Modern university education in India is considered a colonial transplant. In the late 18th century, Warren Hastings proposed the teaching of the English language, along with Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit being taught in oriental schools. The teaching of subjects like mathematics and natural sciences was also introduced in existing schools of oriental learning. European-style colleges teaching arts and sciences made their debut in the early nineteenth century. The change was reflected in a string of new institutions in Bengal and Western India: Presidency College (Calcutta), Elphinstone College (Bombay), Deccan College (Poona), and engineering colleges at Serampore and Roorkee. Medical schools came up in Calcutta, Madras, Dacca and Bombay during this period. Thomas Babington Macaulay, as the law member of the Governor-General’s Council in 1835, advocated making English as the medium of instruction and putting an end to the state support for oriental learning. He argued that vernacular languages had not developed to a level where they could become vehicles for the transmission of Western knowledge.
After the revolt of 1857, full-fledged universities offering courses in different disciplines were established in the Presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The European model of university education inspired colleges and universities at Allahabad, Aligarh and Lahore, around 1875. In princely India, the oriental system of education continued and the progress of modern higher education was slow. Schools started imparting modern education but universities like Baroda, Mysore and Osmania were set up only in the early part of the 20th century, almost 75 years after higher education had been introduced in British India.
In Hyderabad, State support for education was initiated by Mir Turab Ali Khan (Salar Jung I) who became the Diwan in 1853. Darul-Uloom, an oriental college, opened in 1856 with Arabic and Persian as the mediums of instruction. It was to be the centre of oriental learning in the Deccan and the means of diffusing the taste of culture through classics, according to Salar Jung. Four modern languages (Urdu, Kannada, Marathi and English) were also taught to those interested. To attract students, the administration offered scholarships and promised jobs to those completing the course. As the European population grew steadily, English-medium schools – St George’s Grammar School (founded in 1834), All Saints’ High School, Methodist Boys School and Wesley Mission Girls School – were founded by Christian missionaries. For the children of nobility, Salar Jung started Madrasa-i-Aliya as an alternative to homeschooling.
Higher education in Hyderabad received an impetus with the import of academics from outside. The first one was Syed Hussain Bilgrami, a professor of English literature at Lucknow’s Canning College, whom Salar Jung appointed as his private secretary in 1870. Bilgrami, who was made the director of Public Instruction in 1885, reorganised school education across the state. Apart from being the personal secretary to the sixth Nizam, he was also the tutor of the heir apparent, Osman Ali Khan. Another scientist-educationist who came to Hyderabad at the invitation of Salar Jung was Dr Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya who founded the Gloria High School (also known as Chaderghat High School) in 1881. It was merged with the City English School (which was established as a branch of Darul-Uloom) and upgraded into a second-grade college, Hyderabad College. In 1887, Hyderabad College was further upgraded to form Nizam College. Nizam College was affiliated to Madras University and Chattopadhyaya was appointed its first principal. To commemorate the investiture of Mir Mahbub Ali Khan in 1884, two existing schools in Secunderabad were merged to form the Mahbub College.
The educational institutions in Hyderabad in the late 19th century were dependent on the university system in British India for affiliation and examination. The first Matriculation Examination of Madras University in Hyderabad was held in 1875. Darul-Uloom became affiliated with Panjab University for its Oriental Titles Examination in Arabic and Persian.
At this time, new ideas for starting a university were floating around in Hyderabad. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, an English evangelist of education among Muslims, advocated a Mohammedan University as “the centre of religious thought for all India” in 1884, just after a young Mahbub Ali Khan was invested full powers of the Nizam. Blunt wanted the proposed university to provide “all useful sciences and all branches of solid learning” like the Azhar University in Cairo. He even coined a name for it – Deccan University – and sent a note to the Nizam requesting him to grant a building for it. An old mosque in Kalbarga and another building in Aurangabad were identified as potential sites to locate the university. Bilgrami, however, struck a note of caution saying “The Government of India will never consent to such a plan”.
Another idea came from Sheikh Jamaluddin Afghani, a pan-Islamist campaigner who favoured “cultivation and teaching of modern science in the local language of the people”. Syed Ahmed Khan, founder of Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, suggested an English-medium university though he was not against giving Urdu a trial.
Though an Islamic institution of higher learning as lobbied by different people did not materialise, the need for an indigenous university in Hyderabad kept cropping up in some form or the other for the next two decades.
The British influence over the administration of Hyderabad increased at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly as the state faced a financial crisis. Lord Curzon pressurised Mahbub Ali Khan to sign the Treaty of 1902 providing permanent cession of the province of Berar.
Among British civil servants deputed to top positions in Hyderabad was George Casson Walker in the Finance department. In October 1905, Walker invited Akbar Hydari, who was working as an examiner of Government Press Accounts in the Indian Finance Department, to assist him. Hydari, the son of a Sulemani Bohra businessman of Bombay, had extensive experience in British India and at one point was invited by Gopal Krishna Gokhale to join the Servants of India Society. His mother was the sister of Badruddin Tyabji, president of the Indian National Congress.
Two years after coming to Hyderabad, Hydari became the finance secretary and took steps to bring the precarious financial situation under control. Among other steps, he appointed Arthur Mayhew, an Indian Educational Service (IES) officer working as deputy director of Public Instruction in Madras, to review the state of public instruction in Hyderabad. Mayhew subsequently became famous as the author of The Education of India report in 1926. For Hyderabad, he suggested the expansion of primary and secondary education, along with changes in the functioning of the Education department. For higher education, his suggestion was to develop a composite residential university with Darul-Uloom as its theological section and the Nizam College offering European-style education.10 This would have ended the dependence of the Nizam College on Madras University for examinations and degrees. In any case, it was felt that the contribution of the Nizam College in enhancing higher education in Hyderabad was marginal. In 1907, just 4 per cent of candidates passed the BA examination conducted by Madras University. The number rose to 12 per cent in 1908.11 The number of students in Darul Uloom too came down to twenty-two in 1914 from 141 in 1906.
The demand for setting up a new university (the suggested name was Nizam University) was articulated during the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Darul-Uloom in 1911. In 1915, the Hyderabad Education Conference chaired by Akbar Hydari supported the idea of a university where all subjects, including science, were taught in Urdu. By this time, Hydari was secretary to the government in the Judicial, Police and General departments that also administered educational matters. Hydari’s proposal for a new university made at a public forum received enthusiastic support from the Education Department, which he headed, and the Department of Public Instruction, the director of which was Syed Ross Masood. An IES officer, the Oxford-educated Masood was a grandson of Sir Syed.
Armed with Mayhew’s report and recommendations of the Hyderabad Educational Conference, Hydari crystallised the idea of a new university. He was joined in this effort by Syed Ross Masood and RIR Glancy, who succeeded Walker in the Finance department. The group decided to make Urdu, not English, the medium of instruction in the proposed university. Glancy informally consulted Michael O’Dwyer, governor of Punjab, who had previously served in Hyderabad. O’Dwyer too supported the idea of the local language as the medium of instruction, but also enclosed the opinions of the director of Public Instruction of Punjab and the principal of the Oriental College, Lahore, both of whom pointed to practical difficulties of doing so through “a language of which vocabulary is not wide enough to express all modern ideas and which is not equipped with the necessary textbooks etc”.
At the end of these deliberations, the group decided to prepare an arzdasht (petition) on higher education and present it to the Nizam, who could then approve it, instead of going through the Legislative Council. Accordingly, on 24 April 1917, Hydari submitted a thirty-page comprehensive survey of education in India beginning in 1835 and developments in education in Hyderabad to the Nizam. The memorandum argued that making English the sole vehicle of higher education in India was a mistake as “most of the time which should be spent on the acquisition of the sciences and arts is spent on the acquisition of the foreign medium”. As a result, “mere memorizing of books is given priority by the students and most of what they develop is other people’s opinion with little tax on their own intelligence”. Hydari cited the example of the English-medium Nizam College which admitted 253 students from 1907 to 1914 and only thirteen of them could graduate from Madras University in eight years.
In the backdrop of such experience, Hydari gave the following reasons for proposing Urdu as the medium of instruction in the new university:
Urdu was the language of the widest currency in India.
It was the official language of the State in Hyderabad.
It was an Aryan language and thus had direct kinship with other languages of the country.
It was a language which was understood by a vast majority of the population of the state.
Cognizant of the ground realities of Hyderabad being a multilingual and multicultural state, the memorandum noted: “It would have been far preferable if four Universities could be established in the state, representing its four languages – Urdu, Telugu, Marathi and Kannada – but the finances of the State would not allow it.’
As decided in advance, Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan signed a Firman-e-Mubarak (Royal Charter) sanctioning the new university. The popular versions of history credit the Nizam for deciding on the arzdasht within two days of its submission, but in reality the arzdasht was just a well-thought-out bureaucratic tool to formalise the decision which was a result of long deliberations.
Excerpted with permission form Beyond Biryani: The Making of a Globalised Hyderabad, Dinesh C Sharma, Westland.
