AMU
Antara Dev Sen on Land Mafia in AMU
Not just young students but teachers too (have lost their life). It has left the teachers shaken and insecure. Musclemen rule (the AMU).
The murderers are protected by senior politicians”, says one teacher. Many of the students and teachers believe that at least two of the three murders were related to land-grabbing. AMU sits on property worth at least Rs. 150 crore. And thanks to the mishandling of documents, there always seems to be some property scam involving university land. One of these was a major bid by certain property dealers’ to take over the land around AMU's Riding Club, which was thwarted in the early '90s.
Dr. Rajiv Sharma, president of AMU Riding Club was trying to free the land - worth about Rs. 4 crores - from the clutches of these property dealers (when he was shot dead).When Dr. Iqbal Hasan Khan's assailants - Iqbal, Ajay and Mushtaq - were questioned by the police, they named Hafiz Iliyas, a lecturer in psychology at AMU, as the man behind his murder. Iliyas, who had campaigned for Salman Khursheed during the 1991 polls, has not been arrested. Khursheed insists that Iliyas is not in any way close to him. The names linked to the murder include those of Tufail Khan, a local mafia don, Khaled Masood, then president of the AMU Students' Union, who has several FIRs against him, and Hamid Hasan, a computer science teacher in the university. Even the hired killers were not arrested. But apparently (they) - Iqbal for sure, the other two are still the subject of speculation - were bumped off in a revenge killing
by the murdered professor's relatives.
The professor was not involved in grabbing university land. A fact-finding committee investigating AMU's land scams in 1994 named Bundoo Khan, a former Registrar in court and now head of an organisation dealing with property named Azad Grah Nirman Samiti, as "the biggest grabber of the university land". Although no action could be taken against Khan as he was not a member of AMU, three teachers said to be involved with the scam have been suspended.
Curiously, the suspended teachers - Prof. Saleem Akhtar, Ateeq Ahmad Khan and Prof. Ishrat Husain Khan -have not yet been charge-sheeted.
And somehow, the so-called students' agitations seem to have some link with the interests of the property dealers. In 1993, after two students were run over by a truck near the university, the agitation ended in the police firing (killing)2 more. Incensed students went on a rampage, and set fire to two government offices nearby. Following the arson and looting, the offices moved out. Land prices came crashing down in that "violence-prone"area'and both the buildings - one of which belonged to Dr.Nurul Hasan, Governor of West Bengal - have supposedly been sold since then at rock-bottom prices. One of them now hosts the local office of the Samajwadi Party.(Since) students' agitations in AMU are continuously used by various political parties to serve their own needs and when big money is involved, what value do the lives of students and teachers have anyway?
Nehru on Asian Identity
We are of Asia and the peoples of Asia are nearer and closer to us than others. India is so situated that she is the pivot of western, southern and south-east Asia. In the past, her culture flowed to all these countries and they came to her in many ways. Those contacts are being renewed and the future is bound to see a closer union between India and south-east Asia on the one side, and Afghanistan, Iran and the Arab world on the west. To the furtherance of that close association of free countries we must devote ourselves.
Shahabuddin on Proposed University of Science and Technology,
Letter to Saiyid Hamid, 11 December, 1996
What is of interest to the Muslim community is that the University will take special care of the educationally backward minorities and other weaker sections of the Society.
I do not know what "Special Care" means. Assuming that it means not only weight age in preference in admission but even reservation of at least 50% of the facilities for such "minorities" and "Sections", it implies, on a prorate basis not more than 15% for the Muslim Indians. The SC, ST and OBC's (excluding the Muslims) and religious minorities constitute 85% of the population in which Muslims account for 12%. The pro-rata share of the Muslim becomes 15% if 100% of the facilities to be divided among all the eligible groups.
The fact is that unless the proposed University is conceived as a "minority institution" under Article 30 of the Constitution and/or as an institution totally independent of State's financial assistance and unless the Supreme Court permits a minority institution to be made of its own admission policy, not much benefit is likely to accrue to the Muslim community.
Begum Hazrat Mahal
An unknown burqa-clad Muslim woman of 50, in green - the colour of the martyrs - inspired the people to fight and die like brave men. She mounted a horse, took a rifle in the hand and a sword in the other and killed at least half a dozen British soldiers before she was wounded and captured. She was the "Indian Joan of Arc or the Maid of Delhi"
