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| Muslims need more than madrasas | | |
- By Syed Iqbal Hasnain
Appeasement has been a dominant political tool in Indian democracy. It is common to see Opposition parties using "appeasement" as a stick to whip the ruling dispensation at the cost of the religious minorities. Most often than not the "whipping boys" are Indian Muslims, even though common Muslims are usually neither willing to get such appeasement measures from the government, nor are benefiting from such policy. What is more interesting is that both the Congress-led UPA and the BJP-led NDA are equally hypocritical in making virtually useless offers to Muslims. The net result is that Muslims are always trapped in different electoral strategies, not in development targets.
It is regularly complained that North Indian Muslims suffer from educational backwardness, ghettoisation and other discriminations. Similarly, Muslim appeasement is also part of political debates, and thus many a time the true spirit of Indian secularism is questioned in this connection. So it is imperative to analyse the reality of different ruling parties’ appeasement policies towards Muslims.
Take the case of Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad, established by the ruling Congress during one of its earlier stints, with the sole objective of educating the Muslim masses through the medium of Urdu. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, way back in 1875, had established the English medium M.A.O College which in 1920 was upgraded to the Aligarh Muslim University. However, even now, in the 21st century, the so-called well wishers of the Muslim community are forcing Muslims to adopt Urdu as a medium of instruction in institutes so that the latter continue to stay as vote banks. The Congress-led UPA has established a National Minority Education Commission to facilitate their affiliation process with state or Central universities in case they are denied affiliation as it happens routinely in North Indian states in the absence of a credible Muslim leadership.
In our Constitution, education is on the Concurrent List and state universities’ acts and atatutes are passed by Assemblies, and for Central universities it is done by Parliament. No university is obliged to take direction from the Commission until its acts and statutes are suitably amended. Even in granting minority status to colleges, it is the prerogative of the state government either to accept or reject it as it happened in Kerala recently where the LDF government rejected the recommendation of the Commission for three Christian colleges. Till date, not a single Muslim management college has been given affiliation through this Commission. Under the 10th Plan, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, has been given a grant of Rs 80 crores by the HRD ministry to establish centres for Dalit studies, Jawaharlal Nehru studies, Ghaffar Khan studies, Nelson Mandela studies, Prem Chand studies, conflict resolution studies etc. Such centres will not provide jobs to the Muslim youth as they will not impart the relevant skills for employment. I wish that the so-called Muslim friendly HRD minister Arjun Singh would advise the university vice-chancellor to start courses on costume and fashion designing, hotel and catering management, multimedia and health sciences for the large number of average students hailing from the middle and the lower middle classes of UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan. Such courses would help them to secure jobs in these fast growing sectors.
States with good governance and a committed Muslim leadership as in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, are, however, giving affiliation to Muslim management colleges. In Kerala there are about 150 professional and non-professional colleges under Muslim management, affiliated with six universities across the state. The real problem is in the North, in UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana and MP where governance is in shambles and the so-called Muslim friendly parties like the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and various denominations of the Janata Dal and Lok Dal are determined to ghettoise Muslims to use them as vote banks. So these parties encourage them to open more exclusive madrasas and Urdu medium schools.
The meeting of the National Minority Committee on Minority Education held on July 10 and July 11, 2006 took the weird decision of setting up special Urdu medium schools similar to the Navodaya Vidyalayas in districts where the population of Muslims is more that 16%. How will this be implemented in Kerala’s Mallapuram, a Muslim majority district where not a single soul knows a word of Urdu? Perhaps the HRD minister needs to be educated on the linguistic differences in the Indian Muslim community.
Even Rajasthan’s BJP government has announced that it would open 250 Urdu promotion centres. The draft for this project has been finalised by the Rajasthan Madrasa Board. At every centre 25 students will be imparted education and training in Urdu. At this rate, 6,000 to 7,000 students will be imparted Urdu education every year.
Muslims need educational opportunities, both in professional and non-professional courses, but certainly not exclusive madrasas and marginalised Urdu schools. The visionary Muslim intelligentsia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries led by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Maulana Shibli founded English medium schools and degree colleges all across North India. The leadership was aware of the importance of English in a fast changing world driven by science and technology. In the 21st century, even the Chinese and Russians have taken to English in a big way. But the so-called Muslim friendly government’s excuse for opening Urdu schools is that "it is the duty of a responsible government to protect the cultural identity of the Muslim community." When the truth is, it is nothing but the mercy killing of North Indian Muslims and of India’s secularism.
Why is the government bothered more about the cultural identity and religion centric activities of the Muslim community than their inclusive secular educational development? The answer is simple. Here, the notion of cultural identity is nothing but disguised marginalisation of the community from the developed mainstream. The government should be planning programmes for setting up more inclusive English medium public schools instead of trying to "modernise" the madrasa system, or establishing Urdu schools. Why doesn’t the government open real Navodaya Vidyalayas in these districts instead of their Urdu version?
The government is simply exploiting the North Indian Muslim community’s "cultural affinity" to Urdu. In the process, the community is losing its chance to be part of the mainstream and to be able to protect its cultural identity in its own way. What it gets in return is nothing but the hostility of other religious societies, especially the high caste Hindus. The only real gainer in this vicious process is the political party that offers this unwise programme; with this, before the elections it can say that it has done a lot for Muslim welfare. The Muslim community should realise the hazards of this political barter system: giving votes for taking unwanted gifts. Let the community define its agenda and prioritise its requirements, instead of letting the government decide what the community needs. In the present situation, the Muslim community needs much attention as well as assistance from governmental sources for educational development and economic well-being. So the community’s target should be to be on the same footing with the mainstream. Muslims should become conscious about who can deliver what they want. For this they need to be politically sensitised. But who will help them in this? The Muslim intelligentsia?
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