Syed Sir Ross Masood bin Mahmood Khan (15 February 1889 – 30 July 1937), was the

Vice-Chancellor A chancellor is a leader of a college or university, usually either the executive or ceremonial head of the university or of a university campus within a university system. In most Commonwealth and former Commonwealth nations, the chancellor is ...

Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh Muslim University (abbreviated as AMU) is a Public University, public Central University (India), central university in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India, which was originally established by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan as the Muhammadan Anglo-Orie ...

starting in 1929.

Early life and career

Ross Masood was the son of

Syed Mahmood Justice Syed Mahmood (also spelled Sayyid Mahmud; 24 May 1850 – 8 May 1903) was Puisne Judge of the High Court, North-Western Provinces of British India from 1887 to 1893, after having served in the High Court in a temporary capacity as offi ...

. His grandfather was Sir

Syed Ahmed Khan Sir Syed Ahmad Khan KCSI (17 October 1817 – 27 March 1898; also Sayyid Ahmad Khan) was an Indian Muslim reformer, philosopher, and educationist in nineteenth-century British India. Though initially espousing Hindu-Muslim unity, he ...

. He had three children: one daughter, Nadira Begum, and two sons, Anwar Masood and Akbar Masood (1917–1971). Ross Masood was educated at

and the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

.Syed Ross Masood - Pursuit of Excellence in Higher Education on aligarhmovement.com website
Retrieved 11 October 2019 On his return from England, Masood was elected a trustee of

Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College ( ur, Madrasatul Uloom Musalmanan-e-Hind, italics=yes) was founded in 1875 by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, initially as a primary school, with the intention of taking it to a college level institution, known as Muhammed ...

and started his own legal practice in

Patna Patna ( ), historically known as Pataliputra, is the capital and largest city of the state of Bihar in India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Patna had a population of 2.35 million, making it the 19th largest city in India. ...

. He then entered the

Indian Education Service The Indian Education Service or Indian Educational Service (IES) formed part of the British Raj between 1896 and 1924, when overseas recruitment ceased. It was an administrative organisation running educational establishments in British India, larg ...

as headmaster of the Patna High School, a professor of history at

Ravenshaw College Ravenshaw University, formerly known as Ravenshaw college, is a co-educational state university situated in Cuttack, Odisha on the eastern coast of India. Founded as Ravenshaw College in 1868, the institution became a university in 2006. The un ...

, Cuttack (Orissa), and one of the founders of

Osmania University Osmania University is a collegiate public state university located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Mir Osman Ali Khan, the 7th Nizam of Hyderabad in 1918 , He released a farman to establish OSMANIA UNIVERSITY on the day of 28 August 1918. ...

. From 1916 to 1928, he was Director of Public Instruction in

Hyderabad Deccan Hyderabad State () was a princely state located in the south-central Deccan region of India with its capital at the city of Hyderabad. It is now divided into the present-day state of Telangana, the Kalyana-Karnataka region of Karnataka, and ...

. He became the

in 1929. He was knighted by the British Government in the 1933 Birthday Honours list.Ross Masood on The London Gazette
Published 6 June 1933, Retrieved 9 October 2019 Here, he introduced new courses, upgraded the syllabi and established laboratories for various science subjects.

Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu ( ur, ; ''Organisation for the Progress of Urdu'') was an organisation working for the promotion and dissemination of Urdu language, literature and culture in British India. After the partition of India, the separated ...

published a biography of Masud in 2011. He was the president of

. A residential hall constructed in the year 1969 in

is named after him. Ross Masood was linked to the British novelist

E. M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly '' A Room with a View'' (1908), '' Howards End'' (1910), and '' A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short st ...

. Forster's novel '' A Passage to India'' (1924) is dedicated to Masood.Forster-Masood letters / edited by Jalil Ahmad Kidwai. Karachi, Pakistan : Ross Masood Education and Culture Society of Pakistan, 1984.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Masood, Ross 1889 births 1937 deaths Knights Bachelor Indian Knights Bachelor Aligarh Muslim University alumni Indian Education Service officers Vice-Chancellors of the Aligarh Muslim University Indian Muslims 20th-century Indian educational theorists Scholars from Uttar Pradesh