The discredited Vice-Chancellor of the AMU has finally made his exit through the backdoor, 'unwept, unhonoured and the unsung' and the new Vice-Chancellor has assumed charge, with the usual rites of welcome. But during the next two years, all his diplomatic skills, all his administrative experience, all his past association with Aligarh, all his qualities of head and heart, that he undeniably possesses, shall be put to severe test. The AMU is not easy to manage. Successive Vice-Chancellors have swung from one extreme to the other from adoration to condemnation!
It is not enough that the new Vice-Chancellor deals with the routine of administration and management justly and fairly and puts the AMU back on the rail. What is important is to restore its elan vital and the meaning of the AMU for the Muslim Indians, as the country enters the new millennium, and give it a sense of purpose and direction to lead the community educationally into the new era, which demands excellence and competitiveness, in areas of learning which were not even contemplated when its seeds were sown.
In a sense, the new Agenda is essentially no different from what was conceived by the founder Sir Syed Ahmed Khan - not to be left behind in educational progress. But today the opportunities and challenges are much wider, the competition is much more intense and the prize is much more rewarding. Moreover, yesterday, the AMU constituted the entire corps; today it is only the. vanguard. As the educational base expands with universalisation, talent becomes available on a national scale.
The new Vice-Chancellor has begun well by declaring that his agenda is the agenda of Sir Syed, But since the times are different, we have to interpret what Sir Syed would have done today. We know that even in his old age, Sir Syed had not allowed himself to be fossilised. He was always open to new realities and dynamic enough to work for realisation of new ideas. Education today is a universal demand; it is indeed a fundamental right. The educational circle has to be widened to bring the entire Community within its purview. The AMU cannot cater to the rising demand but it can serve as a model, as a continuing inspiration as a centre of excellence, as the vanguard for the community as it moves into the 21s Century.
The Vice-Chancellor
The Vice-Chancellor is the head of the University. He can make a world of difference by making a habit of easy accessibility, maintaining equidistance from all the factions, whether among the teachers or the students, giving everyone his due, applying the law without fear or favour and, above all, encouraging performance and excellence.
The statutory bodies of the University beginning from the Court, the Executive and the Academic Council, the Board of Studies, the Disciplinary Committees and the Selection Committees should be reconstituted, if necessary and they should meet regularly.
The Court has become non-functional. It meets rarely. It almost never discusses the Annual Reports and the Annual Accounts, which are its statutory responsibility. It has never discussed academic status of the University. It plays no role in the AMU's governance
and development and more often than not, it has been ignored and by-passed by the Vice-Chancellor. Its token membership itself has become a matter of prestige for individuals who make little contribution to the advancement of the University.
Admission Policy
If the AMU has to achieve this objective, it should not be a refuge for the second-raters either as students or as teachers. While retaining its de facto minority character, it must admit the best available material from the community and other sections of the people from all over the country on the basis of merit. Reservation for 'internals' - the products of the third rate secondary and higher secondary schools, managed by the University, in Aligarh - should cease. The AMU should indeed shed the burden of running schools and transfer the responsibility to an autonomous Board or a Society affiliated to the CBSE.
Selection of Teachers
The students come and go; the teachers, once recruited, stay on for decades. Indeed the teachers make the University. As a central University, the AMU must cast its net wider to select its teachers without any consideration of religion or caste or place of origin. The practice of arbitrarily transferring vacancies from one department to another, even from one faculty to another, should cease. Selection should anticipate the vacancy to avoid academic gap. Appointment should be made only on the advice of the Selection Committee and not by the Vice-Chancellor, or his adhoc nominees, on an adhoc basis, 'until further orders'. Appointment should be confirmed in the normal course as soon as the appointee becomes eligible and found to be worthy. Interse seniority should be protected; good work should be rewarded; research and foreign assignment should be encouraged. No employee should be suspended, teacher or otherwise, without due process of law.
Senior teachers should be permitted to play their due role in managing the University. Openings available for
These ambiguities, flaws and lacunae have come to light in the course of the last 2 decades. Particularly the role of the AMU in promoting education among the Muslims of the country, which is directly related toits redefinition as a minority institution. This alone will ensure its benefits at alllevels are largely, though not exclusively available to the community.
Restoration of the Minority character of the University which was not, repeat NOT, restored in 1981, though it was loudly trumpeted by the then ruling party is thus essential.
Several well-intentioned persons including Mr. Saiyid Hamid, former Vice-Chancellor and today the foremost living Muslim educationist in India, have been emphasizing the impropriety inherent in the procedure for the selection of the Vice-Chancellor.
Experience has shown the need to provide clear guidelines for the exercise of emergency powers by the VC because, under the former VC, the AMU, at all levels, was in a permanent State of Emergency and he had usurped the function and power of all other authorities of the University, what also needs to be reconsidered is the size of composition of the University Court which links the University to the Community.
There are many other aspects of the Act and the Statutes which need to be gone into with a comb so that the norms in administration, admission of students and recruitment of teachers are well-established and acted upon.
Muslim India heartily welcomes the new Vice- Chancellor, conveys its best wishes to him for his success and expresses the hope that while he has less than 2 years to go, he shall move simultaneously on all fronts - administrative and academic, teaching and extra-curricular activities, student and campus life, and, above all, pave the way for necessary amendments to the Act and the Statutes, and thus to lay the foundation for a glorious, peaceful and creative future.
Muslim India knows that Hamid Ansari will succeed because he has no personal axe to grind, because he is not involved in the group politics of the campus, because he enjoys the unstinted support of the community and universal goodwill of the country, because he is an Aligarian and an honest and committed person.
Muslim India wishes him Godspeed.
New Delhi
1st Jul 2000
