Cultural Agony and My Irresponsibility | Naved Ashrafi

I am writing to all those who are present on the university campus; especially my colleagues and student leaders present in AMU. In the backyard of Aftab Hostel (AMU) a construction is going on since the ‘unfortunate’ closure of Cafe de Phoos. It is popular among students that the new building under construction is new swimming pool in the offing.

As a part of under ground construction, a lot of soil has been dugout from the construction site and has been dumped behind Mumtaz House (Common Room side) of AMU. This scattered mass of soil has covered (rather buried) 3/4th of Mumtaz House building on west. Even central pulpit section on the wall is almost buried [see pictures]. This may promote dampening and corrosion of walls. I feel cultural agony when I ask myself that this is the “idara” of same Sir Syed who had written “Asrar-us-Sanadeed” on architecture and conservation of buildings; and what we have turned it in to owing to our dereliction and irresponsibility ! We should have asked the contractor to dump that huge volume of soil in an open place.

Dear colleagues, this is a part of “genuine student activism” that we must convey affairs to the [hall] administration in a polite and appealing manner. Apex administration will not take care of these minute [but important] things because this is not their cup of tea and it should not be. They have bigger jobs to do for us. Student leaders should come out from pseudo-activism of “patli-daal” and “sookhi roti” in our hostel mess.

I request you all those who are on campus to please bear moral responsibility to conserve our culture and national heritage. We owe very much to this institution. I believe we are in “naughts” without AMU.

Regards