By Javed Ahmad
“On the Solomon islands, when the tribes need to clear the jungle to make way for fields, they don’t cut down the trees, they simply gather and collect around it, and hurl abuses at the tree, they curse it. Slowly but surely, after some days, the trees begin to wither. It dies on its own.”
– So explains the main protagonist, aptly portrayed by Amir Khan, in recent critical hit Tare Zameen Par.
One of the enduring legacies, for AMU alumni and Aligarians, of the past decade is the prominence of the use of social networking sites to connect with each other, for as varied reasons as, sharing old times to highlighting Alumni’s efforts for continuing Aligarh Movement to helping fresher’s coming out of AMU to criticism of the system within AMU. Over the years criticism of system became main theme with other motives mostly taking back seats. The criticism itself which was originally meant to be positive, constructive and practical slowly turned into mostly negative, destructive and speculative.
Today anything and everything coming out of AMU is looked negatively and subjected to volley of voracious critical attacks. Things have come to such a pass that budding professors introduce themselves as ‘Shudras’ to the outer world and aspiring VC’s are termed Tom, Dick and Harry. Union Ministers who also happen to be Alumni are chased away from forums by accusing them of sinister motives and perpetrators of murderous attacks. Ex-VC’s who out of love for AMU try to present a road map are shattered to pieces based on gossips from yesteryears.
Faces of AMU research scholars, 2008
Another form the criticality of system took was ‘whistle blowing’. Whistle blowing which till it not reached AMU doorsteps was meant to be startling revelations based on internally procured facts. But once reaching AMU doorsteps like many other mutations it also went a drastic change in its definition. In the name of whistle blowing the enduring ‘gossips’ of AMU -which have long history in AMU going back to years when warring factions use to plant stories based on half truths against each other- became facts to judge the system. The juicy details of who did what to whom and in what way which previously use to get swallowed by the gutters of Aligarh have become registered on online sites for everyone, from friends and foes of AMU, to read and enjoy.
But this is not to suggest that all is honky dory with these sites or at least with all of them. There is a silent majority who keeps on posting, though infrequently, positive, constructive and practical criticism of AMU system, old memories, details of scholarships, details of vacancies, vision for Aligarh Movement and so on, but sadly voices like these, have become less frequent and getting sidelined in all the brinkmanship and one-upmanship.
It’s quite ironical that a system, that is, Alumni grouping through social site, which was meant to be a form of an alter-ego to the ego, residing within AMU, has inadvertently submerged into the ego itself by emulating all that was supposed to be wrong with the original ego. Though there is still time that the wrong’s which have crept up on these sites can be corrected and weeded out by silent majority before these sites become an inferior and online version of brinkmanship and one-upmanship displayed within AMU.
For if not corrected by silent majority, then not only a beautiful idea of grouping together online for a cause, will be lost but also with constant negative, destructive and speculative criticism, the nourishing tree – the root of knowledge and Muslim intellectualism in India- will begin to wither if it has not yet started to wither with all that goes inside AMU.
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The author is alumunus of AMU and based in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.