Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, provides invaluable service to marginalised students, especially Muslims and those from SC/ST communities. Will we stand by while it is bulldozed?
CURRENTLY, a sit-in is ongoing at Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh. The university was founded by influential Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, who is presently in jail. Azam Khan was associated with the trust running the university. The students at the sit-in are opposing a notice by the Rampur Development Authority (RDA) that has ordered the demolition of 38 of the 40 buildings of the institution, thus effectively shutting down the university.
Mehroza Khan, a law student at the university, told The Indian Express (July 20): “Our career and future are at stake. We have decided to stage this sit-in because we want the government to reconsider its decision to demolish the university. We would not be able to continue our studies elsewhere, especially at colleges located far away.”
“The biggest thing that we get here is the fee concession. Students from SC/ST backgrounds receive a 50% concession. Students who have lost their parents also get a concession. There are professional courses like B.Pharma and D.Pharma, which many of us would not be able to pursue elsewhere,” the student added.
The foundation stone of the university was laid on September 18, 2006. The campus was developed over several years by the Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust. However, the exact construction timeline for various structures has become a subject of intense legal and administrative dispute.
According to RDA, while the university’s Medical College and one academic block had valid approved plans, 38 other buildings across the campus were constructed without obtaining mandatory permissions from the competent civic authority. The university administration has maintained that these buildings were constructed years earlier — at a time when their location (Singankhera village) did not fall under the RDA’s jurisdiction — and were previously approved by the local zila panchayat.
Because of these unapproved constructions and alleged land-use violations, according to RDA, it ordered the removal or demolition of the 38 buildings. The students and many social activists and politicians are pleading that this demolition is unwarranted, as the university is rendering a valuable service to students of various marginalised categories, and more so, Muslims and Scheduled Castes and Tribes. They claim that the primary aim of the state government is to undermine education for Muslims in particular. As such, education is one of the major areas neglected by the present regime, as the current upsurge of students and youth across the country shows. As for minority educational institutions, more obstacles are being created.
The other aspect is the demolition of structures identified with Muslim identity. The Jauhar University is the latest in the line of demolitions, mosques in Kashi, Mathura, Sambhal, Ajmer Dargah and Saharanpur are already in the queue. Recently, we saw the Kamal Maula Masjid being handed over to the Hindu side because it was considered a temple of Vagdevi. Other mosques face the axe on the lines of the Babri Masjid, which was shamelessly demolished in 1992.
These claims resemble the tactics used during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement to weaponise medieval history for political and communal aims. These mosques and similar disputes are based on the wrong premise that temples were destroyed to build them. These claims often rely on exaggerated or distorted interpretations of history, frequently citing questionable colonial-era footnotes. Permitting these claims to be entertained directly challenged the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, which was designed to maintain the religious status quo as it existed on August 15, 1947, except in the case of the Babri Masjid.
The pattern began with the Hindu right-wing’s success in demolishing the mosque in Ayodhya. The claim was that Babar had destroyed the Ram Temple to build the mosque. Despite court judgements being based on ‘peoples’ sentiments’ and ‘God coming in dreams’ of an honourable judge, the judgement did regard the installation of Ram Lalla idols on the premises in 1949 as a crime.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, by Hindutva forces was also regarded as a crime. This demolition paved the way for the exponential rise of the electoral strength of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which, in due course, came to power at the Centre, first in 1996 and then in 1999 and then, of course, in 2014.
But the rewards of the Babri Masjid demolition were very mouth-watering for Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh aka RSS-BJP and the series continues with a claim being made here and there, which the legal system ignores. The 1991 Act permits it to be investigated etc., but religious polarisation is being intensified, benefiting Hindu nationalism.
The creative minds of thinkers of the Hindu right-wing is now aiming at a university. This proposed demolition will serve an additional purpose; that of defaming the Muslim community and pushing it in a corner by depriving much-needed education to the minority community.
On similar lines, an old mosque in a small area in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, has also been served notice to vacate on the grounds of not having adequate permission. The law of adverse possession does not exist for the Hindu right as regards Muslims. So, to somehow prove the illegality of the Muslim structures and try to get them demolished is their continuous effort.
The reckless use of bulldozers is yet another way of pushing the Muslim community into a corner. Demolition seems to be their way of ‘Building the Nation’. The huge loss of social wealth through demolitions on one or the other ground is immaterial to RSS-BJP.
Building the nation had an entirely different meaning in the post-Independence period. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister, had the idea that building IITs, AIIMS, the public sector and facilities for irrigation were the infrastructure on which we could overcome our deprivations to some extent. With the rise of the Hindu right, this direction seems to have been reversed and we are now searching for temples underneath mosques, looking for illegality of Muslim structures, all of which serve as fodder to their politics of promoting hate and polarising society.
Can good sense prevail, and can we come back to the path of ‘nation-building’ through adhering to the values of the Indian Constitution, shun bulldozers and keep claiming the illegality of Muslim structures by stretching some little point here or there?
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Ram Puniyani is an eminent author, activist and former professor of IIT Mumbai. The views expressed here are the author’s personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them.
