The students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) are agitating against sudden exponential fee-hike. While the students claim the quantum of fee hike is by 30-61%, the University administration claims it to be in the range of 15-20%. Students also claim that there is a procedural flaw. If the decision was taken by the Academic Council (AC) then this should have been notified and entered into the admission brochure, long before August 2025. If this hike is by invoking the emergency powers of the Vice Chancellor (VC), then it is absolutely unjustified.
In all these processes, the ad-hoc Controller of Examinations and Admissions (staying in the office since very long; first as OSD to CoE &A and then as CoE & A) is not on the target of the slogan-raising student protesters. This raises a suspicion if he is behind instigating the agitation so that he may not be replaced. In a University system, Controller is the next most important functionary in fee-related decisions and announcements. He therefore cannot skip and escape his responsibility for the hike.
Concern of the Insiders regarding the Protest
There had been a simmering discontent on the AMU campus, because of the, (a) Students Union elections being withheld, and (b) majority of the teachers angry with the perpetuation of certain teachers in administrative offices for far too long. The sudden and arbitrary fee-hike acted as the immediate spark. However, disallowing the offering of Friday prayers at the University entrance gate (on August 8, 2025) saw a sudden spike of interest in the protest both by certain sections of the insiders and also the overseas alumni, who were silent for the last 5-6 years. It also raised a pertinent question, why the students were failing to produce a comparative chart displaying the exorbitant fee-hike. Such a chart came by 10th August, after such questions were raised on social media . Since then both the protesters and the overseas alumni have turned against the Proctor, who had prevented the students from offering the Friday prayers on road. The UP Govt has forbidden it. This episode marked a Rightward shift of the protest. Islamists have jumped into it. Yanis Iqbal in his article has also pointed out the concerted efforts for communalising/Islamizing the student protest.
Thus, this misplaced priority of forgiving the Controller and targeting the Proctor raises serious questions about the intent of the protesters. It glosses over the corruption /irregularities of certain teachers holding administrative offices since long. Some of them appear to have conspiratorially aligned against the VC (against whose appointment a case is sub judice in the Supreme Court, to be heard on 18 August 2025). It is highly unlikely that the two cliques of teacher-administrators would really stay out of this crisis as mere spectators, and not as instigators of the protests? The insiders know it too well as to which cliques are on which side. A good number of insiders believe that factions of teachers are using Muslim Right Wing to further their vested interests. Historically speaking, it is the Muslim Right Wing political narrative that often prevails at the AMU campus.
Not that the highest bureaucracy in the Union Education Ministry is unaware of all these issues. Complaints after complaints are submitted to them, against the longstanding teacher-administrators. Vigilance Inquiry is pending against some of the powerful teachers. AMU teachers sincerely committed to core academics are already frustrated against the long and continuous perpetuation of a handful of teachers endlessly in administrative offices. Administrative crackdown from New Delhi for the much-needed administrative reshuffle appears to be the only solution in sight, opine these academics. These professionally accomplished academics strongly feel that the agitation has been engineered by the teachers’ clouts in the AMU administration.
The Rightward shift of the Protest
There has been an outcry about the AMU administration not letting the Friday Namaz be performed at the main entrance gate of the AMU-Bab-i Syed. Was it necessary to bring the religious matter into an economic grievance of the students? Also, the sudden fee-hike is an issue which pertains to all students whether Hindus or Muslims. This agitation thus excludes the Hindu students. Those Aligarhians (AMU-ites) ready with the technique of gas-lighting the matter with the question “what is so communal about the Friday prayer being performed at the protest site?”, need to explain. . How is it that Bal Gangadhar Tilak is blamed for having communalised (and alienated Muslims away from) the National Movement with Ganesha Utsava and Shivaji festival but the protesting AMU students asking to offer Friday prayer on road is not communalization of the protest?
Even the alumni have entered the “battlefield” (in their own words) only after the Friday prayer issue. A telephonic conversation is going viral where an alumnus, Amir MintoE, can be heard rebuking the Proctor over his role in disallowing the performance of Friday prayers. Note that he makes no mention of the sudden fee-hike but states that they are compelled to resist any gag on roadside Juma prayer (baat namaz ki hogi fir to hum bolenge). The technique of mobilisation is deeply immersed in Islamist symbolism, the same old tricks that have often been played out in AMU. There has been an involvement of a Muslim Right Wing student outfit, SIO (Students Islamic Organisation of India), of the Jamaát-e-Islami-e-Hind (JIH). Its National Secretary, Talha Mannan, raised slogans like Islam Ki Daawat Zinda Hai (The Invitation of Islam is alive) on campus, on 13 August 2025 and addressed a huge crowd. He referred to [the Islamist forces of] Sudan, but nothing against the S.I.R of the Election Commission of India. What have these slogans got to do with the economic grievances of the students over which the protest is based? These developments point towards a disturbing conclusion that the protest has been hijacked by the Muslim Right Wing as so often happens with almost all the protests at AMU.
In an era of Hindutva hegemony, assertion of Islamic Right Wing from AMU raises serious questions. The Liberals and the Left extending solidarity to the agitation must see through these internal realities of AMU, if they are really sincere about fighting Hindu majoritarianism. They are often found to be soft on the Muslim Right Wing.
It is in this light that we shall look at the 1981 incident concerning a tallest historian, Prof. Irfan Habib (a Marxist), when Right Wing Islamist students were used as a weapon to serve the Muslim communalists against him, and he was put under suspension.
Irfan Habib put under Suspension: The 1981 Episode
In 1981, historian Professor Irfan Habib, a well-known Marxist, was suspended from his position at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) after facing significant pressure from Muslim communalists and right-wing students.
The conflict began shortly after Syed Hamid became Vice-Chancellor of AMU in June 1980 during a tumultuous period. Habib, serving as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, was seen as a “hard task master” by the communal elements, who sought to gain control of the university’s administration. They guided their power struggle under the veil of leading a protest against Irfan Habib for some of his alleged harsh decisions. Irfan Habib was physically attacked in December 1980, his colleague M. Athar Ali (another renowned historian) bearing witness to it. Thereafter a large student protest demanded his removal. Bipan Chandra has mentioned it in great detail in his essay “AMU and Communalists: Dangerous Game of Appeasement” compiled in his book Essays on Contemporary India (1993).
On 17 December, there was an agitation with nearly 700 students urging the VC to sack Irfan Habib or else they would use such methods as they deemed fit (Bipan Chandra, pp. 207-208). At this time the Indian Express interviewed Irfan Habib (published on January 13,1980). The contents of the interview were by and large similar to the complaints that Irfan Habib’s opponents had against the University, yet it brought about a tirade against Habib, said Asghar Ali Engineer.
Students’ Islamic Movement (SIMI) wrote an open letter calling Habib “anti-Islamic,” and a leaflet campaign (led by Shakil Tamanna) accused him of “illiterate criticism of Muslim culture.” The protests, which included a strike, were marked by communal and anti-women sentiments. Among those who supported Muslim conservatives on the issue was Salman Khurshid, criticizing the left leanings of Irfan Habib in his book , At Home in India.
Habib opposed the growing influence of these communal elements, which he believed undermined the University’s academic character. It was for this reason that he opposed the minority character of the University. Despite initially stating there was no case against him, the Vice-Chancellor eventually issued a charge sheet and suspended Habib in August 1981, bowing to the mounting pressure. Many, including prominent historians like Romila Thapar were quite angry at the decision terming it to be in violation of the AMU Teachers’ Code drawn in 1976 which guaranteed every faculty member the right to express himself in the press on the functioning of the University, in “Academic Freedom and AMU Crisis”, in People’s Union for Civil Liberties Bulletein, 21 February, 1981.
The mounting communal pressure of the Muslim Right Wing ensured that in August 1981, Irfan Habib was put under suspension.
Conclusion
The Muslim Right Wing assertion both in 1981 and the current protest (August 2025) is unmistakable. The remedy still remains an administrative re-shuffle of the many teacher-administrators sticking to their respective offices since ages. Moreover, a strong assertion of the secularists against the communal reactionaries taking over the current student agitation, is the most urgent necessity at the moment.
(Writer is a PhD candidate at the Department of History, AMU)
