AMU and Jamia at 100: How Different, How Similar

It is a great irony that exactly a century later only a handful of educated Muslims know that Jamia Millia Islamia was a product of a protest movement against the establishment of Aligarh Muslim University and came into existence in the same Aligarh town just 45 days after the latter came into being. It was founded on October 29, 1920 against AMU on September 14 the same year. Initially it used to function from 20 tents temporarily installed by the teachers and students of the Mohammadan-Anglo Oriental College, before shifting to Delhi’s Karol Bagh in 1925.
Actually, it was the same Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College, which Sir Syed Ahmed Khan established in 1875 that was elevated to the Aligarh Muslim University by the British rulers who wanted to calm down the anger of the Muslim community following the launch of Khilafat Movement. Many Muslims mistakenly believe that it was Sir Syed who established the AMU. In fact, Sir Syed died way back in 1898. However, it is also true that when he founded MAO in 1875, he had an ambition to set up a Cambridge- or Oxford-like university. But his dream could not be fulfilled during his life time.
After 1915 massive resentment started among the Muslims of India against the British Raj. Though it was not an era of instant communication like now, the information of British brutality throughout the globe started coming to India later.
The British-led Allied forces attacked Ottoman Turks with the view to abolishing the Khilafat. The Great Arab betrayal against the Ottomans was strongly opposed by Indian Muslims too, who always associated themselves with the anti-imperialist struggle. The Allied victory in the World War-I would never have been possible without the help of lakhs of Indian soldiers, a large number of them Muslims.
A little highlighted fact is that some Muslim soldiers who were pressed into service against mainland Turkey, Iraq and even Palestine did revolt against the British expedition, especially against Palestine and capture of Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine of Islam after Makkah and Madinah. This was possible only because the Arabs of Hejaz rebelled against Ottomans and joined hands with the British and French.
On November 2, 1917 the Balfour Declaration of the British Government called for the foundation of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The Allied started settling Jews from round the world even much before the Hitler’s Holocaust, which started in 1930s.
The Ulema (Muslim religious leaders) under the leadership of Obaidullah Sindhi and Mehmood-ul-Hasan launched ‘the Reshmi Rumal Tahreek’ (Silk Letter Movement) between 1913 and 1920. This was preceded by Pan-Islamic Movement of Jamaluddin Afghani in the 19th century.
The British policy during the World War-I and the passage of Rowlatt Act to be followed by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre caused large scale anger among Indians in general. Therefore, Gandhiji launched Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. Gandhiji supported the Khilafat Movement led by Ali Brothers in particular. So, when Non-Cooperation-cum-Khilafat Movement gave a call for the boycott of all things British, the students of the then Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College – like elsewhere in the country – too walked out of their classes. They refused to be obliged by the British. A large number of them realised that the British had nothing to do with the education of Muslims – or Hindus – but they had their own so-called ‘civilizational mission’. This was the period when composite Hindu-Muslim culture was propounded.
Mohammd Ali, Shaukat Ali, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mokhtar Ahmed Ansari, Zakir Husain, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, etc. did not fall into the British trap and became torch-bearers of what was later called the Jamia Millia Islamia. Hakim Ajmal Khan became its first Chancellor and Mohammad Ali Jauhar the first Vice Chancellor. But the elite Muslims, several of them western educated and especially those having association with the Muslim League – very much like in 1870s – deemed it fit to toe the British line.
Yet at the same time there were many Muslims who wanted to adopt the middle path or were undecided on this issue.
Though history has its own ups and downs, Jamia Millia Islamia, which was always opposed by the British, ran into rough weather. In contrast, the AMU flourished under the British patronage.
After the partition the AMU suffered a lot as almost all its faculty members moved to Pakistan. Thus the post-Independence AMU is a totally different institution. Maulana Azad, once associated with the Jamia Millia movement, became the first education minister of India. He appointed Zakir Husain, another leading light of Jamia, as VC of the AMU. Accept it or not, these two personalities were disliked most in the pre-partition AMU; but they played the much significant role in the expansion of this very institute after the Independence.
Gradually the AMU became an institute of commoners – and not just of the so-called upper caste feudal Muslims, who would look down upon and mock at the ‘uncivilized’ community members belonging to the so-called backward castes or hailing from the backwaters of Bihar and east UP.
Curiously, be it Maulana Azad or Zakir Husain, they took less interest in Jamia Millia than AMU. Perhaps they wanted to avoid the accusations that they are biased against the AMU.
Jamia Millia became a full-fledged university only in 1988. It has its own campus in Delhi and is growing fast. Yet it still has a long way to go.
The tragedy is that many elite Muslims, associated with AMU, want the community to forget this entire post-1857 history and parrot the British line that Indians were the uneducated and uncivilised lot who grew just because of the advent of European imperialism. This is a blatant lie which the western scholars now recognise and accept that ‘education’ was used as a tool to soften and mentally enslave the people of colonies. The unpleasant realities of history must not be swept under the carpet, as the correct knowledge of the past helps in adopting the future course of action.
[The view expressed is author’s own, who does not have any association either with Jamia or AMU]