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So strong was the fervour of Non-Cooperation and the Khilafat Movement which gripped young students and teachers in Aligarh in 1920, that with scant resources it took all of 17 days for Jamia Millia Islamia to be born in their pursuit of a “truly nationalist institution”.
In many ways, Jamia was born of the discontent of nationalist students and teachers at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College – founded by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in Aligarh in 1875 – against the institution’s indifference to the calls of these anti-colonial movements. Among those at the helm of the founding of Jamia were the famous Ali brothers, Shaukat and Mohammed, the leaders of the Khilafat Movement, and Mahatma Gandhi “fired the first salvo” on October 12 1920, in an address to students of the college. Two days before his address, ten members of the college Syndicate, alarmed by national trends, had invoked an address made to Viceroy Lord Lytton in 1877 that they would like the college to make Indian Muslims “worthy and useful subjects of the British Crown”.
“How can you remain,” Gandhi had said in his address, “even for an hour, in an institution in which you are obliged to put up with the Union Jack and profess your loyalty to a governor or other high-ranking officials when in fact you are not loyal.” But the response at the institution had been less than lukewarm.
“In the agenda for the Non Cooperation Movement drafted by Gandhi ji along with Maulana Shaukat Ali, education was very important. Mahatma Gandhi gave calls to all schools and colleges to stop taking grants, aids, funds, awards, honours, all associations with the British in their education system… With this purpose he was invited by some students of MAO college… It was a prestigious college and many alumni had reputed positions in the British service or elsewhere and were doing very well, had name and fame attached to them. The college was being pampered with visits, teachers, funds and awards by the British government because they really wanted this educated lot to come in their favour and serve them… The college had been lulled into comfort over the years and was not really bothered by what was happening in the country… This elite bubble found Mahatma Gandhi’s call very impractical,” said Sabiha Zaidi, Director of Jamia’s Premchand Archives and Literary Centre.
The Ali brothers, who were both alumni and on MAO College’s board of trustees, were deeply disappointed by this response and the lull after this visit, as were some students who called a meeting of students the next day in the Union Hall. Mohammed Ali in particular had a huge following among the students. In their book, Partners in Freedom: Jamia Millia Islamia, Mushirul Hasan and Rakhshanda Jalil describe the mood of this crucial meeting. They wrote that the Ali brothers joined the meeting “not to deliver fiery speeches, but with tears in their eyes to bid farewell to their beloved college… His (Mohammed Ali’s) despondency moved the audience to tears.” Also present in the audience was a young Zakir Hussain, future VC of Jamia and the President of India, who had joined MAO College a few years back as lecturer. As the mood swung among the audience towards collectively leaving the college, Hussain and some other teachers and students began deliberating on an alternative for the young men to turn to.
“So the idea of an independent nationalist institution, the Jamia Millia Islamia, was born in the minds of students,” said Zaidi. Days of protests, efforts to change the mood of the management, calls for police and paramilitary force by the management, appeals at a board of trustees meeting followed.
“On 29 October, in a small function in the Aligarh mosque, Jamia Millia Islamia was inaugurated. There was no corpus fund, no ribbon cutting, no foundation stone, no announcement of any donation. But these students were full of enthusiasm. And when the management found out about this, on 30th they asked the rebellious group to leave the college and on 31st, a nationalist procession walked out of the campus as an independent body,” said Zaidi.
Their idealism had to carry them through many years of spartan conditions. The new institute was housed in two bungalows and twenty tents.
“Jamia had no endowments, no statutory assurance of perpetuity. As a result, its students had to share the hardship with their teachers. They had very little furniture; so they studied, worked and slept on straw mats. The green chogha (robes) they and their teachers wore served as both odhna (drape) and bichona (bed), and their common property was a tin box containing four khadi suits, one or two angochha (cloth to wipe the body), the Diwan-i Ghalib, the English translation of the Quran, and some national songs in Urdu… Never was the gap between the sublime ideas and the everyday life of an educational institute so great,” wrote Hasan and Jalil.
After the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movement ended in 1922, the new institute began to stumble, not least because of a lack of resources. Efforts to resuscitate it included shifting to a location in Delhi’s Karol Bagh in 1925. “In 1935 finally, after the university was given some land in the Okhla area by the river Yamuna, with the help of Mahatma Gandhi, a foundation stone was set in its current location,” said Ahmad Azeem, Jamia’s Public Relations Officer.
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