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/

Dr. Siras Suspended! 10-02-22

The Suspension of Dr. Siras For Moral Turpitude
Misconstrued Collision Of Principles

By Mirza A. Beg

22 February, 2010
Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/beg220210.htm

Dr. Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, reader and chairman of Modern Indian Languages at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was suspended for the moral turpitude of consensual homosexuality within the privacy of his home.

From early reports, is seems that the suspension of Dr. Siras may be quite popular. Religions do not agree on all moral principles. That is the reason for adoption of a secular constitution in a pluralistic democracy. If popularity was the yardstick of morality, some of the minorities would have no place in states dominated by sectarian forces in India. The essential questions are, was Dr. Siras flouting his life-style; was the evidence procured by legal means, admissible in a court of law and if not, should the illegally obtained evidence of “sin” be prosecutable in secular courts?

There are many principles, religious and secular at stake here, and they are not in conflict.

1. In most religions homosexuality is considered to be a sin, condemned by the society. Though homosexuality has always existed in all societies, but by and large has been tolerated as a private matter, if not flouted.

2. Blind Puritanism is discouraged, because it leads to widespread intolerance and discord. Religions and societies choose equanimity in social discourse for stability and peace.

3. Islam enjoins believers to respect the inviolable privacy of home. Muslims are enjoined not to gossip or brazenly expose private failings of others. Muslims are exhorted to be introspective and tolerant with humility in the belief that God is the ultimate all knowing judge. Social responsibility is to condemn only lewd public behavior.

4. Democracy and civil society also follow this Islamic principle. Private behavior and public acts are separate realms. Violation of privacy of the home is against the law. Even the state may not search a home, without a warrant from a judge.

The idea of tolerance and personal space is not a western import, Indian and most eastern cultures have lived by these principles more harmoniously in the past than the West.

I remember an incident from my high school years. A teacher was rumored to be homosexual. My father overheard a remark from one of my visiting classmates. Later he asked me if that particular teacher was a good teacher. I said yes. He admonished me that knowledge is all I needed from the teacher. He emphasized that it was not only unseemly, but also un-Islamic to indulge in gossip.

The idea that democracy is good, and civil rights are essential for democracy to function, are easy to parrot, but forbearance is difficult to practice. If we do not protect the rights of the weakest members of the society, the rights naturally gravitate to accrue only to the powerful.

Tolerance of those with whom we disagree or dislike, protects minorities. Social mores change with time. There are hundreds of examples of what was considered abominable, has become acceptable and what was barely acceptable, has become popular. The most obvious example is the rise of stars in the film industry, from allegations of being little better than courtesans to the new royalty ruling the hearts of millions.

Changing mores are not necessarily good or right. The function of leaders is to lead, nurture and guide the society in the direction they deem to be healthy, through a civil dialogue to change the laws they disagree with. Violating the law to entrap or assault those who are on the margins of the society, religion or popular culture is injurious to the basic principles of a civil democracy.

The notion that in pursuit of “good” unlawful means are permissible, is irreligious and unethical, and leads only to evil. Societies and countries that take such short cuts pay a heavy price and often fall to sanctimonious dictatorships that bring only repression.

In almost all civil societies, evidence procured illegally by corrupt means is inadmissible in a court of law. Often ill-informed people rail against the inadmissibility of misbegotten evidence, because at times they let the criminal go free. But it is an important principle. It forces the law-enforcement agencies to be honest. It requires due diligence and proscribes the protectors of the law from becoming violators of the law. It is much more dangerous for power to be used by corrupt means than for a thief to go free.

The function of an institution of higher education is to educate students not only in their chosen subjects, but also in morality and ethics of citizenship and the boundaries on the use of power. It is shameful when the government or educators of young minds violate these bedrock principles, thoughtlessly to appease the majority.

Essentially what we know of the circumstances of the charges leveled against Dr. Siras and his consequent suspension by the AMU administration is troubling. I wonder what the professors in the AMU law faculty would say about its probity. Dr. Siras’ duty was to be a good teacher and respect the norms and traditions of an educational institution. His life style within the privacy of his home, even if “sinful” was no one’s business.

There are laws that protect the society from predators preying on minors, women and the weak. They are not always easy to enforce, that is the challenge and requirement for the sustenance of a civil society. Muslims ought to be sensitive towards the violation of the civil rights of a minority despised by many. They have suffered enough by the police and those in the positions of power, who despise them.

The religiosity, ethics and respect for the laws are strengthened, when we defend those with whom we may strongly disagree, but stand to uphold their civil and legal rights

Morality is when one adheres to principles, even when no one is watching; and courage is when one protects the rights of the weak and even despised, when it is widely unpopular. India and most functioning democracies, particularly the minorities in these countries owe a debt of gratitude to those who courageously adhere to this principle.

Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com or http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/

AMU Paralyzed again 07-09-17

Aligarh Muslim University Paralyzed Again

Mirza A. Beg

Monday, September 17, 2007

TwoCircles.net Tuesday, September 18, 2007
http://www.twocircles.net/2007sep18/aligarh_muslim_university_paralyzed_again.html

Indian Muslims.info, Tuesday, September 18, 2007
http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2007/sep/18/aligarh_muslim_university_paralyzed_again.html

Khabrein.info, Wednesday, September 19, 2007
http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6410&Itemid=88

Counter Currents.Org, Wednesday, September19, 2007
http://www.countercurrents.org/beg190907.htm

Indian Express, Thursday, September 20, 2007
http://www.indianexpress.com./story/218755.html


About five month ago Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was in turmoil. Two students had been killed and the administration was moribund. The Vice Chancellor, Mr. Naseem quietly abdicated or felt forced to abdicate and skipped town through the back door. Alumni and well-wishers of AMU were abuzz with righteous hand winging and heartfelt advice. I expressed my views in an article, on the vicious cycle at the AMU. http://www.countercurrents.org/beg200407.htm,
http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2007/april/12/articles/the_vicious_circle_at_aligarh_muslim_university.html

A month later a new vice Chancellor was ushered in with fanfare. He made much needed changes in the administrative staff. Most, who claim to be in the know, seemed to have approved.

Suddenly on the 12th of September the news of rape of a student in the Abdullah Girls Collage hit the news. On September 16th another student was murdered in the heart of the campus by unknown assailants. These two events are unspeakably horrible. All efforts should be made to bring the culprits to the bar of justice. Instead, they trigger a mass violent protest and the university is closed for indefinite period (Sine die). Slide back to nightmarish yesterday again.

It is a vicious cycle indeed. If we keep repeating our nightmarish yesterdays, the bright mornings of hope will for ever elude us and be beyond our reach.

Terrible things happen from time to time. How do we react and conduct ourselves is the measure of civilization, decency and courage. It appears that we always fall short, and keep repeating the same mistakes, as if we are locked on a treadmill, condemned to tread the same strip over and over again. The obligatory condemnations pour in from all quarters and we feel ever so slightly better.

Rape and murder are criminal offences of exceedingly grave nature, and a purview of the police investigation. They are not, and can not be construed as an internal disciplinary matter of the university.

There are mechanisms in place to handle such cases in the penal code, albeit the wheels of bureaucracy and justice grind slowly. That is where the clout of the university administration and the political leverage of the students and the community could have been brought to bare to move the process as fast as judiciously possible.

It appears that the administration does not know how to take immediate action to let the students and their parents know that they are not asleep at the switch.

The students or at least many of them have no idea of the purpose of the university and the importance of their being on the campus. It appears that they wait for a provocation and go on a rampage destroying and burning the very structures of the hallowed institution that is supposed to show them the path to success, so that they can be responsible for their own and the community’s destinies, so that such events do not happen.

Instead of pillaging the students could have given a little time to the administration to gather its wits and take action. Granted, the past administrations from time to time have been corrupt or at the very least inept. They could have kept a close watch on the progress of the investigations. They could have written, and in time deluged the relevant offices with petitions. In the absence of proper response, carried out large peaceful and quite vigils every day at a certain appointed times, and not disrupted their own and others education.

Islam teaches us self-control and relentless pursuit of justice with the right means, avoiding injury to innocent others. In the land of Mahatma Gandhi the lessons and effectiveness of peaceful protests are engraved in our history. They have been successful and are part of the unread pages of the history books. They ought to be engraved in our hearts, but sadly they are obscure even in the institutions of learning.

An institution dedicated to intellectual development and pursuit of the betterment through learning can ill afford a lock of reoccurring yesterdays on our psyche to blind us to the waiting tomorrows.

There are many good students and very good faculty members, but they are effectively prisoners of impetuous few who would rather destroy and burn the halls of learning. Until the students realize that they are at AMU to get the best education they can and stop listening to those who preach otherwise; the members of faculty realize that they are there to intellectually serve the institution the best they can and shun the deleterious groups; and most of all the community demands that of its children to behave, 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.

I have written this before, “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.”

The first responsibility of the administration is to bring the rapist and murderers to justice. The second responsibility is to take much needed steps to make the campus safe. And the third responsibility is to punish those students who destroy and burn the university property and disrupt the education by force.

Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com, or http://mirzasmusings.blogspot.com/

Sir Syed & Muslims 06-11-03

Sir Syed and Muslim Renaissance
Aligarh Magazine
Federation of Aligarh Alumni Association of America
November 3, 2006
Mirza Akhtar Beg

“Sir Syed”, the name evokes a sense of gratitude for the graduates of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). Yet many more, Aligarians at heart, who have not even visited AMU, share the feeling, because to them AMU and Sir Syed are synonymous with the Muslim renaissance in modern times. Though Sir Syed’s efforts were directed towards Muslim awakening, they were in confluence with the awakening of all communities in India. The institutions he founded were open to all, and all got educated at institutions such as AMU.

Many books and hundreds of articles have been written about Sir Syed. He was a scholar, a jurist and an author with an expansive view of Islam. His legacy is that of an educator, who pioneered modern education and helped, cajoled and even goaded the Muslim community in India to embrace it. To this end, he founded the Mohammaden Anglo Oriental (MAO) College, which eventually fulfilled his dream by becoming the Aligarh Muslim University. To his admirers he is an iconic figure, to be revered and emulated. To his detractors he was a Muslim partisan and a supporter of the British hegemony.

All these descriptors are a part of a complex personality. They present a two dimensional caricature of a thoughtful, energetic, intellectual, caught in the web of history in very unsettled and rapidly changing times. He rose above the mendacity and mediocrity of his times. He aimed with passion to achieve meaningful changes for Muslims, to liberate them from the clutches of medieval attitudes, without falling into the sectarian trap of being against other communities.
Syed Ahmed, known to posterity as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (Bahadur) was born on October 17, 1817 and passed away on March 27, 1898. Sir and Khan Bahadur both were honorific titles from the British. Aligarians lovingly call him “ Sir Syed”. He was a renaissance man, intellectually liberal, yet deeply rooted in his culture and religion. He considered it eminently Islamic to adapt modern scientific ideas from the West.

It is difficult to understand the leaders of 19th century India, from a political and chronological gap of a century, without considering the turbulent times, when the old ways were dying of decay and the new had not quite taken shape. The best way to understand Sir Syed is to put one self in his position.

Historical setting:
India of today was not even a dream two hundred years ago when Syed Ahmad was born. The idea of nationalism did not exist. The idea of a politically united democratic India evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the wake of British consolidation of power and spread of western education. The geographical understanding of India was fragmented. Indians were Indians in the same sense as feudal Europeans were Europeans. The personal identity sprang from cast, family, occupation, religion, the place of birth and the mother tongue.

In the early 19th Century the government for Indians was the feudal ruler, such as the local Chaudhary, Rao, Raja or Nawab, who owed allegiance to the agent (Subedar) of an even more remote nominal ruler the Mughal Emperor. The life was in complete subservience to the local ruler, who collected taxes for himself and his overlord. The justice was at the mercy of the Raja, Nawab, Taluqedar, or other ranks with vague powers.

The golden age of Mughals was a thing of the nostalgic past. It precipitously declined after the death of Emperor Aurangzeb, in 1707. The internecine succession struggles for the Mughal throne provided opportunities for the regional governors to grow stronger and accrue more power by expansion at the cost of other governors and the successive week Mughal Emperors.
South India known as Deccan, fragmented in four kingdoms - the Sultans of Maysore, Nizams of Hydrabad, Nawab of Carnatac and Maratha Peshwas. They were independent in all but name. In this mix of contending powers, the Chartered European trading companies started to expand from their coastal foot-holds in India. The most successful was the British East India Company (The Company) with strong governorates in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. The French contended for power, but were marginalized because of Napoleon’s final defeat in Europe in 1815. The Company, mostly by default, accrued more and more power to dominate the whole of Indian subcontinent within a century. Neither the Indian rulers nor the Company could have foreseen the potential for its expansion and eventual direct rule by the British Crown in 1858.

The feudal Indian princes were overtly or stealthily being challenged, and bested by the British military might, and monopolistic industrial, mercantile, system. The Company realized the advantage of being a mercenary, in arms, and technology to the highest bidder among the contending states. In return their aim was to get advantages in land grants, and monopoly trading. The company employed Indian soldiers, paid and commanded them better than the Indian rulers. In hind-sight we know that whoever controlled the commerce and the commercial routes, ended up controlling the land that eventually led to vast colonial empires.
With the weakening of the Mughal power the Subedars, appointees of the Emperor gradually became hereditary vassal states and eventually quasi-independent rulers. The Marathas from Western Ghats quickly expanded in the first half of the 18th century. Unable to sustain the authority of Peshwa from Poona they eventually split in to four independent powers forming a confederacy, occupying the western and central India all the way to Delhi. In late 1780s the Maratha, ‘Scindia’ of Gwalior forced Shah Alam the Emperor to cede him the land revenue over a sprawling territory. For the sake of appearances he was also named the Vazir, which in effect was the power of regency controlling the Emperor.

At the same time, the northwestern India suffered constant invasions from the Afghans and Persians. The Persian King, Nadir Shah invaded India, occupied, sacked and looted Delhi in 1739. The Afghan, Ahmad Shah Abdali occupied Panjab, sacked and looted Delhi in 1756 again. Ahmad Shah defeated and broke the power of the Maratha confederacy in 1761 in the 3rd battle of Panipat. By the beginning of the 19th century, a century of warfare by contending governors, the country in general and particularly the area around Delhi was devastated.
The Mughal Emperors were reduced to being titular heads, controlled by regional warlords vying for power. The mercenary soldiers were paid by the revenue from reparations and looting of the subjugated territories. The rapacious warfare had completely destroyed the feudal economy and the people were left in endemic, crushing poverty and chaos. The disbanded Maratha soldiers (Pindari) became marauding gangs in north central India, there were roving bands of bandits called Looteras menacing North India. In the prevailing anarchy, groups called “thugs” with a long tradition of ritually looting and killing way farers, menaced the North-South trade routes. They were especially strong in the Narbada valley.

In this power vacuum the Company expanded its domains in Deccan by finally defeating Tipu Sultan in 1799, in collusion with the Marathas and Nizam. Later, one by one they subdued the Nizam with hegemonic peace treaty and defeated the Maratha power in 1819 exiling the Peshwa to Kanpur.

The Company occupied Bengal by defeating Sirajuddaula the Nawab of Bengal at Plassy in 1757 by bribing Mir Jafar, his uncle and the commander of the Army. The Company installed Mir Jafar as a puppet and usurped the authority of tax collection (Diwani). Seven years later in 1864, at Buxar in Bihar, the Company decisively defeated the combined forces of the Mughal Emperor and the Nawab of Awadh. Suddenly the Company became the de facto ruler of the whole of Eastern India by virtue of obtaining the right to revenue from these lands all the way to Awadh with nominally recognition of the Mughal sovereignty. That is how the chief British district administrator acquired the designation of “the Collector”.

By 1845 the Company had extended its control over Sindh. Punjab was so destroyed by marauding armies for a century that the Muslims happily accepted the peace offered by the 37 years rule of the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh. After his death the Sikh kingdom imploded by dynastic wars. The British defeated the Sikhs and picked up the pieces in 1849, completing the Company’s dominance of India. The Mughal Emperor was now a vassal at the Company’s mercy. He survived on subsistence stipend. The regional princes paid homage to the Company which now ruled most of India.

Rule of the East India Company:
The rule of the Company was economically exploitative, but compared to more than hundred years of wars and pillaging, the peace it provided was welcome to the average Indian. The Company mollified the Nawabs and Rajas by sparing their principalities as quasi independent vassal states, controlled by a powerful Company agent, called “the Resident”. The Company established a direct administration in each district. The judicial system was fair and swift for the native Indians. In effect, the Company’s imposed peace was welcomed by all; even those who lost power accepted it grudgingly.

The Company brought industrial modernization to India, to facilitate communication and travel for their administrative and military advantages. Telegraph lines connected the centers of the company power a little before 1857. To make Indians better serve the Company Raj, colleges were established in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras and Agra. In Delhi, the Madrssah-Ghaziuddin was renamed as Delhi College in 1825, to teach western Science and English. Many upper caste Hindus took advantage of the new education in the British controlled provinces. The ruling class of Muslims having lost power to the British was distrustful of western influences and considered the western education as inimical to their interests and injurious to Islam.

By mid 19th century the Company controlled the whole of India and it became avaricious to eliminate all Indian rulers a fast as possible. Lord Dalhousie became the Governor General in early 1850s. In order to impose direct Company rule more quickly, he brazenly instituted the “doctrine of lapse”. That is states without a ’natural’ heir would be incorporated in the Company Raj on the death of the ruler. To earn more income from exploiting India, extra tariffs were imposed on Indian goods, injuring the Indian industry making it uncompetitive. The Indians were beginning to get restless.

These were the precarious and pernicious times that Syed Ahmad was born in and faced as a young man.

Syed Ahmad’s early Life:
Syed Ahmad was a scion of a well connected nobility of the Mughal Court. His father Mir Muhammad Muttaqi was a confidant of Akbar Shah II, the father of the last Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. His maternal grand father Khwaja Farriduddin was Vazir in the same court for a short time. His paternal grand father Syed Hadi held a high position Mansab in the court of Alamgir II in 1750s (Malik, 1980).

This was a time when the Mughal Emperor was reduced to being a figure-head and his writ had no meaning outside the walls of the Red Fort. The Emperor and about two thousand princes and hangers on lived in dire poverty subsisting on a penurious allowance from the Resident of the Company. Most of the lesser princes in the Red Fort some times went hungry. The Mughal emperor and his court were a decaying hollow shell with no power or will to resist.

Syed Ahmad and his older brother Syed Muhammad were raised, steeped in Mughal culture in wealthy surroundings fallen on hard times. Their upbringing was mostly overseen by their mother Aziz-un-Nisa. She stressed discipline and education. Syed Ahmad was home schooled by well known tutors as was the custom for the ruling class. He was educated in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, followed by Islamic jurisprudence, mathematics and astronomy, a customary good education.

Syed Ahmad lived a carefree life of indulgence until his father died in 1838. With the Mughal court in terrible straits, all it could award were high sounding titles without any substance. So Syed Ahmad joined the service of the Company as a law Clerk at the Company Courts in Agra. Two years later he was promoted to the position of Munsif. In 1845 his elder brother also died leaving him responsible for the welfare of the whole family and his dependence on the Company became critical.

Syed Ahmad, the Scholar:
Syed Ahmad was well educated, his job and interest exposed him to a comparative study of Shariah and the British laws. He became a serious student of Islamic and Indian history. He was challenged by the momentous changes, with the old world in shambles. Islamic civilization was being challenged by the western Christian powers. He started publishing on religious subjects in Urdu in 1842, followed by a description and history of the great monuments of Delhi (Asarus Sanadid).

From 1842 to 1852 he published many works, such as, Jila-ul-Qulub bi Zikr il Mahbub, Tuhfa-i-Hasan, Tahsil fi jar-i-Saqil, Namiqa dar bayan masala tasawwur-i-shaikh, and Silsilat ul-Mulk.
Syed Ahmad’s view of history and Islamic renaissance was greatly influenced by Shah Wali-ullah (1703-1762). Waliullah advocated an updated curriculum of Islamic education to be taught in Urdu, the language of the people. To achieve this Waliullah initiated the first translation of Quran in Urdu against the opinions of orthodox Ulema; he is also credited with an effort to translate Quran in Sanskrit. Waliullah preached an interpretation of Islam based on Quran and Sunnah, cleansed of the pre Islamic tribal traditions that had seeped in the early Islamic culture. He strongly believed in the value of Ijtehad – a contemporary interpretation of Quran and Hadeeth, based Shariah with increasing knowledge and changing times. Waliullah appreciated Ghazali's synthesis of orthodoxy with genteel Sufi thoughts.

Syed Ahmad gradually came to the rationalistic (Mutazalite) expansive view of Islam. While most Ulema and their followers were drawing inwards, casting aspersions on the Western sciences as devils work, Delhi College, with Science and English as part of its curriculum was steadily attracting notice. Syed Ahmad befriended Imam Bakhsh Sahbaiy a professor of Persian at Delhi Collage. Later Zakaullah and Nazir Ahmad, two alumni of Delhi College along with the great poet, Altaf Husain Hali, an admirer of the college, became his ardent supporters and helped him develop his ideas on education (Malik, 1980).

Before 1857 Syed Ahmad did not care to know much about Christianity and held the usual hostile view, common in those days. In 1858 he started a comparative study of Quran and Bible, in preparation of his commentary on the Bible. He hired translators to help him understand Bible. (Lelyweld, 1978). With his increasing understanding of Sciences and western advancements, he was getting uncomfortable with the usual orthodox interpretations of Quran and Sunnah.

His visit to England in1869 fully exposed him to the Western intellectual ferment rife in Europe. This thought provoking exposure made him examine his beliefs critically.. Das Kapital of Marx had been published in 1867; Darwin’s observations of natural selections were published as the Origin of species in 1859, taking the intellectual world by storm. Though he did not comment on these events, he was intellectually challenged to understand new scientific ideas in the light of Islam.

Syed Ahmad augmented his faith with reason in order to better understanding and appreciate Quran. He is quoted as having said, “I am fully convinced that the Work of God and the Word of God can never be antagonistic to each other; we may, through the fault of our knowledge, sometimes make mistakes in understanding the meaning of the Word.” He was quite aware of the changing and incomplete nature of science. He knew that many theories of the science inherited from the Greeks have been proven wrong or inadequate. Therefore even the present scientific theories were also subject to change. The challenge is to carry on growth in scientific knowledge without a clash with Quran.

Quran, in Surah Imran (3:7) refers to the allegorical nature of many verses about natural phenomena. The choice is either to believe blindly or to interpret them with advancing knowledge for better understanding. Sir Syed took delight in affirming that his rationalism, “As our knowledge of the Work of God improves, our understanding of the Word of God must change.” (Lelyveld, 1978). Syed Ahmad faced a determined opposition to his ideas by the orthodoxy. He was ridiculed as being “Nachuri”, that is naturalist rather than Islamic.
Syed Ahmad supported, perhaps pioneered, science based explanations as a principle for the Quranic interpretation. He cogently argued that just as classical commentators had accepted the understanding of God’s throne, hands and eyes as metaphorical descriptions, similarly the descriptions of heaven, hell, and hoors should be considered metaphorical. He felt that Meraj can be understood as a journey of the mind. He firmly believed that with God all things are possible, but we understand according to the intellect God has bestowed on us and has enjoined us to use in his service.

Going against the orthodox view extracted a price. Criticism of Syed Ahmad’s religious views threatened to undermine his educational efforts. Several members of the committee withheld their approval of courses, pending the selection of religious text books for the MAO College. One of his most vocal critics, Ali Bakhsh Khan even traveled to Makkah to get a Fatwa (edict) condemning Syed Ahmad and his ideas (Lelyveld, 1978). He was not very successful in strongly establishing his rationalistic approach in his lifetime, but he did blaze a trail for the modern Muslim Scholars to follow.

Syed Ahmad helped renew the early Islamic, Mutazalite (rationalist) approach to Islam that has yet to take root in many Muslim societies. Muslims in many Islamic countries, even after a century of his passing have not yet been exposed to the idea of freewill, intellectual excellence in pursuit of knowledge that Islam enjoins and Sir Syed practiced.

The revolt of 1857 and Syed Ahmad’s attitude:
The revolt of 1857 called the Sepoy Mutiny by the British and the first war of independence by the modern Indians did start as a mutiny by the Company’s Indian soldiers at Meerut on the 10th of May. They marched to Delhi and proclaimed a reluctant Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader. Soon the rebellion spread and the areas around Delhi and most of todays UP were in flames. The better-known centers of rebellion were Kanpur, Jhansi and Lucknow. It was a horrible period for those who were caught in that whirl-wind.

The Company was able to crush the Indian struggle with very few British soldiers for two main reasons. First the struggle was essentially confined to a very limited region of the then Northern provinces (present Western UP) , Awadh and the present North Bihar. The rest of India - the South India, most of Bengal, Panjab, Sindh and Afghan provinces did not participate. Second, after initial fear of rebellion in these areas, the Company was able to draw soldiers from there. It took almost a year to crush the revolt. In August 1858 the British Crown dissolved the East India Company and India became a part of the Queens Imperial domains.

Syed Ahmad was posted in Bijnor during the early conflagration in the summer of 1857. He saw up close the smooth functioning of the British administration, the general sense of wellbeing and a good justice system with which he was intimately involved. For about a hundred years before the Company took charge, Rohilla leaders such as Najaf Khan and later his son had been responsible for terrible carnage in the this area called Rohailkhand (Northwestern UP) (Edwards, 1971). In his very critical book, “History of the Bijnor Rebellion” (translation by Malik and Dembo 1982), based on his observations of events and his intimate involvement in the administration; Syed Ahmad takes a very dim view of the motives of leaders like Nawab Mahmud Khan, of Najibabad, who paid homage but turned once they felt the Company was weak. Their rule of a few months was cruel and inept.

He saw the indignities heaped on the British families that were reprehensible to his sense of honor. He lamented the return of chaos and carnage that had bedeviled North India for more than a century. He saw the shifting rivalry between the Muslim Nawabs and Hindu Rajas. The treachery between the Shia Nawabs of Awadh and the Sunni Rohillas was also evident, all paying lip service to the Emperor but looking for their own interests. Thus the British with a few battalions, augmented by practically an all Indian force of Sikhs, Panjabis, Pathans and South Indians were able to crush rebellion. There was heroism by some leaders but there was no coordination and the Indian heroes did not get any support from their compatriots.

Aftermath of 1857:
In reaction to the rebellion and atrocities committed by the Indians, the British revenge was swift and brutal. The British rewarded those who had helped and supported them, and punished those, especially the Muslim elite from Delhi, Northern Province and Awadh, whom they blamed for providing leadership of the rebellion. The British justice that the Indians had so admired was discarded when it came to punishing those suspected of participation in the rebellion.

Syed Ahmad was shocked by the British attitude and felt obliged to write the most important and difficult book of his life; his seminal work, Risalah Asbabe Baghawate Hind (the causes of the Indian Revolt). It required courage. In the prevailing atmosphere of revenge, it could have landed him in a lot of trouble and ended his carrier. The book challenged the British thinking that the Indians were ingrates, who understood only force. He strongly criticized the Company’s administration for exactly that attitude. He cataloged the failings of the Company, their ignorance of Indian culture and cruelty of their rule. He particularly took the Company to task for being too greedy and obsessed with profits with little regard for the welfare of the people (Malik, 1980).

Fortunately for Syed Ahmad the book was well received among the policy makers in Britain. The British officers he had helped, when they were in dire need remembered his kindness and grace. He was offered a land grant. He refused it, as he did not want to be tied down to the property. The ill treatment of Muslims following the rebellion became a major concern to him. Muslims, who had finally lost all power and even the appearance of power, reciprocated this ill feeling and withdrew in a shell that manifested itself as not only anti British feelings, but also anti-modernization.

Syed Ahmad’s Educational Efforts:
The Company’s occupation of India started from Calcutta, Bombay and Madras presidencies, mostly by defeating Muslims rulers. The average non Muslim population was not affected, except in Bombay where they defeated the Marathas. Therefore The Hindus from Bengal and Madras and the Parsees from Bombay were preferred for employment and were exposed to the modern British education for more than three generations. They were commercially successful in the new set up and found better positions in the hierarchy of the British administration. Syed Ahmad became fully convinced that the way back to success for the Muslims was also through modern western education particularly in the sciences.

To propagate education with western orientation he helped establish Schools everywhere he was posted. A modern Madarsa was established in Moradabad in 1859. In 1861 his wife Parsa Begum (Mubarak) died. He took charge of his two young sons and a daughter and plunged deeper in his quest for better education for Indian Muslims. While posted at Ghazipur he established a similar school there in 1863. He helped start a Homeopathic hospital at Banaras in 1867. He established the “translation society” to help impart modern education in Hindustani. Because of differences with Raja Sheo Prasad, his partner in that enterprise over whether the ‘vernacular’ be Hindi or Urdu he gave up that idea and decided on English as the medium of higher education.

While posted at Aligarh in 1864 ,he started the Scientific Society of Aligarh, patterned after the Royal Society. The Society included Muslim and Hindu. It awarded grants for education and published journals in Urdu and English.

Syed Ahmad, had developed lasting friendships with British and Hindu colleagues during his long service. He drew on their support in his educational efforts in later years.

In 1869 Syed Ahmad incurred debt and traveled to England to learn first hand the methods and system of education, administration and society from what he considered to be the source of modernization. He enrolled his son Syed Mahmud at Christ College Cambridge, while he met Englishman from all classes and befriended those who received him well and were helpful in his aim for advancing the cause of Muslim education and eradication of ill will towards Muslims. He visited Universities, Colleges and technical institution, with the aim of establishing a Cambridge like residential institution at Aligarh.

On his return from England a year and a half later Syed Ahmad organized the “Committee for Better Diffusion of Learning among Muhammadans” to spearhead the effort of establishing a college at Aligarh. He began publishing a Journal, ‘Tahzibul Akhlaq’ to spread the idea of modern education. This enormous effort had many detractors. He was even declared to be an apostate (Kafir) by some Ulema. Nevertheless overcoming impediments from many directions including the British Collector and many of his detractors, he obtained enough funds from Muslims, British and a few Hindus to lay the foundation stone of a High School in May 1875. To devote full time for his quest of a Cambridge at Aligarh, he took voluntary retirement from the Judicial Service. He finally succeeded in inviting Lord Lytton, the Viceroy to lay the foundation stone of the MAO College in January 1877.

His wish was to establish a University, but he did not have enough resources to achieve it in his lifetime. MAO College finally became the Aligarh Muslim University in 1920.

Political attitudes of Syed Ahmad:
Syed Ahmad became, perhaps the most well known Muslim leader in India. His opinions on education and administration were sought in the British as well as Indian councils. He was firmly of the opinion that Muslims were not developed enough to indulge in anti British politics at that stage and hoped for the evolution of political framework in British India in such a way that Indians will ultimately achieve parity with the British. He had advocated such a development in his book ‘the Causes of the Indian Mutiny’. With the gradual opening up of the services to the Indians, he considered an eventual parity between the British and the Indians a natural outcome.

He supported the efforts of Dada Bhai Naoroji and Surendra Nath Banerjee for inclusion of Indians in the Civil Service. But he opposed the formation of the Indian National Congress and the participation of Muslims in what he considered to be anti British organization. He was skeptical of political parties. It is easy to criticize him in hind sight, but in view of intellectual and emotional historic journey from the decadent times of his youth and the toll the rebellion of 1857 took, it is not difficult to understand that he was averse to destabilizing forces and believed in gradual evolution of parity with the British.

Syed Ahmad grew up with Urdu/ Hindustani being the connective language among the languages and dialects in India. He considered Urdu to be the quintessential bridge among all the Indian languages, in effect lingua-franca. He was extremely disturbed by the sudden demands for replacement of Urdu by Hindi as official language in UP in 1860s and 70s. He considered it to be an effort to divide Hindus and Muslims and spoke passionately about maintaining the comity among the communities. He worked vigorously for Muslim participation in all levels of government, policy making bodies and national life. He was for Muslim progress not by pulling down others, but by the effort and excellence of Muslims to join others.

Syed Ahmad received knighthood from the British government in 1888 and became Sir Syed. He had been member of the Viceroys Legislative Council in 1878 and Civil Service Commission in 1887. But his first and most important effort was always the MAO College. One of the greatest disappointments he faced in later years was the embezzlement of funds by an accountant of the College. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan breathed his last after a brief illness on March 27, 1898.

Sir Syed’s Legacy:
Sir Syed is celebrated by legions of Aligarians, and many more infused with the Aligarh spirit, all over the world. He achieved enough success for one life time, but his success is much greater as it keeps multiplying many times over by a yearly crop of graduates from AMU. The scholars helping the spread of education are his true legacy. His intellectual progeny is a gift to India and many countries emulating his ideas.

Sir Syed passed away before the politics in India became completely polarized in the mid 20th century and the idea of an independent Indian Republic took shape. It is erroneous to assign him credit or blame for the political actions of the generations that came after him. He does get credit for creating an institution where generations to come get educated and learn to think for themselves independently. They join and pursue competing and often opposite political ideologies. This is what the British system that he so admired, as well as all modern democratic political systems are based upon.

Sir Syed lived in very troubled and fast changing times, in which many perished and many others particularly from the ruling class were lost in despair, but he learnt from experiences, struggled emotionally and intellectually to rise above the misery, to help and uplift his fellow beings and his community. He put the welfare of others before his comfort and left an example to be emulated.

Sir Syed was a proponent of education and civil dialogue in resolving problems. He differed with many of his friends and without animus, pursued his course in establishing an institution of modern learning. In these troubled times, more than a century after his death, his message and methods beckon Muslims in India and indeed all over world, to aspire for the best education possible and instead of arms use ideas and knowledge to resolve disputes and work for a better tomorrow for the Muslims as well as the humanity.

The 17th of October is celebrated as the ‘Sir Syed Day’ by Aligarians all over the world. Their effort in propagation of Sir Syed’s ideals by establishing many more colleges and universities are truly valuable tributes.

Sir Syed was a pioneer who single mindedly, with the help of supporters and friends created an institution that keeps on educating in many more disciplines than he could have known. New Aligarians graduate every year to carry the torch of education that he lit more than a century ago. In the words of Majaz enshrined in his poem “Nazr-i-Aligarh” ( Now the AMU anthem,) his legacy is:

“Jo abr yhaN sey utthey ga; Woh saarey JahaN par barsey ga.”
Poems can not be transliterated effectively. To suit English cadence, my sense of the above line, with apology to Majaz is:
“The spray from this fountain showers the whole world with knowledge.”


References:
Malik, Hafeez; 1980; Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Muslim Modernization in India and Pakistan; Columbia University Press, New York.
Mallik , Hafeez and Dembo, Morris; 1982; Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s History of the Bijnor Rebellion, Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Dilli, Delhi, India.
Lelyweld, David; 1978; Aligarh’s First generation; Princeton University Press, NJ
Edwards, Michael; 1971, King of the World, Taplinger Publishing Company Inc.
Barnett, Richard B; 1980; North India between Empires; University of California Press, Berkley, CA.