How Ali Khan Mahmudabad's ancestors helped establish AMU

Time of India

21-05-2025

A senior assistant editor with the Times of India, Mohammed Wajihuddin writes about Muslims, their issues, hopes and aspirations. Committed to upholding inclusiveness, communal amity and freedom to dissent and debate, he endeavours to promote peaceful existence. A passionate reader of Islam, he endeavours to save the faith from the clutches of the jihadists. An ardent lover of Urdu poetry, he believes words are the best weapons to fight jingoism. LESS ... MORE
Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad, arrested for his remarks on Operation Sindoor by the Haryana police on Sunday (May 18) from his residence in Delhi, comes from a family which has championed education and helped form great institutions. The state of Mahmudabad near Sitapur in UP has played a pivotal role in establishing several institutions of higher education.
Given Prof Mahmudabad's pedigree, it is not surprising that he valued and values education, earning degrees from a clutch of highly reputed universities, including Cambridge. While many scions of erstwhile princely states and royal houses diverted their inherited properties to heritage hotels and clubs and spent their time wining and dining, Mahmudabad thoughtfully invested time and resources in education. Perhaps he is paying the price for being brutally honest in expressing his views, the hallmark of a scholar who has cut his teeth in the corridors of academia.
It may not cut much ice with the enemies of education, scholarship and rational thinking, but history records that one of Mahmudabad's ancestors, Maharaja Sir Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan of Mahmudabad (1878-1931) played a key role to make Lucknow the capital of United Provinces (later Uttar Pradesh). He was one of the founding members of Lucknow University and had donated Rs one lakh before the university was founded in 1920.
Not many know that he passionately championed the cause to turn Mohammedan Anglo Oriental (MAO) College into Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
After he became a trustee of MAO College in 1906, Mahmudabad donated Rs one lakh to the College funds created to make it AMU.
In my book 'Aligarh Muslim University: The Making of the Modern Indian Muslim', I have mentioned the crucial role Raja of Mahmudabad played in getting MAO College turned into AMU.
After Sir Aga Khan gave a slogan 'now or never' for the Muslim University at the Muhammadan Educational Conference at Nagpur in December 1910, the campaign to collect funds received a major boost. After Aga Khan and Shaukat Ali toured India, collecting an amount of Rs 4,00,000, it was Raja of Mahmudabad who led from the front in the Muslim University's cause. He, along with Viqarul Mulk, Aftab Ahmad Khan and Maulana Shibli (he has quit MAO College but joined the movement for the Muslim university), toured Punjab and Sind, shoring up support, monetary and moral, for the proposed university.
Raja of Mahmudabad also headed the committee to prepare the draft for the university which was submitted to Harcourt Butler, education member of the Viceroy's Council, at Shimla in May 1911. Butler favoured the cause by writing to J P Hewett, lieutenant governor of the United Provinces, that 'Muslims should be given their university.'
Butler visited Aligarh in November 1919 and hopes for university revived. Mian Mohammed Shafi, an old Aligarh loyalist and an education member in the government of India, lobbied for the Muslim Education Bill. And, on September 14, 1920, the Aligarh Muslim University Act (1920) was passed.
AMU was inaugurated on December 17, 1920 with a brief function at the Strachey Hall (many of today's AMU students may not be aware of it, but this is the venue which has hosted kings and princes, rajas and nawabs, governors and eminent scientists and historians over the decades and it is here that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan got the bismillah or initiation to education of his grandson Sir Ross Masood done in the lap of Sir Syed's good friend Raja Jai Kishan, sending a strong message of communal harmony).
Raja of Mahmudabad became AMU's first Vice-chancellor with Sultan Jahan Begum, ruler of Bhopal, becoming its first chancellor (she has the distinction of being the first chancellor of an Indian university).
Significantly, it was Raja of Mahmudabad who persuaded Muslim leaders like Mazharul Haq and Dr M A Ansari to accept the Muslim University on the British government's terms. Earlier, a group of leaders, including Ali Brothers (Maulana Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali) had demanded that AMU be given the power of affiliation of a network of Muslim institutions, but London rejected it.
So, Raja of Mahmudabad, after the government passed the Benaras Hindu University Bill in 1915, felt pressure from other leaders and persuaded Muslim leaders to accept the Muslim university as per the government's conditions. Mohammed Ali who would play a crucial role in establishing Jamia Millia Islamia University at Aligarh in 1920–it moved to Karol Bagh in Delhi in 1925 and subsequently to Okhla–never reconciled to the establishment of AMU on the terms of the British government. He did not attend AMU's inauguration and lodged his dissent in response to Raja of Mahmudabad's invitation.
Mohammed Ali wrote, and I quote from my book: 'I am painfully aware that it is not, as you stated, The long-cherished dream of the Muslims, that 'has at last been realised… Surely Raja Sahab, this was not the university of your dreams any more than mine, nor can we call this the 'achievement of grand and glorious undertaking' to which you and I had both set our hearts.'
In these trying times, Prof Ali Khan Mahmudabad should draw courage from his forebears, especially Raha of Mahmudabad, AMU's first VC. Tons of ink have been spent in eulogising AMU for which establishment Raja of Mahmudabad made tireless efforts, but perhaps none surpasses what eminent surgeon and AMU alumnus Dr
Naseem Ansari said. He wrote: 'People consider Aligarh as the idol house of Islam. The light here that burns was brought from Taxila, Athens, Cordoba, Baghdad and Oxford.'
Do not dismay, O Professor. You are not alone in this fight.
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