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Laurence Gautier’s book Between Nation and ‘Community’: Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition asks: “Can a Muslim university be an Indian university?” In Rakhshanda Jalil’s review, the question is less about assigning AMU or Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) a fixed national identity than about why Muslim identity can be treated as grounds to doubt it. The scrutiny, Jalil argues, reflects a wider expectation that Indian Muslims must demonstrate national belonging in ways not demanded of Hindus.
What does “Indianness” mean in this debate?
The question is about how religious identity, institutional history and national belonging are interpreted together. Jalil’s review of Gautier’s study presents the universities as places where those interpretations become visible: Muslim institutional life is sometimes read as evidence against national commitment, rather than as compatible with it.
Jalil attributes this formulation to Gautier: “Indian Muslims are taken to be primarily Muslims, whatever their political stance might be. Unlike Hindus, their commitment to the nation cannot be taken for granted; it has to be proven, for their Muslimness casts doubt on their Indianness.” The quotation is the author’s argument as presented in the review, not a neutral description of every Indian’s views.
That distinction matters. Asking whether visible Muslim practices “diminish or detract or take away from the Indianness” of a university or its students and staff is not the same as showing that they do. Religious identity and political allegiance are not interchangeable.
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Why compare AMU and JMI?
Gautier’s book examines Muslim universities and Indian politics after Partition. According to Jalil, it draws on primary and secondary sources as well as oral testimonies. The comparison is useful precisely because AMU and JMI are not interchangeable institutions: the review emphasizes different origins, educational aims and relationships to politics.
AMU: education for a Muslim community
Jalil describes AMU’s educational project as providing Western education to the Muslim community. In her account, the campus was modeled on Oxford and Cambridge, and the institution sought ties with colonial authorities. This is the review’s historical summary, rather than an independently verified institutional account here.
JMI: nationalist dissent and service
Jalil presents JMI as emerging from nationalist dissent. Her review traces its founding story to a group led by Maulana Mohamed Ali that broke from MAO College amid the Khilafat Movement and a period of Hindu-Muslim unity; she also notes Gandhi’s support. She characterizes JMI’s aspiration as serving the nation. This account, too, should be understood as the reviewer’s framing of the history.
How does the review describe their post-independence paths?
Jalil says AMU received central university status in 1951, while JMI faced financial difficulty after independence. These are claims made in the review; the article does not independently establish them through university or government records.
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The review also compares campus size and location, community life, women’s education and the institutions’ changing public profiles. Jalil interprets AMU as becoming more inward-looking and JMI as more open. Those descriptions are her assessments, not measurements or uncontested institutional facts. She points to Jamia’s community ethos and service practices, women’s participation in education, and a working women’s hostel established in 1982 under A. J. Kidwai as parts of that story; these details are likewise reported through the review.
Why do these questions recur in public debate?
Jalil discusses Batla House and anti-CAA protests as episodes invoked in arguments that the universities are “anti-national.” Her broader point is about how incidents can be used to question the national belonging of institutions and their communities. Naming such controversies does not establish that a university or its students lack national allegiance.
Read this way, the book’s question is not resolved by sorting campuses into “Indian” and “not Indian.” It asks why Muslimness is so often treated as a competing identity, and how histories, campus cultures and public controversies shape that judgment.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the book offers readers
Between Nation and ‘Community’: Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition by Laurence Gautier is published by Cambridge University Press. For readers interested in the history and politics behind the question, the book offers a sustained study; Jalil’s review introduces its central argument and comparison without making AMU and JMI stand-ins for one another.
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