"By their works ye shall know them."
At Aligarh, a town of 50,000 inhabitants on the railway between
Agra and Delhi, is a very rare and indeed a unique institution--a
Moslem university and printing press--the only ones in India, and
the only ones in the world established and conducted on modern
lines. The university is modeled upon the English plan. It has an
English president and dean and several English professors, all
of them graduates of the University of Cambridge. The preparatory
school has an English head master and assistant, and in the faculty
is a professor of physical culture, who has brought manly sports
among the students to a standard unequaled elsewhere in India.
The Aligarh University has the best football team and the best
cricket team in the empire.
This remarkable institution was founded in 1875 by Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan, a Mohammedan lawyer and judge on the civil bench, for the
education of his co-religionists in order that they may take
places in the world beside the graduates of English and European
universities and exercise a similar influence. He recognized
that the Moslem population of India must degenerate unless it
was educated; that it could not keep pace with the rest of the
world. He was shocked at the ignorance and the bigotry of his
fellow Mohammedans and at their stubborn conservatism. He was
a sincere believer in his own religion, and insisted that the
faith of Islam, properly understood, was as much in the interest
of truth and progress in every branch of human knowledge and
activity as the Christian religion, and he devoted his entire
fortune and collected contributions from rich Mohammedans for
the establishment of a school that should be entirely up-to-date
and yet teach the Koran and the ancient traditions of Islam. There
are now about 500 students, who come from the most important
families in India. They live together in dormitories built about
the college, dine in the same refectory and enjoy a healthy,
active college life. Foreign and Christian professors fill the
chairs of science, mathematics and languages, while able mullahs
give instruction in the Koran and direct the students in the
daily exercise of the Mohammedan rites.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan met with bitter opposition and animosity
from the conservative element of his faith, and while some of
his opponents admitted the purity and nobility of his motive,
he was often accused of apostasy, but his noble life was spared
until March, 1898, and he was permitted to see his institution
enjoying great popularity and usefulness. There is at present a
movement among the Mohammedans of India for the higher education
of the members of that sect. It is the fruit of his labors and
the men who are leading it are graduates of the Aligarh College.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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