(Following is the text of the address by Lord Curzon, ON April 23 , 1901 , the Viceroy visited the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College at Aligarh, (now Aligarh Muslim University) and addressed a large gathering of the students.)
Since I have been in India I have had a most earnest desire to visit this (M.A.O) College, and to see with my own eyes the work – a work as I think of sovereign importance that is being carried on within its walls. This desire was stimulated by the acquaintance that I was fortunate enough to make with your late and first Principal, Mr. Theodore Beck, during my first summer in Simla. Mr. Beck was a remarkable man. He gave up a life and career in England, and devoted himself to the service of the Mohammedans of India, and to the making of the fortunes of this place. There burned within that fragile body – for when I saw him the seeds of his early death had, I suspect, already been sown – the fire of an ardent enthusiasm, for which in his own student days in England he had been notorious among his friends. But experience had tempered it with a sobriety of judgement, and a width of view, which, coupled with his high moral character must have supplied an inestimable example to his pupils in this College.
As I followed his body to its grave among the Himalayan deodars, I felt that I was paying such a small tribute of respect as lay in my power to one who had both been a faithful friend to the Mohammedans of India, and a benefactor of the commonweal. I afterwards had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of your present Principal, Mr. Morison, upon whom you have passed so high a eulogy, and who is so singularly qualified to carry on the work that Mr. Beck began, and I promised him that I would visit the College as soon as I could. I made the attempt last autumn upon my return northwards from a famine tour in Guzerat. But I was informed that the College was then in vacation, and inasmuch as to come to Aligarh while the teachers and the boys were away would be like going to see the play of Hamlet on the stage with the part of the Prince of Denmark left out, I decided to postpone my visit till the earliest favourable occasion. This has now come, and I shall regard the afternoon that I am fortunate enough to spend in your company as among the most valuable and interesting of my experiences in India.
>When Sir Syed Ahmad Khan delivered a speech at Patna in 1883
In the address that has just been read you have supplied me with a succinct account of the objects and history of this College. I cannot say that they were new to me, for a little while ago I had placed in my hands a volume of the addresses and speeches that have been delivered on the various occasions when the Aligarh College has been visited by public men. It was a collection of uncommon interest, for, on the one hand, in the statements that were from time to time put forward in addresses of welcome by the Committee, or trustees, one could follow step by step the progress of the College, from its first inception as a small school twenty-six years ago, to the present day, and could learn in what manner the aspirations of its illustrious founder, whose death you have justly deplored as an irreparable loss, had been realised. On the other hand, one could observe the impression which these events, and their narration, had made upon the minds of a number of eminent men. It is interesting to note in their speeches, delivered, I dare say, in this very hall, how a common train of reflection runs through the words of each. It has been a frequent observation that this College embodies the principle of self-help; that it furnishes a moral and religious as well as a mental training, a point upon which I observe that you have laid much stress in your address this afternoon; that it has nevertheless no sectarian character; that it inculcates the importance of physical exercises; that it imbues its pupils with a sense of citizenship and of loyalty; and that it keeps aloof from political questions. It will be much better for you that you should read the ideas which have been common to the many speeches to which I have referred, in language that has frequently been a model of expression, than that I should dress them up again with an inferior sauce for your consumption this afternoon.
Origins of the ‘Traditions’ of Aligarh Muslim University
I should like, however, for a moment to contemplate the work that is being carried on here as a branch of the larger problems with which those who are responsible for the future of this great and bewildering country are faced. If the British dominion in India were exterminated tomorrow, and if all visible traces of it were to be wiped off the face of the earth, I think that its noblest monument and its proudest epitaph, would be the policy that it has adopted in respect of Education. When I speak of policy I am not using the phrase in its narrow or administrative application — a sphere in which we have made many mistakes-but in the broadest sense. We have truly endeavoured to fling wide open the gates of the temple of knowledge, and to draw the multitudes in. We have sought to make education, not the perquisite or prerogative of a few, but the cheap possession of the many. History does not, I think, record any similarly liberal policy on the part of a Government differing in origin, in language, and in thought from the governed. In my judgement it has not only been an enlightened policy, it has also been a wise one ; and I do not believe that you will ever have a Viceroy or a Lieutenant-Governor who will desire to close by one inch the opened door, or to drive out a single human being who has entered in. If this be the character, and, as I also contend, the permanence of the great movement that I am speaking of, how overwhelmingly important it is that no section of the community should fail to profit by the advantage which it offers. We have just crossed the threshold of the twentieth century. Whatever else it may bring forth, it is certain to be a century of great intellectual activity ; of far-reaching scientific discovery ; of probably unparalleled invention. To be without education in the twentieth century will be as though a knight in the feudal ages had been stripped of his helmet and spear and coat of mail. It will be a condition of serviceable existence, the sole means for the majority of holding their own in a world of intellectual upheaval and competition. That is why it must be so gratifying to any ruler of India to see the Mohammedans of this country, Sunnis and Shias alike, exerting themselves not to be left at the starting- post while all their many rivals are pressing forward in the race.
When Asking Donations for Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) were seditious
They can run, too, if only they will learn how ; they knew it once in the great days when Mohammedan rulers dispensed justice in their marble audience halls, and when Mohammedan philosophers, and jurists, and historians, wrote learned works. But the old running is now out of date ; a new and a swifter style has come in, and you must go to the seminaries, where are the professors of the modern art, to teach you the suppleness of limb and fleetness of foot that are required for the races of the future. I hold, therefore, that Sir Syed Ahmed, and those who worked with him to found this place, showed not only patriotism in the best sense of the term, but also a profound political insight; for they were seeking to provide their co-religionists in India with the conditions that will alone enable them to recover any portion of their lost ascendency; and if I were a Mohammedan prince or man of wealth in India today, I would not waste five minutes in thinking how best I could benefit my countrymen and fellow-followers of the Prophet in this country. I would concentrate my attention upon education and upon education alone. That these are your own conclusions is evident from the frank and manly admissions of the address which has just been read. You say in it that only by the assimilation of Western thought and culture can the Mohammedans of India hope to recover any portion of their former sway. You are quite right. Adhere to your own religion, which has in it the ingredients of great nobility and of profound truth, and make it the basis of your instruction, for education without a religious basis is, though boys at school and at the University are often too young to see it, like building a house without foundations. But, consistently with these principles, press forward till you pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which once grew best in Eastern gardens, but has now shifted its habitat to the West.
What did Jayaprakash Narayan think of Aligarh Muslim University?
tyle=”font-weight: 400;”>I am aware that the friends of this College have formulated even higher ambitions than are embraced by your present character and scope. Mr. Beck spoke and wrote to me, with that enthusiasm of which I have already spoken, of his desire to expand this institution, which is already a residential College, into a residential University, with real professors, real lecturers, a living curriculum, and a definite aim. I may mention, too, that the project had reached the ears of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, and that in one of the first letters that she wrote to me, after my arrival in India, she inquired most sympathetically about it. I believe that you have not yet, owing to financial and other impediments, been able to travel far upon this pathway, and, indeed, that there are some who doubt the policy of a sectarian institution at all. Upon this I am not called upon to pronounce an opinion. But one admission I do not shrink from making, namely, that you will never get from a University, consisting of little but an examining Board or Boards, that lofty ideal of education, that sustained purpose, or that spirit of personal devotion that are associated with the historic Universities of England, and that were, I believe, in some measure also produced by the ancient Universities of Islam.
Mian Muhammad Shafi: A Forgotten Hero of the Aligarh Movement
And now, before I conclude, suffer me to say a few words to the younger members of my audience. I am still sufficiently near to my own College days to feel an intense interest in those who are passing through the same experience. It is a period of high hopes and sunny aspirations. All the world is before us, and we are ready to confront it with a smile on our faces, and an unwrinkled brow, since we have not learnt of its disappointments and sorrows. Day after day, as our study extends, the horizon of knowledge expands before us, and we feel as those mariners of the old world must have done who sailed out into unknown seas, and before whose wondering eyes, as each day dawned, new islands or fresh promontories rose continually into view. But it is not learning only that we are acquiring. We taste the pleasure of personal friendship, we feel the spur of honourable emulation, and we kindle the local patriotism or esprit de corps, out of which, as we grow older, springs that wider conception of public duty which makes us proud to be citizens of our country, and anxious to play some part, whether great or small, on the public stage. All these are the delights and the novelties of our College days. Later on, perhaps, we learn that some of them are illusions, and very likely we fall short of our earlier ideals. That is the fate of humanity, or, perhaps I should say, it is the fault of ourselves. But, even if I knew that the hopes entertained by any young man of my acquaintance were destined to be disappointed later on, I would nevertheless not deprive him of the joy and zest of forming them. It is good for all of us to have had a time when the tide of hope ran high within us, and to have sailed our bark for a little while upon its shining waters. You will believe me, therefore, young men and students of this College, when I say that it is with peculiar sympathy that I have met you, and been allowed to address a few words to you, this afternoon. It is the sympathy of one who may, perhaps, still be entitled to call himself young, in the presence of those who are still younger. I wish you Godspeed in your career, and I shall always rejoice to hear of the success in life of any of the pupils of Aligarh.
