Write a note on the contribution of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in modern education.

Institutions he founded

• The Scientific Society, begun at Ghazipur in 1864 and moved to Aligarh, translated Western science and history into Urdu so that English learning was not locked behind one language.
• The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, opened at Aligarh in 1875 on the pattern of an English residential college, became Aligarh Muslim University by the Act of 1920, after his death.
• The All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference, first held in 1886, spread the same programme of English, science, and loyal public service beyond one campus.

Content of the educational programme

• Sir Syed argued that Quranic learning and modern sciences could sit together, and he used the journal Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq to attack social stagnation and to praise Western education.
• He wanted Muslims in the colonial services and the professions, so the college combined English, mathematics, and natural science with Islamic instruction.
• The Aligarh Movement therefore made a modern Muslim middle class; it did not create mass primary schooling for the poor, which is a limit of the contribution.

Place in nineteenth-century reform

• After 1857 he wrote Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind and later sought British goodwill, because he judged that confrontation would close schools and jobs.
• His educational work stands with other vernacular-modern experiments of the century, but Aligarh became the most durable Muslim campus of that programme.