Put integrity before politics

Put integrity before politics

Prafull Goradia December 06, 2010
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Pranab Mukherjee traded praise for Aligarh Muslim University at the foundation of its branch in West Bengal to further their personal political interest. But such fawning over an institution whose Professors once proposed balkanisation of Hindustan smacks of implicit contempt for the integrity of the country
A leading Kolkata daily recently reported how Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mr Pranab Mukherjee traded praises at Jangipur in Murshidabad district. The occasion was the foundation laying ceremony of the local branch of Aligarh Muslim University sanctioned by the UPA Government. Calling it ‘a historic day’ for Murshidabad, the Chief Minister said, “We feel proud that the AMU, known for modernising and secularising education in the country, now has a branch in our State.” Mr Pranab Mukherjee played along with the Chief Minister as Jangipur is in his Lok Sabha constituency whereas the former must be keen to offset the odium he earned at Nandigram and Singur for acquiring land for the Salem Group of Indonesia and the Tatas, respectively.
Personal political interest is understandable upto a point but why such implicit contempt for the country’s integrity? On September 10, 1947, Shaheed Suhrawardy, who had been the Premier of Bengal and had directed the Great Calcutta Killing in August 1946, wrote a letter to Choudhry Khaliquzzaman. This gentleman had remained in India until he succeeded Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah as president of the Muslim League. Suhrawardy’s letter observed that Pakistan did not provide a homeland for the Muslims of India. The Muslims here have been left high and dry and must shape their own destiny. However, how should they organise themselves?

Suhrawardy went on to advice that “the Muslims should form themselves into strong pockets”. “It is politically desirable as well as necessary for survival and also culturally desirable.” In this attempt, “we are extremely lucky in having Mahatma Gandhi as the spearhead of this movement”. When Khaliquzzaman had asked Gandhiji what do you propose to do about protecting Muslims, the Mahatma had said, “I want to fight it out with my life. I would not allow the Musalmans to crawl on the streets in India.” All this matter has been taken from Khaliquzzaman’s well-known book Pathway to Pakistan.
AMU Professors Syed Zafrul Hasan and Afzal Hussain Qadri had earlier proposed the division of India into five instead of two a la Pakistan. Bengal would be without Howrah and Midnapur districts, but include Purnea of Bihar and Sylhet of Assam. Pakistan would comprise all of north west India. Third, Hyderabad plus Berar and Karnataka to be yet another. Delhi to be the fourth with western Uttar Pradesh areas of Meerut, Rohilkhand and Aligarh. Fifth, a separation of Malabar, its adjoining areas and south Kanara. The UPA has already sanctioned an AMU branch in Malappuram, Kerala. So also a branch in Bihar, although the location is yet to be finalised. Quite uncannily, the UPA sanctions have a throwback to the scheme proposed by the Aligarh University Professors described above.
Incidentally, the scheme wanted Pakistan and Bengal states to be declared as Muslim homelands and Hindustan to be the Hindu homeland. Presumably, Hyderabad and Malabar were to be plain Muslim states.

The Professors had added that the Muslims in rural areas must be persuaded not to remain scattered in negligible minorities but to aggregate in villages with a preponderant Muslim population. (Professors’ plan taken from Rajendra Prasad’s 1946 book entitled India Divided).
This development confirmed what Professor Gurumukh Nihal Singh had analysed that Sir Sayyid Ahmad had inspired educated Muslim young men so that they could learn to think for themselves and do everything possible to prevent the possibility of having to undergo the slavery of Hindus. The intention was to awaken young Muslims to know that their community had ruled most of India for some seven centuries and should ensure not being flooded by Hindus in the event the British ever left India. In the meantime, his passionate desire was that the British rule should continue and all Muslims should go all out to support it.
London University Professor Francis Robinson, in his book Separatism among Indian Muslims, has analysed a great deal. Sir Sayyid Ahmad inspired through the Aligarh Movement Muslims of Uttar Pradesh to indulge in separatism. In Robinson’s words, Uttar Pradesh Muslims were at the heart of Muslim separatism. They founded and mainly led the organisations which represented their communal political interest. The prototype of the AMU was the Mohamaddan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh founded by Sir Sayyid in 1875 which nurtured most of the early Muslim prominent politicians. It is they who flocked under the leadership of Sir Aga Khan to petition Viceroy Minto in 1906 and founded the Muslim League at Dacca later that year. For some 20 years thereafter most of the League office bearers were Uttar Pradesh Muslims if not also Aligarh men.
According to Pakistani Professor Ayesha Jalal in Sole Spokesman, two other teachers of AMU had recommended Pakistan plus two Muslim autonomous regions inside the body of Hindustan. One of the areas around Delhi and the other centred in Malabar. Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah rewarded all these authors of balkanisation, in his final 1939 will. He granted substantial sums of money to the AMU.
Evidently, the perverse thinking of Sir Sayyid had influenced the University to propound such outlandish schemes. Incidentally, he had condemned the cow protection demand as the Hindu strategy to weaken the physiques of the British and the Muslims. He also considered the Congress Party as a Bengalee Hindu organisation. He had gone on to describe Bengalees as so cowardly that at the sight of a table knife, they would crawl under his chair. This was a part of his epoch-making speech at Lucknow on December 28, 1888.
Would all these facts about AMU and its founder continue to fascinate West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee?

http://www.dailypioneer.com/301489/Put-integrity-before-politics.html