Place · nationalist Muslim university · India
Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi
Also known as Jamia Millia Islamia, Jamia, JMI, National Muslim University
The nationalist Muslim university founded in 1920 at Aligarh by Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari and Zakir Husain as the Khilafat movement's institutional alternative to Aligarh Muslim University, which they considered too close to the colonial state. The institution moved from Aligarh to Delhi in 1925 and was granted central university status in 1988. Zakir Husain served as its vice-chancellor through the 1930s and later became India's third President.
- Date
- 1920–None
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Tradition
- Jamia Millia Islamia records; Khilafat Movement archives.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.561, 77.280
Worth knowing
The founders wanted a university that would be Muslim in its sense of community but Indian-nationalist in its political alignment — the opposite of the AMU-Pakistan movement affiliation that would develop in the 1940s. Through the 1920s Gandhi and the Congress supported Jamia financially.
Connections (1)
- Site withinDelhi
Jamia Millia Islamia moved from Aligarh to Delhi in 1925 and settled at the Jamia Nagar campus near Okhla, where the present central university occupies about 80 hectares. The university sits inside the political and cultural geography of Delhi's Muslim community — Nizamuddin, Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah, the Chishti silsila's Delhi stations and the Khilafat movement's Delhi anchors — and gave Delhi an independent nationalist-Muslim institutional alternative to the colonial state's own universities.