Kashmiri students in AMU on Wednesday said they will boycott the annual Sir Syed day celebrations, including a traditional dinner on Thursday, to express their anguish over the situation in the valley following the revocation of the state's special status. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is the founder of Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College which later known to be called as Aligarh Muslim University.
There are about 1,300 Kashmiri students studying in the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) currently. Talking to reporters here, Sajad Rathar, a Kashmiri student leader and former vice president of the AMU students' union, said, "When the rest of the world is celebrating the 202nd birth anniversary of Sir Syed Khan, we are living in pain."
He claimed that contrary to media reports and official claims "only 5 per cent of the postpaid cell phones have been activated in the Kashmir valley till now". Rather said how could the students think of celebrations when their families were living in "acute distress". He said most of the students still did not know how their loved ones were doing 72 days after the lockdown in the Kashmir valley.
Sir Syed Ahmad Taqvi bin Syed Muhammad Muttaqi KCSI, commonly known as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, was a Muslim pragmatist, Islamic reformist, philosopher of nineteenth-century British India. Born into a family with strong ties to the Mughal court, Syed studied the Quran and Sciences within the court. In 1877, Sir Syed founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh and patterned the college after Oxford and Cambridge universities that he had visited on a trip to England. It was one of the first purely residential educational institutions set up either by the government or the public in India. The college was originally affiliated with the University of Calcutta and subsequently got affiliated with the University of Allahabad in 1885. By 1920 the college was transformed into the Aligarh Muslim University.
