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Not at all in good faith

Not at all in good faith

Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 28, 2008

It is the avowed intention of "good politics" to separate the individual from the issue. Unfortunately, despite my best endeavours I have been unable to disentangle Professor Mushirul Hasan, the harried vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, from the storm that has engulfed India's Muslims.

Never mind what the more uninformed critics said, Hasan didn't quite fit the stereotype of the pained Muslim who got places by wilfully carrying a monumental chip on his shoulder. His personal faith was always subordinate to his reputation as an accomplished historian and a man of letters. Even as a "Muslim" intellectual he was different from both the radical Marxists and the Islamic conservatives. He was the archetypal Congress Muslim in the best sense of the term: Liberal, Westernised, progressive without being flamboyantly trendy and, predictably, very Nehruvian. Like many true Nehruvians whose convictions were rooted in both aesthetics and class, Hasan probably nurtured a disdain for both the ghetto and the suicide bomber. Like many liberals who now take their cue from the American campuses, he blended a critique of the so-called Bush doctrine with a distaste of the robust nationalism of the Right.

There is, of course, another more practical facet to this man of letters. Over the years, Hasan has become a feature of the intellectual pantheon of a very beleaguered Nehruvian establishment. This has made him more sensitive to political cross-currents and fuelled the belief that the only fight worth fighting these days is against the grand ideological project of the Hindu Right. For Hasan, the hosting of Sahmat exhibition of MF Hussain's prints and the naming of a path in the Jamia campus after HRD Minister Arjun Singh is an aspect of a political grandstanding.

It is this new-found public-spiritedness that has led Hasan to the centre of an extremely unfortunate controversy centred on terrorism. This is not because the controversy has arisen in the first place but because the vice-chancellor has decided to change tack from being a man of letters to becoming the unlikely voice of the qasba.

It is not novel for either students or teachers to be engulfed in issues that have little bearing on the campus. If a student is picked up by the police for, say a credit card fraud or something more violent, it is not incumbent on the part of the institution to play father to the errant child -- although individual teachers can and should play such a role. The principle isn't any different for the two Jamia students held on terrorism-related offences by Delhi Police. The charges are serious and relate to the mass murder of innocent citizens, an armed encounter in which a policeman died and assaults on the sovereignty of India. These, presumably, are offences that are not curriculum-related, unless new-fangled courses on Human Rights now include practicals on bomb-making.

It is conceivable that there are people in the vicinity of the Jamia campus who believe that the students have been unfairly targeted by a vengeful police. It is equally likely that there are others who sympathise with the Indian Mujahedeen's jihad and are piggybacking on the "unfair arrest" theory to create a gulf between Muslims and India. These are political issues that both the Government and civil society have to confront. In offering legal assistance to the arrested from official funds, Hasan wasn't simply upholding the inalienable right of every citizen to get legal assistance -- a right statutorily guaranteed and needs no intervention from Jamia Millia. He was putting the full weight of a public institution behind the accused. In effect, he was equating the institution with those charged with terrorism. The conflict between "town" and "gown" is an intractable problem that has plagued academia. In obliterating the distinction between the mood of neighbouring Jamia Nagar and the aloofness of Jamia Millia Islamia, Hasan has sullied the relationship between an academic institution and the nation. His combative speech to the students on September 24 is a case in point. According to the report in Times of India (which to my knowledge hasn't been contradicted), Hasan urged students to not be defensive about the arrest of two colleagues. "We owe no explanation to anyone except ourselves and to our faith that unambiguously eschews violence." Of course, he added by way of a postscript that "Our commitment is to the rule of law and the Indian Constitution."

What Hasan has purportedly said is preposterous. He has suggested that a publicly funded institution isn't accountable to anyone but the Jamia community and "our faith". I have no theological expertise to pronounce a judgment on whether this faith "unambiguously eschews violence". It is, at best, a contested assertion. It is also not my case that a religious institution cannot exist. But such an institution cannot be run on public funds. The Constitution forbids it. Either Jamia is a Central University or an institution answerable primarily to "our faith". Hasan obviously feels it is the latter.

What this incident tells us is disturbing. It suggests that a traditional liberal like Hasan no longer feels the need to maintain a healthy detachment between a rarefied institution and the radicalisation of Indian Muslims. Ironically, it was a willingness to swim against the tide of community consensus that distinguished an earlier generation of nationalist Muslims such as Maulana Azad and Zakir Hussain from the well-bred Liaquat Ali Khans and Khaliquzzamans. In those days, the choice was between a united India and Pakistan; today, it is between democracy and terrorism. If Hasan makes a wrong choice out of personal choice it is a footnote; it is a commentary on his fickleness. If, however, he is moved by community pressure it is a sure sign that the community is totally out of tune with the rest of India.


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