The State and Madrasa Reform: An Indian Deobandi Perspective

By Yoginder Sikand

In recent years, state authorities in several countries, particularly India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, in addition to the West, have been voicing the demand for what they call the ‘modernisation’ of madrasas. While some ulema have gone along with their governments and have secured state assistance for some half-hearted ‘modernisation’ schemes, many others are vehemently opposed to the offer of state largesse. As some of them see it, state assistance is aimed at interfering with their functioning, curtailing their autonomy and meddling with their curriculum so that, by introducing secular subjects, ultimately the madrasas would be ‘reformed’ out of existence.

For its part, the state typically sees the madrasas as ‘traditionalist’ and even ‘obscuranist’, and hence in need of ‘reform’. The autonomy of the madrasas is regarded by the state as a
challenge to its own hegemonic agenda, which explains the urgency with which it looks at the project of ‘reform’, which is intended to bring madrasa education under the firm control of state authorities. In India, the state’s agenda of madrasa ‘modernisation’ is also a reflection of the Hindu majoritarian underpinnings of the state and of the official nationalist narrative which reflects an ‘upper’ caste Hindu worldview, brooking little space for other cultural identities.

Numerous (though not all) Indian ulema have reacted strongly to suggestions by Indian state authorities that madrasas should ‘modernise’, and have turned down offers of assistance for this. As some of them view it, the state’s ‘modernisation’ agenda has ulterior motives, as being allegedly aimed at destroying Muslim faith and identity. This, for instance, is the confirmed opinion of a Deobandi scholar and a graduate of the Dar ul-‘Ulum Deoband, Maulvi Abdul Basit Hamidi Qasmi, author of a recently-published Urdu book titled Nayab Taqreerey (‘Rare Lectures’). The book contains short prefaces by several teachers of the Deoband madrasa, suggesting, therefore, that the author’s views are widely shared among many of his fellow Deobandis.

As Qasmi argues in his book, the state’s argument that madrasas must ‘modernise’ is not a novel development. Rather, he says, it is a continuation of the British colonial policy that was aimed at destroying Islam in India. This is why, he asserts, the British ‘consistently opposed’ the dars-e nizami, the syllabus employed in most Indian madrasas, albeit in somewhat modified forms. Despite the terrible tortures that he says the ulema had to suffer at the hands of the British for refusing to abandon the dars-e nizami, ‘they held on to it firmly’ and ‘refused to leave their intellectual treasure at the mercy of their enemies’. In this way, he claims, they ‘proved that students who had studied the dars-e nizami were far more capable than university-educated students’.

Qasmi sees the present-day Government of India as walking in the same path as the British colonialists and as being goaded by the same alleged motives, accusing of it being

similarly opposed to the dars-e nizami. The Government, he argues, ‘does not want the dars-e nizami to exist’, although ‘it is this syllabus that Muslims have been following from the very beginning’. Here, of course, Qasmi is patently wrong, because the dars-e

nizami, as it exists today, was formulated as a framwoek of madrasa education only in the eighteenth century during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, and so cannot be said to have been used by Muslims ‘since the very beginning’.

The government’s appeals for madrasas to ‘modernise’ and for Muslims to go in for modern education, Qasmi insists, is actually a ‘conspiracy’ because ‘by taking to modern

education Muslims will go far from the noble teachings of Islam, and, like students in modern educational institutions, will become useless’. Qasmi argues that if, as the government suggests, modern subjects are included in the madrasa curriculum, ‘it will become very difficult for Muslims to protect their religion and identity’. It is precisely because of this, he alleges, that the Government ‘instigates some ignorant Muslims, telling them that in this modern age they need modern education and that, hence, the dars-e nizami should be reformed’. Consequently, he claims, ‘many gullible and innocent Muslims have fallen victim to this propaganda’. Qasmi appeals to them to realise that ‘the aim of the Government is to cause Muslims to distance themselves from religious
learning and to destroy Muslim identity’.

Qasmi claims that he is not opposed to modern education as such, which he seems to equate simply with learning the English language. The ulema, he says, have never forbidden the learning of English, because even the Prophet instructed Zaid, one of his followers, to learn a foreign language—Syriac—as it was then needed, just as English is required today. However, he adds, the ulema are opposed to Muslims who want their children to study only modern subjects and ignore religious education. The ulema agree that Muslim children can indeed learn English but thus must begin only after they finish their religious education. English, he says, should not be included in the madrasa syllabus because then the syllabus will ‘get mixed-up’ and the ‘real aim of madrasa education
will be destroyed’. Instead of ‘reforming’ the madrasas, Qasmi argues, modern educational institutions should be reformed to include Islamic Studies for Muslims enrolled therein.

Reforming the madrasa syllabus, Qasmi insists, is none of the business of the government, because it is the ulema of the madrasas themselves, and not the
government, who shoulder the responsibility of managing them and arranging for their finances. In fact, Qasmi says, the madrasa syllabus is hardly in any need of reform, and here he quotes the late Qari Muhammad Tayyeb, rector of the Deoband madrasa, as
saying, ‘As far as the syllabus is concerned, it is totally satisfactory. This syllabus has produced great ulema. As far as minor adaptations are concerned, these have been made in the past and will be made in the future as well’. Qasmi also quotes the noted early nineteenth century Deobandi scholar Ashraf Ali Thanvi as saying that the Arabic texts selected by the ulema of the past as part of the madrasa syllabus ‘contain everything necessary and the only thing is that they need to be understood properly’. If the books included in the dars-e nizami ‘are studied even by a person of medium intellectual capacity’, Qasmi refers to Thanvi as saying, ‘it will produce amazing, unbelievable powers and capabilities, such capacities that a person with a degree from America, London and Britain cannot walk in front of a student of a madrasa, because the dars-e nizami is a treasure house of knowledge’. To further back his argument that the dars-e nizami is in no need of major change, Qasmi refers to the leading Pakistani Deobandi scholar Taqi Usmani, who, when asked about certain books included in the dars-e nizami, is said to have ‘shouted out in excitement and declared that these books create strong mental capacity and should never be abandoned’.

Qasmi ends his lecture by declaring that the Muslims will not tolerate any change in the

dars-e nizami, because, he says, the fact that Islamic faith and identity are far stronger in South Asia than anywhere else in the world owes largely to the present syllabus and system of madrasa education followed in the region. If the syllabus is changed, he argues, madrasas might continue to exist but they would be ‘bereft of religion and the religious spirit’. In the face of governmental ‘opposition’ to the dars-i nizami, he declares in conclusion, Muslims must not lose hope because even the prophets and other revered personages of the past faced tests and trials.

Not all ulema would go to the same extent as Qasmi in defending the dars-e nizami. In fact, many of them, including some Deobandis themselves, are critical of some aspects of it and have been demanding suitable reforms while keeping its religious core intact. Likewise, not all ulema would view the ‘modernisation’ proposals put forward by the state in wholly negative and hostile terms. Yet, voices like Qasmi’s appear significant enough among the ulama to make dialogue between the state and the madrasas a difficult task.