Raja Mahendra Pratap

Those resorting to communal politics have not only perfected their techniques of polarizing the communities along religious lines, but have been constantly resorting to new methods for dividing the society. On the backdrop of Muzzafar nagar, where ‘Love Jihad’ propaganda was used to enhance the divisive agenda, now in Aligarh an icon of matchless virtues, Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh is being employed for the similar purposes.

The attempt by BJP and associates to hold the memorial function in his honor within campus was successfully deflected by the Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) University with the plan for a seminar befitting his contribution to the freedom movement of this AMU alumnus.

BJP dug up this icon from pages of history and gauzing prevalent respect for him after the lapse of decades after his death. The answer to why now at this particular juncture is very revealing. Mahendra Pratap died on 29 April 1979, and now out of the blues BJP seems to have felt that his Jat, Hindu identity can be pitched as a flag of their politics. Pratap was a freedom fighter extraordinary, a journalist and a writer. He was a humanist, believing in International federation of nations transcending the national and religious boundaries. He was a Marxist who called for social reforms and empowerment of Panchayats. He was president of Indian Freedom Fighters’ Association He was also the first one to form the provisional Indian Government in exile by establishing it in Kabul in 1915. Just to recall the Indian National Congress adopted the goal of complete freedom for India much later in its 1929 session. This Provisional Government was called Hakumat-i-Moktar-i-Hind, and was constituted with Pratap as the President, Maulvi Barkatullah as prime minister and Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi as interior minister.

After independence he also participated in the electoral arena where he defeated Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Mathura in the 1957 Lok Sabha election. His commitment to being opposed to communal forces could not be more evident than this opposition of his to the leader of Bhartiya Jansangh, Vajpayee. Ironically same person is being lifted up as the icon, who opposed their politics. BJP leaders like Yogi Adityanath are claiming that had Mahendra Pratap not donated the land the AMU would not have come up. This is contrary to the facts. The predecessor of AMU, Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College was formed in 1886, with a land bought from British cantonment (Nearly 74 Acres) and much later Pratap had leased 3.04 acres of land, this is called Tikonia ground and is used as a playground by the City High School of AMU in 1929. He joined the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College in 1895, but could not complete his graduation. He left MAO College in 1905. MAO became Aligarh Muslim University in 1920, which regards Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh as an alumnus. In 1977, AMU, under V-C Prof A M Khusro, felicitated Mahendra Pratap at the centenary celebrations of MAO.

He wasn’t born when MAO was established, and there is no record of any donation of land from him. Mahendra Pratap’s father Raja Ghanshiam Singh of Mursan had got a hostel room constructed, which continues to stand as Room Number 31 in Sir Syed Hall (South).

BJP demanded that Mahenra Pratap’s birthday should be celebrated as AMU celebrates the birthday of Sir Syed, the founder of the University RSS Functionaries and BJP leaders put pressure on the VC. VC pointed out that AMU cannot celebrate birth day of every donor or alumnus, while recognizing their contribution to the building up of the University. As such already AMU in recognition of Pratap’s contribution to the University has put up his photo in University along with the photo of Sir Syed.

On November 17 (2014), BJP chief of UP Mr. Laxmikant Bajpai and general secretary Swatantra Dev Singh visited Aligarh and directed their district unit to celebrate the birth day of Mahendra Pratap’s within the MU campus. The raja is a also Jat icon, In popular perception AMU is seen as a Muslim institution. The Jat-Muslim conflict instigated by communal forces, which erupted in the form of violence in Muzaffarnagar continues to affect in western part of UP. The BJP through its machinations allegedly wants to restore the glory of a Jat ‘king’. As such the idea is to appropriate one more of icons and in the process if the state government puts curbs on the celebration, the BJP can benefit by accusing the state Government of “Muslim appeasement”.

As the matters stand VC, Gen. Shah’s suggestion of celebrating the birth anniversary of Raja Mahendra Pratap by organizing a seminar on his contribution to freedom movement of India is a welcome initiative. The situation seems to have been diffused for the time being. BJP had planned a rally outside the gate of AMU, which would have precipitated the unwarranted incidents.

This whole episode has many lessons for the society. To begin with, the national icons are being modulated to suit the interests of communal politics. Be it Sardar patel, Swami Vivekanand, Mahatma Gandhi or in this case Raja Mahendra Pratap, they are being presented in the light which suits the communal politics. In case of Mahedra Pratap, who was a Marxist internationalist; is being presented as a mere Jat leader. He was a person who opposed the politics in the name of religion, as is evident by his electoral fight against BJP’s previous avatar, Bhartiya Jan Sanghs’ Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Secondly BJP associates are manipulating people’s identity as primarily being religious identity, Hindu or Muslim. In case of Muzzafarnagar, the Jats who were instigated in the name of ‘love Jihad’ came to stand more for Hindu identity. This identity is then made to stand opposed to the ‘other’ religious identity in particular, the Muslim identity and sometimes Christian identity. Same game is also being experimented in parts of Delhi, where Dalits are being made to pitch against Muslims, in a way two deprived communities being made to fight for’ their’ religion’ on the pretext of some issues related to faith.

The communal politics not only manipulates the identity of the people but also that of the icons, as is clear in the case of Raja Mahendra Pratap. The third major lesson for society to learn is that the search is on to find more and more issues to pitch one religious community against the other to strengthen the politics of a particular type. While the top leadership will talk of moratorium on violence, the associates of the same leadership will stoke the processes which will lead to the process of violence in due course.

A great amount of restraint is needed to ensure that we learn the values of the icons, e.g. the likes of Mahendra Pratap teach us the basic lessons of love and amity, peace and universal humanism. To use the techniques of conflicting religious identities is a gross violation of human morality, irrespective of the religion in whose name it is done.

by Rana Ayyub

My father, a noted writer from the field of Urdu literature, like many of his friends from the Progressive writers movement, found in his alma mater Aligarh Muslim University, the courage to break the barriers of religion enforced stereotypes. He forced his wife, my mother, who was raised in a conservative family of zamindars from Uttar Pradesh to pursue her education post marriage and give up all ominous practices of subjugation.

Among the first few books my mother was gifted besides Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’ were on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of AMU, and Sultan Shahjahan Begum, the first female ruler who vehemently worked for the promotion of education amongst women and Muslims in particular.

Shahjahan Begum, also referred to as the Begum of Bhopal, was the first Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University which gave India some of its best known luminaries from the field of politics, art, literature. AMU alumni include former Presidents of India and current Vice President Hamid Ansari, who also served a term as the Vice Chancellor of the university.

Some of the most prolific writers and thinkers with affiliation to the Marxist philosophy owe their careers to AMU. One such figure was Raja Mahendra Pratap, an admirer of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who started the Mohammad Anglo Oriental College after successfully completing his education from Oxford and Cambridge.

With the dominance of religious education in the lives of Muslims, who were in the lowest rung of socio-economic progress, Sir Syed understood that religious studies from Madrassas did not give the less privileged a window into the world; for them to succeed, there was a dire need for a platform which helped them with a contemporary understanding of religion, philosophy and science.

While the University was started with the intent of providing modern education to Muslims, non-Muslims were welcomed. It was for this reason that many Hindu rulers of the time sent their children to the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College spread over 468 hectares of land which was later renamed the Aligarh Muslim University.

So impressed was Raja Mahendra Pratap with the vision of Sir Syed that he decided to lease 3.04 acres of land to the AMU in 1929. Though it was a small share, this helped forge a strong bond between Hindus and Muslims. His commitment to the social cause and his zeal for the Marxist thought was such that Lenin himself is said to have invited him to Russia post the success of the Bolshevik revolution.

An independent MP from Mathura from the year 1955 to 1962, and a freedom fighter with a desire to weed out communal thinking, Mahendra Pratap despised all form of right-wing indoctrination. Little did he realize that one day his name would be used by right-wing leaders to turn an educational institute he so admired into a ground for religious polarisation.

Satish Gautam, BJP MP from Aligarh, whose party has professed commitment to ushering in a new era of development and inclusive growth, has decided to use AMU to instigate communal politics between Jats and Muslims, both communities being the main constituents of Aligarh.

Satish Gautam, a popular figure amongst Jats, possibly realises that the last time the two communities were provoked in Muzaffarnagar, it earned rich political dividends for his party. But in his overzealous endeavour to use AMU, he has conveniently forgotten to state some very important facts to his followers.

It would be judicious on the part of Satish Gautam, who has threatened to hold a rally at the gates of the AMU on the birth anniversary of Raja Mahendra Pratap on the 1st of December to list for his followers some of the most revolutionary non-Muslim thinkers from AMU. Before and during the freedom movement, both Muslim and Hindu kings and rulers united against the British and helped each other – these included funding educational institutions. AMU and the famous Banaras Hindu university were the two icons of this educational uprising that received patronage from both the communities.

Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder of the Banaras Hindu University, had no qualms about accepting funds from Muslim rulers and elites.

If one were to accept the BJP MP’s logic, then each and every person who leased land for the 468 hectares of AMU will have to be celebrated just like each and every donor of BHU and thousands of other educational institutes in India.

Would the BJP MP not do a great service to the iconic institution by asking it to celebrate the birth anniversary of social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who was one of the main influences on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, or guide the non-Muslim students of Aligarh to the plaque of historian Ishwar Prasad, who belonged to the first batch of graduates from the AMU?

The Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University has written to the Education Minister Smriti Irani stating that the BJP’s decision to hold a rally would provoke communal tension; he has said the university is willing to diffuse the tension by holding a seminar on Raja Mahendra in the future. Smriti Irani displayed her feminist side by speaking out against the VC’s alleged decision to not allow female undergraduate students into the Central library – she called it an “insult to the daughters of the country.”

Now she should take the first step in saving the legacy of the likes of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya by weeding out the rogue elements who threaten to target educational institutions.

In the last few months, there seems to have been a meticulous plan to target educational bodies by fringe elements by planting fictitious stories and dividing them on religious lines. On this particular occasion, it would be wise for the powers that be to not allow local Samajwadi Party and BJP leaders to target the sacrosanct for a communal or political agenda. Both the HRD Minister and the Prime Minister, who has held education as one of the key areas of development in his agenda, should step forward to save the legacy of the great reformists from being converted into a communal experiment.

Rana Ayyub is an award-winning investigative journalist and political writer. She is working on a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi which will be published in 2015.

Aligarh Muslim University, Raja Mahendra Pratap and Attempts of Polarization

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