Intertwined Lives by Jairam Ramesh

Author:Jairam Ramesh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S India
Published: 2018-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Haksar was uncompromisingly secular to the core. In 1972, he could not speak publicly but made his views forcefully clear when the issue of declaring Aligarh Muslim University as a minority institution erupted and began to engage the prime minister’s attention. Legislation to declare the university a minority institution came to the Cabinet for approval. Haksar used this opportunity on 26 May 1972 to tell the prime minister:

The central—in fact the only—issue raised by the proposed Bill on the Aligarh Muslim University is a very simple one: is the Government of India going to create a precedent by setting up a Central University for a minority community? If the answer is in the affirmative, the question would arise whether such an Act would be in consonance with the letter and spirit of our Constitution. The further question would be that if an educational institution wholly maintained out of State funds is to be established for a religious minority, namely the Muslims, why should it not maintain similar educational institutions out of State funds for other minorities, be they linguistic, religious or ethnic? And if the Aligarh Muslim University is to be wholly maintained out of State funds for the benefit of Muslims, why should not Banaras Hindu University be wholly maintained for the benefit of the Hindus? Thus, the communal forces which are wittingly or unwittingly, fanning up the demand for the Aligarh Muslim University retaining its Muslim character, are giving sustenance and support to the R.S.S. and the Jan Sangh to raise a similar demand vis-à-vis the Banaras Hindu University.

The foregoing considerations lead one to the only conclusion possible, namely that the Government of India cannot possibly treat the Aligarh Muslim University on any different footing than any other Central University. Of course, this would mean withstanding the pressure of those Muslim communal elements who are mounting up agitation. They have to be fought just as Hindu communal elements were fought the other day in the Banaras Hindu University. [italics mine]

Haksar’s vies prevailed even though the prime minister was under pressure from many MPs and others to have Aligarh Muslim University declared as a minority institution. When it came to secularism, Haksar was uncompromisingly Nehruvian—that the State had no business promoting the interests of any one religious community and that communalism of all kinds need to be combated unapologetically.

A few months later the prime minister would tell Haksar about her anxiety on the agitation then being carried out against privately managed educational institutions in Kerala. The majority of these institutions were run by various societies of the Roman Catholic Church, the Syrian Christian Church and by other Christian denominations, the Nair Service Society, the Sree Narayana Guru Trust and the Muslim Educational Society. Thus, except for a few colleges most of these colleges were run by caste-based or religion-based organizations. A similar situation prevailed in secondary education as well. Haksar himself had received a telegram from the leading Malayalam newspaper Malayala Manorama asking for his intervention to quell the agitation.

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