Lt Gen Zameer Uddin Shah (Veteran)

Roughly 3,000 students study at Mohammad Ali Jauhar University. Around 40% of them are not Muslim. They are Hindus, Sikhs and Christians, sitting in the same classrooms as everyone else. Now Bisht's UP government has ordered the demolition of 38 of the university's 40 buildings on its roughly 400 acre campus. The authorities say only two structures ever had proper plan approvals. So fix that. Regularize the buildings. Fine the trust if it broke a rule. Grant the approvals now. What could possibly be worth demolishing an entire university? And ask the obvious question the students are already asking. Have the houses, the government offices, the police stations in that same area all been checked for approvals too? If not, why was only this university singled out? Have you ever once heard of a government that demolishes a university? Think about what kind of state sends a bulldozer toward classrooms and laboratories where 3,000 young people are studying at this very moment. Remember also that this is the only university for nearly 100 kilometres around Rampur, and most of its students come from poor families who have nowhere else to go. And please, spare me the tears over Nalanda. The same people who mourn a university destroyed a thousand years ago are ready to applaud as one is flattened right in front of them. If the Muslim students don't move you, then think about the hundreds of non Muslim students who lose their education too. Because that is who actually pays the price. The students, every single one of them. And they are not alone. Sikh leaders and Hindu teachers have stood at that same gate defending this place, which tells you it was never only a Muslim cause. And while you are at it, look at the wider record. The number of government schools in UP fell from around 1,63,000 in 2017 to about 1,37,000 by 2024, close to a sixteen percent drop. They are quietly closing schools that serve the poor, and now they want to bulldoze a university that serves thousands. So tell me honestly, who is really standing up for education here? Maybe it really is Hindus who are in danger. Because once a government decides that education itself is disposable, no community's children are ever truly safe. You cannot shut down a living university with 3,000 students inside it. Because it's you who taught us that it is the barbarians who demolish universities. Who is the barbarian now?