Jauhar University Faces Demolition Threat as Students Stage Indefinite Protest in UP

Nearly 200km (132 miles) from New Delhi, where thousands of youths demanding education reforms recently forced a minister to resign, students, alumni and residents of Rampur district in Uttar Pradesh have launched an indefinite sit-in against an order seeking the demolition of 38 of the university’s 40 buildings.

Named after freedom fighter Mohammad Ali Jauhar, the university was founded by prominent Muslim politician Azam Khan in Rampur district. Khan established the Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust in 2003, which supervised the university’s creation three years later.

On July 15, while protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) — a youth movement that began as a joke — were at their peak, the Rampur district administration issued an order directing the demolition of most of the university buildings, alleging that they violated regulatory guidelines.

Authorities claimed that only two structures, including a proposed medical college block, had valid approvals. The university was ordered to remove the “illegal” buildings by August 5. If it failed to comply, officials said they would bring in bulldozers and recover the demolition cost from the university.

Jauhar University Vice Chancellor Zaheeruddin told Al Jazeera that the stay order obtained by the institution does not mean the demolition process has been cancelled.

“It means that the demolition will not take place by the August 5 deadline set by the RDA. The university is now seeking a verdict that quashes the demolition order outright,” he said, referring to the Rampur Development Authority.

Since July 15, students and alumni have been protesting outside the university’s main gate, demanding the withdrawal of the demolition order.

“If a [federal] minister can be forced to resign following the CJP protest, why can’t the Uttar Pradesh government be forced to stop the demolition of the university when so many students are agitating here,” asked Usama Tayyab, who graduated from Jauhar University in 2019.

Uttar Pradesh, home to about 240 million people, has been governed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2017. The state’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, is a saffron-clad hardliner.

Khan, the 77-year-old founder and lifelong chancellor of the university, has been among the strongest critics of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. He is one of the founders of the Samajwadi Party, a political group popular among the state’s 38 million Muslims and a large majority of underprivileged caste Hindu voters.

Khan studied law in the 1970s at Aligarh Muslim University, India’s largest minority institution, about 160km (100 miles) from Rampur. At Aligarh, he became known as a fiery student leader and later entered politics, challenging a former royal family that had dominated Rampur’s politics for decades in a district with nearly 50 percent Muslims, according to the last census conducted in 2011.

He entered electoral politics in 1980 and represented Rampur in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly for 10 terms. He also served as a minister in several state governments and as leader of the opposition. He was elected to the lower house of the Indian Parliament from Rampur and later sent to the upper house by his party.

In 2003, Khan established the Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust, which oversaw the university’s establishment three years later and strengthened his position as one of the most prominent Muslim leaders in northern India.

Shortly after coming to power in 2017, Adityanath’s government filed nearly 100 cases against Khan, accusing him of landgrab, forgery and hate speech. Dozens of those cases relate to Jauhar University.

Khan spent more than two years in jail before the Supreme Court granted him bail in 2022. In 2023, a court in Rampur convicted him, his wife Tazeen Fatima and their son Abdullah Azam Khan, also a former legislator, of using forged birth certificates.

He is currently serving a two-year sentence handed down in May this year for making “provocative remarks” during the 2019 general elections, along with his conviction in a separate case involving a fake income tax document.

Khan’s supporters say the cases against him and his family are politically motivated, while the state government denies the allegation.

Samajwadi Party MP Javed Ali Khan, who is unrelated to Azam Khan, told Al Jazeera that the Jauhar University demolition order was “vendetta politics by a ruling dispensation opposed to education and intent on keeping people illiterate”.

“There are many reasons why this university is being targeted. First, it was founded by Azam Khan. Second, its foundation stone was laid by Mulayam Singh, the Samajwadi Party patriarch. Third, it was inaugurated by Akhilesh Yadav, the former chief minister of the state. And fourth, it is a minority university,” he said.

Mulayam Singh Yadav, the main founder of the Samajwadi Party, died in 2022. His son Akhilesh now leads the party and is a member of the anti-BJP coalition that includes the Indian National Congress, India’s main opposition party.

BJP spokesman Rakesh Tripathi said the demolition order followed legal procedures against illegal construction and accused the Samajwadi Party of engaging in “appeasement politics”.

“Can anyone deny that Azam Khan built this university on illegal land? He used his position and power during the Samajwadi Party government to construct this university on illegal land and erect illegal buildings. What we are doing is simply following the law on illegal construction, and that means the university should be demolished,” Tripathi told Al Jazeera.

The proposed demolition of Rampur’s only full-fledged university has triggered growing anger among students and residents. The district ranks above only four of Uttar Pradesh’s 75 districts in literacy rate, according to the 2011 census.

Nearly half of Jauhar University’s students are females, according to chief proctor Gulrez Nizami.

Iqra, a fifth-year law student who uses only one name, said she selected the university because of the environment and safety it provided for women students.

“Our parents were satisfied with the atmosphere here, and with the safety it offers to women students over other universities,” she told Al Jazeera.

“If this university is demolished, girls like us will never get another chance to study anywhere else. Our parents will not be convinced to send us elsewhere. They chose this place because they believed Muslim girls were safe here,” Iqra said.

The protest is not limited to Muslim students, as more than a third of the university’s students are Hindus.

“They may call it a Muslim university, and yes, it is indeed a minority university by legal status, but that does not mean others do not study here,” Chandni Diwakar, a first-year paramedical student, told Al Jazeera.

“I have been a part of the university for the past year and have never once felt like a non-Muslim in a minority university. Everyone here is friendly, teachers and students alike,” she said at the protest site.

The Rampur Development Authority said its action followed a report by a regional officer who flagged alleged violations. A meeting between lawyers representing the university and the RDA was held on July 15.

“They were given notice, and they have since given a written response. Out of the 40 buildings constructed at Jauhar University, only two were considered acceptable. The other 38 were proven invalid,” Ajay Kumar Dwivedi, district magistrate and RDA vice chairperson, told reporters on July 15.

Zaheeruddin rejected the allegations, saying the university’s campus in Rampur’s Singankhera village came under RDA jurisdiction only in September 2024, years after the buildings were constructed.

Approval, he said, was therefore not required during the time of construction and could not be demanded retrospectively.

“There was no RDA jurisdiction in Singankhera at the time the university was formed. We are running courses approved by different government bodies, which grant approval only once we meet all their criteria,” he told Al Jazeera, calling the RDA action a violation of the constitutional right to education.

“They are simply using this as a tool against the visionary Azam Khan, who created this university for the upliftment of the minorities, the poor, and the underprivileged,” he said.

Officials, however, maintained that the alleged violations cannot be regularised under existing laws, making demolition the only legal remedy.

Al Jazeera made repeated attempts to contact Dwivedi for his comments and also visited his office in Rampur, but he declined to meet or respond to interview requests.

The university has challenged the RDA order as protests continue to expand.

“If others can achieve results through a peaceful protest, why can’t we, as Muslim students, achieve our legitimate goal of stopping the demolition of our university? If this requires sacrifice, we are willing to give it. But we will not accept this injustice against us any longer,” Usman Ali, a law graduate from the university, told Al Jazeera.

He alleged that police officers were visiting the homes of students taking part in the strike to pressure their families into ending the protest.

“Police are coming to our houses and threatening our parents with consequences, but we will not back down,” he said.

On Saturday, the protesters were joined by a delegation of Samajwadi Party parliamentarians, including Javed Ali Khan, Ziaur Rahman Barq of Sambhal and Iqra Choudhary of Kairana.

Since 2014, when BJP leader Narendra Modi became prime minister, India has seen an increase in demolitions of homes, mosques, shops and other properties in a pattern that rights groups say disproportionately affects Muslims. Authorities have said they are targeting “illegal encroachments”.

“There are multiple dimensions to it [demolition]. One, it was meant to create a spectacle out of confronting powerful Muslims in front of its Hindu voters. Second, there has been a sustained campaign throughout this government’s tenure against minority institutions. And third, it does not want mingling between Hindus and Muslims, of which universities are a stronghold,” Apoorvanand, a teacher of Hindi literature at the University of Delhi who uses a single name, told Al Jazeera.

Back in Rampur, Abdul Kaleem Ansari, another Jauhar University graduate, compared the protest with the CJP movement that forced India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign over a series of examination paper leaks.

Ansari, who attended both protests, said he was surprised that calls for education reforms, which brought the “Cockroach” protesters onto the streets, did not include the demolition threat facing a full-fledged university.

“It is astonishing that they are talking about education reforms, but saying nothing about the demolition notice served to Jauhar University, a minority university situated just a few hundred kilometres from Delhi,” he said.

“The futures of all its students and alumni are at stake, and we do not know where to go from here.”