Indian Muslim Educational Reform: Halting Efforts

Yoginder Sikand

The reform of Muslim education, in particular bridging the gap between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge, has been one of the main focuses of the efforts of a range of South Asian Muslim reformists and revivalists over the past century and more. Although bitterly critiqued by sections of the traditionalist ulema for some of his views, including what they saw as his obsession with political power, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e Islami, was one of the most forceful advocates of Muslim educational reform. This aspect of his work is often overlooked in analyses of his life. He wrote extensively on the subject, arguing that Islam did not countenance any division between ‘religion’ and ‘this world’, including in the realm of knowledge and education. This made him critical of both the traditional madrasa system, which provided little or no space for ‘modern’ subjects, as well as of the Western-oriented ‘modern’ education system, which had no room for religion. This was one crucial reason for the fierce opposition that he faced both from sections of the traditionalist ulema as well as from ‘modernist’ Muslim quarters.

Following Maududi, the Jamaat-e Islami of India, with branches in almost every Indian state, has played a key, if somewhat limited, role in the reform of Indian Muslim education. Its educational work is supervised by an Education Committee, set up in 1990. ‘Admittedly’, says Muhammad Ashfaq Ahmad, Secretary of the Committee, ‘we have not done as much work as we should have, but you must also understand that Indian Muslims and their organizations have been forced to focus most of their energies on protection of Muslim lives, properties, institutions and identity all these years, because of which education has not received the attention that it deserves’.

Ahmad explains to me the educational philosophy of the Jamaat. ‘Since Islam covers every aspect of a believer’s life, all subjects must be understood and studied in the light of Islam, inspired by faith in God and consciousness of one’s accountability to God in the life after death. In this way, Islam opposes the radical dualism that some people have constructed to divide religious and worldly knowledge. All subjects are Islamic and can be legitimately pursued provided they fulfill God’s purposes.’ ‘Further’, he adds, ‘our religious leaders must know what is happening in the world around them if they are to provide the community with proper leadership. Hence, they, too, must learn the various different subjects, albeit in a suitably Islamised manner’.

In terms of institution-building, the Jamaat has registered few notable successes, however. Its first initiative in this regard, the Darsgah-e Islami in Rampur, a town in northern Uttar Pradesh, which it intended to be a model institution combining Islamic and ‘modern’ education, has, almost half a century after it was founded, not progressed beyond being a lackluster, mediocre junior Hindi-medium high school. The Jamaat runs a few more such schools on its own, particularly in Kerala, but now, instead of setting up and administering educational institutions itself, it encourages its activists and sympathizers to do so on their own, all of them being governed by a broad common policy framework. ‘People today are so heavily influenced by the dominant system, so reluctant to accept anything other than the regular, western-style schooling, that we have been unable to achieve much in terms of setting up our own educational institutions, except at the lower levels, of the sort that Maulana Maududi envisioned’, Ahmad rues. That might be true to some extent, of course, but the argument does not take into account the sheer apathy and a distinct lack of professionalism that characterizes the management boards of many Muslim educational institutions.

Today, the Jamaat’s educational work is largely focused on producing textbooks for use in a fairly sizeable number of Muslim schools across the country, not all of them associated with the Jamaat. Most of these, estimated by Ahmad at around 150, are located in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, home to the largest concentration of Muslims in India. Of these only a few are traditional madrasas, the rest being regular schools and a few madrasas that follow the Jamaat’s understanding of Islam. Ahmad tells me that so far the Jamaat has prepared and published textbooks for a range of subjects, including ‘modern’ ones, that reflect its ideology, till the sixth grade. These are mostly in Urdu, although its Islamic Studies texts have been translated and published in English and Hindi as well. He admits, though, that these books have not been updated for almost twenty years now.

Interestingly, many of the Urdu- and English-medium schools that use Jamaat textbooks also use books published by the Government’s National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Ahmad stresses that, as citizens of India, Muslims have as much right to benefit from the Government’s various educational schemes as other communities, but laments that this is not so in practice, for a variety of reasons. ‘It’s wrong to say that the Government does not want to do anything at all for Muslim education’, he stresses, but at the same time he argues that various programmes announced by the Government of India for Muslim educational development have often been scuttled by reluctant state governments and bureaucrats.

One area that Ahmad feels the urgent need for reform is in how different communities, their beliefs and histories are depicted in textbooks. He points out that biases against Muslims are quite common in a range of textbooks prescribed and used in schools in numerous states. This is an issue that, he says, the Government must address. He tells me that the Karnataka unit of the Jamaat did a survey of anti-Muslim stereotypes in textbooks in the state, and that it was successful in getting the state government to rectify it. He refers to a similar study, conducted some two decades ago by the Uttar Pradesh Dini Talimi Council, which also includes numerous Jamaat activists. ‘The same sort of surveys should be done for all the other states’, he advises, but when I suggest that perhaps Jamaat activists in the different states take upon themselves this task I receive no reply but a gentle nod accompanied with a faint smile.

Ahmad is all for madrasa students to have at least a basic exposure to ‘modern’ subjects. ‘Without this, how can they effectively lead the community? How can they properly interpret Islam? How can they effectively explain to others what Islam is all about? How can they meet the many challenges that we are today faced with? How can they rebut allegations against Islam?’, he asks. A litany of questions, and Ahmad’s simple recipe is to let madrasas reform on their own, without any external pressure or coercion, including by the state. But, he adds, hopes for change have been greatly dampened by the mounting, and misplaced, propaganda against the madrasas, unfairly branding them as ‘dens of terror’. This has forced many of them to become even more defensive and insular and to fear that any suggestions for change might well represent a sinister hidden agenda.

To counter widespread misconceptions about madrasas, Ahmad suggests that madrasas interact with people of other faiths who live in their vicinity and even to invite them inside. ‘Much misunderstanding about Islam and Muslims owes simply to lack of interaction between the communities’, he says. He cites a personal example. He was once traveling in a train, and a co-passenger, a Hindu woman, asked him, ‘Why do Muslims take the name of the Emperor Akbar in the azan, when they recite Allahu Akbar?’. He explained to her that this was not the case, telling her the actual meaning of the word which she had confused for the Mughal potentate. And that, he says, ‘made the woman happy’.

‘The point is’, Ahmad continues, ‘that Muslims in general, and not just the ulema alone, have to have more close and positive social interaction with others so that we can explain to them what Islam and Muslims actually are. And not just verbal interaction, but we must also seek to help others, no matter what their religion, when they are suffering and are in pain, just as we would like them to help us too’. ‘After all’, he concludes our hour-long discussion, ‘isn’t that what real education is also about?’.