By Faisal Z Siddiqi. 11 Feb 2024
It’s been a year since our father Prof M. Zakaria Siddiqi passed away. Abbu’s memories, especially those of his ever-present smile permeate our lives every day. To push forward his legacy of service, coaching, and guidance for students, we have initiated some projects, in whatever limited fashion we can help.
This post is about updates on some of these initiatives.
Memorial Seminar on Indian Criminal Justice System
In July 2023, we participated in a National Seminar in memoriam of Prof. M. Zakaria Siddiqi, organized by the Faculty of Law AMU, Aligarh, where Abbu spent 4 decades of his life, retiring as the Dean, Faculty of Law in 1997.
The seminar focused on the Indian Criminal Justice System, and area of specialization for Abbu, and featured several Indian legal academics and luminaries, most of whom were former students of our father. These included Prof. Faizan Mustafa, Prof. Balraj Chauhan, Prof. S. M. Afzal Quadri, Prof. Nuzhat Parveen Khan, Prof. Anurag Deep, among several other speakers. The attendees included faculty members as well as both undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to sharing their expertise on the subject, the speakers also spoke of their connection with Prof. Siddiqi, and how in many cases he motivated to be better and strive for excellence.
MZS Law Scholarships for undergraduate BA LLB students
We have instituted a merit-and-needs-based scholarship for law students in the undergraduate BA LLB programs. For the inaugural 2023-2024 year, we selected 12 students for the award of this scholarship. In addition to financial assistance, we are also connecting them with other legal professionals in India for guidance, motivation, and potential internship opportunities.
It has been inspiring to work with some of these highly deserving students and learn about the challenges they have often faced to get to where they are. We hope our little nudges of support will be able to set them off to a successful career in the legal field. Depending upon the progress of this inaugural year, we hope to expand the number of scholarships we make available in the years to come, and thereby pushing forward Abbu’s legacy of motivating students.
MZS Memorial Lecture Program at Residential Coaching Academy
After his retirement from teaching, Abbu spent countless pro-bono hours at the then-Coaching and Guidance Center in Aligarh. His love for teaching and guiding was not bounded by time and societal constraints like mandatory retirement. He helped many aspiring judges take the Indian Judicial Services exams over several decades, but more so in the years after his official departmental teaching duties were completed in the 2000s. This Coaching and Guidance Center has now been morphed into the well-established Residential Coaching Academy (RCA). We were impressed by the setup when we visited this in July 2023 and decided to set up an endowment for hosting multiple memorial guest lectures at RCA, with an intent of bringing high caliber judges and other successful candidates from the Judicial services exams of past years.
One thing we were especially happy to see and was a factor in our selection of this institute, was it’s focus on under-represented groups, especially women in the coaching selection process.
We know these initiatives are but a small drop in the ocean, but we hope this will be a first step in continuing support over the years. We will strive to post again when we have meaningful updates to share.
I know he is not with us, but I am sure Abbu would have been happy to see his legacy be pushed forward. And knowing that is a lot more valuable solace to us than a drop in the ocean.