The relationship between Jamia Millia Islamia and Palestine can hardly be over-emphasised; JMI’s founder and first vice-chancellor Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar is buried in the Al-Aqsa campus in Jerusalem.
Mohammad Alamullah | Clarion India
NEW DELHI — The world-renowned educational institution, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), celebrated its 103rd Foundation Day on 29 October. Normally, on such occasions, tributes are paid to the founder/s of the concerned institution. But, far from paying tributes to the founders of this great institution, brazen disregard towards JMI ethos was noticed.
The relationship between JMI and Palestine can hardly be over-emphasised; JMI’s founder and first vice-chancellor Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar is buried in the Al-Aqsa campus in Jerusalem. Far from showing some respect for this historical relationship between JMI and Palestine, a couple of days before the founding day celebration, a protest by students against Israeli barbarism and its occupation of Palestinian land was dispersed and several student protesters were harassed.
Furthermore, JMI administration also imposed a ban on pro-Palestine rallies and on waiving Palestinian flag in the campus. The administration also warned of strong action against anyone organising and participating in a pro-Palestine protest within the campus, without prior permission. Student leaders, however, allege that their applications to hold rallies were not even responded to.
In such an atmosphere and culture of ungratefulness, is it at all surprising that JMI administration and a majority of its students, both past and present, have no idea of JMI’s role in the freedom struggle of the country and the strong historical relationship between this great institution and Palestine?
Not long ago, in the entrance examination of JMI, students were asked about the location of Jerusalem. Surprisingly, the options provided did not include Palestine but Israel.
In another incident in 2014, at an event at JMI, the then Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, the chief guest, expressed his desire to visit the grave of Maulana Muhammad Ali and asked about its location. No one could answer his question. When I mentioned that his grave was in Palestine, no one believed me. Finally, a history professor confirmed that the Maulana’s grave was indeed in Jerusalem as he had searched it on Google (Sic).
Three years ago, on 5 October 2019, JMI students were subjected to injustice and oppression on the same issue when, during a seminar, they protested against participation of an official from the Israeli embassy in Delhi. According to media reports, during the protests, unruly individuals, reportedly acting on the instructions of the authorities, physically assaulted the protesting students. Several students were injured in violence and had to be hospitalised and five students were issued show-cause notices. The incident was reported in several newspapers and it caught the attention of Delhi Minority Commission (DMC). It sent a letter to JMI asking: “Are the university authorities not aware of the BDS movement, under which numerous universities in the East and West boycott Israel because it occupies Palestinian lands and mistreats Palestinians in the occupied territories?”
Only if the Jamia administration knew that this institution owes its existence to a popular and strong movement against foreign rule and a protest against British government’s control over JMI’s inspiration, the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Unfortunately, a ban on protests against Israel’s barbarism has been imposed by AMU administration too. In both institutions, protesting students have been harassed and intimidated. To add insult to the injury, on 13 October, JMI administration also attempted to stop Friday prayers by locking the campus gates that were opened following intense protests by the students.
Lamenting on the tragedy, young journalist and a JMI alumnus, Afroz Alam Sahil, wrote on his Facebook wall: “How much Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar’s soul must have been pained — buried in Al-Aqsa campus — at the snatching of Palestinian flags from the hands of JMI students, an institution founded by him?”
Let the administrations of JMI and AMU learn some history of their institutions. Ironically enough, a majority of staff members in both these institutions are those who owe their positions to their alma maters.
Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar, (about whom English writer H.G. Wells once said that he possessed, “the pen of Macaulay, the tongue of Burke, and the heart of Napoleon.”) dedicated and sacrificed everything he had for the freedom of the country. He used his oratory and writing skills to free his motherland from foreign yoke and paid heavily for this. For him the establishment of JMI — and before it the launch of English daily Comrade and Urdu daily Hamdard — was only the means to achieve the lofty goal of freedom, an Islamic ideal. Addressing the Fourth Plenary Session of the of the Round Table Conference on 19 November 1930 in London, he described his relationship with India and the Muslim ummah as:
“I belong to two circles of equal size, but which are not concentric. One is India, and the other is the Muslim world. When I came to England in 1920 at the head of the Khilafat Delegation, my friends said: ‘You must have some sort of a crest for your stationery.’ I decided to have it with two circles on it. In one circle was the word ‘India’; in the other circle was Islam, with the word ‘Khilafat.’ We as Indian Muslims came in both circles. We belong to these two circles, each of more than 300 million, and we can leave neither. We are not nationalists but super-nationalists, and I, as a Muslim say that ‘God made man and the Devil made the nation.’ Nationalism divides; our religion binds. No religious wars; no crusades, have seen such holocausts and have been so cruel as your last war, and that was a war of your nationalism, and not my Jihad.”
It was this deep sense of belonging that made Maulana Muhammad Ali a staunch nationalist with a strong sense of relationship with rest of the ummah in the world. He saw no contradiction and clash between the two. It was this spirit that earned him great respect among the freedom fighters of India as well as among Muslims outside India. And it was this respect that made the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, provide him a place for his final resting place in the holy compound of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Palestinian and Arab mourners participating in his funeral procession, carried placards acknowledging his unwavering support for their cause.
In an article, “Need for a Revised Palestine Policy” Seema Sengupta, opines: “Jauhar was so passionate about the rights of Palestinians to have an independent homeland that he did not even hesitate to confront the British government and other western powers. And this very sentiment is shared by a large majority of Indians, because of the country’s role in global decolonisation efforts and fight against apartheid.”
She adds: “Being leaders of a moral struggle based upon mass politics and movements, both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru recognised the importance of issues of justice and morality and the need for India to stand for it unequivocally.”
Muhammad Ali died in London on 4 January 1931, only six weeks after his last and passionate speech at the Round Table Conference in which he had famously said: “I want to go back to my country if I can go back with the substance of freedom in my hand. Otherwise, I will not go back to a slave country. I would even prefer to die in a foreign country, so long as it is a free country; and if you do not give us freedom in India you will have to give me a grave here.” His body was taken to and buried in Jerusalem.
But, with an irony of fate, slavery continued to chase Muhammad Ali even after his death and Jerusalem came to be occupied by a nation that has set a new example in cruelty and barbarism.
Known Urdu writer Maulana Majid Daryabadi gives us some idea of the Maulana’s dedication to freedom and the circumstances in which he undertook the painful journey. He writes:
“When, just before departure, a very sincere friend and associate of his and also my namesake, Maulana Abdul Majid Badayuni asked him, ‘Why on earth, with all this big portfolio of ailments and having become a walking corpse, you are going to Britain?’ In response he only said these two words, ‘To die…” (Muhammad Ali: Zaati Diary Ke Chand Auraq, page 593, by Maulana Abdul Majid Daryabadi)
“He wasn’t able to walk and board the ship on his own. So, he was laid and taken on a stretcher and by the time the ship reached France his condition worsened. While London was still a good distance away his condition had become so miserable that the rest of the journey had become almost an impossibility and therefore he was taken off the ship in Paris and put under the treatment of some renowned and expert doctors there.”
Daryabadi writes further: “On the face of it, it was simply a sojourn to London, to attend the Round Table Conference whereas, in fact, it was a journey to meet one’s death in place. The ill-wishers had taunted: ‘What spark do these dead ashes have in them?’ But when he stood up and spoke, everyone, the British and the Indians, all gasped and wondered whether this man was of flesh and bones. He declared unflinchingly (as if he was seeing the future): ‘I have come here to win freedom, I will only go back with freedom otherwise I will die in this very land; and if you do not give us freedom in India you will have to give me a grave here.’ [Exact vibration from the speech; not translation]. It was 4th of January of 1931 and the 15th night of Sha’ban 1350 Hijrah when the Muslims around the world were praying to their Almighty for their sustenance, health, honour, life and forgiveness, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise Creator deprived the world of Islam and took back this blessing from them. When Maulana died he was only 52” (English translation: courtesy Urdu Media Monitor).
According to Raees Ahmed Jafri, the author of Seerat-e-Muhammad Ali: “The body was sent to Baitul Muqaddas from Taylori Bandar by the Narkanda ship. It reached Port Said on January 21. Representatives of the King of Egypt, the Prime Minister, and the elders of Port Said were part of the procession. Namaz-e-Janaza [funeral prayer] was offered at The Abbas Mosque, the Egyptian guard saluted, and the corpse was carried on shoulders. Prince Mohammad Ali honoured and blessed Muhammad Ali by giving a piece of the Kaaba cover for the late Muhammad Ali. The deceased’s coffin was made of pure khaddar. The body arrived in Jerusalem on January 23. After the Friday prayers were offered, Shaheed-e Millat was buried with millions of moist eyes.”
To quote Afroz Alam Sahil from one of his articles: “He was the one and only Indian to be buried in the Masjid-e-Aqsa campus. One reason behind this decision was to establish a religious connection between the Muslims of India and Palestine, similar to their love for Makkah and Madinah. The choice to bury him in Jerusalem, the place from where the Prophet (peace be upon him) ascended to heaven, was made by his friends, relatives, and followers.”
Subhas Chandra Bose, known for his closeness to Hitler’s Germany, was critical of the British’s contradictory and erratic policy on Palestine which is said to have ultimately led to the current impasse. Bose was greatly impressed by Muhammad Ali Jauhar’s concern. He objected to the British policy of simultaneously appeasing both Jews and Palestinians. Gandhiji himself (one of the founders of JMI) was a fierce critic of the Jewish leadership. In his magazine Harijan in 1946, two years before the establishment of the Israeli state, he wrote: “They have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism.” On November 26, 1938, he again said in Harijan: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct.”
A study of Gandhiji’s writings show that he opposed the Jewish nation-state in Palestine, calling it wrong and inhuman. He believed that displacing the local Arab population to establish a Jewish homeland would be a crime against humanity. Gandhiji used to say that Jews could settle in Palestine only “with the goodwill of the Arabs” and for this, they would have to “forgo the British bayonet.” He believed that any religious practice, such as the “return” of Jews to Palestine, should not be enforced by coercion or force, but with the goodwill of the Arabs. Gandhiji believed that the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was at odds with the fight for Jewish rights around the world. He questioned whether Jews, who had already settled in different parts of the world, would welcome the idea of being forced to leave these areas if Palestine was their only home.
India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru played an important role in shaping the foreign policy of the nascent country for decades. It is said that Gandhiji’s anti-imperialism views had a profound effect on Nehru, and that is why India voted against UN Resolution 181 (Partition of Palestine). India recognised Israel as just a “factual event” in 1950, but Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao established official diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in 1992, recognising it as a “legal reality.” India was one of the first non-Arab countries to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinians and allowed it to open an office in India. In 1988, India recognised Palestine as a state and allowed it to open its embassy in Delhi.
These and various other factors indicate that JMI’s founders and the pioneers of Indian independence had a profound understanding of the Palestine issue. This insight is reflected in the enduring memorials within JMI, honouring individuals associated with this cause. The university boasts an official building named after the renowned pro-Palestinian American philosopher Noam Chomsky. Additionally, there is a spacious building dedicated to late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and a staunch advocate for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. A hall is also named in his honour. Similarly, an official hall bears the name of late Edward Said, a Palestinian-American scholar, literary critic, and advocate for Palestinian rights. This stands as a testament to his unwavering connection and solidarity with the university regarding the Palestinian cause.
The India-Arab Cultural Centre and West Asian Studies at Jamia contribute to shaping the Indian government’s foreign policy towards Palestine. Additionally, the Government of India continues to support the Palestinian cause. A shared historical experience between India and Palestine is that both countries were colonies of British imperialism and underwent partition almost simultaneously, facing the challenges of ethnic superiority. Alongside Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Maulana Azad, the Jamia community has consistently stood in solidarity with the Palestinians regarding the Palestine issue. Given this context, the university administration should consider the university’s historical stance before taking any position on the Palestinian cause.
This is really shocking to see where the institution — which once stood for truth, justice, solidarity with the oppressed, and was known for its opposition to oppression — is heading. It should be remembered that JMI has a history of its unwavering commitment to solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In the given culture of insensitivity and lack of sense of history, it is necessary that the institution’s custodians revive the principles of its main founder — and co-founders like Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, Maulana Mehmudul Hasan Deobandi, who laid the foundation stone, and Abdul Majeed Khwaja — and embrace the ethos established by these visionaries who opposed oppression and supported the rights of the weak and the marginalised.
The author is a Phd scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia
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