The political significance of Tariq Mansoor’s move from AMU VC to U.P. legislator
The Hindu
Prof. Mansoor is credited for steering the university to the middle path when the local BJP unit was building an anti-AMU narrative during the Jinnah portrait controversy.
A day after the Uttar Pradesh Governor accepted his nomination to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council by the BJP government, Aligarh Muslim University Vice Chancellor Tariq Mansoor resigned from his post, more than a month before his extended tenure comes to an end.
In the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the development is more than just of academic interest. While a section of teachers in AMU alleged that he had been awarded for doing the bidding of the government and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh during his six-year-tenure, political observers said that the BJP could project Prof. Mansoor as the educated face of the Pasmanda Muslims in the run-up to the Lok Sabha poll. This is a continuation of the party’s Pasmanda outreach, whereby Danish Ansari was made a minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet in 2022. (Pasmanda Muslims are those from Dalit and Other Backward Caste communities.)
Seen as the choice of the central leadership, the nomination is also being seen as an attempt to bury the age-old anti-AMU narrative propagated by the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, where the university has been held responsible for sowing the seeds of Partition among Indian Muslims.
Interestingly, as the news of his nomination spread, the chatter on Whatsapp groups alluded to his Kasai (butcher community) background. “Originally hailing from Meerut, Prof. Mansoor’s grandfather Abdul Khaliq was a professor of law at AMU and went on to become chairman of the municipal council in Aligarh. The road from the AMU campus to the railway station is named after him. His father Prof. Hafeezul Rahman was the first dean of the law faculty of AMU,” said Rahat Abrar, former public relations officer of AMU. Prof. Mansoor’s elder brother Rasheeduzzafar was the vice chancellor of Jamia Hamdard. Before becoming the VC, Prof. Mansoor was the Principal of AMU’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College.
Prof. Mansoor is credited for steering the university to the middle path when the local BJP unit was building an anti-AMU narrative during the Jinnah portrait controversy, and when AMU students took to the streets during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens.
His tenure’s high point was when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the centenary celebrations and described AMU as a “mini-India.” Through his articles in national dailies, Prof. Mansoor has been supporting the narrative of the BJP government. Recently, he described the BBC documentary on Mr. Modi as the “white media’s burden.” His supporters feel that he could be elevated as a Minister in the State government.
“As the AMU fraternity is spread all over the world, the BJP has sent a strong signal by nominating the VC to the U.P. legislature,” said Aftab Alam, former secretary of the AMU Teachers’ Association and chairman of the Department of Strategic and Security Studies. However, he added that, in the current scenario, Muslims were largely becoming indifferent to politics, so it remained to be seen whether Prof. Mansoor would add more than face value to the BJP.