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        Sir Syed Ahmed Khan formulated the basic tenets for the Aligarh Movement. The fundamental keynote of the movement was that India was a land of not one nation but two nations - Hindu Vs Muslim, with distinct social, political, religious and historical traditions for centuries. The other basic tenets were logically derived and defined by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in the following manner :

        a) The grant and establishment of representative institutions based on democratic principles would be detrimental to the interests of the muslims in India because that would subject the Muslims to Hindu domination which would be far worse than British rule.

        b) Appointment to high public offices by open competitive examinations in India would be detrimental to the interests of the Muslims because that would also subject the Muslims to the hegemony of the Hindus.

        c) Consequently it would be in the larger interests of the Muslim community in India to regard the Paramountcy of the British as the chief safeguard of Islamic interests and therefore all the Muslims should keep themselves aloof from all forms of political agitation against the government.

        d) As both the short run and the long run interests of the Muslims would be safe in the hands of the benign British rulers, the Muslims should confine their attention to cultural development and carefully eschew politics or political activity except in so far as it is necessary to counter-balance the mischief of Hindu political agitators.

        The fundamental seeds of separatism and Pakistan were developed in Aligarh College which later became the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). Thus it will be clear that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was the political and spiritual precursor of Mohammed Ali Jinnah who effectively used the above arguments to outwit the old and tired Congress leaders in 1947 to create the Muslim Nation and Islamic State of Pakistan. In this context I would like to quote the following words of a great politician of British India : 'It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism'..they are, infact, different and distinct social orders and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this conception of one Indian Nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of our troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious phylosophies, social customs, literature. They neither inter-marry nor inter-dine together and indeed, they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Musalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes. Very often, the hero of one is a foe of the other. To yoke together two such Nations under a Single State, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a State - Muslim India cannot accept any Constitution which must necessarily result in a Hindu-majority government.'

        All the pseudo-secular political thugs in the UPA government today would love to dismiss the above prophetic words as emanating from a highly communal, saffronised and non-secular Hindu fundamentalist of the Hindu Maha Sabha of British India. Unfortunately for them all, I would like to give a crushingly secular and mercifully non-Hindu rejoinder to them by inviting their sqinted attention to the unassailable fact that the above words flowed graciously and ever so benignly from the compassionate Islamic mouth of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, while delivering his Presidential address to the All India Muslim League Session at Lahore in March 1940. Jinnah was very clear and definite about his stand : he was not Islam-hating and Hindu-embracing !

        Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had unconcealed contempt for the Hindus and boundless romantic love for the Muslims in India. Right from day one after our independence, he was focussing personal and paternal attention upon the Aligarh Muslim University. He took particular care to see that no Hindu was appointed as a minister to deal with education for almost 17 years after 1947. He was advised by Dr Zakir Hussain that the place of Muslims in India would be largely determined by the way Aligarh University works, the way Aligarh thinks and by the way India deals with Aligarh. He had come to this conclusion after carefully analysing how the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) had functioned as the arsenal centre of Pakistan from 1900 till 1947, completely promoting the two nation theory. In order to counter this established anti-national trend, Dr Zakir Hussain was sent to Aligarh Muslim University to function as its Vice Chancellor in 1951. Soon after asumption of office as Vice Chancellor, Dr Zakir Hussain declared his aim in the following words : 'My main objective is to convert this University into a real National Muslim University in which Muslim students are trained not only to be good citizens but also to look upon this country as their own and become true nationals and loyal citizens of India'.

        Even after Zakir Hussain assumed charge, there was no change in the attitude of most of the Muslim students who remained hostile to Dr.Zakir Hussain. They were all ill disposed towards Zakir Hussain, running him down as an agent of the Congress Government who had been sent to Aligarh only for the Shuddhi ( purification) of the University. In 1951 when Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, was assasinated, the Muslim students went on a procession and sounded the siren, disregarding the advice of Dr.Zakir Hussain and gave an open exhibition and demonstration of their allegiance to Pakistan.

        When many of the Muslim students in the Aligarh Muslim University ( AMU) campus were treasonably anti-national (!) and reasonably pseudo-secular (!!!) in their declared objectives and actions, Dr Zakir Hussain, the Vice Chancellor, boldly reported to the Ministry of Education, Government of India in May 1953 that students from Pakistan were being enrolled in the Aligarh University. His report was ignored by the Government of India. Minority rights were treated as more sacred than national security (!). The students of the AMU actively participated in the Convention of Muslims held at Aligarh in October - November 1953.

        The truly 'patriotic', 'responsible' and 'compassionate' Muslim League leader of pre-Partition Bengal, Syed Badrudduja of pan-Islamic fame and glory presided over that Convention. All the sessions of the Convention were held at night to enable the students of the AMU to attend the Convention.

        The Muslim students of AMU took out a procession in August 1956, protesting against the publication of a book titled Religious Leaders by two American authors containing derogatory remarks against Prophet Mohammed. They carried and burnt an effigy of K M. Munshi, the then Governor of UP and founder of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, the publisher of the book. They shouted slogans like Hindustan Murdabad , Pakistan Zindabad. The university expelled 8 students for their misconduct. In the felicitous language of Dr Shaik Ali, the biographer of Dr Zakir Hussain, Aligarh became the KARBALA for Dr Zakir Hussain : 'In Jamia Milia (where he was the Vice Chancellor before going over to Aligarh as Vice Chancellor), he was Moses with a staff but in Aligarh he was Jesus with a cross'.

        All the earnest efforts taken by Dr Zakir Hussain to restrain and curb the reactionary elements in the AMU and to make it a truly secular and National institution failed. In disgust, Dr Zakir Hussain quit the university in 1956.

        On 25 April, 1965, a crowd of 1600 students from the AMU Students' Union made a brutal and murderous attack on Vice Chancellor Ali Yavar Jung who received as many as 65 wounds of which 30 were in his head. No student came to his rescue. It was Islamic compassion indeed ! In a report to the Education Minister M C Chagla, Ali yavar Jung stated : 'All the Muslim students are against my broad and nationalistic approach to the problems of the University. Many of them are not showing any loyalty th their University or to the country in which they have opted to live'.

        The AMU covered itself with unpardonable shame when Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, the revered Frontier Gandhi, was mobbed by students who spat upon him during his visit to the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in November 1969.

        I am of the view that our degraded and debauched Government of India today has lost the taste for any truth because it goes out of the known way to avoid the bitter, but always wholesome flavour of fundamental and cardinal truth relating to the Muslims of India. One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth. Emerson said, 'the greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it'. Government of India's misplaced charity towards Muslims is weak in concession and untrustworthy in judgement. To be firmly rooted in charity, to be loyal to cardinal truth and to rejoice in it, will combine the wisdom of the serpent together with the harmlessness of the dove. Are we ever going to be blessed with such a responsible government in the immediate future ?