FROM THE FREE PRESS ARCHIVES

It may now appear that the near-hysteria generated by the demand for an inquiry into the affairs of the Aligarh Muslim University was unwarranted. The findings of the Committee are not such as might not be applied with equal justice to many other educational institutions in the country. Actually, the University might have emerged in a better light if its Vice-Chancellor and other officers had not objected to the principles of an inquiry at the beginning. The inquiry has disclosed anomalies that need correction and if this could have been accomplished with the co-operation of the authorities of the University and without the stigma of a near scandal attaching to it, it would have been all the better. However, there are special problems connected with this particular university, some of which have been brought out by the inquiry, and it is just as well that some of the dirty linen has been washed in public. In its own interest as well as in the public interest the university’s communal bias in matters of admission, instruction and appointment of staff must be above suspicion. The Committee could not have been more categorical in saying that the ‘university has been the victim of ill-informed criticism not wholly free from communal or political bias.’ Much of the criticism has thus been labelled as sinister and for this reason, if no other, the university deserves sympathy. It is also apparent that some of the leaders of the minority community— if Indian Muslims can be termed as such at all— have a serious charge against the majority: of discrimination in matters of higher education. While no specific instances have been brought to its notice, the Committee has been sufficiently impressed by these charges to recommend a full investigation into the matter. Enough has been said by the Committee to show that bias, communal or otherwise, is not one-sided. But disturbing is the fact that in many subtle ways the university has been trying to maintain the legend that Islamic suicides are somehow outside the periphery of what may be broadly termed studies in Indian culture. As long as the fiction that Islamic culture in India is something apart from composite Indian culture is kept alive at Aligarh, it will inevitably breed a class of intellectuals whose exclusiveness will be their greatest religion and whose religion will be their exclusiveness. January 30 , 1961