Allahabad High Court has castigated and made some caustic comments against the Samajwadi leader and the former UP minister Md Azam Khan for adopting the foulest means to grab the land for the Maulana Jauhar Ali University of Rampur. It is the pet and dream project of Md Azam Khan. He got full support from the unscrupulous Mulayam Singh and nincompoop Akhilesh Yadav in fulfilling his dream.
However, what has been most surprising is why at all Md Azam Khan named the university after a person, who was the leader of the notorious and communal Khilafat movement, which was unfortunately supported by Mahatma Gandhi for the sake of Hindu Muslim unity? Jauhar Ali was very briefly associated with the Congress Party, although he was the prominent leader of the Aligarh movement. He was one of the founders of the Muslim League, which was responsible for the partition of India.
Nobody knows why Md. Azam Khan wanted to name a university after Maulana Jauhar Ali, who was not satisfied with anything less than the establishment of Nizam-e- Mustafa in India, where there will be no place for any pluralism or diversity. It is a well-known fact that before leaving for England in the round table conference in 1930, he had openly declared that he would prefer to die in the country of rulers than return to India. Incidentally, he died of a heart stroke in England and was buried not in India but in a mosque in Jerusalem.
Why should there be a university in India named after a man who was one of the significant proponents of Pakistan? This speaks volumes about the vitiated mentality of Mohammad Azam Khan. Therefore, it would be in the fitness of the occasion of the Platinum Jubilee of the Independence of the country that the Maulana Jauhar Ali University should be named after the great revolutionary Ashfaqullah Khan, who laid down his life for the liberation of the country from the foreign yoke. It is the right time to call spade a spade because whitewashing the misdeeds of those like Maulana Jauhar Ali by persons like Mohammad Azam Khan will do more damage than good to the country.