66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST under Article 30 of the Constitution. In fact, after the Supreme Court's ruling in 1968 that the University could not be a "minority institution", the demand was boldly revived, and a thoroughly communal and undemocratic set-up for the University was proposed in a semi-official committee known as the "M M Beg Committee". This committee was appointed in 1968 by no less a person than Fakhruddin Alt Ahmad, then as now, a Minister of Cabinet rank, on behalf of a cabinet sub-committee. Its recommendations were widely circulated among Muslims, and Muslim Congress ministers and legislators shunted to and fro, creating the impression that its recommendations would be accepted by the Government, if the Muslims voted for Indira Gandhi. In 1970, a bill that was designed broadly to restore the structure of the University as it had existed before the changes made through the Ordinance in 1965, was withdrawn by the Government, thereby giving the impression that great concessions would be made to Muslim communalists in any future bill. Thus the entire problem of the Muslim minority was reduced to the question of the character of the Aligarh Muslim University ; and on this question wordy promises were made in sufficient abundance to help gain an impressive harvest of Muslim votes in the Parliamentary elections of 1971. In such a situation, it is hardly surprising that large numbers of the students and teachers of the Aligarh University supported the agitation for declaring University a minority institution. The AMU students' Union, which has a past to be proud of as a democratic platform of students and has a non-communal Constitution, became the centre of the agitatson. In April this year, the AMU Teaching Staff Association also passed by majority-vote a resolution demanding that the University should "primarily cater to the needs of Muslims" ; its General Body even voted down an amendment which merely wanted that there should be no discrimination on religious grounds in the University. This agitation among Muslims has had its counterpart among the Hindus as well. A vigorous counter-agitation has been organised by the Jana Sangh and the RSS. They have persistently demanded that the University should be "nationalised" and the local colleges at Aligarh should be affiliated to the University, thereby diluting its residential character. It is, however, to be noted that not only the Hindu communalists are well entrenched inside the Congress organisations everywhere, but there has also been considerable migration ofpro-Jana Sangh elements into the Congress after the 1971 elections. The Congress is certainly not above giving concessions to these elements. A single instance would serve. In the present amending bill, section 5, clause 2 of the principal Act is so modified as to provide that the second of the various functions of the University would be (a) to promote Oriental and Islamic studies, Muslim theology, etc, and (b) "to promote the study of the religions, civilisation and culture of India" (as if religions are apart from, and more important than, civilisation and culture). Subclause (a)