Manzoor Alam: How Indian Muslim thinker built ideas into institutions

By Iftikhar Gilani

Over the past century, despite political pressure, economic scarcity, and social marginalization, Muslims in India have built sustained institutions of learning and public life.

Institutions such as Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Osmania University in Hyderabad, Darul Uloom Deoband, Mazahir Uloom Saharanpur, and Nadwatul Ulama became intellectual anchors not only for the subcontinent but for Muslim scholarship worldwide.

A more recent but equally significant addition to this tradition was the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS), founded in 1986. Its aim was distinctive. Instead of emotional rhetoric or protest politics, it sought to understand Muslim social, economic, and educational conditions through data, research, and serious academic inquiry.

For researchers and journalists working on Indian Muslim issues, the institute’s modest premises in south Delhi have become an essential resource.

On January 13, news came from Delhi that  Mohammad Manzoor Alam, the institute’s founder and guiding intellectual force, had died at the age of 80. His passing marked not only a personal loss but the close of an era defined by quiet, sustained institution building.

My own association with Dr. Alam began in the early 1990s, when I arrived in Delhi from Kashmir to study journalism. It was my first journey outside my home region. Admission was secured, but housing was not. I met Alam in Nizamuddin West, and without hesitation, he arranged accommodation, signed my admission papers as a local guardian, and ensured I found my footing in a new city.

He then introduced me to Maqbool Ahmad Siraj, a senior journalist who had left a leading English daily to co-found the Feature and News Alliance, or FANA, with Alam. Their mentorship shaped not only my professional training but also my understanding of journalism as a public service rooted in balance, context, and responsibility.

Building platforms, not personalities

As historian Zafar Ahmad Nizami once observed, Alam’s major achievement was his ability to bring English-educated Muslim professionals, judges, academics, and researchers onto one platform and engage them with wider community concerns.

One example was his role in coordinating historians to produce a three-volume study on Muslims in India’s freedom movement, a corrective to simplistic historical narratives.

Born in 1945 in a remote village in Bihar, Alam studied economics at Aligarh Muslim University and earned a doctorate. He later served as an economic adviser in Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Finance. The position offered comfort and security, but he chose to return to India, driven by a sense of responsibility toward the intellectual and social condition of Indian Muslims.

That return marked the start of a long, deliberate project.

Alongside IOS, he helped establish the Islamic Fiqh Academy with leading religious scholar Qazi Mujahidul Islam Qasmi. The academy brought together jurists from different schools of thought to address contemporary challenges faced by Muslims living as minorities, emphasizing context, law, and ethical reasoning rather than rigid literalism.

Its international standing became evident after the end of apartheid in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela’s government began drafting a new constitutional and legal framework in the mid-1990s, it consulted the Islamic Fiqh Academy in New Delhi on matters related to Muslim personal law. The choice reflected confidence in an institution shaped by life in a diverse, plural society.

Media, research, and self-reliance

Alam also understood the power of the media. Through the United Mass Media Association, he supported students entering journalism and helped launch FANA, which supplied reports and features to more than 150 newspapers across India. Though the agency eventually closed, it served as a training ground for many journalists who later joined major media organizations.

A documentation center established alongside it still exists, holding valuable material that now urgently needs digitization for global access.

When the Indian government set up the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee in 2004 to assess the social and economic status of Muslims, research produced by IOS proved crucial. By then, the institute had already built a reputation for credible, usable data.

Since 1986, IOS has organized more than 1,350 seminars and conferences, including 14 international gatherings, and completed 475 research projects. These studies covered education, economics, law, minority rights, politics, and media, offering material for policymakers and scholars alike.

Alam believed sustainability mattered. Rather than depend entirely on donations, he helped establish printing presses and publishing houses to support research and publications. IOS also developed a multilingual library of around 14,000 volumes, reflecting his belief that knowledge must be preserved and shared across languages.

He later helped create the All India Milli Council, designed to build consensus among scholars and professionals and reduce internal divisions.

Throughout, he rejected grievance-driven politics. His conviction was simple: communities are built through ideas, institutions, research, and patience, not slogans.

A legacy still in motion

Alam trusted people and gave them autonomy. He built institutions and allowed others to run them. His death leaves behind questions rather than closures.

Will these institutions adapt to a digital, global age? Will IOS evolve into a wider public data and policy platform? Can initiatives like FANA be revived to help a new generation of Muslim journalists find space in mainstream media?

These questions are part of his legacy.

Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam’s life shows that even in difficult environments, sustained intellectual work can earn global trust and lasting relevance. He is gone, but the institutions he built, the people he mentored, and the ideas he nurtured continue to speak for him.

That, ultimately, is the measure of his contribution.