K B Jandial
AMU: Institution of Learning or Identity by Anil Maheshwari and Arjun Maheshwari; ink/OCCAM, New Delhi; 2025, Cost- Rs. 899
The book is a work of history and indictment, meticulously researched. Authored by a veteran Journalist, Anil Maheshwari and his son Arun Maheshwari, it questions how institutions shape identity and, in turn, how identity shapes institutions. The book does not offer easy answers, nor does it seek to. Instead, it presents Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) as a mirror, reflecting the broader struggles of Indian society-its aspirations, its contradictions, and its unfulfilled promises.
Moreover, authors delve into the role of AMU in shaping the Muslim political consciousness of India. They argue that while AMU was initially intended as a space for progressive thought, it has often been at the mercy of political interests that have manipulated its identity to suit broader electoral agendas. They highlight how successive governments have either courted or vilified AMU depending on the political climate. The push and pull between secularism and communal identity at AMU mirrors the larger struggle of Indian democracy itself.
The book also raises questions about the academic culture at AMU. While the university has produced a significant number of scholars, administrators, and public intellectuals, the authors write that its academic rigour has suffered under the weight of political turmoil. “When institutions become ideological battlegrounds, intellectual pursuits take a backseat.”
This insight resonates beyond AMU, speaking to the larger crisis that many universities in India are facing today. The erosion of academic freedom, the increasing politicisation of campuses, and the struggle between traditionalism and modernity are not unique to AMU alone. However, AMU, given its history and symbolic weight, bears these burdens more acutely than most of others.
Authors have made attempts to demolish the established perception that AMU ‘was the arsenal of Muslim India’, to quote M. A. Jinnah. The authors submit: “Aligarians smugly boast about the university’s role in the creation of Pakistan. It is true that Aligaians branched out to villages of UP and Bihar to garner support from the Muslim masses. By sporting beards and skullcaps to win the hearts of Muslims and staying in mosques, they had no appeal for influence over the Muslim elites (ashraf), who were the only ones who had the right to vote in the 1946 polls”. Only 3.25 percent Muslim population in UP was enfranchised in the elections under the ‘restricted franchise only to tax payers and landed classes’ And 34 percent of polled votes did not favour the Muslim League which had projected the elections as the ‘referendum on the demand of Pakistan’ and scholars of all shades and hues overlooked the report on the 1946 elections and based their ‘prejudiced’ conclusion merely on the basis of euphoria among the Muslim masses during the electioneering.
It is not merely a book about an institution; it is an autopsy of an idea. It examines the tension between education and identity, between a vision of intellectual enlightenment and the inescapable pull of history. “It was like serving two warring masters simultaneously: the British colonialists and orthodox co-religionists,” They write. “The resultant inter-mixing of the conflicting goals of learning and identity led AMU to a path where secular learning was destined to take a back seat, and champions of identity were to lead the institution to a blind alley.”
The book’s narrative begins, inevitably, with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. A figure both celebrated and contested, Sir Syed envisioned AMU as a bridge between the old and the new, an institution where Muslims would embrace modern education without forsaking their cultural roots. “Let Muslims reinvent themselves by adapting to a new epitome and evolving a new weltanschauung of reason-religion reconciliation,” he declared. It was a bold project, but that never fully escaped the gravitational pull of identity politics. “When Sir Syed talked about modern education for Muslims, he did not envisage a religious university. Otherwise, he would have established a madrasa.”
This contradiction-between the secular and the sectarian, between knowledge and identity-courses through AMU’s history like an unrelenting current. Maheshwaris liken its trajectory to a Greek tragedy, an enterprise undermined by the very forces it sought to transcend. Partition, in particular, was a decisive moment. “Partition came as a boon for AMU to bury its past, but it did not convert it into an opportunity. Since then, the university has become a sanctuary for backwards-looking Muslim leadership which has survived on emotional issues, thereby increasing the sufferings of Indian Muslims on the one hand and depleting the university’s standard on the other.”
If AMU was once a beacon of Muslim intellectualism, it is now, in authors words, a battleground. They document the internecine struggles that have defined the university’s history-between students and administrators, between rival factions, between visions of what the university should be. The position of Vice-Chancellor, for instance, is both powerful and precarious. “The VC of the university is the king and the newsmaker. More than 30,000 students and officials function under a near-perfect democratic setup, and nobody cares about whatever is happening outside the University.” But this kingdom is beset by strife. “There have been numerous and frequent episodes of strikes, gheraos (a siege), use of country-made pistols; pressuring the VC and other functionaries into making wrong decisions, including those in admission and appointments; compromising the dignity of the university authorities, teachers, and various office-bearers; and hooliganism to the point of bodily harm or threat of bodily harm.”
The Book provides chilling examples. “In one instance, a VC was forced to walk from the office to his residence barefoot before a hostile crowd of more than 5,000 students who booed and abused him.” In another, “a minor incident blew into a murderous attack on the VC on 25 April 1965, tarnishing the fair name of AMU forever and leading to an unending quest for the minority character of the university.”
This last point-the university’s “minority character”-is at the heart of much of AMU’s ongoing tumult. The Authors contend that AMU’s identity has been both weaponised from within and scrutinised from without. “An aggressive and militant Hindu right wing perceives every assertion of Muslimness with jaundiced eyes.” This mistrust is deeply entrenched. A TV correspondent once described AMU as a “university of terrorists.”
Yet for all its internal strife and external battles, AMU retains a hold on its alumni, an almost mythic presence in their consciousness. “Despite large-scale departure to Pakistan of faculty and alumni, the university has retained its role of nurturing Muslim ethnicity, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.” The love for AMU is often tinged with nostalgia and a sense of loss.
This duality-AMU as a revered institution and a site of perpetual crisis-runs through the book. It is a university of “world repute, yet in decline; progressive, yet conservative; credited with both Hindu-Muslim unity and the two-nation theory; failing its founder while claiming to honour him.” It is, in other words, a house divided, still searching for the balance between education and identity that Sir Syed once imagined.
In the end, Maheshwari’s book is neither an obituary nor an unequivocal condemnation of AMU. Instead, it is a call to reflect on what the university was meant to be and what it has become. “An institution cannot thrive on nostalgia alone,” they write. “It must adapt, innovate, and above all, prioritise learning over rhetoric.” Whether AMU can rise to this challenge remains an open question, one that this book leaves the reader pondering long after they turn the last page.
Endorsing the book, Pakistan’s public intellectual Pervez Hoodbhoy says, “The facts related in this book are deeply unsettling. Suppose Indian Muslims are to avert further marginalisation. In that case, they must take heed of this dangerous situation and recall AMU’s foundational principle as articulated by the great Sir Syed – retain your identity but move with the modern world, understand and absorb its changing ways and cheerfully accept the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.”
For those who have passed through its hallowed halls, for those who have debated its legacy, and for those who see it as a barometer of India’s secular ideals, “Aligarh Muslim University: Institution of Learning or Identity” is an essential read. It is a book that forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, to acknowledge both AMU’s contributions and its failures, and to imagine a future where the institution can emerge stronger, committed to its founding principles while embracing the realities of the present.
Follow our WhatsApp channel
