The solidarity agenda: Aligarh students and the demand for Pakistan

Abstract

Since its founding by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, the educational institution at Aligarh functioned as an incubator of Muslim aspirations. During its early years, future leaders of the Indian National Congress, the Khilafat Movement, and the Pakistan Movement emerged from its classrooms and playing fields. Aligarh students participated in all of these movements, and from 1937 to 1947 it was a key site of pro-Pakistan activism. Student activity during this later period, and especially election work, at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has been interpreted as part of a state-centred history of Muslim nationalism that culminates in Pakistan. However, by separating Aligarh students’ activism in the period 1930s–1940s from the creation of Pakistan, it actually becomes possible to discern their motivations and to differentiate them from post-1947 statist narratives. This framework exposes the central priority of Muslim uplift as a separate objective from that of independent statehood. Interviews of former Aligarh students, in both India and Pakistan, reveal the complexity of their allegiance to politics, the university and the community. What drew students to political movements in Aligarh? Why did the Pakistan movement attract so many students in this elite institution? I argue that the Pakistan movement was substantively similar to earlier political movements of Muslim empowerment at AMU and that the solidarity agenda driving student activity was not tied directly to the creation of a separate state of Pakistan. This examination moves away from the 1947 borders to investigate the objectives that drew students to the movement for Pakistan long before a notion of Pakistan as a territorially sovereign state actually existed.