SOROOR AHMED analyses the past and present performance of AMU, pleads for meritocracy against mediocrity, and suggests that educational standards be improved and non-elites given their due.
Padhai
(education) and ladai (battle) not only rhyme but also involve enormous struggle. Without struggle one cannot achieve excellence either in the field of education or battle. While success in one is achieved with the help of pen in the other it is gun which matters.
Often in history padhai is equated with ladai. It would be not out of place to say that 150 years back a similar comparison was made and some leading lights of Muslim community came to the conclusion – or were forced to do so by their British masters – that the Mughals and others lost in 1857 because they were backward in English and Science and that they were a bunch of ignorant lot. These gentlemen then went on to launch an education movement which culminated with the establishment of a college in Aligarh. Forty-five years later in 1920 the British helped establish the Aligarh Muslim University.
The competitive exam result season of summer 2007 is perhaps the best time to make an objective assessment of Indian Muslims’ educational achievement since the First War of Independence, which started on May 10-11.
However, at the very outset it needs to be made clear that those who propagated that Muslims lost because of their educational or scientific backwardness either wrought havoc with history or deliberately distorted it to serve the purpose of the British imperialists. There is nothing wrong in learning English or Science and opening schools, colleges or universities but the biggest question is: was it right to say that the Muslims really ignored education? Objective British historians of that time, such as Major General William Sleeman, are of the view that the Indian Muslims were one of the most educated peoples in the world. The only difference was that till 1830s the medium of instruction was Persian and not English. It was only after 1857 that the view of the defeated Muslims about education changed.
One example needs to be highlighted here. The Delhi College near New Delhi railway station was a centre of learning and it came into existence about five decades before Sir Syed’s College in Aligarh. Read any less biased British writer of the time – certainly not the prejudiced intellectuals like Macaulay or Mill – they would accept the educational achievement of the Muslims of those earlier periods.
And if education can be the basis for the victory in the battlefield then Soviet Union and the United States, scientifically and educationally the most advanced countries of the world, should not have received bloody nose at the hands of the ‘least developed, ignorant and illiterate’ Afghans and Vietnamese respectively. The defeat of Soviet Union, in fact, went on to disintegrate the second most powerful country of the world. Even today it is locked in a grim struggle against tiny Chechnya.
Similarly 30,000 Israelis, the most educated community on the planet, should not have been stopped by ten times less number of Hizbullah men, the poorly armed non-state army. History is replete with innumerable stories of such nature. As has often been highlighted by me a number of times a community or nation loses a political or military battle when they lose their ideological commitment or become soft and corrupt. When Israelis failed in Lebanon last year many war veterans cried that their forces have become soft and lack commitment in comparison to the past generations and not because they have become educationally backward. In fact, the Israeli army today is much more advanced than in the earlier wars.
The historical fact is that Mughals and others lost because the society at large became luxury-loving, corrupt and soft and lacked battle-hardiness. There was infighting in India and the British fully exploited that situation. True in the first part of the 19th century industrial revolution started taking place in Britain yet Indians, especially Muslims, were not as bad as it is being made out. It was only after the final battle in 1857 that the situation changed and the Muslims went in cocoon. As all defeated nation they started viewing the world differently. While in the earlier decades Muslims used to share their educational and scientific research with different communities of the world and were quite open, after 1857 they shut themselves inside a shell.
The interpretation of the word Ta’alim changed. Like all the defeated nations some Ulema went to the extent of hating everything imposed by the new rulers – certainly education too, though it was not the monopoly of the British. In 1866 a madrasa came up in Deoband. These Ulema were not against the education as such, but their interpretation in the post-1857 era was different.
However, it was nine years later that Sir Syed, obviously with the help of the British and some landed gentry, went on to open a college in Aligarh. The situation was then entirely different. Instead of tracing the real reasons behind the defeat of the Muslims these so-called champions of modern education held the educational backwardness of Muslims as the only factor responsible for their defeat.
The problem was not education or lack of it. The British wanted the Muslims to remain involved in this debate and do not try to discover the real reasons behind their rout. That is why they gave Sir Syed so much support.
But a group of Muslims – some of whom were earlier associated with Sir Syed – founded Nadwat-ul-Uloom in Lucknow a few years later as they observed that his approach was too pro-British. Though it was a madrasa, it was opened with much modern approach.
Thus three schools of thought on education prevailed among Muslims and those trends exist in the subcontinent till today. While Deoband is still very closed, Nadwa is much more open. And Aligarh Muslim University continued to serve the purpose of what is called the modern education. With 30,000 students and 2,000 faculty members, it continues to be the largest institute in the country where Muslims study in such a large number.
Aligarh, no doubt, produced some Muslim leaders and intellectuals. But one way or the other its performance was not up to expectations. After the partition of the country almost the entire faculty and an overwhelming number of students migrated to Pakistan and initially contributed immensely to that country. In was then the bastion of Muslim nationalism, but not Islam as such. After the partition of the country the University re-opened but it was not the same. Gradually it became the citadel of Left and atheists. In the age when the Communist wave was sweeping the world it could not remain immune from that.
In 21st century and exactly 150 years after that great upheaval, which led to the opening of this institute, there is a need to examine the academic achievement of the AMU. In spite of its shortcomings it is still dear to Muslim elite of North India. They have attached themselves so strongly with this institution that they are not in a position to listen to any objective assessment. There is no dearth of people who cannot tolerate any criticism of Sir Syed or AMU.
If anyone asks one simple question: Why is it that Aligarh fares so badly when compared to other institutions of the country, they would declare that particular person anti-Muslim and anti-Aligarh. But I still dare to ask this question.
Take this year’s example alone. Over 200 boys from Patna qualified in the Indian Institute of Technology exam. This is not an isolated incident. Fifty-two candidates from Delhi Public School, Bokaro (Jharkhand), also qualified for IIT. What is surprising is that only 150 students from this Plus-two school appeared in the test. And the topper from this school is none else, but Mohammad Javed Iqbal, who ranked 130th in India.
Sixty to seventy students from Jamshedpur make it to the IIT every year. Almost similar is the story with Jalandhar, Allahabad and many such relatively smaller cities, not to speak of Kota. Be it the CBSE Engineering or Medical, CAT or Civil Services examination, we seldom hear any such performance from Aligarh, where too many schools and coaching institutes have come up outside the University area. Many times more Muslim youth from different smaller towns and villages qualify in prestigious exams than the AMU.
The fault does not lie with the Muslim students, but with the mindset of the people who teach and train them. They need to be reminded that out of 200 who qualified for IIT from Patna – where educational infrastructure is in much worse condition than the AMU – more than one-fourth are sons of extremely poor people like watchmen, roller-drivers, labourers, etc. These successes are the outcome of the community effort involving senior IPS officers, ex-IITians and reputed teachers. Mind it till now there is no reservation for the backwards – only for SC and STs – in the IIT, CBSE Engineering and Medical, AIIMS, etc. Yet these students from the weaker sections of the society have come out with flying colour.
Organisations like Super-30, Genius-40 and I-DESIRE prepare poor but talented students. Many of these students live in the hostels, which are no better than hutments, and study in pitiable conditions. They do not enjoy the privileges that the average students of Aligarh enjoy.
The problem with Aligarh lies in its very roots. It was meant for the feudal and elite classes where backward Muslims and then Biharis were ridiculed for the lack of polish. Why not, Macaulay in 1830s talked about civilizing the Indians.
True, there was community efforts in the beginning but for the upper strata of the society and not for all. The trend continues today. Students are ragged and ridiculed if they wear Hawaii chappal or lungi, the preferred dress of South Indians. However, there is no problem if you strut in T-shirt or jeans.
Instead of inspiring boys and girls in this age of cut-throat competition, they are trained to hold on to the feudal traditions. They waste their time behaving like the sons and daughters of the nawabs and landlords of the past.
You can get Javed Iqbal from Bokaro, Mohammad Kaisar from Malegaon, who used to sell water-melon before qualifying in the Civil Services exam this year and Mohammad Akram Khan, son of a semi-skilled labour, who became the first boy from an Urdu medium school to score 86 per cent marks in the CBSE Plus 2 exam and many others. They all have made it because of their own efforts.
True the community effort is still involved, but that is reserved for the middle, upper middle class and NRIs – the soft-lot of the society. We have no dearth of AMU, Jamia Millia, Jamia Hamdard and hundreds of private medical, engineering and dental colleges, but hardly any concerted attempt to go for talent hunt from people living below the poverty line. We are lectured about educational backwardness, but do not wish to trace as to where the backwardness really lies. Aligarh can be the best place for this experiment. But who is prepared to accept the fact that it has – at least – failed in this objective.