Saquib Salim

“I do look to the Aligarh College (later Aligarh Muslim University) to give the lead in this (Non-Cooperation Movement) matter.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote this in Young India on 11 August 1920. He was talking about boycotting the government-sponsored education by the Indian students and teachers. His call was meant to ask people not to cooperate with the courts and colleges governed by the British. The rationale behind it, as explained by Gandhi, was, “with the knowledge we have of British intentions, it is unmanly— un-Indian — for us to accept even a portion of our own money through hands stained with the blood of the innocents at Jallianwala.”

Along with Maulana Mohammad Ali, Shaukat Ali, Madan Mohan Malviya, Motilal Nehru, Madhav Desai and other stalwarts Gandhi started a tour to persuade Indians to boycott the British institutions. On 9, 10, and 11 October 1920, Congress leaders held a conference at Moradabad to discuss the matter. At the conference presided by a well known Sanskrit Scholar from Banaras, Babu Bhagwandas, Gandhi said, “it is haram (anathema) to go into the Councils, courts, and schools of that Government which, after doing naked injustice to Punjab, has the bad faith to advise us to forget its wrongs”. Though Malviya was against the resolution to boycott the colleges, Shaukat Ali and Babu Shiv Prasad Gupta saw to it that the appeal, to Muslim University Aligarh and the Hindu University of Banaras, was passed to ask them to refuse the government grants. On this occasion, Shaukat asked, “if I can persuade the 1,200 Aligarh boys to vacate the University and send them out to serve the cause of the Khilafat, what better education can I impart to them than that?”

It was decided that Gandhi will travel to Aligarh with Ali Brothers (Shaukat and Mohammad) and address the students there. An enthusiastic Shaukat told Gandhi, “We will first empty the Aligarh College. That will produce a tremendous effect on the whole of India” 

On the afternoon of 12 October, Gandhi and Ali brothers addressed a large gathering of students at Aligarh College Students Union Hall. Gandhi explained his idea of non-cooperation. He explained to students how after cooperating with the English government during the Zulu, Boer, and First World wars he was disillusioned. Did the government return the favour after Indian leaders had cooperation during the First World War? In return, they had reciprocated with incidents like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Gandhi asked students to appeal to the trustees of the college to relinquish the Government aid. In case the trustees did not comply, the students, with the permission of their parents, should leave the college. On being asked wasn’t it destructive path, Gandhi replied, “This is a work of destruction. But the one thing necessary first of all is to eradicate the weeds that have grown so that corn-seeds could be sown in their place."

Later, Mohammad Ali said that the college had deviated from the ideals of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. When the college was established by the money of Muslims, “Why did you then build what is called ‘Stretchy’ Hall; and founded ‘Lytton’ Library?”

Gandhi’s words had a tremendous impact on the students and they served a notice to the college administration asking it to relinquish the aid by 29 October or face mass desertions. Students offered to cut down on their daily expenses and donate Rupees 5 each (a considerable amount in 1920) to replace the government funds. Several teachers stopped teaching. A Biology professor told his class, “It goes against the grain to inflict on you a biology lecture, at a time when the most momentous resolutions are being passed.”

As the deadline given by students was close the students’ excitement on the campus was rising. The trustees of the Aligarh College decided to seek police help to maintain order on the campus before their meeting to decide on the issue. Gandhi termed this issue of relinquishing the government aid by the college as the ‘most momentous issue for Islam and India’. In a letter written on 24 October, to the trustees of the college, Gandhi wrote that the trustees should not take government help in a ‘domestic matter’. What was the point in asking for police help when the Ali brothers were leading a nonviolent protest? 

He wrote, “You know as well as I do, how this Government has willfully trampled under the honour of India... I cannot imagine the late illustrious Sir Syed Ahmed keeping his noble creation under the control or influence of the present Government”. Taking the responsibility as ‘the originator of the idea of disaffiliation of Aligarh and rejection of the Government grant’, Gandhi promised that if trustees decided to relinquish the government aid he would help in realizing the funds through public crowd fundings. 

No wonder, the trustees decided against Gandhi's call. Instead, they alleged Gandhi was trying to shut down a ‘Muslim University’ and not applying the same yardstick to the ‘Hindu University of Banaras’ Gandhi responded to these allegations in an article published on 27 October. He clarified that he had issued similar calls to Banaras Hindu University and Khalsa College. The government, he said, was hell-bent on destroying the country and religion, and therefore, must be boycotted. 

Gandhi wrote, “I have therefore no hesitation in advising immediate destruction of these institutions at all cost. But if the trustees, the teachers, and the parents of the boys will act in unison, there is no cost to be paid and everything to be gained.” The institutions could be funded by the Indians and then the education would be truly national. The argument that the college could not function without government aid was contested, as he wrote, “Financial considerations deter those who do not want to work.”

In another article, Gandhi urged the parents of the students to let their children leave the Aligarh College for a national funded institution to be inaugurated within the campus by Ali brothers under the leadership of Maulana Mahmud Hasan on 29 October, the deadline set by students. He believed, “the parents of the Aligarh boys are no less convinced than the others of the necessity of withdrawing their children from schools and colleges supported or controlled by a Government that has participated in betraying the Mussulmans of India and has wantonly humiliated the nation through its barbarous treatment of the Punjab”. The new institution inaugurated within the campus of Aligarh Muslim University was named Jamia Millia Islamia (The Islamic National University) with Mohammad Ali as its Vice-Chancellor. Jamia Millia Islamia was later shifted to Delhi and is now a Central University.

  

Hundreds of students and several teachers heeded Gandhi’s call and left the college to join the new University. In a congratulatory telegram to Mohammad Ali, on 8 November, Gandhi wrote, “They (students of Aligarh) to preserve honour, dignity, Islam, and India should adopt high thinking and simplicity as their motto.”

It is a forgotten chapter of Indian history now, but Gandhi did consider Aligarh as the leader of Muslims in India and believed that only through its students a mass movement could be created. It was his call of non-cooperation in Aligarh that led to the creation of Jamia Millia Islamia by the alumni, teachers, and students of Aligarh Muslim University. 

Saquib Salim is a writer and a Historian