Remembering Sir Syed for his contribution to education and sports on his 225th birth anniversary

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If Muhammadan Anglo -Oriental (MAO) College, founded in 1877, which became Aligarh Muslim University in 1920, was the result of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s vision of education, Tahzibul Akhlaq (Mohammaden Social Reformer) and Aligarh Institute Gazette, the two important publications that he started, were devoted to the idea of social reform and a questioning spirit among Muslims of his time. He wrote prolifically, boldly and often with a lot of pain in his voice, on different social and theological issues.

But not many associate him with sports    and outdoor games. Endowed with radiant health since his childhood, his grandfather remarked on his birth that a jat has taken birth in the family. It was a compliment to his robust physique.

Sir Syed’s love for sports was facilitated by a fairly liberal atmosphere at his home. The only condition imposed on him was that he and other children would participate in sports under the watchful eye of the elders.

His biographer Altaf Husain Hali, an important voice in Urdu literature, notes that bat and ball, chase, skittles and hide and seek were popular sports during Sir Syed’s childhood. He also loved swimming and archery and participated in multiple competitions with Delhi residents. Both the games were team events in his time and sometimes as many as hundred swimmers would plunge into the Jamuna river together.

What was the   relationship between Sir Syed’s love of sports in his childhood and his future vision of education?  During his visit to England in 1869-70, he was not only mesmerized by the progress of England in all spheres of life but also saw the Britishers’ obsession with sports and physical fitness.

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 Five years after his return from England Sir Syed started a school, Madrasat-ul-Ulum, in Aligarh in 1875. Two years later on 8 January 1877, the foundation stone of Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College was laid by the then Viceroy and Governor General Lord Lytton. This was the year when England’s cricket team toured Australia and played the first official Test match at Melbourne from 15 to 19 March.

In Sir Syed’s Oxbridge model of the college, games and sports were given importance. The buildings were designed in a manner that students had enough open spaces to run around. The College did exceedingly well in different sports since its inception. . In the early days of the college, the College’s Cricket Club was established in 1878, Riding Club in 1893, Football and Athletics Club in 1894. In just a matter of a decade, but after Sir Syed’s death in 1898, hockey, basketball, skating and mountaineering also found favour with students and the faculty at MAO College.

But of all games, it was cricket that  established Aligarh’s reputation both in and outside India. The famous Ali brothers, Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, who played a prominent role in India’s freedom struggle, were part of MAO College’s cricket team in 1890s. On its 1902-3 tour of India, Oxford University Authentics visited Aligarh and played a memorable match against MAO College. Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, which was published in serial form in 1900-01, refers to his main character playing a game of cricket against Aligarh Muhammadan College, a nod to the excellence of the MAO College team.

In his book Wounded Tiger Peter Oborne, while writing the history of cricket in Pakistan, traces the roots of cricket in Karachi and Lahore, the two power centres of the game in Pakistan, to Aligarh. In the Indian Cricket team’s tour to England in 1911 there were three players, Khan Salamuddin, Syed Hasan and Shafqat Hussein, who studied at MAO College. The 1932 test team of India that toured England had four AMU players- Syed Wazir Ali, Nazir Ali, Jahangir Khan and Ghulam Mohammad- and 1936 test team had three- Syed Wazir Ali, Syed Mushtaq Ali and Lala Amarnath.

 Usually English professors are credited for organizing sports in the MAO College. Theodore Beck, the second principal of the College, took keen interest in sports, especially cricket.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was one of the architects of modern education in the country. But for him education did not exclude distinction in sports. In an article written in 1872 he outlined his vision of a college on the lines of Oxford and Cambridge universities: “There will be boarding houses… the boarding house will have a Common Hall and a common dining room… “there will be a playground and a swimming pool attached to it.”

T he writer teaches English at Aligarh Muslim University.