Ross Masood

Ross Masood was the son of Syed Mahmood. His grandfather was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.^[2] He had three children: one daughter, Nadira Begum, and two sons, Anwar Masood and Akbar Masood (1917–1971). Ross Masood was educated at Aligarh Muslim University and the University of Oxford.^[3]

On his return from England, Masood was elected a trustee of Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College and started his own legal practice in Patna. He then entered the Indian Education Service as headmaster of the Patna High School, a professor of history at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack (Orissa), and one of the founders of Osmania University.^[3]

From 1916 to 1928, he was Director of Public Instruction in Hyderabad Deccan. In 1922, he travelled to Japan to assess its educational system as a possible model for Hyderabad. In his publication, Japan and its Educational System (1923), Masood recommended that Hyderabad follow a Japanese model of modernization and educational reform by focusing on the imperial tradition, patriotic nationalism, and freedom from foreign control.^[4]

He became the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University in 1929. He was knighted by the British Government in the 1933 Birthday Honours list.^[1] Here, he introduced new courses, upgraded the syllabi and established laboratories for various science subjects.^[5]

Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu published a biography of Masood in 2011.^[6] He was the president of Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu.^[7]

A residential hall constructed in the year 1969 in Aligarh Muslim University is named after him.

Ross Masood was linked to the British novelist E. M. Forster. Forster's novel A Passage to India (1924) is dedicated to Masood.^[8][9]