JEDDAH: A former vice chancellor of a leading university in Delhi has called on Muslims to focus on providing good secondary and higher secondary schools rather than worrying about new universities, colleges or centers of learning.
Speaking in Jeddah at the weekend during the 95th Foundation Day celebrations of Jamia Millia Islamia, Syed Shahid Mahdi said there were already far too many good, well-funded universities and colleges in India.
“There is no point in demanding new universities or new colleges for minorities,” he said in a blunt speech addressed to the well-placed and highly recognized alumni of the university in Saudi Arabia. “Even if you get new colleges and new universities, where will you get the students? That is the challenge.”
Mahdi suggested that efforts should be made to empower and enable Indian Muslim students in schools to compete and win seats by means of the common entrance tests in medical and engineering colleges.
“I will give you the example of Azam Education Trust, led by P.A. Inamdar, in Pune, Maharashtra,” he said. “They go through the results of all students in Class X and select the 100 best students for very rigorous, intensive and meticulous coaching for their Class XI and Class XII studies.” (In India, students are eligible for medical and engineering entrance tests only after they get good marks in Class XII.)
Mahdi, a product of the prestigious Indian Administrative Services (IAS), said nearly 50 percent of the 100 selected students succeed in gaining places in the best medical and engineering colleges. “That, I think, is the right approach as we move ahead. I call it the cost-effective-attention-intensive approach,” he said.
He said the system of education at Muslim-managed schools in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra was much better.
“In North India, where most Indian Muslims live, the situation is alarming. There is a huge dropout rate,” he said. “In these circumstances, the demand for the creation of more colleges or more universities for minorities will not help. We need to concentrate immediately on the feeding channel as has been successfully done in the south Indian states.”
He appealed to the alumni to keep the flag of their alma mater flying high. “Our university has scaled new heights and is now known as one of the finest in the country, thanks to its award winning research centers. The university does not expect anything from you,” he said. “We don’t need your money. Jamia is a well-funded central university. All we need is for you to keep the line of communication open between alumni and the university, and to keep excelling in your respective fields.”
Mahdi said Jamia differentiates itself from other universities because it dares to think and it dares to innovate. “It has the capacity to put life into the most traditional subjects, such as history and geography,” he said. “We are a university of the 21st century.”
He acknowledged the efforts of the Jamia Millia Islamia Alumni Association (JMIAA) Presidents Nadeem Nadwi (Jeddah) and Ghizal Mahdi (Riyadh) in bringing the alumni together and providing them with a means for networking.
Nadwi, who graduated from the university in 1980, is among the most well-known alumni of the university in Jeddah by virtue of his being the chief executive officer of the prestigious Saudi Cricket Centre (SCC).
Ghizal Mahdi urged the alumni to revisit the vision, mission and reason for the creation of Jamia in 1920. “Is Jamia any other university? Why did the founders launch it? What made them rebel against Aligarh Muslim University? What was Mahatma Gandhi’s contribution? And what were the contributions of the leading Islamic scholars of those tumultuous times? We need to look carefully at the answers to these questions,” he said.
He said the university’s founders did not expect to produce mere graduates who would worry only about securing a job for themselves and for their families. “The idea of the university’s founders was to integrate the community into education and to bring it out of the misery that had befallen the community during the British occupation of India.”
A principal attraction at the event was the popular radio jockey, Naved, who is also a JMI alumnus. He entertained the audience with his pranks, jokes and repartee in his trademark Radio MIrchi style.
Prominent among those who attended the event were Urdu News Editor in Chief Tareq Mishkhas, popular columnist Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi, who formerly served at the Saudi Embassy in New Delhi, Press and Information Consul Dr. Irshad Ahmad, Dr. Intakhab Alam Khan of King Abdul Aziz University, well-known journalist Syed Athar H. Rizvi, prominent community member Ghazanfar Khan, JMIAA-Jeddah General Secretary Syed Naseem Ahmad, Vice President Nawed Siddiqui and Treasurer Afzal Nisar Khan.
The event was very well emceed by Sadiqa Tarannum, a popular teacher of English at the International Indian School-Jeddah (IISJ) and a writer at the Nation and the World magazine.
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