By Md. Sajjad,
Aligarh Muslim University is once again closed sine die. Students arose in protest on October 26th, 2009 following the killing of a student outside the campus the night before. As about almost every previous agitation/forced closure, the latest campus closure that begain on October 31st is also sine die. If assured of anonymity, significantly large number of the insiders would share the ‘secret’ that the student agitation in AMU is basically an outcome of the fierce rivalry between the ‘warring’ groups of teachers.
The turmoil and agitation on the AMU campus is sadly a recurrent phenomenon, which makes it a focus of controversy. It can only be understood by dissecting the politics of internal power struggle in AMU. Does it have anything to do with: (a) the ‘enormity’ of the size of the boarding students? (Of the total of over 32000 students, about 17000 live in the hostels, probably the biggest residential ‘one-campus’ university), (b) form and content of the teaching, which does not help the students in developing critical, questioning capabilities and abhorring all kinds of chauvinist world-views (c) Recruitment/ promotion policy, (d) admission policy, (e) lethargic, biased, weak, inefficient, corrupt administration?
Quite often, the student agitations in AMU are believed to be engineered by one or the other group of ‘politicking’ teachers. Niraj Roy, in a different context of 1981, had precisely said the same thing that the AMU students are the ‘pawns of the self-seekers’ (Indian Express, July 19, 1981; for different views on the 1981 agitation see, Asghar Ali Engineer, ‘Trouble at AMU’, EPW, August 15, 1981, among many others). Urdu periodicals, memoirs/ autobiographies (mostly of insiders) have great many interesting and revealing details, pertaining to the affairs of AMU through the ages.
Vested interests
As rightly observed by an alumnus and distinguished IAS officer, ‘local factors, particularly vested petty interests have always played major de-stabilizing role in the affairs of the university’. This time, the factionalism and polarization has become even more evident in the various meetings of the Executive Council (EC, 2007-09), practically the highest decision making body of AMU, which has got about 26 members in all, of which a good number is ex officio, ‘handpicked’ by the V.C.; rest is nominated by the Visitor (President of the Indian Republic)/ Union government. Only four are directly elected by the teachers: two by the Lecturers, and remaining two by the Readers & Professors jointly.
Are the factions really concerned about corruption in administration or they are fighting for their own shares/ kickbacks in the contracts for constructions and purchase? It is necessary to probe this question. The ongoing enquiry by the committee led by Justice Fakhruddin may probably be examining it. This is also almost a pattern in the history of AMU that allegations, counter-allegations and exposes of corruption often accompany (or result into) turmoil, indiscipline and upsurges. This ‘hypothesis’ is exemplified, among few others, by the Shaikh Abdullah Committee Report (1926) and consequent Ibrahim Rahimatoola Committee Report (October 1927), AMU Official Enquiry Report (1961, was it called Chatterjee Committee?), Justice Mathew Report (1998, made public only in March 2007, and taking no action against those indicted) and the ongoing Justice Fakhruddin Committee (2009).
Students’ movements
If the teachers/ officers (Karmacharis) are going to be exposed by these reports then why do the turmoil in the university invariably manifests through student agitations? Is there really a link between the ‘discomfiture’ of the teachers/ officers and those of the students? Insiders would almost certainly give an affirmative answer to this. Arguably, in AMU there has never been a student movement (let alone its autonomous character) of long term vision and dynamics, not even on the issue of ‘minority status’ during 1965-81 (Violette Graff, EPW, 11 August, 1990). There have only been sporadic, spontaneous, short-lived upsurges; and relief distribution among the Muslim victims of communal riots, at times inviting allegations of embezzlement of the relief fund by the office-bearers of the Students’ Union [Besides some outbursts on emotive issues like Muslim personal law, Urdu, Babri Masjid etc.].
Quite often, replacement of some teacher-administrators was the only important demand of the agitating students. They however, hardly demand any change in the principles and style of functioning of these administrators. In the early 1990s, this phenomenon had become much recurrent, when the pliant VC (1990-94) invariably succumbed to the demands of the student leaders whose influence on and accessibility to the VC (and other high functionaries) had reached such a menacing limit that the student-leaders could decide the recruitment/ promotion of the teachers, teacher-administrators and other functionaries (I. H. Siddiqui, Tahzibul Akhlaq, Sir Syed’s Death Centenary Number, 1998). These “observations” may not be telling us everything we want to know, but they do illustrate some critical features in which the system called AMU works.
Isolation syndrome
In the 1960s [and the subsequent decades], large number of the Indian university campuses were agitating on the issues like unemployment, rural poverty, economic inequality, land reforms, atrocities against Dalits & minorities, social justice, civil liberty, social composition of the structures of power etc. ‘It was an era of worldwide student politics’, but ‘in northern India particularly, [politically] committed vice chancellors with their handpicked aides and advisors took charge’ (Rudolph & Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi, Chicago, 1987, p. 290, 302). The AMU students’ ‘movements’ however preferred to remain largely oblivious of all these issues.
This ‘isolation syndrome’ of AMU (Muslim educated youth in a secular democracy) awaits deep academic exploration. An unpublished brilliant essay on AMU, 1909-65 by Prof. Hameeduddin Khan (1893-1974?) , informs us that the void (created by the teachers who migrated to Pakistan), was largely filled by the Left leaning teachers, whose influence in the power-structure of AMU enhanced particularly with the AMU Amendment Act of 1965. Could they help ‘radicalizing’ the outlook, orientation of the campus life? How and why did the Islamist student outfits emerge on the campus? How did all these outfits look at the society and state of India? Or did they also turn into another groups of vested interests? Sadly, many respondents would say ‘yes’.
Another student group, Forum for Democratic Rights (FDR) made its presence felt on the campus during 1994-99, got a tremendous mandate in the students’ union elections of Jan-Feb. 1999, and tried to break the ‘isolation syndrome’ by connecting with the larger world of progressive had they got the backing ideas, but its ex-activists would tell us that ‘massive administrative repression’ was one of the most important causes of their decimation. All vested interests, they would say, got united against the FDR. In retrospect they ‘realise’ that of a group of teachers, they would have not been decimated so easily, but in that case they too would have ended up as another vested interests.
Teacher-Officer-Student nexus
Arguably, it is perhaps because of the teacher-officer-student nexus that the VCs are often compelled to resort to populism, yet, at the end of the day, feel helpless in dealing with the turmoil. To complete their tenures, the VCs depend upon the various internal lobbies for local support. Depending upon the situation and whims, the VCs have to decide which clique to be avoided/ antagonized and support of which to be enlisted. The clique closer to the VC will have greater following as prospects of extracting due/undue favours look bright to the followers. If the person of the VC lacks the tact, integrity, firmness and the qualities like that, are more prone to fall prey to such cliques. It therefore becomes necessary to explore the manner in which such lobbies come into being, the manner in which leadership of such lobbies is acquired and exercised. Brass analyzes that the manipulative leadership emerges through:
(a) The politics of patronage which involves mutual dependency and the politicians build their power by ‘diabolic’ cultivation of linkages from top to bottom through ‘bargaining, compromise and exchange’, accompanying ‘jobbery, demagoguery and populism’. Aggregating power from the bottom up enhances the importance of the local actors/ factions, because of a symbiotic relation between the top power and local brokers.
Unscrupulous inbreeding through ‘infamous’ Local Selection Committees, and recommendations of three (each year) such committees placed them ‘till further order’ (TFO), making them virtually permanent employee. It also taxed the academics of the meritorious ones. (Syed Shahabuddin, Editorial, Muslim India, July 2000). Of late, the relatively strict insistence of the UGC-NET could put only some restraint on illegal recruitments at the entry level of lecturers. Presumably, the exercise of the RTI Act 2005 might also be creating some check on fearless violation of the rules. Reckless, populist promotions, without taking care of research publications in reputed peer-reviewed journals are arguably one of the greatest banes of AMU. These (mal) practices have particularly fattened the vested interests.
(b) The politics of crisis which plays upon or manufactures dramatic volatile issues, who can engineer, manipulate and control the upsurges. Association of local politicians with criminals/ lumpens or quasi lumpens hovering around the mohallas adjacent to the campus would only add to the problem.
Badruddin Tyabji, the AMU-VC (1962-64) recalls in his autobiography (More Memoirs of an Egoist, Haranand, Delhi, 1994) that the ‘inefficient and corrupt staff’ constantly hindered him and that ‘they had entrenched themselves in the university over the years, and it was not easy to cure them or dispense with their services as so many vested interests had grown round them’ . A former teacher observed that the ‘dubious’ process of recruitment (more so of the non-teaching staff) and the principle of their functioning suffer from “cousin-syndrome”, which helps them form a powerful nexus. Anil Maheshwari, a correspondent of the Hindustan Times had also (in early 1990s) reported that, “In-Laws and out-laws make laws in AMU”. It had detailed how few clans had dozens of its members on the pay rolls of AMU.
Once, Prof. H.A.S. Jafri, the then Registrar cum Pro-VC cum… had to make a press statement that in AMU there are no ideological groups, rather in the name of ideologies of Leftism, Islamism, piety etc they pursue the brazen politics of opportunism and favouritism. In 2007, the Times of India reported that the administration in AMU had deteriorated particularly because the then Registrar and Proctor (both newly promoted professors of law) were at loggerheads with each other, and this factionalism manifested more through student mobilizations on trivial and ‘real’ issues. Group of rowdy students ransacked the private houses of the then officiating VC, Prof. Saleemuddin and the then Registrar. Many believed that this was schemed by the rival groups of politicking teachers. The decision of enquiry into the upsurges of April-September 2007 by Justice Faizanuddin has not yet been allowed to start on one or the other pretext.
Such fragmentation and factionalization renders the VCs weak and helpless. In such a situation even an upright VC of impeccable credentials and capabilities can face enormous resistance, incapacitating him/her in confronting the lobbies (persistent centres of power, whose support is so crucial for the VCs to complete their tenure) head on and breaking the networks of kin-clan-faction-region-sub-region ties. One can only imagine, what will happen to one who launches selective and cynically opportunistic crackdown on illegal recruitment/ promotion, leaving many more fishes out of their net, while at the same time indulging in similar kinds of wrongs.
As the agitating students are reported to have complained that why does not the VC launch a crackdown against those Provosts who dispose and utilize the Hall staff at their own residences? Interestingly, this ‘malaise’ along with ‘corruption in the management of the Halls’ was resented by Badruddin Tyabji also. The credibility of the teachers among the students have got so badly eroded that those teachers who went to pacify the agitating students (last week of October 2009) were greeted with the embarrassing remarks like, ‘what kind of promotion/ administrative assignment do you intend to bargain with the VC in exchange of pacifying us (fizzling out our agitation)?’ What do we make of such spine-chilling disrepute of the teachers? Does not it affect the self-esteem at least of those teachers who don’t have any such embarrassing & disgusting personal axe of self-promotion to grind with? A serious question to Aligs: self-introspection is probably inevitable at least now.