Aligarh Muslim University has been frequently in the news this
year. In May, with the consent of the Union Ministry for Human Resources
Development, the university announced a new admission policy for its main
professional courses (engineering, medicine etc.) whereby only 25 per cent of
the total seats were to be left open to merit alone. Fifty per cent of the seats
were to be reserved for ‘Muslims of India’, including
those already studying at the graduate level within AMU. The controversial
policy meant that henceforth students on the campus would be divided into two
classes of citizens: Muslims and others. For SCs and STs there would be very
little space on the AMU campus.
The policy met with stiff resistance from certain quarters
within the campus and outside, opposition coming both from the Left parties and
the BJP. In the controversy that unfolded, the issue as to whether AMU, an
institution created through an Act of Parliament, could still claim minority
status and protests against the new reservation policy became intertwined. Some
challenged the new policy in the Allahabad High Court which gave its judgement
in October effectively holding that AMU could not claim the status of a minority
institution. The high court’s verdict has been acclaimed by the Left and the BJP
as a validation of their position. But it has generated a lot of discontent
among Muslims and others who firmly believe that the 1981 amendment to the
Aligarh Muslim University Act, 1920 by Parliament had decisively affirmed the
status of AMU as a minority institution.
Through our cover story this month, advocate Mihir Desai makes a
signal contribution to the currently raging debate. He argues that since the
birth of the Indian republic, the criteria adopted by the apex court in
determining the minority character, or otherwise, of an institution has been
deeply flawed. He makes a strong case that the dictates of democracy in general
as also the letter and the spirit of our Constitution demand that the criteria
of determining the minority status of an institution should be whether it is
being run for the benefit of the minority (religious or linguistic) and not
whether it is established and administered by a minority. While Desai’s
argument unambiguously affirms the minority character of AMU, its new
reservation policy still remains contentious.
An opinion piece in the context of the Delhi bomb blasts
targeting men, women and children out shopping for Diwali and Id highlights the
fact that the continuing massacre of innocents in India or elsewhere in the name
of Islam agitates Muslim minds no less than people from other communities. The
article draws attention to the anomaly that while on several occasions in recent
years, in the immediate aftermath of any terrorist attack especially in any part
of India, Urdu papers are full of strong and unambiguous condemnation of the
killing of innocents as "inhuman" and "un-Islamic", there is little reflection
of this is the non-Urdu media. This gap in communication is not only unfortunate
but also dangerous, as it can only widen the "us" vs "them" divide.
In this and related contexts it would help if the media were
more alive to its social responsibility. But as revealed in the report of a
fact-finding team that visited Mau, a communally sensitive town in eastern UP
which flared up in mid-October, rather than help douse the flames, sections of
the mass media were in fact adding fuel to fire. The eruption in Mau is merely
symptomatic of the fact that much of eastern UP is sitting on a communal
volcano, says the report, and points to the incendiary campaign of Gorakhpur’s
Yogi Adityanath, who has been working hard in the last few years to out-Hindu
the BJP and emerge as the saffron messiah of the region. The mainstream media,
television included, blamed the outbreak of violence on local MLA Mukhtar Ansari,
who has a previous criminal record, without sufficient proof. While focusing on
the role of ‘Yogi’s’ followers in triggering the violence, the fact-finding team
uncovers the fact that as Mau burned, instead of unbiased reporting the mass
media was busy myth-making.
We are happy to inform our readers that with the current issue
of CC, we are introducing a Guest Column. We thank the two contributors
for this issue, Rahul Bose and Rajdeep Sardesai.
— Editors