By Kaleem Kawaja,
The Genesis
When Sir Syed first decided to improve his qaum by imparting modern education to them he built the Aligarh Movement. The clear objective of the pioneers in that movement was to build several Muslim schools that will grow into Muslim colleges. Even though Muslim, they enrolled some non-Muslims as students and quite a few non-Muslims as teachers, for obvious reasons of producing Muslim youth with broadminded viewpoints. They started with one school (the MAO school) that soon became MAO college in Sir Syed’s lifetime.
If you read Dsvid Lelvyd’s book “Aligarh’s First Generation”, it tells you that what Sir Syed and his colleagues were pursuing was not to build one school/college, but a movement where starting from the epicenter in Aligarh, educated Muslims were to branch out and build schools/colleges for Muslims across the breadth of the Indian subcontinent. That was the mantra of the founders.
It soon began to happen, when Chaudhry Karamat Hussain moved out and initiated the Karamat Hussain school for women in Lucknow that became a women s’ college. Shibli Nomani branched out to build Shibli school in Azamgarh that later became a college.
The Aligarh college became AMU in 1930 with the collective effort of Muslims from all over India and not just the M uslims of north India. The university kept growing, adding more faculties and colleges, the womens’ college, the teachers’ college, the law college, the engineering college, the Medical college etc.
Throughout its blossoming AMU remained a place where the Muslims of India brainstormed and made plans to spread education among the Muslims of India. Due to historical reasons and the sudden backwardness of Indian Muslims, the complexion of the post-1947 AMU transformed from all-India into a north-India (UP/Bihar) color. But that is not what Sir Syed and his friends wanted it to become.
Today
In the last decade the leaders of AMU started making some efforts to restore AMU’s all India complexion by trying to admit Muslim students from different parts of India. As expected VC Naseem Ahmad ran into stiff opposition and violence from the vested interests. With the arrival of VC Abdul Azis of Kerala, who does not speak Urdu, the restoration of AMU’s all-India complexion is accelrating. The concept of satellite AMU campuses was first tried by VC Mahmoodur Rahman. But now with real encouragement from the Indian government the concept of several remote AMU satellite campuses appears to be taking off.
Obviously the Indian government will have to make changes in the AMU Act to change AMU from being a one-campus university to a multi-campus AMU university system. Even though this model is very common in North America where most of the 50 states in US have their “state University System” where several universities in the state come under one State University System. For example, the California State University is really a system comprising of a conglomeration of several universities in the geographically large state of California.
The IIT system
This system exists within India itself among the various IITs. The first IIT was established in Kharagpur. The head of IIT Kharagpur was called “Director”, functioning under the supervision of the ministry of education. A few years later, with help from the management and professors at IIT Kharagpur, the second IIT was established at Bombay. Quite a few senior administrators and professors from IIT Kharagpur were transfered to the Bombay IIT. They set up the teaching system, curriculam etc at Bombay IIT and got it going. The entrance test at IIT Kharagpur was now expanded to include IIT Bombay. A council of IIT Directors comprising of the heads of these two IITs was set up to coordinate their functioning. In the next few decades as the number of IITs has grown to about half a dozen, the council now includes the Directors of all these IITs and is headed by a IIT Director-General, who functions under the supervision of the HRD ministry.
Today 125 years after its inception, AMU too needs to expand into a multi-campus university system that can be operated and managed somewhat like the IIT system. Obviously in the beginning the satellite campuses could be colleges, each of which will expand into their own universities. Just as each IIT starting with a few departments of engineering added more departments, MS level, then PhD level, then post-PhD research level; then non-engineering physical sciences; each finally becoming a full fledged university. All IITs have not reached this level yet.
The AMU Court, Executive Council and Academic Council who appear to be positive on a multi-campus AMU, even though some well entrenched vested interests are doing their best to rock the boat, needs to grab the bull by the horn and make sure that this evolution of AMU does go through. With mid-term elections to several State Assemblies due in 2011, and the Sachar Committee recomendations in tow, the present time is the most opportune to get the UPA/Congress government to start implementing this AMU evolution. I hope the Muslim political leaders will put the pressing interest of the Muslim qaum first in their minds and put enough pressure on the UPA government to ensure the implementation of this scheme.