Portrait controversy is about anything except Jinnah, says AMU community

There is consensus not only among the students, teachers and the administration of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) but also locals that, contrary to the perception created by media reports, the recent controversy and violence around the over the 143-year-old varsity has little to do with the portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. And there is more to it than what meets the eye.

One of the reasons behind this widespread scepticism is the fact that the man who stirred the controversy -- BJP Lok Sabha MP from Aligarh Satish Gautam -- had been a member of the AMU Court between 2014 and 2017. Why didn't he raise the issue earlier, and how come his letter flagging the issue was leaked to the media even before it reached the Vice Chancellor office, ask those in the AMU community.

 

Of the "real purpose" behind the attack on the varsity by Hindutva activists, however, there are diverse views. While some insist on linking the entire episode with the ongoing Karnataka assembly elections, the others see it as a "diversionary tactic" by supporters of the BJP government at the Centre and state to hide its "failures".

Still others feel that it had something to do with former Vice President Hamid Ansari's visit to the university.

Those with an academic bent of mind portray the incident as an attack not just on AMU but on all institutions of higher learning in the country and their pluralist ethos. They point to a pattern in the attacks and urge one to look at "the larger picture".

While the students have been openly questioning the local administration and the police's impartiality, some of the teachers feel the university administration could have handled the portrait controversy "in a better way".

The varsity administration, however, avers that it did everything "that needed to be done" on the first day itself and has been doing its best to "maintain peace on the campus so that that academics does not suffer and students' future is not jeopardised in any way".

The controversy started with a letter written by MP Gautam to the AMU Vice Chancellor on April 30 in which he questioned the presence of a portrait of Jinnah -- Pakistan's founder -- in the AMU Students Union (AMUSU) office.

On May 2, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy is said to have tweeted: "Somebody needs to teach AMU a lesson. Who will do it?", with a link to an article with the same heading.

On May 2, former Vice President M. Hamid Ansari was scheduled to visit the AMU at the invitation of the AMUSU that was to confer its lifetime membership -- an honour also bestowed on Jinnah in 1938 and which explains the presence of his portrait there -- on the former Vice President and a former Vice Chancellor of the university.

The next day, on May 3, Ansari was to deliver a lecture on pluralism in the Kennedy Hall at the varsity and in the evening attend a dinner hosted by the AMUSU. His schedule had been conveyed the Aligarh administration in advance by Ansari's office as per protocol.

Ansari reached the university on May 2 at the scheduled time, that is, 1 p.m., and was lodged at the AMU guest house which is near the Baab-e-Syed gate of the university.

A little later, a group of men, owing allegiance to the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an outfit founded and patronised by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, started creating a ruckus near the administrative block of the university by raising objectionable slogans. The AMU security confronted them and handed them over to the Civil Lines police.

As per the statement given by the AMU Proctor's office to the police, the men returned barely half an hour later with more people -- around 25-30 men, ome of them wielding pistols, lathis and stones -- and shouting expletives and objectionable slogans against the AMU, tried to barge into the university through Baab-e-Syed.

"First the persons handed over to the police were let off easily. Then the miscreants were allowed to come near Baab-e-Syed at a time when a former Vice President of India was in the university guest house which is less than 100 metres away from Baab-e-Syed. Then the students going to lodge the FIR against all this were brutally beaten up by the police and Rapid Action Force. How could there be so many lapses on the part of the administration within a few hours," AMU Teachers'Association (AMUTA) President professor Hamid Ali asked while speaking to IANS.

Several students were badly injured in the police assault and had to be hospitalised.

Ansari cut short his two-day programme and returned to Delhi soon after the incident as the local administration expressed its inability to provide him security cover. Last year, there was an attempt to poison the drinking water tank of a madrasa in the town run by Ansari's wife, Salma Ansari.

AMUSU Presdent Mashkoor Ahmed Usmani said that neither is the controversy about Jinnah's portrait nor is the students' protest.

"Jinnah's djinn will disappear again after Karnataka elections. Our protest is not about him or his portrait because the portrait has been there long before us. We are protesting against the use of brutal force against the students who were moving peacefully. We are also demanding a judicial probe into the entire incident and quashing of FIR against the unknown students of AMU," Usmani told IANS.

"But a section of the media is portraying our protest as if we are supporters of Jinnah. We are not. His portrait is there since 1938, along with many others who were conferred with the lifetime membership of the AMUSU," he added.

The students are also nursing a resentment against the university administration which, they think, "failed to rise to the occasion".

Nevertheless, Vice Chancellor Tariq Mansoor did visit on Tuesday the dharna site -- where students were preparing for the final exams commencing from Saturday -- to "express solidarity with the genuine demands of the students".

"I share our students' pain and have endorsed the demand for judicial inquiry and conveyed the sentiments of the AMU fraternity to all concerned," Mansoor said in a statement on Tuesday.

University Public Relations Officer (PRO) Omar Peerzada said that the administration had no objection to the students' protest as this was being done "in a peaceful, democratic way inside the campus".

Of the students and teachers unions raising questions on the impartiality of the local administration, Peerzada said the AMUSU and AMUTA were independent bodies and were "entitled to their views".

"On our part, we have very good relations with the local administration as well as the Union HRD Ministry and we have had their full support so far," Peerzada told IANS.

Meanwhile, it is business as usual in the rest of the town even as armed police surrounds the campus of the historic and multi-faceted university that has a long list of distinguished alumni who have made their names in politics, armed forces, civil service, sciences and academia. Incidentally, the university was ranked No 1 in the country this year in official rankings.

(Asim Khan can be contacted on mohd.a@ians.in)

--IANS

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