SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Visit to Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Web page: http://www.jmi.nic.in

Anna Lindberg meets the VC Prof. Mushirul Hassan and Prof. Lakshmi Subramaniam.

In the afternoon we travelled southeastwards from our NCI base and visited Jamia Millia Islamia (National Islamic University) in New Delhi, where Professor Lakshmi Subramaniam from the Department of History had organized a meeting in the administrative building (Khayaban-e-Ajmal) with the Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the University, Professor Mushirul Hasan. Unfortunately urgent matters and traffic delayed Professor Hasan, so we could only meet with him briefly. Nevertheless, while we waited we had a very fruitful discussion with Professor Subramaniam, a very dynamic person who conducts interdisciplinary research in the fields of media, music, and history. She had studied our webpage in depth, so we could briefly touch upon some main features of SASNET and spend most of our time instead discussing future ideas and collaboration.

JMI has had no formal collaboration agreements with Sweden so far. We wanted to visit JMI because we had heard so many positive things about its education and research programmes, and we also felt we should not restrict our visits to the two largest universities in Delhi alone. But when the Vice-Chancellor arrived, it was made clear to us that JMI is very interested in SASNET’s activities and the possibility of collaborating in various ways with Swedish universities.

Professor Mushirul Hassan has been connected to Jamia Millia Islamia University ever since 1981, when he was appointed Professor of Modern Indian History at the age of thirty-one, which in fact is the youngest ever professorial appointment in the subject in India. Professor Hasan was also appointed director of the Academy of Third World Studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia in 1992, a position he continues to hold. He became the VC for the university in June 2004. Hasan has also been visiting professor at many places, ssuch as the Central European University in Budapest; the International Institute of Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris, and held professorial fellowships at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library in New Delhi, Centre of Oriental Studies in Rome and the Centre of Indian Studies at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris.

The Jamia Millia Islamia university was originally established by nationalist Muslims at Aligarh in United Provinces in 1920, but was moved to Delhi in 1925. It became a Central University by an act of the Indian Parliament in 1988. JMI is truly secular in character and provides a large number of courses at school, undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Today Jamia Millia Islamia University (JMI) is one of the three large universities in New Delhi (the others are Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University). It has a beautifully laid out, albeit small, campus, and its scenic cricket ground has hosted a number of Ranji Trophy matches and a women's cricket test match.
JMI has approximately 12,000 students in various programs and at its research centres, among which are The Third World Centre, Media and Government, Indian Ocean Studies, and Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies. The last-mentioned centre recently started to publish a journal, Contemporary Perspectives: History and Sociology of South Asia, in collaboration with Cambridge University Press, India. Despite JMI’s name, its students and teachers come from various communities, and only in certain courses are Muslims in the majority.