August 2025
Talha Mannan (TM), a PhD student in the MANUU (Hyderabad) and the National Secretary of the Students Islamic Organization (SIO, established in 1982; an affiliate of the Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind-JIH, established in 1941 by Abul Ala Maududi) has come out with a critique in his piece published by a “Muslim” portal, maktoobmedia, dated August 26, 2025, “How (not) to talk about Aligarh Muslim University”. This was a week after the “second stage” of the hunger strike protest (hunger strike till death) was finally withdrawn in the pre-dawn moments of August 19, 2025. The “first” was claimed to have been clinched by some girl students a few days earlier than August 19, 2025. Whereas the “third” stage came to an end with another glass of fruit juice offered by some girls (dukhtaraan-e-millat), subsequent to August 19, 2025.
While expressing his discomfiture with Yanis Iqbal’s and with Bhavuk Sharma’s pieces, (besides some of the write-ups of Prof Mohammad Sajjad), Talha Mannan (TM) has made what is termed as Strawman’s arguments. TM is manufacturing contentions out of nowhere and attributing these to the three authors.
For instance TM seems to suggest that a Leftist slogan, lal salam and laal-laal lehrayega) is equivalent to his Islamist slogan “Islam Ki Dawat”. First of all, no such Leftist slogan was raised in the AMU student protests of August 2025. Thus, he creates an illusion for himself that he has triumphantly refuted the arguments of the authors he purports to rebut. Also, how did he arrive at a conclusion that Bhavuk (and his PhD supervisor) are Marxists/Leftists, is also quite unclear? Of course, Yanis Iqbal does claim to be a Marxist, in his Facebook profile. TM’s motives become evident when he criticises the authors on account of failing to oppose the UP government’s ban on Namaz on roads.
As far as I have been able to follow from their publicly iterated positions, around the August 2025 protests of AMU students, they have raised the issue that JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) have not raised — their explicit and candid objection to the UP government’s pre-existing order (March 2025) banning roadside namaz. The JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) have maintained a silence on the said government order and he chose to take on the AMU Proctor who was trying to ensure that the UP government’s specific order doesn’t get violated. Such a shift of the student protest from being against the Proctor to making it against the Yogi government’s police, gave a pretext to the Yogi-led government’s police to launch a crackdown against the students who had already undergone the stun-grenade horror on December 15, 2019. [The immediate prelude of this horror itself awaits an expose]. That is how JSTM itself got the AMU students’ protest menacingly policed. Rather than accepting his own fault he is shifting the blames on the said three authors. This is sheer mischief.
Let it be noted that the AMU students began their protests on or before August 4, 2025, against the procedurally flawed fee-hike. Talha Mannan (TM) jumped into it five days later, on Friday August 8, 2025. The JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) remained silent on all the days of protests, preceding Friday August 8, 2025. Till August 8, no written statement, press communiqué of the JSTM has been found on the issue of fee-hike. Let it also be noted that in September 2024, the MANUU administration cancelled the students’ union elections scheduled for September 23, 2024. Talha Mannan (TM), contesting the MANUU Students’ Union elections, didn’t intensify his agitation there in Hyderabad, the way he suddenly jumped into the AMU protest on August 8, 2025 to make more vociferous demands for the right to roadside namaz and less for every other issue such as the procedurally flawed fee-hike and demand that elections for the AMU Students’ Union (AMUSU) be held. The JSTM was nowhere to be seen when the AMU girl students were protesting against power-cuts and the agitated girl students were maltreated by Proctorial professors in April 2025
Is it a case then that the JIH rarely exposes the ills within “Muslim managed or Muslim dominated” institutions, unless there is an intra-Muslim, sectarian disputes (for instance, a few months ago, there was a social and Urdu media outrage by JIH against the Darul Uloom, Deoband)? If the answer is in the affirmative, then this pathology that affects Muslim politics needs a deeper scrutiny. AMU has got many systemic flaws, such as a problematic localism, inbreeding (not only in enrolments, recruitments but also in the composition of the Executive Council (EC), in empanelling VCs and in recruiting higher officers and teacher-administrators, highly damaging the quality of academia. The long continuation of a handful of academically laggard teachers within AMU governance (who also extract lots of illegal benefits), and highly disproportionate preponderance of western UP + Azamgarh, financial and other corruption and irregularities, occupation of hostels by non-bonafide ex-students and hoodlums, massive corruption in contracts for supplies and civil constructions, patronage of AMU administration to certain dubious persons doubling as suppliers-contractors, and (also) a massive inflow of AMU teachers into majoritarian saffron outfits to curry favours (such as appointments to VCs!!). Why must posts of ad hoc Controller, ad hoc Finance Officer, ad hoc Registrar, too many Directors & OSDs must continue endlessly? Why must only a particular OSD get driver and security?
These serious, festering issues that plague AMU have, so far not found any comprehensive expose’ from ‘Muslim bodies’ and their ‘leaderships.’
Besides Talha Mannan (TM)’s duplicity and cunningness, he is also self-contradicting himself and appears confused. At one place he calls Bhavuk’s position (“Why Protests at AMU take a Rightward Shift?”, LinkedIn, August 14, 2025) as being governed by his “Hindu, upper-caste” upbringing, while on the other he speculates Bhavuk’s write-up to be doing with his flawed “Left-Liberal” framework.
Historically speaking, within AMU, students’ protests often acquire a strand of demonizing the Left (the surkha) and then mobilizing [Muslim] students by raising the bogey of “Islam in Danger”..
TM has tried to misrepresent Bhavuk’s position as if he wrote against Namaz per se, which is absolutely false. I haven’t come across any of his writing stating that. The only point, if I haven’t missed something, Bhavuk was trying to make was the refusal to engage with and oppose the UP government’s order (March 2025) banning Namaz by the SIO or the protesters. According to Bhavuk, what Talha instead chose to do was holding the Proctor responsible for not letting Namaz be performed at the protest site as if the Proctor, and not the UP government, that had imposed the ban. [The JSTM seems to be unaware of the fact that the University Road of AMU from the Bab-e Syed to the Centenary Gate isn’t owned by the AMU; it is only used by the AMU; its ownership lies with the Aligarh Nagar Nigam].
What Bahvuk insisted on was that the JSTM has almost side-tracked the central issue of fee-hike which concerns all religious communities and atheists of AMU, and has (TM included) turned it into a Muslim identitarian issue. The AMU alumni too jumped into it only after August 8, insisting to speak only on the namaz issue (an audio conversation between an ex-student leader, Amir Mintoe and the Proctor, Prof. Wasim Ali had been circulated). Such a twist and turn given by the JSTM weakened overall student solidarity. Also, the battle against the AMU administration was turned into battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Tactically this was a dangerous shift. The student protesters (vulnerable in the face of the BJP’s Neo-Hindutva regime) were made to confront the state and BJP, and less the AMU administration. This was exactly what was needed to weaken student’s mobilization and protest, while strengthening the AMU administration. This was also how and when (August 8, 2025) the JSTM gave a cause to the police to meddle into the affairs of AMU, the protests. Who then is responsible for involving the police in student protests? It is Talha Mannan, the JSTM; not the three writers Talha is trying to shift blame on.
The JSTM collusion with the functionaries of the Muslim managed institutions and JSTM’s prejudices in favour of privileged elite-powerful segments of Muslims (in this case, the AMU administrators) have become sharp and evident during and after the protest of August 2025.
TM does not talk about the timing of the Students’ Union elections previously agreed on in December 2025, after the semester examinations. JSTM has no questions on the refusal of the AMU administration to convene the Students’Union elections in August-September 2025.
It is quite well known that in December 2025, after the end-semester exams, most of the distant provinces’ hostellers leave for their respective homes in Bihar, Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Kashmir. Those left are the ones living closer to Aligarh i.e. the western UP students. Would not this leave the field open for the western UP lobby (aligning with the Azamgarh lobby) to gain control of the Students’ Union? AMU has already been quite infamous for its regionalism and factional politics and this chaotic-chauvinistic power play and such non participative elections will heighten this trend.
Faultline with the JIH’s Worldview
Why is it that the tone and tenor of the speech by TM makes us believe that Muslim majority campuses are being conceived and portrayed as Muslim exclusive spaces where the Hindu minority is not to be taken along? Constitutionalism’s selective use and the disdainful attitude of the JIH and RSS towards the Constitution is no secret. That the JIH had allied with the saffron forces in 1975 is too well known a fact to be repeated here especially after the publication of Anderson’s and Jaffrelot’s works on the Emergency. Pan-Islamism finds endorsement from TM in the politics of Muslim victimhood where Islamic solidarity is concealed. The Indian saga of the Islamisation of Knowledge (IOK) project is not a problem for the left, liberal or Hindu Right Wing government. Chosen Muslims associated with it do not face problems in any of these regimes in fact all such characters find reward with some position of power. While Saffronisation is critiqued, Islamisation is spared. This double standard is not going to help in the fight against Hindutva. In fact such an attitude has helped in Hindutva attaining power.
Tragically, Muslim reactionary are even today strong enough to send a clear message to the non-Muslim students of AMU that even in today’s era of Hindutva hegemony, writing against the all-powerful Indian Home Minister is easy but a Hindu minority of AMU cannot write against the Muslim Right Wing. All AMU insiders know too well that the JIH wields a significant influence within the structures of AMU. It was these fundamentalist forces which ensured that Prof. Irfan Habib wasput under suspension in 1981. When Abrar Kashif came to a Mushaira in Kennedy auditorium last year (2024), the applause of the students on his “Pan-Islamic” nazm exhorting Mujahids (soldiers) from Afghanistan and Khurasan, had put the University to shame, drawing widespread criticisms on the social-media. Why it is so was easily forgotten that, Pan-Islamism had created a Hindu consolidation post-Khilafat Movement, which eventually became one of the factors in the Partition of India? Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) had worked in collaboration with the Khilafat Movement. But soon after, he realised the dangers of Pan-Islamism and turned into a critic of anyone invoking this phenomenon. Among the Muslim intellectuals, only Intezar Hussain has had the moral courage to admit this in his biography of Hakim Ajmal Khan, Ajmal-e Azam (1999).
The JIH’s stated aim is creation of a theocratic state and for achieving this purpose they need to enhance the numbers of the Muslim population even by conversion (Dawat). JIH’s love for Muslim majoritarianism is no secret. Hence, their slogan, Islam ki Dawat, provides justification for the Hindutva project of Shudhi, Ghar Waapsi. Just see the resemblance between JIH’s Hukumat e Ilahi (Divine Governance) and Non Biological, Parmatma appointed PM!
No wonder then that the saffron outfits insisted for performing “Hanuman Chalisa” inside the AMU campus, a t funded residential university of the Indian state. It was after the call for “Islam ki Dawat” came from JSTM on August 8, 2025, that the call for Hanuman Chalisa inside AMU was echoed by saffron outfits as a “package deal”. The announcement was made by Hindu Raksha Dal’s state convener, Gaurav Sisodia, who was later placed under house arrest in Ghaziabad to prevent him from reaching Aligarh (The New Indian Express)!
This guilt is confessed by the JSTM kind of forces with the fact that the officially uploaded video-clip of TM’s speech (of August 8, 2025 at the Bab-e-Syed of AMU) has edited out the TM’s slogan of “Islam ki Dawat”.
It also needs to be stated that the AMU has a few dozen mosques (pesh-Imams, paryer leaders paid salaries by the University Grants Commission-UGC!), and not a single temple! This, by the way is an issue with Hindus students, even beyond those inclined towards majoritarian Hindutva. This policy is even at variance with the Holy Quran itself since the Quran says La IkraHa Fil Deen meaning there is no compulsion in the matter of religion (it appears in Surah-al Baqrah verse 256 also) and Lakum Deenukum Waliya Deen meaning for you is your religion and for me is mine. JSTM’s Dawat is in sharp contradiction with this verse of Quran. JIH’s Dawat would/should be seen as ominous by Liberal-Left and a tool for the Neo-Hindutva state power to repress the Muslims and reinforcing the stereotype of Muslims as radicalised bigots!
Thus the JSTM in this agitation stands as a culprit of putting India’s Muslims in great danger of repressive Hindutva state.
Sir Syed was against Pan-Islamism and he was a rational interpreter of the Quran. Maududi in his book Tanqeehat, attacks Sir Syed for borrowing “western thought” and inculcating western values into them. It is an irony that the very students benefiting from the fruits of Sir Syed’s enterprise are in solidarity and sometimes even having intimate collusion with such organisations opposed to Sir Syed’s vision. JIH’s duplicitous politics of Muslim majoritarianism in Islamic countries and minoritarianism in India stands thoroughly exposed, by now. Talha cannot play both ways. TM’s play of Victimhood Syndrome, while ground realities of victimisation of disenfranchised and poor Muslims are addressed more by the Liberal-Left. Not so unreasonably, a distinguished Aligarhian, K M Ashraf (1903-1962) clubbed JIH with CIA in his slim book (in Urdu) on Hindustani Muslim Siasat.
These Muslim communal organisations who play the victimhood card, reflect a form of minoritarianism while, on the other hand, rubbishing all secular-democratic forces. They attack Hindu majoritarianism in the rest of India while promoting Muslim majoritarianism within a Muslim majority campus. AMU cannot be expected to exist as a Vatican. Only Liberal-Secular Constitutionalism can guarantee minority rights. Islamist Minority Right Wing (and Pan Islamic politics) can only enable Hindutva.
Muslim reactionary forces such as JSTM must realise that it is not they who provide Rs 1200 crores to a modern university called Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). This fund comes from the Indian state because of its Liberal-Secular Constitution, which JSTM disdains. The bid, even now made, of minority communalists of converting Hindus to Islam in order to establish a Hukumat-e-Ilahiya, is a dangerous game. It needs to be unequivocally shunned. We have seen enough destructions of humans and values by the Salafi regime in Saudi Arabia and by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
(The author is a former student who has requested anonymity, he graduated in Sunni Theology from the AMU after studying at the Nadwat-ul-Ulema-Editors)
Related:
The Solipsism of Faith: A Response to Talha Mannan
Political History of India’s Two Muslim Universities since 1947