Sir — This refers to the article, “Sir Syed as Bharat RatnaIJ O god!” (January 7) by Abhijit Bhattacharyya. The author was legitimately surprised at a recent article in a national daily by two scholars who had raised the question: ‘If Madan Mohan Malaviya can get the honour, why not Sir Syed Ahmed KhanIJ’ Clearly, equating the two was improper. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, besides founding the nationalist Benares Hindu University, participated in the freedom movement led by the Congress and was its president too. Sir Syed’s role was the opposite. He was known for his support to the British who knighted him for the services rendered.
Further, Sir Syed was among the original champions of a separate Muslim homeland (Pakistan). Ashok Patnaik, in his review of BR Nanda’s book, A Witness to Partition — A Memoir, had stated that “...a movement for Muslim separatism had been gathering strength since 1877, the year when Mao College was founded by Syed Ahmed Khan...(who) put forward the idea which Jinnah and other heavy weights of Muslim league carried forward till they achieved their goal that Muslims constituted a nation separate from the rest”. Mao College later grew into the Aligarh Muslim University. Incidentally, this otherwise excellent institution has regularly been in the news for all the wrong reasons.