Clarifying the Aligarh Muslim University’s stand on allegations of being involved in language politics, Vice-Chancellor Zameer Uddin Shah said the decision to improve academic standards had been misconstrued.
Shah pointed out that both Hindi and Urdu were being taught to the undergraduate students in the first year, with students who had Hindi as a subject in Class XII having to opt Urdu and those having Urdu at the intermediate level having to opt Hindi. The Vice-Chancellor said Hindi and Urdu were made compulsory subjects in the first year of undergraduate course to make students serious towards them. He said that as earlier the marks of both these subjects were not counted in determining the ranking, the students were not attending the classes regularly.
He said now the marks of Hindi and Urdu would be included in the aggregate marks to determine the ranking of a student. After the university made these subjects compulsory, political parties and some students’ unions demanded roll back of the decision to make Urdu a compulsory subject. “The decision was taken only to induce seriousness of purpose among students but the decision to improve academic standards has been misinterpreted. The Aligarh Muslim University takes pride in fostering pluralistic ethos of our multi lingual, secular, country”, the AMU Vice-Chancellor said.
The Vice-Chancellor also denied the allegation of AMU Teachers’ Association that the children of the university employees were not getting due share in admissions to various courses of the university. He said the AMUTA was unjustified in its statement as more than 50 percent of nominations were made in favour of children of the University employees. “The children with abysmal low marks in the entrance tests, however, were not admitted,” he clarified.