Don’t miss the latest developments in business and finance.

Home / Elections / Assembly Election / News / Muslim youth yearn for economic growth

Muslim youth yearn for economic growth

An individual the Azamgarh's Shibli students were uncomfortable with was Mayawati

Muslim
Premium
Muslim
Radhika Ramaseshan Allahabad/Azamgarh
Last Updated : Mar 08 2017 | 4:30 AM IST
Connect with us
Facebook IconLinkedIN Icon
The catchwords for Muslim students on Uttar Pradesh’s campuses are economic growth and jobs. But in Azamgarh’s imposing Shibli National College, such enticing words seemed out of immediate grasp, while these appeared reachable in Allahabad’s Muslim Boarding House.

The variations in the understanding of what it meant to be a young Muslim in current times on two campuses 166 km apart come from lived and shared experiences. For students living in a boarding house, popularly known as the Muslim hostel of Allahabad University, life falls into a quotidian pattern: Never-to-be-missed classes and tutorials, organising meals in the mess and prepping for the civil services that most of them aspired for rather than employment in the private sector. “We discuss politics heatedly like everyone else does before an election but we are not concerned with the BJP’s divisive rhetoric,” said Mohammad Nooman, an economics student looking at an Indian Administrative Service posting.

The Muslim hostel, the oldest of the dozen boarding houses in the varsity, was set up in 1892 by Moulvi Samiullah Khan, who was one of the first supporters of Syed Ahmad Khan, the Aligarh Muslim University founder and the Aligarh movement that advocated a reformed Islam. Khan strove to promote modern, liberal education among the Muslims of central and eastern UP but his endeavour provoked a Hindu backlash led by Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder of the Banaras Hindu University. Malviya, who twice headed the Congress, was an alumnus of Allahabad University and demanded that a Hindu Boarding House be built as well.

However, such vestiges of a communal past have got obliterated with time. Faizan, reading for a BTech degree in electrical engineering, said, “Our first and last priority is employment. A party that promises to get jobs and augment job-oriented skills will get my votes, no matter what its ideology.”

Mukhtar Amir, a resident of Mau studying for a Master’s in Chemistry, emphasised that it was “time for Muslims to view the BJP through a different prism”. “For several years, Muslims were told to vote for a candidate who can defeat the BJP. We feel this mindset must go. We are ready to look afresh at the BJP. But each time we say yes, a statement comes that puts us off that party,” said Amir, alluding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent remark in a Fatehpur rally that if more space was created for cemeteries, crematoriums too must be given an equal share.

On a Sunday, the ambience on the Shibli campus seemed relaxed. Its sprawling spaces hosted a wedding and a cricket tournament, cheered on by locals like Alok Singh, a campus regular. But the stigma attached to Azamgarh after the “Batla House” encounter in Delhi in 2008 between the police and some young men from the district who were studying at the Jamia Millia Islamia University stayed and continued to extract a huge price from the students. The cops suspected the students were linked to the Indian Mujahideen and were accomplices in the serial blasts that had rocked Delhi a few days before the encounter.   

“I see a hopeless future,” said Rahat Shafique, a final year BSc Math student. “My seniors have failed to get jobs because when they mentioned Azamgarh on their CVs, the prospective employers gave one excuse or the other to reject them. Most of them have set up small businesses like welding unit and selling juice on money borrowed from family and friends. I see myself going their way,” said Shaifque, who wants to enter academics or get a job in the private sector.

Adnan Tariq, in his last year of Bachelor in Business Administration course, was equally fatalistic. “To get a good job, I need to go out of Azamgarh. My seniors who went to places like Delhi and Mumbai were denied a place to live in because of the association with Azamgarh. The moment they mentioned the place, people would ask are you carrying bombs and AK47s?”

Those like Shafique and Tariq have taken it on themselves to repair Azamgarh’s credentials, showcasing the town’s success stories in the West instead of allowing it to become synonymous with shadowy figures like Abu Salem. The place is full of posters depicting Frank F Islam — an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who heads the FI Investment Group in Washington and was appointed by former US President Barack Obama to the board of trustees of the John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts. “He’s my role model,” said Mohammad Dawood, a final year MA student.

Azamgarh’s other poster boy is Waqar Azmi, chairman of Waterhouse Consulting Group and the European Union ambassador of Intercultural Dialogue, based in London.

If there’s an individual the Shibli students were uncomfortable with, it was Mayawati, the Bahujan Samaj Party president. Aziz Khan, an undergraduate history student, recalled Mayawati was the chief minister when the Batla encounter was staged. “She unleashed the state police on our district. They indiscriminately arrested boys and detained them for months but not once did she show up here, much less regret her action.”
Connect with us on WhatsApp

Also Read

Assembly Elections 2017: Phase 6 of UP Elections in numbers

Focus is key

UP polls 2017: Modi, Akhilesh and the great Indian roadshow

<b>UP elections 2017:</b> Muslims fear economic cost of BJP's poll promises

All roads lead to eastern Uttar Pradesh

First Published: Mar 08 2017 | 1:37 AM IST

Explore News