The Rampur Development Authority has ordered the demolition of 38 of the university's 40 buildings.
Delhi’s Jantar Mantar has, for nearly a month now, been witness to slogans, posters and hunger strikes. Leftist comrades, Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) activists and Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk have been vigorously demanding answers from the government regarding the paper leaks in exams like NEET, the administrative failures of the education ministry and the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Sharp questions are being asked in front of TV cameras, press conferences are being held and every effort is being made to portray the government as anti-education. But, as a Muslim observing this platform, a deep and painful question arises in the mind: will these protesters show the same zeal, aggression and urgency in demanding answers from the government regarding the demolition order against Rampur’s Mohammad Ali Jauhar University as they do on the paper leak issue?
Do those demanding the Education Minister’s resignation have the courage to ask why a functioning, successful educational institution is being threatened with demolition by a bulldozer apparatus? Or is their enthusiasm limited only to those places where they gain safe, non-controversial and majoritarian social and political mileage?
The NEET paper leak is a serious issue, no doubt. But when it comes to saving the country’s education system, every institution that provides a future to the youth should be included. The Rampur Development Authority (RDA) has issued a dictatorial order to demolish 38 of Jauhar University’s 40 buildings, claiming they were constructed without approved building plans.
Standing here, it is necessary to ask these messiahs of Jantar Mantar some direct and sharp questions: are you eager to demand a direct answer from the government about its ‘bulldozer policy’? While you are issuing press releases every hour on the paper leak, have you issued a single official statement on the ruined future of 3,000 students of Jauhar University?
When an institution that has been operating for the past 20 years without any paper leaks, cheating or scams is being targeted as part of administrative revenge, where has your “education reform” agenda gone?
More than 50 per cent of the students studying at this university are poor, marginalised and Muslim (minority). They used to receive substantial fee discounts, which were their only option for higher education. But the loudspeakers at Jantar Mantar are completely silent on the cries of these poor children. This silence proves that your focus is not on justice, but on setting a selective and politically advantageous narrative.
This situation is not new.
The biggest betrayal of the Muslim community in Indian democratic history is treating them merely as a “political tool” and “vote bank.” Whenever so-called secular parties, leftist comrades or liberal civil society need to enhance their political image, corner the government or gather crowds for their rallies, they put the Muslim community at the forefront.
In large movements, when there are batons to be taken, jail to be faced or nights on the streets to be spent, Muslims are provoked and used as frontmen. In every election and major discourse, Muslims are shown the fear that “if you do not come with us, your existence will be finished.”
In exchange for trading in this fear, their votes and support are taken, but what do they get in return? Nothing.
When the rights of the Muslim community itself, their mosques, madrasas or their modern higher education centres like Jauhar University, are attacked, these same “secular” political parties and activists become paranoid. They fear that if they speak out for an institution with a Muslim name, their “soft-Hindutva” or “nationalist” facade will be exposed and they will lose the majority of voters.
This is purely a strategic fraud, where the Muslim community is reduced to mere labourers bearing the burden of secularism, constantly deceived in the name of rights and security.
When we look at the administration’s insistence on shutting down institutions like Jauhar University and the silence of activists on this issue, we must turn to the pages of the country’s official reports. This silence represents not just a tacit consent against a single institution, but a deliberate push of an entire community into the darkness of illiteracy.
The report of the Justice Rajindar Sachar Committee, released in 2006, shocked the nation. It clearly stated that the status of Muslims in India had fallen even lower than that of Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in terms of education and employment. According to the report, about 25 per cent of Muslim children in the six to 14 age group had either never attended school or had dropped out. In higher education, the picture was even more alarming: about 7 per cent of Indians aged 20 and above were graduates or diploma holders and among Muslims, the figure was under 4 per cent.
The Sachar Committee had strongly urged that modern and higher educational institutions were urgently needed to bring Muslim youth into the mainstream. Jauhar University in Rampur was fulfilling exactly that need. It was a gateway for poor Muslim youth from western Uttar Pradesh and the surrounding areas to pursue modern technology, science and law.
Today, as that gateway faces demolition by bulldozers, the activists at Jantar Mantar, by remaining silent, are directly mocking the concerns raised by the Sachar Committee. Is your education reform only for the children of a specific class? Do the backward Muslim students of Jauhar University not have the right to higher education?
To understand this pattern of deception and being used as a “tool,” we must recall the period of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)-National Register of Citizens (NRC) protest movement between 2019 and 2020.
When the anti-CAA protests began, from Shaheen Bagh to every corner of the country, Muslim women and youth took to the streets and invoked the preamble of the Constitution of India. At that time, these leftist comrades and organisations like the CJP took to the stage, delivering grand speeches, garnering applause and declaring themselves the greatest warriors against fascism. But as soon as the movement ended and the cycle of state repression began, these activists cleverly withdrew.
Today, when many Muslim students and activists associated with the CAA-NRC movement have been in jail for years, do Sonam Wangchuk or these new revolutionaries sitting at Jantar Mantar show any eagerness to demand answers from the government for their release? No.
They were left to their own devices because their use as a “tool” had been exhausted. The Jauhar University case is also part of this chronology. As long as an issue strengthens these activists’ secular branding, they remain interested. As soon as the issue risks “Muslim identity” or “administrative displeasure,” their interest wanes.
Sonam Wangchuk ji, you come from the valleys of Ladakh and sat on a hunger strike in Delhi because you felt it was your moral duty to directly question the government to protect Ladakh’s culture, environment and the democratic rights of its people. The country respects your commitment.
But, Mr Wangchuk, when you sat on the stage at Jantar Mantar and talked about the future of the country’s students, did the future of those 3,000 students from Rampur not shake your conscience? Why can your eagerness to ask the government sharp questions regarding Ladakh’s Sixth Schedule not lead to demands for answers from the government regarding the administrative order to demolish 38 buildings of a university in Uttar Pradesh? Does the reduction of a university to rubble not fall within the scope of your “constitutional values”?
Your silence forces us to think that your activism also operates through a selective lens, where the government will be put in the dock on specific issues, but where real and repressive administrative injustice is happening, silence will be maintained so that your “universally acceptable” image does not get blemished.
The intention and credibility of the protest at Jantar Mantar will be judged by whether this platform remains limited to selective, headline-grabbing issues or whether it feels the pain of every student whose future is at stake. The Muslim community has now fully understood this pseudo-secularism and the politics of “use and throw.”
We will no longer be mere pawns to add to your protests and become a “tool” for your narrative. If your movement is truly about saving education, then, Sonam Wangchuk, comrades and CJP leaders must, through this very loudspeaker at Jantar Mantar, demand answers from the government with equal fervour for the repressive action being taken against Jauhar University.
If you don’t do this, it will become clear that your entire protest is merely a political sham in the name of education reform, and history will record you as a “selective activist” who succumbed to the oppression of power and his own political interests at the cost of destroying an entire university.
It is time to broaden your horizons and stand with the students of Jauhar University to prove your true intentions.
(The author of this article, Alex Azam Khan, is working as an independent researcher focusing on violence against Muslims, Dalits and other minorities in India after Independence)
This post was last modified on July 20, 2026 2:19 pm