Interview: Zafarul Islam Khan

Zafarul Islam Khan is a noted Indian Muslim intellectual. He is the editor of the Delhi-based fortnightly English magazine Milli Gazette, one of the few Indian Muslim periodicals that focus on Muslim social, as distinct from religious, issues.

(Interviewed by Yoginder Sikand)

Q: What do you feel about the propaganda campaign against madrasas in India today?

A: As I see it, there are some people who will not spare any opportunity to attack Muslims, using any excuse, and for them the issue of madrasas comes as very handy. Then, there are others who are simply misguided, who have been wrongly led to believe that the madrasas in India are similar to those madrasas in Pakistan that have been involved in militant activ­ity. They do not know that there are some very basic differ­ences between madrasas in India and in Pakistan. In Pakistan, in contrast to India, many madrasas have gradually become politicised, with several of their ulema joining politics, becom­ing Members of Parliament and even ministers. Thus, these madrasas have a very different role and perspective from the Indian madrasas. Furthermore, several Pakistani madrasas were actively engaged in training fighters for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but this was not true for the Indian madrasas. Hence, to equate the Indian madrasas with madrasas in Pakistan which are active in politics or which have trained mil­itants is completely incorrect and entirely misleading.

Q: But what about the allegations that have been levelled against some madrasas in India of being involved in militant activities?

A. These allegations are utterly, totally fictitious. There is no evidence to suggest any such activity on the part of a single madrasa. A maulvi here or a madrasa student there might have been arrested on some charges, but how can you blame the madrasa to which he belongs, or the madrasas as a whole, for that? Until now, government authorities have not been able to identify a single madrasa in the country providing any sort of military training. The newspapers or the authorities some­times ambiguously claim, ‘Some madrasas are spreading terror’, but why don’t they clearly name these madrasas if they have the evidence?

Q: There have been some allegations about madrasas on India’s interna­tional borders being engaged in what are called ‘anti-national’ activities. What is your opinion?

A: They is today much talk of the India-Nepal border being ‘infested’ with madrasas and where the Pakistani secret services agency, the ISI, is alleged to be active. Some years ago, when the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition was in power in India, Mr. Banatwala, a Muslim Member of Parliament, questioned this thesis and demanded to know exactly which madrasas these were. The Home Minister crypti­cally replied that these madrasas were located on the other side of the border, on the Nepalese side! We sent a team of reporters from Milli Gazette to the Indo-Nepal border to investigate, and they found no truth in the allegations about the madrasas in the region.

Some time ago there was another report in a leading newspa­per claiming that Muslim ‘militants’ were very active in Manipur, in India’s North-East, and that they were conspiring to establish an ‘Islamic state’ there. I asked a friend of mine there to verify the story. He travelled through the area, and even met the District Inspector of Police, who told him that there was no truth in the story. I believe that fake reports such as these that appear regularly in newspapers are generally fabricated by intelligence agents to please their political bosses.

Q: What are your views on allegations that madrasas are receiving enor­mous amounts of petrodollars from Arab countries?

A: There is no doubt that petrodollars did come in, but that was a short-lived phenomenon and the flow of such funds have now considerably declined. It all started after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The Saudis, fearing internal opposition by Islamic groups to their monarchical rule, were advised by the Americans, by the CIA to be precise, to splurge money on madrasas of the conservative sort all over the Muslim world so as to prevent Muslim communities from getting radicalised. And so, funds came to some madrasas in India, in addition to other countries, and these were mostly used for setting up buildings and mosques. But now this has stopped as the Saudis have come under American pressure.

One must also remember that not all Muslim groups were beneficiaries of Saudi largesse. Most of the funds from the Saudis went to the Ahl-e Hadith sect, whose understand­ing of Islam is similar to that of the Saudi ‘Wahhabi’ state, although oth­ers also did receive some of it. Now, because the Ahl-e Hadith got much more than the rest, it caused considerable friction within the Muslim community, as the Ahl-e Hadith starting behaving as if they were the only true Muslims or the greatest Muslims! But, of course, this is not true, because historically, at least in India, they have always been on the fringes of Muslim society. This strategy of supporting the Ahl-e Hadith seems to have backfired on the Saudis, for many Muslims in India now think that the Saudis and the Ahl-e Hadith have divided the community, creating intra-Muslim conflicts by defaming other Muslim groups.

Q: How do you account for the increase in the number of madrasas in India today?

A: One reason is, of course, the natural population increase, because of which the number of madrasas has also increased. There are said to be some 35,000 madrasas in India now, big as well as small. These must be seen as efforts by Muslims to educate themselves. These madrasas are often the only means through which poor Muslim boys and girls can get edu­cation, because they provide free teaching, and often boarding and lodging as well. Interestingly, in recent years there has been a growth in the number of girls’ madrasas in various parts of the country. This has to do with a host of factors, such as the increasing difficulty that parents’ face in marrying off une­ducated daughters, as well as the influence of experiments in Arab countries, where girls’ madrasas are now quite a well-established phenomenon.

Q: The government says that it is keen that madrasas should be ‘modernised’ and that it is willing to help out. What do you feel about this?

A: I believe that the state does have the responsibility and the right to intervene and see that certain subjects are taught in the madrasas. The state should make it compulsory for madrasas to also teach modern subjects, and Muslims must obey this, for there is nothing in Islam which says that Muslims should not study these disciplines. And then, Muslims are also citizens of this country, and they have as much of a right as well as a duty to study these subjects as others do.

Now, as for how these subjects should be introduced in the madrasas and how they should be taught, that is a separate question that needs to be debated. But, then, many madrasas might be opposed to this, because the managers of the madrasas have their own vested interests, which they think might be affected if the state steps in to intervene.

Q: What do you feel about government proposals to fund madrasas to employ teachers of modern subjects?

A: In principle that sounds fine, but in practice it is very dif­ficult to get funds from the state. Funds will only be given to a madrasa if it receives a prior security clearance from the state government, but you know how difficult this is. Even to get a simple birth certificate one has often to pay a bribe. So, these hurdles often make it impossible for many madrasas to access funds from the state.

Q: What do you feel about the standard of teaching in the madrasas? How could this be improved?

A: The entire madrasa system in the country is badly in need of a total reappraisal, of a revolutionary change in methods and scope. Most madrasas are certainly not serving the purpose for which they were intended. In the case of many madrasas, what they teach is of little use to the wider society. They are churning out vast numbers of maulvis, only some of whom can be absorbed into the system. The others turn into a bur­den on Muslim society, because they have not been trained in such a way as to be an asset to the community. So, at most madrasa graduates can aspire to become teachers in madrasas, imams in mosques or else open another madrasa of their own. If you ask me, I think we do not need so many madrasas as we have today.

I also think that the syllabus of the madrasas needs a radical overhaul. Most madrasas in India use some form or the other of the dars-e nizami, a syllabus developed in the eighteenth cen­tury by Mulla Nizamuddin of Lucknow. In Mulla Nizamuddin’s time, madrasas functioned as schools for training clerks and officials for the Mughal state, and the books they taught were meant for that purpose. However, most madrasas today still continue to use those very same books! The dars-e nizami today has become irrelevant to our needs. I think we can gain a great deal from the experiments in modern Islamic education being conducted in other countries. For instance, in Egypt, al-Azhar, the great centre of Islamic learning, now teaches Islamic as well as modern subjects, and there is no reason why the Indian madrasas should not do so.

Q: But some Indian madrasas are already doing that, is it not?

A: That’s true. Some madrasas have introduced new books, and are also teaching modern subjects. Most madrasas now teach basic English and Hindi as well. Some larger madrasas also have facilities for teaching computer applications. But the pace and scope of change and reform is not as impressive as it should be. An ideal madrasa should teach all the regular modern subjects plus the standard Islamic disciplines. Then, at the high school level students should have the choice of going in for higher education at a regular college or else carrying on studying in a madrasa and specializing in religious studies, in a particular branch such as the Quran, Hadith or Islamic jurisprudence.