Yoginder Sikand Lying to the immediate south of Delhi, straddling the rocky outcrops of the Aravalli range, is the region known as Mewat, named after the Meo Muslims, the principal community living in the area. Mewat covers large parts of the Gurgaon and Faridabad districts in Haryana and Alwar and Bharatpur in Rajasthan. Recently, a separate district was carved out of the Meo-dominated parts of Haryana and also given the name of ‘Mewat’.
Two decades ago I used to regularly visit Mewat—for my Ph.D dissertation, which was about the history of the global Islamic revivalist Tablighi Jamaat, now the world’s largest such movement, which had its roots in the humble hamlets of Mewat in the 1920s. It was the Tablighi Jamaat that put Mewat on the map of the world. Some months ago, I returned to Mewat, after a gap of fifteen years, curious to learn how much, if at all, the region had changed in this period.
Despite its proximity to Delhi, Gurgaon and Jaipur, Mewat is one of the most impoverished regions in northern India. When I did fieldwork in the region in the 1990s, the literacy rate among the Meos, more than a million-strong community, was estimated at less than 10 per cent, and that of Meo females at lower than 5 per cent. This was attributed to extreme poverty (most Meos being small peasants) as well as the influence of the ultra-conservative Tablighi Jamaat, which was seen as being opposed to education imparted in regular schools, particularly for girls, believing that this would lead the Meos astray from Islam.
Two decades later, the Mewat is still characterized by endemic poverty. The villages and towns I visited this time seem to have hardly changed in terms of looks since I saw them last. But for a couple of recently-constructed large, brightly-painted mansions and a few new shops (only a few of which were Meo-owned), Nuh and Ferozepur-Jhirka, the two largest towns in Mewat, seemed to be no different from what I remembered of them from my earlier visits. In fact, they only seemed to have become even more filthy and chaotic. The villages I travelled to seemed to have remained frozen in time—the same squalid mud huts, the same visible signs of neglect by the state, the same scene of Meo women labouring in the fields while their menfolk squatted on cots sunning themselves or sucking away at their hukkahs at roadside eateries. But one change struck me forcefully throughout my trip: a distinct thirst on the part of many younger Meos for ‘modern’ education—nothing short of a revolution in terms of demands, hopes, and expectations.
This was quite in contrast to what I had witnessed on my first visit to Mewat, in the late 1980s, when there was not a single Meo-run school, when there were hardly a dozen or so Meo girls in government-run schools throughout the region, and when many local ulema or Muslim clerics, mostly affiliated to the Tablighi Jamaat, openly condemned ‘modern’ schools as dens of irreligiousness and licentiousness, insisting that the Meos should send their children only to madrasas instead. Today, however, literally dozens of ‘modern’ schools run by Meos have mushroomed all over Mewat; girls are enrolling in these and in government-run schools in rapidly increasing numbers; many ulema are in the forefront of promoting ‘modern’, in addition to religious, education among the Meos; and scores of madrasas have begun teaching English and Hindi, with some of them having actually transformed themselves into regular schools.
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Located on the outskirts of Ferozepur Jhirka town is the sprawling 15-acre campus of the recently-established English-medium Aravalli Public School, the largest Meo-run school in Mewat. Founded by a retired Meo engineer, Muhammad Israil, this residential school has some 600 students on its rolls, 60% of whom are Meos, and roughly 10% Muslims from other parts of India, the rest being from other religious communities. 60 of the school’s 70 girl students are Meos. The costs of studying here are exorbitant by average Meo standards, but tuition fees are waved for girls in order to encourage more Meo girls, whose overall literacy rate is less than 15%, to enroll. The schools’ principal is a Hindu. Most teachers are non-Meos, including Muslims from other parts of India as well as non-Muslims from Mewat.
The school’s well-maintained campus is lined with fine buildings built around a vast playing field. The swank technical training institute was built with aid from the Japanese Embassy, so I am informed by a student who takes me around, and the girls’ hostel building that is still under construction is being financed by the Islamic Development Bank.
It is late in the afternoon, and the students pour out of their hostels and onto the playing field, forming teams to play football and cricket. They are dressed in jeans or shorts, and brightly-coloured T-shirts or jackets and sneakers. None of them sports the almost mandatory Tablighi-style beard that almost every Meo male in their fathers’ generation does. These students are nearly all Meos—I can hardly believe that at first, for hardly any Meo boys dressed like this when I last visited the area. A dozen girls, Meos all, take a sprint around the playing field, brandishing their badminton rackets. Needless to say, that would have been considered sheer anathema two decades ago.
I stare, dumbstruck, at the students, stunned at what I see before me. When I first visited Mewat, the parents of most of these students would almost all have been un-educated peasants—their fathers dressed in long kurtas, tahmats and ponderous turbans, their mothers, wholly illiterate, kept carefully cloistered in their homes when they were not compelled to work in the fields.
That a major section of Meo youths are today defying deep-rooted traditions by clamoring for ‘modern’ education is undeniable, and signs of this are today visible all over. I am not sure if this is an entirely positive development, though. Need ‘modernisation’ necessarily be equated with ‘Westernisation’? Does it have to also necessarily imply ‘secularisation’, in the sense of focusing wholly on worldly knowledge and ‘success’, consequently trivializing religion and moral values? These crucial questions are being raised by many Meos themselves, who fear that the irrepressible desire on the part of Meo youths for ‘modern’ education might seriously erode traditional, religious values and promote crass consumerism. This is summed up in a complaint of a maulvi attached to a Deobandi madrasa located adjacent to the Aravalli Public School—‘The school has no facility for teaching Islamic Studies. All that they are taught is about this world (duniya)—how to gather more information and degrees so that they can get highly-paid jobs and lead a life of ease and comfort.’
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Devising an educational system that balances the needs of the duniya and the deen or religion has been a longstanding concern for Muslim educationists. When I first visited Mewat, I came across almost ulema who were supportive of, leave alone actively engaged in, promoting ‘modern’ or ‘secular’, in addition to religious, education. In contrast, on this trip, I met with numerous maulvis, all graduates of what are commonly considered to be ‘orthodox’ madrasas, who have set up their own schools that impart a healthy mix of both sorts of learning.
One of these ulema is an old friend of mine, 33 year-old Qari Sirajuddin of Bhadas village near the town of Nuh. The last time I met him was when he was 18 years old. He had just completed his religious education at the Jamia Sanabil, an Ahl-e Hadith madrasa in Delhi, and had returned to his village, where he had started a small maktab in a two-room tenement to provide basic Islamic education to girls. Today, what started off as the Madrasat ul-Banat Ayesha Siddiqa is now the Al-Falah Model Senior Secondary School. Affiliated to the Haryana Educational Board, it provides education till the twelfth standard. It has almost 700 students on its rolls, of whom almost a hundred are non-Muslims. Girl students number some 125, of whom 25 are Hindus, and the rest Meo Muslims. The school supplements the government-approved syllabus for modern subjects with compulsory Islamic Studies, Urdu and Arabic for Muslim students and Sanskrit, for Hindu students.
What, I ask Qari Sirajuddin, made him transform what began as a girls’ madrasa into a co-educational secondary school? ‘There are scores of madrasas in Mewat’, he answers, ‘but what we lack are sufficient general schools, for which there is now increasing demand’. Further, he adds, ‘I did not want to keep depending on people for donations (chanda), which I would have had to had I continued to run it as a madrasa. As a school it can generate funds for itself through the fees that it charges’.
Several other small madrasas across Mewat might, too, like to make the shift and become regular schools, albeit with provision for Islamic education for their Muslim students, Qari Sirajuddin tells me. However, a major hurdle in this regard are the government’s stringent norms for providing recognition to private schools that most such madrasas fail to meet. As per the existing rules, to qualify for official recognition an institution must possess a basic minimum plot of land (half acre for primary schools, one and a half acres for middle schools and two acres for high schools)—which effectively rules out most madrasas. Likewise, an institution must possess a certain number of rooms of a particular size, a library with a basic specified number of books and so on, which many smaller madrasas, that run small budgets based on donations, simply cannot afford. Were the government to lower these requirements in the case of madrasas, Qari Sirajuddin suggests, several small madrasas in Mewat might well transform themselves into regular schools. ‘That’, he says, ‘would be a much less expensive and controversy-free way to modernize madrasas.’
Qari Sirajuddin’s own family, whom he introduces me to over a hearty meal at his home, exemplifies the rapid transformation that the Meos are today undergoing in terms of their approach to education. Although himself a madrasa graduate, none of his children is training to become a traditional alim or Islamic scholar. The first two of his six children, including one girl, study in modern, privately-run ‘public’ schools, and the rest in his own school. His brother, also a graduate of a traditional Ahl-e Hadith madrasa (the Madrasa Riyaz ul-Ulum, Delhi) has just finished a degree in Social Work from the Jamia Millia Islamia and hopes to join the civil services.
His support for ‘modern’, in addition to religious, education, Qari Sirajuddin assures me, is something that he shares with increasing numbers of ulema today—not just in Mewat, but across other parts of India, too. ‘Even some very conservative Deobandi Meo ulema, who traditionally frowned on modern schools, have opened such institutions, fearful that otherwise Muslim children would study in non-Muslim schools, because of which they might, as they see it, go astray’, he tells me. Madrasas throughout Mewat, he says, have now introduced basic English, Hindi and Mathematics in their curriculum, mainly because they realize that this is what parents of most Meo children now also want. At the same time, he laments, few of these madrasas take the teaching of these subjects seriously. ‘Some of them claim to be teaching English and other such subjects simply to keep the mouths of their critics shut and to stave off criticism that they are not giving their students a well-rounded education’, he says. ‘The managers of most madrasas do not know English or other modern subjects themselves, and so are not in a position to prescribe a proper syllabus for these subjects and to supervise the teachers they appoint for teaching them.’ Many of them also feel, Qari Sirajuddin goes on, that if they were to deviate from the traditional Deobandi-style curriculum by giving more than just a basic attention to modern subjects they would be criticized by their religious ‘elders’. Typically, he says, the staff they employ for teaching these subjects are simple high school graduates, with no training at all, and with a very poor command of these subjects.
Be that as it may, the very fact that Mewat’s madrasas, once known for their visceral opposition to what they saw as the baneful influence of ‘Western-style’ education imparted in schools, are increasingly willing to incorporate these ‘Western’ subjects into their curriculum is ample proof, Qari Sirajuddin assures me, of the veritable revolution in the demands and expectations of vast numbers of Meo parents as regards the education of their children.
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The last time I visited the Madrasa Arabiya Dar ul-Ulum Subhaniya, on the outskirts of Ferozepur Jhirka town—in 1992—it was housed in an ancient, crumbling mausoleum—said to have once hosted the grave of a Shia nobleman who died some 400 years ago. Today, the madrasa has undergone considerable expansion. The sprawling tomb-structure is cemented and neatly whitewashed, a number of low-lying buildings have come up around it, and the madrasa is now surrounded by a well-trimmed lawn with plenty of trees and flowering plants.
The founder of the madrasa, the amiable, 60 year-old Maulana Ilyas Qasmi, a graduate of the Dar ul-Uloom at Deoband and currently head of the Haryana wing of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, has aged considerably since I last saw him. Yet, he still recognizes me as I step inside, and rushes up to envelop me in a warm embrace. He seats me down on a mattress on the floor and tells me excitedly about the progress his madrasa has made in the years since I last visited it. It now has some 150 students—almost all Meos. In addition to regular Islamic subjects, it now also teaches English, Hindi and Mathematics, till the fifth grade level. Those who teach these subjects are themselves maulvis, though, the Maulana admits, they are not well-qualified for the task. ‘We wish we could appoint better qualified teachers for these subjects, but such teachers demand high salaries, which we cannot afford’, he says.
Maulana Ilyas is a passionate advocate of ‘modern’ education, as well as education for girls. ‘When Islam has forbidden neither of these’, he says, ‘who are some so-called maulvis to forbid them?’ No reliable maulvi has ever issued a fatwa against modern education, he hastens to tell me. All that they are opposed to is blind Westernisation and loss of religious faith, commitment and identity that often characterizes students who study in regular school. Islam and modern education, he says, must go together. The Meos need both, he insists. That is why, he says, madrasas, too, need to reform. ‘Often, madrasa students cannot read English or Hindi, which not only causes many practical problems for them but also causes them to feel inferior, forcing them to depend on others in situations that require knowledge of such languages’, he rues.
Lamenting what he describes as the rapid ‘Westernisation’ of the Meo youth, particularly, he points out, under the influence of television, the Maulana admits that the process appears unstoppable. ‘When people begin to regard something bad as good, it become very difficult to stop it’, he explains. This is another reason, he says, why madrasas must teach their students—would-be ulema—the basics of ‘modern’ subjects. ‘By familiairising themselves with these subjects, they can understand and speak in the language and idiom of the educated classes and explain Islam to them in an appropriate manner’, he points out.
In order to ‘modernise’ Mewat’s madrasas, the Government has instituted a special scheme, Maulana Ilyas tells me. But, he laments, this have made little progress. He cites reports of endemic corruption as one basic cause for its failure. ‘A number of people set up fake madrasas simply to siphon off funds from the scheme’, he says. And, he adds, government servants administering the scheme were said to demand a hefty ‘cut’ before sanctioning money to madrasas that applied to avail of it. To make matters worse, he says, those administering the scheme were not too serious about them—perhaps they were loathe to see the Meo Muslims progress.
Yet another reason why the government-funded scheme for madrasa ‘modernisation’ found few takers in Mewat was because some larger madrasas, in Mewat and elsewhere, vociferously denounced the scheme as an alleged conspiracy against Islam and the madrasas. Maulana Ilyas dismisses this charge as unfair. ‘Some such larger madrasas simply want to maintain their supposed superior position and keep the smaller madrasas below them. Hence their opposition to the scheme. Some of them even went to the extent of announcing a social boycott of the smaller madrasas that wanted to avail of government funds under the scheme’, he relates.
Like a few other madrasas in Mewat, the Madrasa Arabiya Dar ul-Ulum Subhaniya brushed aside the opposition of some maulvis and decided to avail of the Government’s madrasa ‘modernization’ scheme for a period of two years. Under the scheme, the madrasa received a sum of three thousand rupees per month as salary for one teacher appointed for ‘modern’ subjects for every forty students, plus an annual grant of eight thousand rupees to buy equipment. ‘Contrary to what many maulvis had claimed’, Maulana Ilyas stresses, ‘there was no effort on the part of the Government to interfere in the madrasa’s curriculum and system of functioning through the scheme.’
Maulana Muhammad Husain, Maulana Ilyas’ eldest son who helps him run the madrasa, exemplifies a new sort of ulema that is today fast emerging in Mewat—socially-engaged and supportive of ‘modern’, in addition to religious, education for Meo children, both boys and girls. Two of his four sons study at the English-medium Aravalli Public School near Ferozepur Jhirka, and they also attend religious classes in the madrasa after class hours. ‘They are babus during the day and maulvis at night’, Maulana Husain’s friend Qari Sirajuddin jokes. Maulana Husain has high ambitions for his sons. Strikingly, he does not want them to become maulvis like himself and his father. ‘I hope they will become doctors, engineers, lawyers or government officials. But, at the same time, they must have a good grounding in religious education’, he tells me.
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Another institution that I visit on this trip is the Muhammadiya High School, in the village of Sakras, not far from Ferozepur Jhirka. When I saw it last—in 1992—it was a small madrasa. Now transformed into a regular co-educational school, it caters to almost 400 children, a fourth of who are girls. A little more than a tenth of the students of this Meo-run school are Hindus, the rest being Meos. The school follows the syllabus prescribed by the Haryana Board, to which it is affiliated, but it also has facilities for Urdu, Arabic, and Islamic Studies. Although its medium of instruction is Hindi, it arranges for its senior students to take the examinations conducted by the Jamia Urdu, Aligarh.
At the school I met a maulvi—whose name I forgot to ask—who teaches Islamic Studies to students in the primary and middle classes. He opines that it is imperative that the madrasas modernize by introducing at least a basic modicum of modern subjects in their curriculum. This, he says, is crucial especially since in Mewat the ulema continue have a very strong influence, and if they are seen as supporting modern (in addition to religious) education, it can have a very powerful and positive impact on the wider Meo society, inspiring Meo parents to seek modern, in addition to Islamic, education for their children.
At the same time, the maulvi is critical of some maulvis, associated with the larger madrasas, who are vehemently opposed to any sort of modernization, including the government’s madrasa modernization scheme. ‘They are financially strong, so they feel no need to take advantage of this scheme. They fear that through the scheme the government might interfere in their finances’, he surmises. ‘They continue to spread rumours that the government is engaged in a conspiracy to interfere in the madrasas and, thereby, to destroy them in the name of reforms. In this way, they want to keep modern education out of the madrasas’, he continues. He is clear, though, that madrasas must not balk at teaching their students the basics of ‘modern’ subjects—with or without the financial assistance of the government—because, otherwise, he warns ‘madrasas will find themselves anachronistic, being unable to keep up with the times.’ ‘Madrasa students who don’t know a word of Hindi or English feel terribly ashamed when they have to seek the help of others for even such small matters as filing in railway reservation forms or for writing an address on a letter. Being forced to be helpless in such matters is quite contrary to the stature that one expects of the ulema’, he bemoans.
Another man I meet at the school is 68-year old Maulana Kamaluddin Nadwi, a Meo graduate of the renowned Nadwat ul-Ulema madrasa in Lucknow. Uncle of the director of the school, Abdul Ghaffar, he is, in some sense, the main inspiration behind it. ‘Over time’, he tells me, ‘many Meo ulema have changed their position on modern education. Only a few of them—maybe just a fifth—remain somewhat opposed to it in its present form. They fear that the sort of education that is imparted in general schools will impact negatively on the religious identity and commitment of Meo children. At the same time, they realize that the demand for modern education is immense. That is why they have been forced to modify their views.’
Maulana Nadwi comes across as a passionate advocate of what he calls ‘a balanced and holistic Islamic concept of education’, combining both modern as well as Islamic subjects. He does not conceal his differences with those maulvis, such as some very staunch activists of the Tablighi Jamaat, which still remains strong in Mewat, who argue that modern education is opposed to Islam, a claim, he argues, that they assert simply to promote their own vested interests that depend on keeping people ignorant. He recites an Urdu couplet to stress his point:
Mudda tera agar duniya mai hai talim-e deen
Tark-e duniya qaum ko na sikhlana kabhee
(‘If you want to promote religious education in the world, do not teach the community to renounce the world’)
It is not simply out of practical considerations that Maulana Nadwi argues for a healthy mix of both ‘modern’ and Islamic subjects in the madrasas. Rather, he says, his appeal is based on his understanding of Islam, which, he says, countenances no division between religion and the ‘this-worldly’, unlike Christianity. ‘Muslims pray to God for success in both this world and in the life after death’, he reminds me, ‘so how can we, especially our ulema, ignore knowledge of this world?’ ‘The Quran refers to those who have truly submitted to God as the best community, which has been created for the welfare of people’, he poignantly asks, ‘but what welfare can we present-day Muslims provide others when we ourselves have no knowledge of the present world?’
Maulana Nadwi passionately argues the case for Meo girls’ education, lamenting that the Meos have one of the lowest rates of literacy among all the various communities that inhabit India. ‘Islam insists that education is a duty binding on all Muslims, men as well as women’, he says, ‘and hence those who oppose girls’ education, ironically in the name of Islam, adopt a completely anti-Islamic stance.’ In sharp contrast to most other Mewati maulvis, Maulana Nadwi argues that Islam does not prohibit Muslim women from seeking suitable employment outside their homes, if the need so arises, or from playing roles in the public sphere. ‘While abiding by the rules of Islamic decorum, Muslim women must participate in public activities and take up suitable careers. In this way, they can have a salutary impact on people of other faiths who have negative views about Islam, based on serious misunderstandings and on wrong interpretations of the faith on the part of many Muslims themselves’, he stresses.
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The winds of change blowing across Mewat have not left even traditional madrasas unaffected. Many of these have now included a basic course in ‘modern’ subjects while continuing to focus mainly on traditional Islamic learning. One such madrasa is the all-girls’ Madrasat ul-Banat Khadjiat ul-Kubra at Patparbas, near the town of Nagina. Established in 1994 by Maulana Syed Muhammad Sulaiman, it is one of Mewat’s only two girls’ residential madrasas. Associated with the Deobandi school, the syllabus it follows is ‘traditional’. Texts penned by numerous Deobandi elders specifically for women, most notably Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi’s Bahishti Zevar and Bahishti Sumar, form the core of the madrasa’s five-year maulviyat course, after which students are encouraged to shift to the Jamiat us-Salehat, a large girls’ madrasa in Malegaon, Maharashtra, to train for an additional three years in order to become full-fledged religious scholars or alimas. Presently, some sixty Meo girls, aged between six and fourteen, study and stay at the madrasa. Education is free, but a monthly fee of three hundred rupees is charged for boarding and lodging, but only from those girls whose parents can afford it.
In addition to the core religious or traditional subjects, students at the madrasa now also learn basic English, Hindi and Mathematics, besides practical skills such as tailoring, embroidery, cooking and first-aid. Says Maulana Sulaiman, ‘The Prophet made education a duty for all Muslims, including women. It is as important as food is. The real ulema have never opposed girls’ education or modern education, unlike what is often alleged. Instead, what they are against is immorality, un-necessary intermingling of the sexes, and licentiousness. Otherwise, they have no problem with them.’
That statement I am to hear from almost every Meo maulvi I meet on this trip—a clear indicator of the veritable educational revolution underway quite unnoticed in Mewat today.
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Because the Tablighi Jamaat, today the world’s largest Islamic movement, had its roots in Mewat, many Meos identify themselves with it—even if, for many, this may be only nominal. The founder of the Tablighi Jamaat, Maulana Muhammad Ilyas, is credited with having founded a number of maktabs and madrasas in Mewat in the 1920s. Today, there are several hundred such Islamic schools across the region.
Returning to Mewat after almost two decades, I was eager to learn if the veritable revolution that was so apparent in terms of many Meos’ desire for modern (in addition to Islamic) education for their children was shared by the Meo ulema as well. When I conducted fieldwork in the region in the early 1990s, the general perception was that the majority of the local ulema, mostly associated with the Tablighi Jamaat, were not at all enthusiastic about modern schools, particularly because they considered their general environment to be ‘un-Islamic’. I wanted to find out if that was how the ulema in Mewat continued to feel.
Established in 2005, the Ma‘adan ul-Ulum in Jhimravat village in Ferozepur Jhirka’s Nagina block is a modest-sized madrasa. Maulana Ilyas, its head, is an active worker of the Tablighi Jamaat. ‘There is no division between religious and worldly education in Islam’, he tells me, quite in contrast to what many other Tablighi activists would claim. His own son, he says, is studying at the Jawaharlal Nehru university in New Delhi, citing this as proof that he and many of his fellow ulema are not opposed to modern education in principle. He notes, with considerable enthusiasm, that while two decades ago there were hardly any privately-run Meo schools in Mewat, today they number almost 50, although this figure is less than half of those run by non-Muslim Mewatis.
Yet, the Maulana does not favour the teaching of modern subjects in the madrasas beyond a basic limit. ‘The burden would get too much for the children, already loaded with a heavy curriculum, to bear’, he argues. He, however, admits the need for madrasas to have a basic understanding of modern subjects, pointing out that his madrasa had earlier employed a teacher for English and Hindi but that he had subsequently quit his job. ‘Our community does need modern education’, he explains, ‘but those who want to go in for that sort of education at a higher level should study in schools. Why expect madrasas to cater to their needs?’
Another alim associated with the Tablighi Jamaat, Maulvi Qasim, principal of the Madrasa Muhammadiya Anwar ul-Quran, on the outskirts of Ferozepur Jhirka town, echoes similar views. ‘The Mewati ulema, by and large, now do not oppose children studying in regular schools, provided it does not lead to them straying from Islam’, he says. One reason for the relatively low rates of enrolment of Meo children in government schools and their high drop-out rates, he explains, is that in many such schools in the region, students are made to recite Hindu prayers—their teachers and principals being largely Hindu. ‘In many villages, parents of Meo children have only two choices—to send their children to such schools or to none at all’, he says, adding that the best alternative is for the Meos to start their own modern schools which should also provide some religious education. With average Meo landholdings rapidly shrinking and Mewat still starved of canals, he says, the largely peasant Meos are now realizing the importance of modern education. ‘Earlier, they used to be largely self-sufficient farmers, and so they considered a bit of religious education enough for their children,’ he points out. ‘Now, with the growing economic crisis in the agricultural sector, they need to go in for new occupations, for which they realize that they also need modern education.’ This realization is also visible in Meo Tablighi ulema circles, he says. ‘Today, relatively few Tablighi activists, mainly those who have little knowledge or awareness or who are very traditionalist in their thinking, continue to oppose modern education’, he comments.
Maulana Khalid, head of the Dar ul-Ulum Mewat in Ferozepur Jhirka, is the son of the founder of this madrasa, Maulana Ishaq, one of the closest Meo disciples of Maulana Ilyas, founder of the Tablighi Jamaat. Established in 1994, the madrasa provides a traditional Deobandi-style education, based on the dars-e nizami pattern, till the fazilat level, one of the only four madrasas in the whole of Mewat to do so.
A year ago, the madrasa introduced the teaching of basic Hindi and English to the 35 children on its rolls. ‘We did so because of compulsion (majburi)’, Maulana Khalid admits. ‘Worldly subjects are not compulsory, while the sixteen disciplines taught through the dars-e nizami are’, he contends. ‘We want to keep our students useless (be-kar) as far as the world is concerned so that they can focus only on religion (deen)’, he explains when I ask him why he does not believe that modern education is necessary for the would-be ulema that his madrasa is training. ‘Only that knowledge (ilm) is important that helps us in the Hereafter (akhirat). Secular knowledge is important only to the extent that it helps us follow the deen. One can be without secular knowledge and still be a good Muslim,’ he claims.
Maulana Khalid vigorously shakes his head in denial when I opine that secular education is crucial for Muslim empowerment. ‘The President of India was a Muslim, and so were top police officers, when thousands of Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002’, he retorts, ‘but they did not open their mouths against that barbarity. It was the ulema, who don’t have secular knowledge, who did so.’
Nor does Maulana Khalid believe, as some contend, that it is the lack of ‘scientific’ education that is keeping Muslims ‘backward’. ‘All great scientific inventions were actually made by Muslims’, he contends. ‘It is not the lack of scientific knowledge that is the cause of our malaise but, rather, the lack of faith (iman)’, he stresses. ‘All this is a result of a Jewish conspiracy. Enemies of Islam have spread all manner of immorality among Muslims in order to weaken them,’ he rattles on, visibly irritated.
The conversation turns to girls’ education. ‘Islam does not prohibit it’, the Maulana says, ‘but in today’s times it is virtually impossible for women who have a secular education to lead Islamic lives, and so it is better to refrain from it,’ he argues.
The Madrasa Moin ul-Islam, Mewat’s largest madrasa, located in Ferozepur Jhirka town, was set up by Maulana Ilyas, founder of the Tablighi Jamaat, in 1922. Run directly by the Tablighi Markaz, the global headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat in Basti Nizamuddin in New Delhi, it has some 300 students, almost all Meos, on its rolls. It follows the traditional Deobandi-type syllabus and has made no provision at all for teaching modern subjects.
Says 35 year-old Mufti Zahid Husain, the director of educational affairs (nazim-e talimat) of the madrasa, a graduate of the Dar ul-Ulum in Deoband, ‘We are not opposed to Meo children taking to modern education, but we don’t want to teach subjects like English here because then our students will be neither partridges nor quails (na teetar na bater). They would not be good maulvis nor good scholars of modern subjects’ He is, however, open to the idea of madrasa graduates joining colleges and universities, if their intention, he adds, is to use this knowledge for what he calls ‘service of Islam’. He cites with approval the example of some new Muslim-run centres in the country that train Deobandi graduates in a range of modern subjects, including English, and encourage them to enroll in universities for a wide range of courses, not just Islamic Studies.
That I find a pleasant surprise, for twenty years ago, when I visited the very same madrasa, I was told by a senior maulvi who taught there that universities were ‘slaughterhouses of the faith’.
The winds of change have thus, it appears, not left even the bastions of conservatism in Mewat—the Tablighi madrasas, who describe themselves as ‘fortresses of the faith’ (deen ke qile)—unaffected.
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On my last day in Mewat, I fixed an appointment to meet a Meo woman whom I had heard much about—46 year-old Mohammadi Begum. When I did fieldwork in Mewat two decades ago, she was the only Meo female to have earned a Bachelor’s degree. Today, there are some three hundred others like her—which, considering that the Meo female population is estimated at around 600,000, still does not amount to much.
When I met Mohammadi ji, she was surrounded by a flock of men and women who had come to hear for various requests, for, as a well-known social activist, she has wide contacts in all the right places. I asked her to tell me her story—from being a girl child of a poor Meo family, fighting against poverty and deeply-entrenched patriarchal prejudice, to becoming the first-ever Meo woman to study in college and acquire a government job.
‘My parents were not educated but they were socially very aware’, Mohammadi begins. ‘We shared our house in Maholi village with a family of Punjabi Hindi refugees from Pakistan. They had educated their girls, and so my parents felt that they should do so, too.’ Those were the days when hardly any Meo girls went to school, being made to work in the fields or graze livestock instead. ‘My mother insisted that she would do all the work but that we all—me, my two sisters and two brothers—must go to school. At that time it was simply unheard of for Meo girls to ride cycles, but my mother insisted I should learn to do so. If boys could ride circles, she would say, why not girls?’
Mohammadi’s elder sister soon dropped out of school, and began helping her father on his small plot of land. She tended to the family’s buffaloes, selling their milk to earn money to support her siblings’ education. Mohammadi, however, continued with her education. In 1979, she passed the matriculation examination, and, four years later, won the proud distinction of becoming the first Meo woman graduate. Many men in her family frowned on the idea of her enrolling in college. Some even claimed it was not proper for Muslim girls to do so. ‘My brother opposed this, saying that boys might trouble me’, Mohammadi goes on, ‘but my mother told him off, saying that he was useless if he could not protect me from the boys’.
At this juncture, one man came to her rescue—Mr. Madhur, the Hindu principal of the Nagina College. ‘Madhur Sahib was so excited on learning that I, a Meo girl, had passed the tenth grade exam that he came all the way to our house and pleaded with my father to let me study in his college. We did not have enough money for the fees. Madhur Sahib covered the charges himself, saying that I was like his own daughter.’
Mohammadi did so well in college that from the second year of her BA degree she began receiving a scholarship. And, contrary to the fears that she might go ‘astray’ or be troubled by boys, the boys in her college, mostly non-Muslims, came to greatly respect her, she says with a hint of well-deserved pride.
After her graduation, Mohammadi worked as a teacher for a year at the government’s Bal Bhawan school in Nuh town—the first Meo woman to take up such a post. A year later, in 1984, she married Basheer Ahmad, who was then a naik in the Indian Army and who later went on to become an engineer in the Haryana Electricity Board and then a Sub-Divisional Officer and the sarpanch of his village. When her husband was posted to Hyderabad, she went to Delhi and enrolled for a Master’s programme in History at the Jamia Millia Islamia, after which she did a degree in Library Science from the same university and B.Ed. from Sonepat University. In 1988 she joined the government’s Mewat Model School in Ferozepur Jhirka town as a librarian—again, the first Meo woman to take up such an occupation—a post that she continued in till 1996.
‘I wanted my husband to have at least a graduate degree’, Mohammadi relates, ‘and so I insisted that he enroll in an engineering course. He did so, failing five times consecutively, but I told him never to give up. Finally, in the sixth attempt, he passed!’
‘I loved my work in the library’, Mohammadi rambles on, ‘but I wanted to do something more substantial for my people, especially for Meo women, who have the dubious distinction of being the least literate women in the whole country. Gruelling poverty, deeply-rooted male prejudice and authoritarianism, opposition from some maulvis and indifference on the part of politicians and bureaucrats all add up to make life for Meo women extremely harsh.’ Mohammadi then joined the Mewat Mahila Evam Bal Vikas Sanstha, an NGO working for Mewati women and children. Her task was mainly to promote women’s empowerment, health and self-help groups and vocational centres. She carries on this work today, but in the capacity of field-coordinator for projects run by the government-funded Mewat Development Authority. As part of her work, she often travels outside Mewat for workshops and seminars on women’s issues.
‘I’m kept busy the whole day, traveling throughout Mewat. I leave home at 7 in the morning and get back only by around ten at night’, she says. Witnessing her dedication, she says, even diehard religious conservative among the Meos, including Tablighi Jamaat activists and ulema, many of who frown on women working outside their homes and dealing with men, now hold her in high regard. ‘I have found that if one’s intention is good, then no one will object’, she muses. Seeing her example, she says, her relatives who had initially opposed her going to college are sending their own girl children to school. ‘The greatest joy for me’, she tells me, ‘is when people tell their girls that they should become like me.’
A mother of four—two girls and two boys—Mohammadi wants her children to carry on in her path. Her eldest child, Feeha Benzair, scored almost 90% in the twelfth grade and is now in Kota, where she is taking tuition for the medical entrance examinations. Her other children are still at school. She has high hopes for them. ‘I want them all to live in Mewat and to work for our people’, she beams.
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