This article focuses on the campaign for AMU’s minority status (1965–1981), at the intersection of student politics and Muslim politics. What started in 1965 as an internal university dispute on student quotas soon transformed into a central Muslim issue. The campaign crystallized mounting resentment against the government and provided a common platform to heterogeneous forces–students, teachers, as well as Muslim organizations of different shades and hues–who all claimed to serve Muslim interests. This campaign thus played a key role in the reconfiguration of Muslim politics in the 1960s. It contributed to the re-emergence of the demand for Muslim minority rights, largely delegitimized after partition. It provided a platform for an increasingly assertive Muslim leadership which claimed to represent the Muslim community. Finally, it constituted a laboratory for issue-based coalitions, which, in the absence of a strong Muslim political party, became a dominant feature of Muslim politics, especially in North India.