Will the Draft UGC Regulations 2025 undermine our universities? Unlikely, notes Professor Mohammad Sajjad, citing how AMU has utilised its exceptional autonomy.
Crucial reforms in Muslim personal law, especially laws related to inheritance and adoption, need to be initiated forthwith; historically speaking, without the State's backing, hardly has any reform taken place or allowed to prevail, asserts Mohammad Sajjad.
In the Muslim community, views on this Lok Sabha election seem to vary, with some seeing it as crucial for India's pluralism while others feel neglected by political parties.
'I somehow felt that Muzaffar Ali was in Aligarh to feel the pulse of the Muslim youth, especially in the darker and harsher times that India is passing through,' notes Mohammad Sajjad.
Pratinav Anil is able to foresee some agency and assertion on the part of India's Muslims. His hope emanates from the citizenship rights movement of Muslims in 2019-2020, notes Mohammad Sajjad.
The arrested BSF man, identified as Mohammad Sajjad, is a native of Sarola village in the Rajauri district of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, who was deployed in the 74 BSF Battalion at Bhuj in July 2021, the ATS said in a release.
Is perpetuating corruption and communalising politics, the Akhilesh Way, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
Some important simple truths about the issue may be more helpful than high sounding debates, asserts Mohammad Sajjad.
With some gestures and promises, to an average electorate, Akhilesh Yadav appeared to be harmonising socialism with the changed economic realities of post-liberalisation India, even though he is yet to be counted as a visionary, notes Mohammad Sajjad.
The urge of democratisation among the Muslim communities remains unaddressed by these emerging Muslim outfits. Do they wish to pursue the emotive identity politics of religious exclusivism which may degenerate into the politics of religious reaction, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
Muslim youth are neither meant for being indoctrinated and hired by any destructive foreign agency like the ISI, nor are they meant for being fired by their own security agencies, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'People's expectations are so high that they won't wait for long. They won't tolerate any delay in pushing ahead development work at the fastest possible pace.'
An interesting phenomenon of the UP assembly elections 2012 is the emergence of many small Muslim political outfits, says Dr Mohammad Sajjad
Nitish Kumar has made the people of Bihar taste the fruits of inclusive development. His rivals don't have that image among the electorate.
The community constitutes about 16.5 percent of the total electorate. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, aware of the figure, has been vocal in his opposition to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi campaigning in the state... For all its backward mien, Bihar has a very high political consciousness and a reason for the paradox is politics is the sole arbiter of fate in this state. And Muslims are no exception.
What plagues the Aligarh Muslim University? Armed with historical facts, Dr Mohammad Sajjad lists the likely reasons for the recurring turmoil in one of India's oldest educational institutions.
'Mere communal-secular binary of political rhetoric will hardly help the Congress to attract enough votes to get power.'
In a major upset, Pakistan's top seed Mohammad Sajjad was ousted from the Asian Snooker Championship, even as India's Pankaj Advani, I H Manudev, Kamal Chawla and Aditya Mehta secured places in the last 16, in Indore on Wednesday.
'India's pluralist character, vibrant democracy, assertive intelligentsia and all attendant principles/institutions are the best assurance to allay the misgivings of the minorities.'
The government, every year, hides behind the mystery of the disease, linking it with litchis, and does not confess malnutrition as the prime cause, points out Mohammad Sajjad.
'For Muslims, India is now a Hindu Rashtra, no matter what kind of Constitution is still in place,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
'As a student of history, I am no pessimist, but regardless of which party/coalitions comes to power on May 23, the space for secularism, pluralism and minority rights has shrunk significantly,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'One does not understand why you should launch your attack against the Constitution, against Gandhiji, against the Left and Congress regimes at a moment when the Hindutva regime needs such attacks against them.' 'By doing so, don't you think you are playing into the hands of Hindutva forces?', Mohammad Sajjad, who teaches history at Aligarh Muslim University, asks Sharjeel Imam who was arrested on charges of sedition on Tuesday, January 28.
'The Mallahs may remain divided between the two competing coalitions in Bihar,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Will the M (Muslims) in the RJD's M+Y move fast swiftly towards the MIM and away from the RJD, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
'The Ulema have come out as villains against Indian secularism, impeding the secular united resistance against violent Hindutva that is backed by ministers in the government,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The jurisprudence of a modern secular State has to be strictly rational.' 'Rather than aastha and aqeedah, our jurisprudence as well as the executive and legislature have to act in accordance with Constitutional rationality,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
The manner in which a large proportion of common people have mortgaged their rationality and questioning spirit to let hatred, prejudice, and bigotry take over their minds is a cause of worry, observes Mohammad Sajjad.
'Maybe the BJP believes, in the post-poll scenario, it will have the might to foist, anybody endorsed by the RSS, upon Bihar,' observes Mohammad Sajjad.
'Should the Congress take Jyotiraditya's departure as good riddance?', asks Mohammad Sajjad.
'In Kairana, the grand coalition was able to transfer its votes to a Muslim candidate in supposedly an era of anti-Muslim ambience.' 'Given this perspective, the Kairana result seems more significant than that of Gorakhpur and Phulpur a few months ago,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill would possibly be the first piece of legislation that is perniciously discriminatory on the basis of religion/faith, says Mohammad Sajjad.
The hounding of former AMU students by some alumni over their 'wining and dining' during Ramzan is deeply disturbing, says AMU Professor Mohammad Sajjad. 'Intolerance, irrationality, bigotry, religious/sectarian hatred, and all such pernicious tendencies must be fought and resisted, more particularly by university campuses, in order to build a better society.' 'Have we, as academics, failed, and that too, quite miserably?' he asks. 'I feel like confessing and saying yes, we have indeed failed.'
'Their brave resistance keep our hopes alive that this youth upsurge is strengthening India's democracy and pluralism,' states Mohammad Sajjad.
'In Bihar, the Dalits are not a consolidated socio-political constituency,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
True, Azam Khan is being targeted rather disproportionately and also because of his Muslim identity. That must be protested and resisted. But to say that he is a big messiah, and his profit-making educational enterprise is an issue concerning all Muslims of India, is absolutely unjustified, assert Mohammad Sajjad and Md Mohammad Zeeshan Ahmad.
'Amit Shah and his fellow travellers need to realise that India was divided because of competitive communalism of forces like Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, prodded, aided and abetted by the colonial power,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'This time, even the professedly secular parties have maintained a conscious distance from being identified with Muslims.' 'This could be interpreted as a success of the BJP campaign of what it has been calling 'minority appeasement', says Mohammad Sajjad.
'How many Indian parents, still alive, really have documents of, their parents's date and place of birth? Not more than 27% of still alive Indians have got birth certificates,' points out Mohammad Sajjad.
'The Mughals became completely Indian in every sense and united the vast Indian subcontinent, not only territorially, but also the hearts and minds of people with multiple religio-cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversities' 'The Mughals, arguably, made India an enviable superpower in the then world.' 'Are the Hindutva rulers of today scared of acknowledging Mughal accomplishments?' asks Mohammad Sajjad.
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