurrying from class to class became unspoken friends even if we did not know their names. I have been to scores of universities around the world, but have not seen anything like it. After leaving the university in 1962, I came back for a visit a year later with a friend from Lucknow University. Walking around the campus, so many people greeted me. Many even stopped to inquire about my health and long absence, as if they missed me. Impressed, my friend commented, “You must have been very popular.” I simply replied, “This is AMU, every one is as popular.”

The flow of life at AMU

AMU’s academic calendar was a decagonal (ten sided) cycle. It started with admission, followed by introduction, election, Dassehra vacation, examination, winter vacation, exhibition, preparation, followed by the final examination and a long summer vacation.

The year started with admissions of fresh new students in July. It was much anticipated by the returning students, particularly by the half baked second year seniors, looking forward to about two weeks of “introduction”, when these newly minted seniors, did to others what was done to them the year before. Occasionally, it was a harrowing experience for some new students, but mostly it was mild ragging that did not cause permanent scars. To make up for the ragging, well meaning senior students some times invited the juniors for tea.  September was the start of election fever that culminated with election for the office bearers of the Students Union followed by Dassehra vacation. Coming back from vacation was a time for some serious studying for the midterm examination in December, followed by a much needed winter vacation that brought in the New Year. Classes started again in January. We looked forward to the annual exhibition on the outskirts of the old Aligarh city in early February. It was a time for week long revelry. Evenings spent with friends dressed in the required AMU uniform, black shervani (buttoned-up long coat). It was a time of seeing and being seen, stealing a glance or two at the denizens of the AMU girls college (Abdullah Hall). It was a thrill to have the glance returned with a smile. Almost every one indulged in the culinary delight of the famous Kababs and Parathas dripping with oil, washed down with sweet hot tea to avoid sore throat. Warm March winds ushered in the time for serious preparation for the approaching final examination. They took place from mid April to early May, followed by a much anticipated summer vacation.

This cycle repeated every year. The graduating old faces departed in May to face the challenges of life in the world beyond, making way for fresh young faces arriving in July. However for a few seniors, building seniority was a calling in itself. They managed to hang on to become fixtures at AMU as super seniors, as if they were tenured senior students. They held court as arbiters of AMU traditions.

Election for the AMU Students Union

Of this cycle the most colorful were the elections. Most students, including me did not know or care for the intricacies of the university politics, if there was one, and were oblivious to the existence of two ideological groups, allegedly active behind the scenes. The Student’s Islamic Organization, ostensibly an arm of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Students Federation, ostensibly an arm of the Communist party. One heard of behind the scene maneuverings of these groups, mostly at the time of the Student’s Union elections held in early October. Among the many candidates for president, the two better known and financed were often rumored to be supported by these groups.

The most important and hotly contested position was the presidents’. Other positions were vice president, secretary, and ten cabinet members. There had been some legendary presidents who had made a name for themselves in late1950s, such as Saeed “Anda” and Abidullah Ghazi. The post was considered to be a possible stepping stone to a future in politics.

I had enjoyed the general elections of 1952 and 1957 for the UP legislature and the parliament with childish curiosity and enthusiasm. They were a serious affair with a festive veneer of musical propaganda and rhyming ditties in an effort to reach an uneducated and uniformed populace.

But the elections for the Students Union were in a class by themselves, an experience to remember. They were urbane when face to face, but the pamphleteering was often cleaver and occasionally acerbic.  Active canvassing period was limited to the last two weeks of September. Attired in black shervani and topi, the candidates made rounds of the hostels and the nonresident student’s centers. As the election grew closer, especially in the last few days, the activity reached a fever pitch. We looked forward to cleverly devised pamphlets aimed at giving the candidates a positive image with enumerated qualifications. Some of them were very creative, such as mimicking a telegram or a postcard slipped under our doors in the middle of the night. The most dreaded and inventive were the pamphlets deriding the opposing candidate with biting wit, especially on the eve of the election, so that the other party did not have time to respond. They were popularly known as “Anti” for anti-propaganda.

I had enjoyed the commotion of two elections, by the time the third election in October 1961 came around, we knew what to expect, and were looking forward to the wit and cleaver barbs. In the beginning it did not appear to be much different than the earlier ones, though there were forces at work behind the scenes that would have momentous consequences. A difference did emerge, and in retrospect, it turned out to be consequential. For the first time a Hindu candidate was also contesting for president. If my faded memory serves, his name was Iqbal Singh.

AMU, as the name indicates was founded as MAO College in 1875 by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to bring modern western education to the educationally back sliding Muslim community.  So a vast majority of the students are Muslims, and as a norm, no Hindu had ever contested the presidency before, though traditionally there was at least one Hindu elected to the cabinet.

I had known Iqbal Singh cursorily from my Morrison Court days. For a short time, he lived with Amar Singh whom I knew a bit better. They lived a few rooms away from mine. I remember his name only because of what happened later. The other presidential candidate was insipid at best. I do not remember his name.

Attack on the University on October 3, 1961

Following is my recollection, albeit a bit faded account of the events. Memories, especially with the passage of half a century are likely to have gaps and may be at variance with the memory and personal experiences of others.

Finally the voting took place on the1st of October, it was an uneventful day. The results were declared rather late that night, and as expected the Muslim candidate won the presidency. The next day was Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. It was normal, except what I heard from Kalyan Singh, a Sikh friend in my geology class, who lived in the Ziauddin Hostel. He casually told me that some altercation had taken place in his Hostel in the wee hours of the morning. That evening I did hear that some shots may have been fired, but no one was injured. Unwelcome news indeed. We thought, it was just an after election stupidity emanating from a tradition gone awry - teasing the loosing candidate by taking out a fake funeral procession.

On the 3^rd of October in the morning, we did notice that our mathematics class was less than full. My section of the geology class consisted of only three students, of which Kalyan Singh and I were present, but my friend Ramesh Tayal who lived in the city was absent. The significance of the low attendance dawned on us later in the day. It was due to the absence of non-resident students from the city. My last class was in the physics department at the periphery of the main campus.

We came out of the physics class at about 2 PM and noticed that the campus looked ghostly quiet. Some one told us that the university had been attacked by a large Hindu mob from the city and they had burned the Shamshad market, the popular and only shopping street next to the university. It was almost next door to the Aftab Hostel, where I lived. Reflexively, I ran towards my room with a cavalcade of thoughts crowding my mind, including the possibility of my burned ransacked room. Breathless, I reached the hostel. It was a relief to see the serene building as I had left in the morning. I saw some students running towards the Shamshad market with long bamboo sticks used for holding up our ubiquitous mosquito nets, a nightly refuge from the teaming buzzing Aligarh mosquitoes. I ran to my room and pulled out a stick from my mosquito net and ran towards the Shamshad market, to join what I considered to be a student protection squad against the attackers.  

On the way I met my senior and a close friend, Haris Bhai (Haris Ansari). It turned out that the attacking mob from the city was long gone, but we saw some university students venting their frustration on a dilapidated shop, presumably belonging to Hindus. Some students were trying to pry and break the lock on its weather beaten wooden doors. A few students, including Haris Bhai and I instinctively felt the injustice of the mindless revenge and jumped in front of the shop to shield it.

We did succeed in saving that poor shop from the reprisal by the madness of infecting sectarian anger. The crowd moved on. We also moved on and saw some partly damaged building fronts and blackened shutters of the popular Friends Book Depot owned by Muslims. Apparently the mob from the city had tried to set fire to them. Further down the road we were shocked to see the ransacked Rama Book Depot and Krishna Book Depot. As the name indicated, they were owned by Hindus. I had been to these stores many times. The books were strewn in front of the broken doors, as if staring at me, in protest at the indignity heaped on these repositories of knowledge and wisdom, used to a place of respect on book shelves. No apparent damage was done to the businesses further down the road and to the university buildings and hostels.

Though most of us including the late arriving reporters had not witnessed the attack, in the charged communal atmosphere, it was easy to surmise that the Hindu mob from the city had run out of steam and did not enter the AMU campus doing only minor damage to the Muslim business establishments. And the looting of the Rama and the Krishna book depots was done by the vengeful Muslim students from the university. In the emotionally taxing environment, the conclusions seemed obvious.

Student life in the aftermath of the attack

We returned to our hostels, with mixed feelings of sadness over the destruction of the book stores, and anxiety over our safety. Those were the days without the instruments of mass communications - no telephones or even radios in the rooms. If the authorities made an effort to console and guide the students, I am not aware of it. Obviously the authorities knew more, but perhaps were busy devising plans for the protection for the students with the district administration. With the setting sun, we feared that the mob from the city would return in the darkness of night to attack the hostels. With no means of instant communication, the hostels were like isolated islands shrouded in the dark oppressive quietness of the night.

In our charged imaginations, a possible massacre was not out of the question. Most of the residence halls were quadrangles with one or two gated entrances, such as SS Hall. Even the newer hostels such as Ziauddin and Saifi were enclosed structures. But the three hostels closest to the main road, MacDonald, Aftab and Mumtaz were three sided graceful structures with verandahs adorned with Moorish arches. The fourth side was open to the road separated by an ornamental iron fence.

In frustration, some even criticized the bad design of our hostel, suggesting it should have been a fortress like closed quadrangle. Forgetting the irony that we took pride in the aesthetics of the aftab hostel, unlike those cooped up in closed quadrangles. Fear changed the perception and the cooped up design looked safer.

We felt completely exposed and vulnerable. Again those were the days when violence meant fist-a-cuff. We did not have, nor did we imagine anyone should have a revolver or a gun. Some one suggested that there was a big pile of broken bricks from some collapsed old structure, behind our hostel. Within minutes we got to work and carried loads of broken brick to the roof of Aftab hostel. We were not sure how effective brick throwing would be against the invading mob with fire arms. It was a good way to feel useful and use up our youthful adrenalin.

Tired, after hard physical work, I fell in deep sleep. Waking up next morning, it took a few seconds to be jarred by the returning memory of the eventful yesterday and the anxiety of a night time attack. I was still alive, the hostel was still there and nothing untoward had happened, at least not in our little corner of the world. It was hard to believe that yesterday was not just a bad dream. The October sky was a brilliant azure blue, even though we felt in our bones that the horizons were red with turmoil. Apparently every one assumed that there would be no classes and therefore there weren’t. There were rumors that hundreds of Muslims had been killed in the old Aligarh city. It was not deemed safe to travel as the miscreants may have carried the virus to other cities spreading mayhem from town to town.

Later that day a police constable showed up at my room, with a letter from the District Magistrate (Collector), Mr. Joshi inviting me to his office in the collectorate. I knew he was my father’s colleague at an earlier posting and apparently my father had called him. He offered to send me home accompanied by a police constable to navigate the long journey home. I felt irritated by the offer. I thought he was not doing his job of saving the innocent victims in the city. I felt that a strong district magistrate had enormous authority and could have nipped the rioters at the first sign of trouble. In solidarity with my friends who I felt were trapped, I declined the offer and came back to Aftab hostel and my other friends in other hostels in similar predicament.

The first thing on everyone’s mind was to inform their worried families of their safety. Long lines formed at the telegraph office as soon as it opened. Telegraphic shorthand in English is not everyone’s forte. Many students sent a crisp though unintended alarming message home, “still alive”. Aligarians are known for their sense of humor, gallows humor was rife. There was an undercurrent of subdued panic, based on the rumors of hundreds of deaths in the city. Some students mispronounced the unfamiliar word “Panic”; others did it intentionally with a broad smile.

Mr. Joshi informed my father that I was safe and would be coming home shortly. In a couple of days the papers reported that the riots had been quelled and it was safe to travel. AMU was closed for about ten days. We went home. The journey was charged with consternation, but uneventful.

There were two Hindu students in our hostel of eightyeight. Des Raj was much senior to me. He was a research scholar probably in political science and was teaching part-time at a local college. Dhyan Prakash was a year junior to me and we knew each other well. We were mindful of their emotional well being, and made an effort to make them feel a part of us in these terribly emotionally divisive times.

All my life I had attended schools with an overwhelming majority of Hindu kids. Almost all of my school friends from school days were Hindus. Many of them are still cherished friends after many decades. So even though AMU hostels were demographically overwhelmingly Muslim, I had many Hindu friends, mostly my class fellows from different hostels. Some names are still fresh in my mind - Sushil Tomar, Kalyan Singh, Ramesh Tayal, Ravindra Rustagi, Vinod Singh, Ambrish Kumar. Ravi Rustagi remained a close friend until he passed away a few years ago in Australia and Ramesh Tayal and I still correspond.

I did not see them until after the vacations, when the University finally opened in mid-October. What ever residue that remained in the minds of the students was gone and we were close as ever.

Many newspapers were very critical of the university. They blamed AMU for the inculcated communal atmosphere, based on the election results, appearing to justify the riots in the city. The photographs of the ransacked Rama and Krishna Book Depots were used as exhibits of vandalism. They had built up a case, completely ignoring the planning by the interested parties in the old Aligarh city to use the inevitable results as a pretext to engineer the planned carnage. K L Shrimali, the new education minister in the Central Government, accused AMU of communalism. When informed that there was a very strong influence of the communist party at the university, he scoffed that they are communal communists. Disheartened at being battered by a partisan press, we felt much better when Chnchal Sarkar of “The Statesman” a respected news paper spent time interviewing students at the university and the citizens of the old city. He published two incisive articles on November 6^th and 7^th. It gave some respite to AMU. Sarkar passed away in October 2005. 

Engineering of the 1961 riots

Many books and articles have been written on the subject.  The following analysis is gleaned from an excellent book by Paul R. Brass, “The production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India, published in 2003”; and an excellent analysis in the report by the India Policy Institute, published on the internet in January 2004. “Communal riots in India: A Sketch of History and Causes.” (www.indiapolicy.sabhlokcity.com/.../lbs-comm-notes.doc - India

In the wake of the British occupation of India for three centuries ending in 1947, the ruling class of Muslims was thrown off kilter. The Aligarh movement was started by Sir Syed to help Muslims retain their Islamic moorings while regaining their footing in the flow of history. He started the MAO College in 1875 to check the backsliding and help them join the modern scientific trend. Hindus were not only welcome, but many helped him in his efforts.

Soon after the MAO College became Aligarh Muslim University in 1920. The idea of imminent freedom for India from the British Raj was in the air. Sectarian forces were also working overtime and the specter of separatism was on the rise. The popular belief with some justification is that hatred germinated under the aegis of the British policy of divide and rule. The Pakistan Movement of 1930s and 40s became a potent force and did a lasting damage to the amity between the two communities. Many students and faculty at AMU bought into the two nation theory and were active in the creation of Pakistan. This left a very deep animus to wards AMU among many Hindus.

Aligarh had a sizable Muslim Population. It diminished after the partition.  But over the years it has gradually increased by accretion. Muslims educated at AMU and the AMU faculty have settled down in new neighborhoods close to the university. AMU being a residential university, it legally gives preferences to students educated at AMU in coveted professional courses. With a stiff competition for professional education in India many Hindu students have also gravitated to AMU to qualify for the professional courses in the internal quota. Most of these students live away from the campus and have not been able to integrate in the residential student body.  The local Hindu colleges have tried many times, to swamp AMU demographically by getting a change in the AMU charter, to get affiliated, thus becoming a majority.

With this background the Student Union election of 1961 became a watershed. The resentments were simmering. The Hindu communal class’ resistance to AMU was well established and the Muslim communal resistance to Hindu incursion in AMU had grown over the years. Growing Hindu and Muslim communalism symbiotically found sustenance in exaggerated and often invented grievances.

Usually the Student Union election was contested by candidates from the right and the left of the political spectrum who happened to be Muslims. In1961, the sectarian Hindu forces decided to put up candidates for all the posts of the Students Union knowing that Muslim vote would be divided among many Muslims. It became apparent to the rightwing Muslims, that with about 40 percent Hindu students the Muslim vote would be divided and the Hindus will sweep the elections, particularly the coveted presidency.  A successful effort was mounted to make all Muslim candidates withdraw leaving a single insipid consensus candidate for each office.

The stage was set for the clash of two communalisms with a foregone conclusion. In the course of time, had an accomplished Hindu student contested the presidency it would have been notable and a positive evolution. But the way it was planned by the communal BJP minded Hindus was diabolically cleaver. They relied on the knee jerk push back by the myopic Muslim communalists. The dice was cast. If a Hindu candidate won with the agenda of harming the tranquility of AMU, so much the better, but as expected if he lost, it was trumped up as causes belie. An average student had no inkling of the gathering storm. The authorities were also caught napping.

After the contrived post election incident at the Ziauddin Hostel, early morning on the 2^nd of October authorities should have been more vigilant. The propaganda in the colleges of the old city was allowed to fester. It resulted in the attack on the university. As it turned out it was only a side show to malign the AMU, the real atrocities were committed in killing innocent people in the city. The official figures were fifteen innocent people killed and hundreds injured, of which an overwhelming number were Muslims.   

The authorities had clamped a curfew on the town. That is the least they could have done. As it often happens they called the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) for help to oversee the curfew. One may think that people would feel safer. But far from it, the record of the PAC has been blatantly anti-minorities over the years. So much so that in mid the1950’s commenting on the role of the PAC in a case before the court, Justice Ananand Narain Mulla of the Allahabad High Court (1954-61) is said to have included a comment in his judgment, that the UP police was the most organized group of Thugs (goondas) in the state.

It has been proven time and again, that Muslims do not fear their Hindu neighbors with whom they have lived in harmony, and most of us have experienced it all our lives. The problem arises when the riots are engineered by vested communal interest and the police particularly the highly partisan PAC is called. That is when the real atrocities take place, as it has been conclusively proven by the hundreds of photographs published internationally as evidence in the February- March 2002 Gujarat massacre. The published photographs show the miscreants throwing fire bombs protected behind the police lines towards the cordoned off hapless Muslims.

A long view

It was a lesson to me that the riots were engineered by a very small coterie of vested interest waiting to find a cause, or invent one when needed. Knowing the intensity and passion of the Student Union elections, they engineered a cause and when successful fanned the flames. All of my Hindu friends and teachers were good to me and remained my friends. Their attitude towards me was the same before and after the riots.

After graduating from AMU I joined Roorkee University for my master’s degree. In a class of ten students, to my pleasant surprise, I found two friends from my batch at AMU, Kalyam Singh a Sikh and Ravi Rutagi a Hindu of merchant cast. There were seven other students, three from BHU and one each from Lucknow, Jaipur and Patna universities. I was the lone Muslim. In the beginning there was a silent competition among us as flag bearers of our universities. Ravi and Kalyan were even more concerned and enthusiastic than me not to let AMU down. And succeed we did.

The problem of sectarianism (communalism) is endemic all over the world. It manifests it self as tribalism in African countries, as religious conflict in European countries up until the 19^th century, as racism in the United States, and as communalism in Pakistan India, Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar) and other countries.

Rising from medieval civilization based on uniformity of power structure, the molding of a modern secular nation is difficult. It becomes that much more challenging after a long period of colonialism, especially when the society is economically poor and there is competition for meager resources. In India the religious divide between Hindus and Muslims and the cast divide among the upper and lower cast Hindus and the untouchables has been a bane to the progress of the nation. Yet India has adhered to secularism under very difficult circumstances.

There is no wall of separation between the state and religion in the Indian constitution. The state is supposed to be neutral, yet most people often vote on the basis of caste. In the Indian social milieu religion is supposed to act as a motivating positive force, not a force against other religions. But the bane of democracies is that unscrupulous politicians exploit religion to their selfish ends, injuring the fabric of the nation.

After the Aligarh riots of 1961, I found myself caught in the riots in Calcutta, twice. The first time it was in January 1964 while on a geological tour as a student; and again in January 1967 as a faculty in charge of the students. Both the times I was the only Muslim among my colleagues. The riots in Calcutta were intense. They were sparked by the flooding of Hindu refugees from the riots in the erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) resulting from the atrocities on the Hindus by a Muslim majority. Obviously the times were tense, but the bonds of friendship and decency were a lot stronger than the beckoning force of sectarianism. I never felt threatened. Though there were some who tried to provoke me, but my Hindu friends stood by me.

Time is a friend as well as a foe. The passage of time often smoothes the sharp edges of the sad events and diminishes the sting, though memories remain, but in the process it also robs us of the innocence of the idyllic days of our youth.

As old men having lost the innocence we become cynical and lose trust in the innate goodness that is significant part of humanity. Young people do damage out of inexperience and foolishness. Old people know better, therefore they are guilty of criminal selfishness.

It does not have to be this way. Germany and France have fought three increasingly horrible wars within a period of seventy years - The War of 1870, The First World War (1914-18) and the most horrible of all wars The Second World War (1939-45). Making them the most hated enemy of each other. Nobody could have predicted that within a couple of generations they would be the best of friends with open borders and the most important bull work of the Economic Union of modern peaceful Europe.

Yet the hatred of what we consider “the other” continues. I keep reading about mayhem in many parts of the world from the Northern Ireland and Bosnia in Europe to endemic riots and wars in many parts of Asia and Africa. These fault lines are not only racial, but religious and within religions, casts and tribes. The solutions are so obvious. Countries that treat there citizens with justice do better economically. Larger countries do even better. The divisiveness can be ameliorated with cooperation that enhances economic development. According to a well known aphorism, “A rising tide lifts all boats”. But time and again the vested interests are able to invoke our baser nature and cause havoc on other humans caught in a vicious cycle of revenge with self-serving narratives of who started it.

I hope some day the world would be a better place for our children, but in the near future it is disheartening. I wrote the following lines about four years ago to express this conundrum.

Elusive thoughts at Midnight

Mirza A. Beg
April 3rd, 2008

Miiddle of the night
Is never perfectly dark
The restful dark
Of deep slumber

Stray eerie light seeps in
From the streets of the
Smoldering day, from the
Tormented world beyond

Eyelids quiver with twilight
Of wakeful concerns of the day,
Of wars, real and imagined
Of inhumanity and lost friends

Inducing an amorphous ache
From myriad hazy sources
Flooding the heart and mind
And engulfing the soul

With countless Images
Of tortured bodies
Of hungry faces
Of loss and injustice

Of slings and arrows
Of lost opportunities
Of what could have been
Should have been, but is not

In the name of
Egotistic power
Misbegotten ideology
And misused religion

In the deathly stillness
Of a body, dormant
The restless mind soars
To resonate with the spirit

Inspiring visions
Of possibilities of peace
Just and humane
Clear and concise

To capture lost opportunities

Transcending arrogance and pride
To mend the frayed fabric
And make shattered souls, whole

Slowly the sleep returns
To cloud the vision
Clarity dissolves in a mist
Leaving only a few kernels

Morning is melancholy
I stare at a blank page
Failing to capture that

Fleeting flawless vision

Mirza A. Beg may be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com. 

His essays and poems are on my blog  http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/