By Dr. Omar Khalidi
What does one expect from a university’s faculty dedicated to the educational modernization of Muslims? Of course nothing less than a leadership role in scholarship about the community to which it primarily caters. One can write about the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on a range of issues associated with it, such as the purpose and the performance of the university as a whole since inception. Or it can be subdivided into numerous topics such as its “minority character,” the admission criteria and process; the social and regional composition of students; the careers of its alumni; the performance of the university administration; employment at the university and the functioning of the university court.
Leaving aside these topics for better informed persons, the present paper deals with the intellectual output of one segment of the AMU: its three critical departments of economics, political science and sociology. Given that the three departments are most crucial in social sciences, they make ideal candidates for assessing the contribution its faculty makes for understanding the issues facing Muslims. The paper seeks to assess the intellectual output of the three departments in two ways. One is a quantitative and qualitative analysis of books and journal articles written by its faculty on issues of contemporary Indian Muslims in English and Urdu; and the other way to see the quantity and quality of doctoral dissertations the departments have produced.
A Profile of Aligarh:
Located in a typical UP town reputed for its lock industry, the AMU began as a small college in 1875 graduating into a university in 1920. The purpose of its establishment was of course the educational modernization of Muslims in the aftermath of the failed uprising in 1857. Initially, the rich landlords and the feudal nobility of India funded the university, and most of the money came from outside UP. From around 1930s to 1940s, the AMU was among the major centers of Muslim nationalism in the Subcontinent, earning it from Muhammad Ali Jinnah the dubious compliment of “the intellectual arsenal of Muslim India.” In the 1950s-1960s, leftist intellectuals dominated the AMU, but since the 1970s, the university has seen a diversity of opinion among its community of faculty, staff and students. According to its official website, in 2010 the University has about 28000 students on its rolls, most living in 70 hostels, making it essentially a residential campus spread over an impressive 467.6 hectares of land. It employs about 1400 academics and about 6000 staff its administration. The AMU is one of the 20 central universities funded by the union government. Central universities are better funded than state universities.
AMU VC Prof. Abdul Azis among the students
The Departments of Economics, Political Science and Sociology:
What is the intellectual output of the three departments as measured by faculty publications? Searches conducted in electronic databases such as Social Science Citation Index, Bibliography of Asian Studies, Index Islamicus, and printed bibliographies such as Guide to Indian Periodical Literature (Social Sciences and Humanities) since 1967, as well as citations in publications on Indian Muslims since 1950 to 2010 reveals that the three AMU faculty combined have contributed little to the burgeoning literature on Indian Muslims. Of the several thousand bibliographic citations in the aforesaid databases and in my three major works, Khaki and Ethnic Violence in India, Muslim Experience of Indian Democracy, and Muslims in Indian Economy, [1] the AMU faculty publications number less than 30, a meager count by any measure! A close scrutiny of the websites of each of the three departments revealed nothing suggesting an active, ongoing research on Indian Muslim issues. An examination of the latest catalog of the Publications Division of AMU reveals a mere handful of titles by the three department’s faculty. Unless the three departments’ academic output is shown elsewhere, information in public domain suggests that the relevant AMU departments’ focus of research is on topics other than Indian Muslims. Given the slim output of published research at AMU, it is unsurprising that the latest work on Aligarh lock industry comes not from the Economics Department, but from scholars elsewhere.[2] Similarly, some of the important works on Aligarh have come from Elizabeth A. Mann, Professors Paul Brass and Asutosh Varshney with no connection to the University. [3] On the University itself, some of the seminal work have been written by academic outsiders such as Violette Graff, Hafeez Malik, David Lelyveld, and Theodore P. Wright, Jr.[4] Unlike the absence of interest in Indian Muslim issues at the three departments, late Prof. Iqbal Ansari (1935-2009) of the AMU’s Department of English wrote several major works on minorities, perhaps compensating for the lack of interest in the subject among his colleagues.[5]
How many doctoral dissertations have been completed at the three departments at AMU? Does the topic of research of the dissertations cover issues of Indian Muslims? An examination of the doctoral dissertations titles in each department reveals an unsatisfactory picture. I examined the titles of 144 dissertations in the Economic Department and found a mere 5 pertinent to Indian Muslim issues; 121 dissertations were submitted in the Department Sociology between 1971 and 2006, none pertained to contemporary Indian Muslims; out of 250 dissertations in Political Science submitted from 1959-2008, only three pertain to contemporary Indian Muslim issues.
Prof. M. Naseem Farooqi, vice chancellor between the years 1990-1994 complained that at Aligarh,”people do not expect a professor of Economics or Sociology to publish any research paper in an international journal. Even nil publications in Indian journals are also becoming acceptable and respectable.”[6] Compared to the research done at AMU, central universities such as Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University have done better as far as issues of modern Muslim India are concerned. Scholars looking for research on Indian Muslims are likely to look for input from academics in universities other than Aligarh. Why is there a lock on research at AMU on Indian Muslim issues? Only the relevant AMU faculty can unlock the puzzle. As things stand, students of Islam in India do not expect leadership role for AMU faculty in light of their current academic output.
References
1. Omar Khalidi, Khaki and Ethnic Violence in India, (New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2nd edition, 2010; Omar Khalidi, “Muslim Experience of Indian Democracy,” in Islam and Democratization in Asia, edited by Shiping Hua, (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010); Omar Khalidi, Muslims in Indian Economy, (New Delhi: Three Essays Collective, 2006)
2. Mridula Sharma, Harsh Sharma, Talmeez F. Naqvi, “Survival of Aligarh Lock Manufacturing Industry,” Economic and Political Weekly (24 September 2005): 4257-4263.
3. E.A. Mann, Boundaries and Identities: Muslims, Work and Status in Aligarh, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1992); Paul Brass, The Production of Hindu Muslim Violence in India, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); Asutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). An exception to the case is the unpublished work of Naved Masood, Aligarh alum, “Reflections on Aligarh Vice Chancellors, 1920-79.” I am grateful to Masood for sharing the document.
4. Theodore P. Wright, Jr., “Muslim Education in India at the Crossroad: The Case of Aligarh,” Pacific Affairs 39, 1 & 2 (Spring-Summer 1966): 50-63; David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Hafeez Malik, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Muslim Modernization in India and Pakistan, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); Violette Graff, “Aligarh’s Long Quest for ‘Minority,’ Status: AMU (Amendment) Act, 1981,” Economic and Political Weekly (11 August 1990): 1771-1781.
5. Iqbal Ansari, Political Representation of Muslims in India, (New Delhi: Manak, 2006); Readings on Minorities: Perspectives and Documents, 3 vols. (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1996-2002)
6. M.N. Farooqi, My Days at Aligarh, (New Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1998), p. 55.
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Dr. Omar Khalidi can be reached at [email protected].