‘ A university is A university first, a cultural artefact later ’

Nadim Asrar
AMU, 1993-2000

The events of the past week at the Aligarh Muslim University have been upsetting. But what has been most distressing is the draconian decision of the administration to close the university sine die. It would have made some difference had they stayed together and pondered over the concerns and confusions that mark AMU today. Closing the university at a moment of crisis, and hence any possibility of a dialogue, is at the root of what ails the institution today.
Having hinged my argument at the literal and figurative closing of the university as its fundamental predicament, I want to pull myself back from the immediate context of three murders and a rape within an outrageously ridiculous span of six months, and try and probe the larger questions that such unfortunate incidents raise. Why is AMU like any university in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar today? What went so drastically wrong that an institution that boasted of its historical-political significance for more than a century is now a hotbed of chaos, crime and mediocrity?
I firmly believe in the idea of a university, Muslim or otherwise. For me, an academic institution is defined by its inherent logic of intellectual freedom. Any credible academic pursuit has to have such an ideal as its cornerstone. In this case, AMU finds itself in a strange spot. On the one hand, it has to be celebrated as the assertion of more than a century of struggle by the largest minority in India in a majoritarian state. In doing so, notions of the community and its cultural exclusivities are amplified to the extent that they become a parallel ideal within the campus. Anxiety over preserving a particular identity forces the community to resort to “traditions” and “culture” as the sacrosanct concepts, against which even academic excellence is often compromised.
It is this apparent contradiction that has been AMU’s greatest misfortune. How can an institution pursue academic and intellectual goals if it simultaneously puts an embargo on certain questions that can never be asked? Why is it that Islam, for example, as a social formation can never be put to any humanist academic enquiry in the campus? After all, historically speaking, there is not one Islam. People moving from the more culturally specific ‘’Khuda Hafiz” to the Wahabi totalising “Allah Hafiz” have to realise this shift, if not question it.
By limiting discourses within the campus, the University is bound to find itself outside the academic mainstream, and thus deprived of its dynamism. It is for this reason that the largest Muslim institution in India has continuously failed to come out with authoritative or groundbreaking researches on the status of Muslims of India.
The academy here has been largely unsuccessful in responding to phenomena like the rise of the Hindu Right or the globalisation of the Indian economy. Internal assertions like caste-conflicts within Muslims have been hardly addressed within the academy in Aligarh. In fact, the glaring silence of the campus during the period when Gujarat graduated from being a state to a statement is the best example of the institution’s academic sterility and a failure of its vision.
As a witness to that episode, I have to say that an extravagant dinner on Sir Syed’s birthday succeeded in doing what Gujarat could not do in 2002, i.e. constitute Aligarh as a community. It is this myopia and a suicidal obsession with its past that blinds AMU on its way to progress and enquiry.
It is like Bush’s violent closing of the dialogue: “You are either with us or with them.” The binary has no opening. It forecloses any alternative. You are either a slave of the dogmatic AMU mentality, or you are an enemy of Muslims belonging to anywhere from the Hindu Right to the evil West (or if they are a little kind, then you must be a Communist!). The schizophrenia of minorityism can have strange effects.
Against this backdrop comes the question: how can AMU be reclaimed as a brand? While I am uncomfortable with the idea of a brand that the New Economy of India dreams of turning every entity into, I do realise the intent behind such a question.
To begin answering this question, let me state the obvious—a university is a university first, and a cultural artifact later. This is not an inane statement. History best serves its purpose when it shows us the way ahead. The ideals of a movement that Aligarh proudly declares itself to be premised upon have to be perpetually internalised and acted upon, instead of them remaining some hollow slogans reserved for certain jingoistic occasions. The movement that Aligarh was is not over; it cannot be allowed to be either declared dead (or accomplished depending on how you see it) or hijacked by the self-seeking satraps of the campus.
The students have the highest stake in the institution. Their politics has to rescue the university, and hence the movement, from the self-seekers. Simultaneously, they have to be conscious of their historical role in representing a community that needs immediate attention from its intellectuals. Justice Sachar committee report is only the most recent damnation of India’s scorecard, a nation well on its way to be a superpower. The university has to come out of its self-imposed exile and start relating. The faculty and administration in AMU have to respect dissent, for there is no other way to sustain academic discourse. Conditions for dialogue and debates have to be created. Gender parity and justice is absolutely essential. In short, it has to live up to its claims of being a vanguard of Muslims. Merely claiming the status will not do.
It is high time AMU refused to be an island.
The writer, a MacArthur Fellow and research scholar at the University of Minnesota, US, was president of the AMU Students Union in 1999

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