The AMU was a fairly small university when Independence came. With the AMU (Amendment) Act, 1951, the Government of India took up the entire responsibility for its maintenance, and provided it with a largely democratic and autonomous structure. The result of these steps was the beginning of a phase of expansion of the University, with central government funds (afterwards routed through the University Grants Commission). The Chatterji Committee appointed to review the working of the University (1960) commended the Act of 1951 and agreed that a policy of admissions, where some preference may be given to internal students, should continue. The Act of 1951 forbade in its Article 8 the admission of students through any "test of religious belief", and the question of reservation for Muslims was not raised by anyone.

Unfortunately, a sudden enhancement of the internal quota to 75 per cent in 1963 and its proposed reduction in 1965, created a violent incident in the latter year. The Government of India took the opportunity to practically scuttle the Act of 1951 through an Ordinance and in effect took over control of the University’s administration by its nominees. This action had the most disastrous consequences. As against government control, the issue of AMU’s autonomy as a minority institution was raised for the first time by many critics of the government’s ham-handed act. It was only after seven years that in 1972 certain amendments were made to restore some internal authority to the AMU, but there yet remained in it far too many undemocratic provisions, reminiscent of the 1965 Ordinance.

The provisions of the Amendment Act of 1972 therefore remained subject to controversy. Finally, in 1981 Indira Gandhi’s government brought forth amendments to show that they were trying to underline the minority character of the AMU. This they claimed to have done by defining the AMU as "the educational institution of their choice established by the Muslims of India" (Section 2 (l)), and to insert in Section 5 (2), a sub-section (c), enabling the University "to promote especially the educational and cultural advancement of the Muslims of India". But that these provisions were intended to have no effect on the policy of admissions was shown by the reformulation, by the same Amendment Act, of Section 8 in the following words: "The University shall be open to all persons (including the teachers and taught) of either sex and of whatever race, religion, creed or class". The only proviso to this was permission to provide religious instruction to "those who have consented to receive it". There is no proviso for any kind of denominational reservation.

Whatever the other elements of the Act of 1981, it should be noted that the University’s admission policy remained unaffected by its passage, and there was no resort to any discrimination made on religious grounds in admissions in accordance with the institution’s own traditions.

The whole question was reopened by the BJP government in 2003-04. In his effort to bring admissions to all professional courses in the country under his control, Murli Manohar Joshi, the then Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, sanctioned a 50 per cent Muslim quota for the Jamia Hamdard (a "Deemed University"), and, as the AMU vice chancellor has confirmed, offered the same to the AMU. It is not surprising that the VC of AMU has been citing the Hamdard Deemed University’s quota system as a precedent for AMU, although Hamdard is an institution managed by a private trust, while the AMU is administered according to a parliamentary Act and, being maintained by the government, is ‘part of the State’ in the eyes of the law.

It seems from the statements of the present HRD Minister Arjun Singh himself that soon after the UPA government took office it fell to the same temptation of drawing political mileage from pursuing the path pioneered by the NDA. The HRD Minister has claimed that this step was a part of the UPA’s own Common Minimum Programme. At least in this item, then, it would seem that the UPA’s vision has remained the same as that of the NDA!

The new admission policy, which reverses a tradition established since AMU’s foundation, stipulates that at the maximum only 25 per cent of the seats in the main professional and technical courses (Medicine, Engineering, Management, etc.) would now be absolutely open to merit. A further 20 per cent will be reserved for internal students. For ‘Muslims of India’, who fail to enter the AMU through these two channels, a 50 per cent quota would be provided. Finally, there will be a five per cent discretionary quota for admitting children of employees, alumni, government servants, SC/ST candidates, etc. In Medicine, the percentages are 25 per cent general, 25 per cent internal and 50 per cent for Muslim candidates not getting through under the first two categories. There is thus to be practically no SC/ST quota at any level. The University authorities have indicated that they intend to raise the reservation for such Muslims as are not able to get admitted through general competition to 66.6 per cent.

All this has been done without any claims that the proportion of Muslims in various test-based courses is so low as to make Muslim reservation a material issue. One would have thought that that the proponents of the communal quota should have first come forward with statistics about the actual Muslim proportion in the University and in the test-based admissions. Indeed, AMU’s official spokesmen have been telling the media that the change in Muslim proportion would not be more than marginal. The same spokesmen have also been speaking of the "stranglehold" by Muslims of UP and Bihar over AMU, but none has cared to explain how the communal quota would prevent candidates from these states getting admitted to AMU.

What the University authorities and the HRD Ministry have entirely failed to recognise is the blow they have struck at the character and repute of the AMU. The letter from the MHRD to allied parties quotes from the speech of late CPI leader Indrajit Gupta where he rightly said that a university does not become communal if it has a majority of Muslims – which for the AMU has always been the case. But if a religious test is imposed – which Indrajit Gupta never contemplated, and which Section 8, as redrafted by the very Amendment Act of 1981, entirely bans – it can no longer be said that the admissions to AMU are not communally oriented. The substantive reduction of the general quota cannot but dilute the competitive element in the admission tests and depreciate the value of the AMU’s degrees in the public eye. Here the AMU is in a more vulnerable position than any ordinary minority college which is usually affiliated to a university. Whatever the latter’s admission policies, its students compete with students of the general colleges, and get the degree of the affiliating university, which is not itself a minority institution. The AMU grants its own degrees, so that its degrees’ repute cannot but be directly affected by its new policy of communal reservation.

Far from addressing this very important issue, the University authorities have, in order to justify their new admission policy, publicly run down the quality of education imparted at the AMU both in its schools and in its University classes (Admission Review Committee’s Report, pp. 2-3). One would have thought that this is a very damaging rebuke to the University administration for not having maintained proper teaching standards; it can hardly be deemed the fault of the candidates admitted under the system previously in force. And how would Muslims be served if they are enticed to a University which, we are officially told, has "many problems which have contributed negatively to its academic standards"? Indeed, given such irresponsible statements from the authorities about their own institution, and the absence of any academic vision on their part, it is obvious that they find it easier to appeal to communal sentiment than to think of the careers of their students.

A University is an intellectual community. Until now it was the proud boast of AMU that once a student is admitted here, there would be no discrimination between him and others on any sectarian grounds. Neither the University authorities nor the MHRD seem willing to consider the very disturbing fact that now on the AMU campus there would be two sets of students – one set disadvantaged by its religion, and having only half the chance than the other of getting admitted to a higher course. One cannot predict the tensions that such discrimination could breed on the campus.

There is, finally, the legal tangle to consider. There may be eminent authorities, including the Ministry of Law, which are ready to opine that the AMU is a minority institution under Article 30. But even in the unlikely circumstance that they are right, law cannot force a minority institution to have a communal reservation – many minority colleges, in fact, do not have such reservation at all. This apart, it is clear from Article 30 of the Constitution that its framers had in mind only educational institutions with private managements when they conceived of minority institutions. The Supreme Court of India, in TMA Pai Foundation vs. State of Karnataka too, clearly had only such institutions in mind. The judgement laid down that "the percentage of non-minority students" in a minority institution has to be notified by the state government. In other words, if recognised as a minority institution, the AMU would need to have a "non-minority quota" as well, to be fixed by the state government! There is also the possibility that the legal status of the AMU may be adversely affected. As a minority institution, under Article 30, the AMU must be deemed to be "administered" by the minority; it cannot therefore be "a part of the State", falling under the writ-jurisdiction of the courts and having corresponding legal protection. The complexities are enough to make admissions and other administrative measures subject to unending litigation. The Aligarh Muslim University, a product of so much labour and such large national investment, surely deserves a better prospect.