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Three Aligarh Students: Aftab Ahmad Khan, Ziauddin Ahmad and Muhammad Ali
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
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IN 1912 Shaukat Ali drew from popular Hindu mythology to explain some recent disputes at Aligarh. Sayyid Ahmad Khan was represented by the god Indra, the Muslim community was his sabha, or assembly, and Aligarh College was the divine akhara, or wrestling pit. Shaukat Ali was the Red God, Muhammad Ali, the Little Red God, and Aftab Ahmad Khan, the White God.
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References
1 Ali, Shaukat, Old Boy (March–April 1913), as quoted in [Azizuddin Ahmad]Google Scholar, Report Committee Tehqīqāt mut'aliq be Old Boys Association Madrasat ul-'ulūm Aligarh (Aligarh, 1917), pp. 19–23. I have condensed and paraphrased considerably in the above rendering into English. The source of the tale is a popular play of the Oudh Court, Sayyid Agha Hasan ‘Amanat’ Lakhnavi's ‘Indra Sabha’.Google Scholar See Hasan Rizvi Sayyid, Mas'ud ‘Adib,’ Urdu Drama aur Istej (Lucknow, 1957), Pt 2. I am indebted to C. M. Naim for referring me to this work.Google Scholar
2 In the case of the earlier factional dispute between Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Sami Ullah Khan it is probably relevant that they were both from the Tiraha Bairam Khan section of Delhi and related through their mothers and wives to the same family. It is said that they quarrelled over a girl in that family who had been promised to Sami Ullah's son but married Sayyid Ahmad's. Interview with Hashim Muhammad Ali, great-grandson of Ahmad, Sayyid, Karachi, 1969;Google Scholar also Husain Mir, Wilayat, Āp Bēti (Aligarh, 1970), p. 67.Google Scholar
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46 A different reliable interview with a former student of the period.
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49 Abdul, Mājid Daryabadi, ‘Muhammad Ali Alig’, Aligarh Megzin (Aligarh Number) 1953–1954, 1954–1955), p. 67.Google Scholar
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