WHY did Jinnah take to Aligarh in the late 1930s and early 1940s as he did to no other institution? Because he had recognized all along that Aligarh represented “a great power house of Muslim thought and culture and learning”, and was the “intellectual capital” of Muslim India, to quote the Aga Khan. Since “often in civilized history a University has supplied the springboard for a nation’s intellectual and spiritual renaissance”, Jinnah felt that Aligarh might well serve as a springboard in his on-going campaign to rouse Muslim consciousness, to revitalize the AIML, and to galvanize Muslims under its banner.
Even otherwise, Jinnah had began to take a keen interest in Aligarh since he entered mainstream Muslim politics soon after his election to the Imperial Council from Bombay on January 4, 1910. Next year, he was appointed a Trustee of the MAO College, whence his association with Aligarh began formally.
He had defended Aligarh’s second generation in his December 20, 1913 presidential address at the Bombay Anjuman-i-Islam meeting, which was organized to welcome Sir Wazir Hassan and Mohammed Ali, on their return from England, where they had gone to present to the Secretary of State for India (Lord Crewe) the Muslim case on the Kanpur mosque affair.. “... It is a base vilification and slander upon the fair name of Aligarh to say that the young men of Aligarh are disloyal”, he said, adding, “It is a libel upon the most cultured and educated class among the Musalmans.”
In 1920, Jinnah had played a leading role along with the Raja of Mahmudabad, in raising Aligarh to the University status. Later, his support to Sir Shah Muhammad Sulaiman for the Vice-Chancellor’s post in 1938, which he seconded, proved critical, as it led to Dr. Ziauddin, the other candidate, stepping down.
It was therefore but natural that when Jinnah took up the arduous task of reorganizing the AIML and uniting the disparate Muslim groups on its platform in 1937, he turned to Aligarh for support. Jinnah believed in the youth, and Aligarh represented the cream of Muslim India’s youth. He knew that if he could only gain their confidence, he could work wonders and galvanize the Muslims on the League’s platform as no leader had done before. That’s why Jinnah used to visit Aligarh regularly, to discuss Muslim India’s problems and future with the Aligarh dons, and speak to the students, besides keeping himself abreast of Aligarh’s views and thinking on problems confronting the Muslims.
Through correspondence, Philip Talbot, former President of Asia Society, New York, who was at Aligarh in the late 1930s, told me at the Quaid-i-Azam Academy in 1988 that Jinnah and other Muslim League leaders used to visit Aligarh frequently during the weekends in late 1939 and would discuss the various partition plans, before one was finally approved of by the AIML Working Committee, early in February 1940, and presented for acceptance at the Muslim League session at Lahore, on March 23, 1940.
It is rather well known that Jinnah, all through his political career, had advised students to shun active politics, and devote themselves to working for educational, cultural and social goals.
Simultaneously he had urged them to equip and prepare themselves to shoulder the national tasks, once they left the portals of their educational institutions. Although he inspired and blessed the founding of the All India Muslim Students Federation (AIMSF) in 1937, if only as a riposte to the two students federations, one left-oriented and the other Congress-inspired, he was still opposed to students dabbling in active politics. However Article 2(A) of the AIMSF constitution laid down that it would seek “To arouse political consciousness amongst the Muslim students, to prepare them to take their proper share in the struggle for the attainment of Pakistan”.
Later, in August 1945, when general elections were announced, Jinnah finally came to the conclusion that the electoral battle for Pakistan called for the active participation of students as the vanguard in the struggle for Pakistan. Hence he sent Liaquat Ali Khan, the AIML General Secretary, to Aligarh, to give the call for students’ active participation on his behalf. On September 22, 1945, Liaquat gave that call, arguing that “there comes a time in the life of a nation when every other activity has to be subordinated to that big issue.... I want you to realize that the forthcoming election is a matter of life and death to the Muslims. I want the Muslim students...to play their part boldly and honourably in an issue which would mean either emancipation or perpetual domination”. What use would be a degree, he argued, “if the future is dark and disappointing”. Hence the students should come out of their class rooms and support the Muslim League “even at the cost of one academic year”.
The Aligarh students came up to Jinnah’s expectations at that critical juncture. They organized themselves, set up camps for the training of volunteers for election work and fanned out in all directions, to spread the message of Pakistan, especially in the countryside, and to ensure the return of the League’s candidates at the hustings. Aligarh served as a role model for other Muslim institutions such as the Islamia College at Lahore. Peshawar, Allahabad, Calcutta and elsewhere.
Muslim students in various provinces took, the cue from Aligarh and organized themselves for election work. And the students’ contribution in the League’s scoring a resounding triumph in the 1945-46 general elections was both substantial and significant.
