A university stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards even higher objectives. If the universities discharge their duty adequately, then it is well with the nation and the people. But if the temple of learning itself becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how then will the nation prosper or a people grow in stature?- [Jawaharlal Nehru ]
Around two months ago the BJP-led government brought a flawed and ill-intended Bill to amend the Waqf Act 1995. It created a furore, and ever since, newspapers, news-portals, Youtube videos have been educating the masses through their “explainers”. Opinion pieces from experts and the theologians too have been published, interjections into the issue with their own position. All this while, the AMUTA, for whatever reasons, has not been able to call a general body meeting or hold discussion sessions. Eventually, on Sunday, September 22, 2024, they called a meeting. Given the general mood on the campus against the Bill, one assumed that there would have been a near consensus on finding ways of working out political tactics and strategies of rejecting and resisting the move. One expected there would be a discussion more on this specific aspect.
That was however not to be. Only two speakers spoke at a “sickening” length as if fellow academics sitting there were school students waiting to be educated, threadbare. This paternalism of these academics against their own colleagues made many among the audience uncomfortable. Speakers’ assumption that others had nothing significant to say, was irksome. The affair degenerated further when two of the longest speaking teachers sought yet another session to again speak on issues they claimed to have omitted to speak on! The presiding authority was generous enough to grant them a second session, again ignoring the fact that others were also competent enough to speak on the issue. These other speakers-in-waiting including this writer (who was the first among the serving AMU faculty to have intervened through his column on the Waqf Bill issue) had a right to speak at greater length: to propose preparing a draft (alternate) bill that could be put in the public domain to mobilise constructive public opinion and also to solicit support of cross-sections of people, including the opposition political parties apart from some of the allies in the ruling coalition.
Treating the fellow academics as children
In some ways, the two longest speakers were probably right in treating their colleagues as infants or their inferiors. This has to be illustrated by a one instance. This writer used an expression to describe the Executive Council which is massively dominated by a select club of internal teachers. Hence I used the the expression, “Incestuous Club”. This expression was first used by a columnist on March 6, 2023. She then wrote, AMU’s “Executive Council, Academic Council, and the Court are incestuous clubs where everyone is everyone’s someone”. On March 10, 2023, this piece was rebutted by a professor of law cum vice chancellor of a law university [he eventually made it to the panel for AMU-VC in October-November 2023]. His rebuttal was anything but a precise objection against any sexual connotation of the expression. The EC members aggrieved with my usage of the expression cannot claim to have been ignorant about the columns and rejoinders. The reason being, a long thread of debate on the issue has been carried on The Print.In and on Rediff.Com, besides other portals in 2023. Let it be added that a “synonymous” expression, “blind inbreeding” [in recruitments], was used by the AMU Official Enquiry Committee Report, 1961.
Ever since then (March 6, 2023), dozens of meetings of the AMU Executive Council (EC) have been held thus far. None of these four, or for that matter, other EC members, have raised any objection to the expression. Thus, their silence can be construed as their consent or endorsement of the expression.
This writer used this expression on a Facebook (Meta) post. They didn’t object to the expression on Facebook or on Whatsapp group of the AMU teachers, called “AMU Faculty 1” where I could have helped them with Dictionary. They, in vengeance and to intimidate me, straight away silently/confidentially, submitted a complaint against this writer, to the Vice Chancellor, possibly to get me penalised or gagged. This is now admitted by at least two (in fact, three) of the four signatories that they have written to the VC to curb my academic freedom.
The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary clearly provides the meaning of the expression, “incestuous” club, “of a group of people that have close relationships with one another and do not include people outside their group”. The Dictionary, further illustrates it, in order to make it clearer, by using the expression in a sentence: “the incestuous atmosphere of media discourse”.
We the teachers have elected four teachers to represent us inside the Executive Council, to safeguard our academic freedom, against the Vice Chancellor. Far from doing so, they are, instead, unfortunately, approaching the VC to penalize us and curb our academic freedom. At least one of them came to me saying, he shouldn’t have signed on such a document. I said to him that of he regrets his act, he should consider withdrawing the complaint. He declined.
The Vice Chancellor would, one expects, understand the dictionary meaning as well as the extended meaning of the expression in question, and she will treat the reported complaint accordingly.
The founder admin of the abovementioned WhatsApp Group of the AMU teachers (almost all Muslims) is one of the four elected members of the EC-AMU. For long, a Pakistani member was added to the WhatsApp Group. Once I spotted it and objected strongly to this. His response was, “it happened inadvertently”. My response was, if they have got a habit of submitting complaint to the VC, why shouldn’t I bring it to the notice of the VC, the Government and also to the media? They had no response.
Further, one of the four elected members to the EC advised me to refrain from consulting dictionaries; that I should concentrate on teaching history [whereas he indulge in campus (politics) through the EC; would carry out his Tablighi Jama’at activities and the Drama Club engagements, besides doing Mathematics!]. He further preached me not to teach/discuss/raise the issues of caste. Asserting his immodesty, he insisted on adding the prefix of “Honourable” for the AMU-EC (and by implication, for its members, including himself), regardless of no such protocol specified by the AMU.
I look upon this argument with him as one with a person who holds a right wing ideology and is committed to depoliticising the electorate. Outraged, I argued with him referring to Juan Linz’s book (2000), Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, which argues that, authoritarianism relies upon a “mentality” (“way of thinking and feeling more emotional than rational that provide non-codified ways of reacting to different situations”). Thus, by depoliticising common people and by trapping them into irrationalities they facilitate variants of authoritarianism and the personality cult (to which, let me add) of “honourables”. Such people choose to forget that honour is commanded, not demanded. I wish there was a provision of right to recall such representatives!” He had no response to this on the WhatsApp Group.
Another elected representative, the Joint Secretary of the AMUTA, while inviting the teachers to attend the meeting on the Waqf issue, first circulated an “intimidating” message as to whosoever from among the AMU teachers is referring to the faults (retrogression on caste and gender) of India’s Muslims in the 1970s-1980s and asks the Qaum to self-introspect in order to find out the possible reasons of the rise of Neo Hindutva, according to him, amounts to “blaming the victim” and therefore s/he is a Qaum’s villain; therefore only he can command teachers to attend the meeting.
In a Muslim majority campus like AMU, any academic with an independent (read “contrarian”) view, is already demonised as Qaum’s traitor, by the elected representative. Given the prevalence of competitive right wing radicalism, such intolerance and provocations might endanger the life of the insider-academics espousing “contrarian” views on such issues.
Be that as it may, the point I am trying to make here is: (1) Either the two long, self-indulgent speakers on the Waqf issue were absolutely right in treating the fellow academics as school kids with spoon-feeding as pedagogy. Or, (2) The speakers are too self-obsessed and narcissistic to make way for listening to fellow colleagues and more importantly to concentrate more on working out the strategies of resistance. Or, (3) They harboured an intention to consume much of time and thereby not letting this session culminate into working out a strategy to resist in a comprehensive way, by a longer discussion on that specific aspect? (To be fair to them, this is less likely, though).
Anyway, on the intervention of fellow academics in the assembly, focus was brought back to working out a draft bill. This would eventually be endorsed by the academics attending the meeting (There was a thin presence in the meeting).
Alienation of the Qaum, or disjunction between the Qaum and its self-serving elite
Most interesting aspect is, these educated elites of the Qaum were then pledging to fight the BJP regime, whereas, the commoners of the Qaum have already been on the streets against the Waqf Bill for the last many weeks. Barring one or two exception, the collective of the AMU teachers seem to have risen to register their protest belatedly. This shows how yawning is the gap between the commoners of the Qaum and its educated, affluent elites!
Even more importantly, while these elites do persuade the commoners of the Qaum to keep waging wars against the ruling dispensation, they themselves behave with cunning opportunism. Consider the empanelment result of the AMU-VC in October-November 2023. Unlike other central universities, AMU empanels its VC through its own EC and Court (both the bodies excessively dominated by internal members), without advertising the position to invite application from across India. This select Club (EC & Court) eventually ended up empanelling all the three from the internal faculty members in November 2023. The predecessor VC too was not only internal faculty but also a resident of the town for the last few generations; he eventually became a legislator belonging to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in UP Council as well as vice president of the ruling party. This unprecedented inbreeding was so brazen that some of the internal teachers seeking to be empanelled as VC have approached the Allahabad High Court to challenge this.
Insiders in the AMU know too well as to which of these (empanelled) candidates for VC-ship or their alleged patrons have been writing columns in favour of the BJP-RSS in the national English dailies, testifying further to their opportunism. AMU insiders also know it very well as to which of the AMU teachers (aligning with Muslim BJP legislator) canvassed for the BJP candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Videos of such event(s) had circulated among the AMU teachers and on the social media. The AMU insiders also know with considerable clarity as to which of the EC members (from among the AMU teachers and teacher-administrators in the EC), and their clouts, were inclined towards which of these “pro-regime” candidates for VC-ship.
The short point is: sections of these elite Clubs of AMU have already aligned with the ruling BJP and at the same time the Club has also been instigating the commoners to keep fighting the BJP and facing reprisals from the hate-filled vindictive regime. Understandably, this approach provides such opportunist elites with stronger bargaining power vis a vis the governing party.
AMU’s Own “Anti-Waqf” (mis) deeds
The AMU itself is alleged to have indulged in erasing the names and identities of the Waaqif (the donor of land estates and assets who institutes/creates the Waqf or charitable endowment). For instance, it has been reliably learnt that the renowned physicist cum the last principal of the MAO College (when it became incorporated into AMU in 1920) and also the founder of the department of Physics in the Lucknow University, Prof. Wali Mohammad (1886-1968) had instituted the Waqf for AMU; one of these is the costly land on which a residential Hall of students is existing. The Hall is named after Nadim Tarin who bore the construction cost of the students’ residential Hall. Sadly, the name of the donor/waaqif of the land stands obliterated. We are told, there could be many such Waqf estates and assets dedicated to AMU, wherein the Waaqifs/donors remain unacknowledged and anonymized.
In other words, with such state of affairs and the corruption of land-grabbing (by the influential people within the state administration, Waqf Boards and society), ordinary Muslims have become cynical. There is a huge deficit of the people’s connect with the Waqf estates and assets. This would dissuade the common people from adequately agitating and mobilising against the Waqf Bill 2024. This in turn, one apprehends, would fail to mount as much of pressure on the regime, as is required.
I made similar arguments in my essay as to how and why the current dispensation succeeded in demonising the best of our universities. Questioning the relevance of India’s elite institutions to the social and economic challenges facing Indian societies, I argued that the lack of socially relevant research and teaching has contributed in part to society’s disaffection with “our respectable institutions.”
The significant disconnect between the educated elites and the common Muslims pose a critical challenge. As highlighted by Omar Khalidi (2010) who records a damning indictment: “[research] publications on Indian Muslims since 1950 to 2010 reveals that the three AMU faculty combined [Political Science, Sociology, Economics] have contributed little to the burgeoning literature on Indian Muslims”. Of course, the Indian state didn’t stop them from carrying out such researches on the India’s Muslim communities.
Moreover, as Daniele Struppa notes, “A university is a microcosm of our larger society that reflects different beliefs, ideologies, experiences, and backgrounds. While that is exactly what I love about a university community, it also comes with the reality that prejudice lives within our communities as well: we are not immune to the ills of our society”.
Given this concern, the challenge before the academia in our times is to establish an effective and efficacious connect with the rest of the society, if the current democratic downslide has to be resisted and arrested with forging solidarities. Quite a number of teachers (with clout) in AMU, at the moment, seem to be missing this point, as they are the ones either falling into the trap of becoming practioners of Muslim communalism or aligning opportunistically with the Hindu Right, or both. Patronage-distribution and clientelism is embedded in the governance structures of AMU. So much so that some teachers have shamelessly been continuing in certain administrative offices of the AMU for the last 10 to 12 years, or even more! Some of them holding three administrative positions concurrently, compromising with their teaching; forget about their research. Their clout is so entrenched that successive VCs have failed to replace them with new faces in the University administration.
Such a pathetic state of affairs needs to be addressed immediately by many reforms including change in composition of the EC, which defiantly adopts any kind of resolution, disregarding financial implications, sense of justice and the government’s or UGC’s inviolable norms. For instance, for recruitments in the AMU schools, they have outrageously reversed the norms of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS, which has got only 30% component on interview and 70% component on written test-for admissions). In contrast, the requirement for AMU schools is reversed, 70% for the interview and only 30% for written test. This is obviously designed to favour their own candidates, already recruited on a temporary basis, in large numbers, over the last many years. Likewise, in certain cases, some influential employees have placed themselves in Old Pension Scheme despite having been recruited on regular basis after 2004 (even advertisement of the post was after 2004 making it even stronger case of New Pension Scheme). The Audit and Account of the government needs thoroughly probe this. The examination system is thoroughly compromised even at the level of question paper-setting and moderation. Yet, the Controller of Examinations has been continuing in his office for very long. The rules state that tenure-statutory administrative positions of the University are required to be advertised and filled every five years. There are many such irregularities, including financial chaos, which need probing by independent government agencies. The assets of such teacher-administrators need to be probed by such agencies too.
The question for the ordinary men and women of the Qaum is: if their educated and affluent elites can’t mount enough pressure upon the AMU-VC to replace these clouts and reshuffle the AMU administration then such a weak-kneed and helpless lot can’t be expected to muster enough strength to press the current dispensation in New Delhi to withdraw the Waqf Bill 2024.
Most important of all, ordinary Muslims need to be alerted by the conscientious section of people, that a chunk of their educated and affluent elites have switched over to the saffron establishment, leaving them vulnerable, isolated and, above all, helpless to fend for themselves. Felix Pal (2020) has documented a section of western UP Muslim elites opportunistically joining saffron outfits.
The time has come for the AMU [Teachers’ Association] and the communities to rise to the occasion and unite their members. They must actively engage in strategies that not only resist the Waqf Amendment Bill but also address the broader implications of elite’s perfidious detachment from the community. Only by fostering a genuine dialogue and acknowledging the voices of all constituents can we hope to challenge the majoritarian regime effectively. The survival and dignity of the embattled Qaum of Indian Muslims and the country’s organic plurality depend on it.
(The author is a Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University)
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