Innovative NGO-Ulema Collaborative Effort for Muslim Education: The Jeevan Talim Project in Kutch

Yoginder Sikand

The Jeevan Talim project in rural Kutch in northern Gujarat represents a pioneering and innovative effort to bring Muslim ulema or religious scholars to work along with secular NGOs for Muslim community development. A joint project of the New Delhi based Jamiat-e Ulema-e Hind and the Ahmedabad-based Janvikas, through its initiative Udaan, a resource centre working on primary education, it started in 2004 with a grant from Misereor, a Germany-based Catholic relief and development agency.

Hitherto, the Jamiat focused mainly on providing religious education to Muslim children through a vast chain of madrasas and maktabs, and providing relief in the event of natural disasters and anti-Muslim violence. In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Kutch in 2001, the Jamiat played a crucial role in relief and reconstruction efforts. This, says Ahmad Shaikh, a senior Jamiat leader based in Ahmedabad, marked a significant change in its policies and priorities, because its activities in the state had till then been restricted largely to providing religious education and constructing and maintaining mosques. It was for the first time, in the course of its relief work in Kutch, that the Jamiat had the chance to work with some secular NGOs.

The almost complete loss of faith in the system of the Muslims of Gujarat in the wake of the genocidal anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002 provided the context for the Jamiat, as well as a few other Muslim groups in Gujarat, that were earlier concerned almost wholly with issues of religious education and identity, to become more involved in practical efforts to address the pathetic educational, economic and social conditions of large sections of the Muslim population of the state. This set the ground for collaboration between the Jamiat and Janvikas to work together to devise and launch the Jeevan Talim project.

Janvikas has been working with marginalized communities in Gujarat, including Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims, for several years now, mainly on issues of education, economic empowerment and human rights. In the wake of the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, it played an active role in relief work, in highlighting widespread human rights abuses and in fighting legal cases on behalf of a number of innocent Muslims who had been arrested on false charges. The menacing rise of Hindutva fascist forces and the consequent escalating enforced ghettoisation of Muslims across Gujarat were viewed by Janvikas activists as a dangerous phenomenon that urgently needed to be tackled on various fronts. One of these fronts was the educational sector. In many cases, Muslims were barred from studying or working in private Hindu-owned schools, faced increased discrimination in government schools and continued to be neglected in government-funded educational programmes. To add to this was the tendency on the part of some Islamic groups who sought to promote insular tendencies among the community, particularly through the madrasas. Many of these Muslim groups and their educational institutions focused only on Islamic education, lacked inner democratic functioning, paid little or no attention to issues of Muslim girls’ education and had few or no links with non-Muslims, including even secular groups. Hence, Janvikas felt it imperative to work in the field of Muslim education and to interact closely with traditional Muslim religious and other community leaders in order to promote a new sort of Muslim leadership that would address the community’s economic and educational marginalization and work with secular, non-Muslim forces on issues of common concern, such as the struggle against communalism, fascism, and mounting social and economic inequalities and exclusion.

It was in 2002, in the wake of the state-sponsored campaign of horrific violence unleashed against Muslims in Gujarat, that activists from Janvikas and the Jamiat first met. This was in the course of seeking to provide relief to the victims of this unprecedented wave of anti-Muslim violence in the state. Working jointly on common issues and projects at this time, such as providing legal aid for Muslim youth indiscriminately arrested, mostly on false charges, and constructing houses for violence-effected families, activists of both organizations were able to cement a strong bond of trust and confidence. Building on this, the next year Janvikas and the Jamiat decided to work together in the field of Muslim education in the dry and relatively barren northern parts of Kutch district in Gujarat, home to a sizeable and largely poverty-stricken Muslim population characterized by very low literacy levels. This pilot project, christened Jeevan Talim or ‘Life Education’, was envisaged as a community initiative of the Jamiat undertaken with assistance from Janvikas through Udaan, which the local community would eventually manage on its own and sustain in the long-run in cooperation with the Jamiat.

The aim of the project was to provide access to remedial, pluralistic and inclusive education and basic numerical and literacy skills to Muslim children in the age group 4-10 years in selected parts of Kutch where no government-funded educational facilities exist. It was hoped that in this way these children would be enabled to later take admission in a government school at the fourth or fifth grade level. The project entailed using the Jamiat’s existing network of maktabs. The Jivan Talim classes would be organised in the maktab precincts, or, in villages and hamlets that did not have maktabs, in the porch of the local mosque, with the timings suitably adjusted so that the children’s Islamic education would not be interrupted or disturbed. In this way, the project was seen as helping to expand the scope of maktab education. Where possible, the maulvi or Islamic scholar teaching in the maktab would be engaged to take the Jeevan Talim classes as well, for which he would be paid an additional sum. If there was no maulvi available in the village or hamlet or nearby, then a local youth, male or female, would be engaged for this. Because the levels of education in rural Kutch, particularly among Muslims, are extremely low, provision was also made for providing suitable pedagogical training to the maulvis and the local youth selected as instructors in the Jeevan Talim centres. Subjects to be taught in the centres included basic literacy in Gujarati, the official state language, numerical skills, environmental awareness, as well as songs and theatre. It was expected that after finishing the Mahatam course, children would be able to join the nearest government school.

To begin with, a total of 14 villages in northern Kutch, many of them on the fringes of the Rann, a vast stony desert that spills across the border into nieghbouring Pakistan, were selected for purposes of the project. Most of them had no government schools, and in those few that did the teachers came very irregularly or not at all. Two villages had Hindu and Dalit inhabitants also, including one where the students who attended the Jeevan Talim centres were all Dalits. Today, the project runs 32 centres in different parts of rural Kutch, with a total of some 900 children, boys and girls, studying in them in all.

Despite various challenges that it has faced, the Jeevan Talim project has been able to make considerable headway, although not as much as was envisaged when the project was formulated. The number of centres has expanded, and a team of four supervisors and one coordinator regularly visits the centres, monitors and evaluates them, and, along with the instructors, sets periodic examinations for the children. The development of the curriculum remains an on-going project, and this is discussed at the monthly meetings of teachers and Udaan activists at the Jamiat’s office in Bhuj. In addition, instructors’ training and refresher programmes are organised every three months, where teachers also share their experiences and the problems that they and the children face.

Given the extremely harsh terrain in which the Jeevan Talim project functions, the pathetic economic conditions of the people, their lack of a culture of literacy, the poor communications, the inability to get trained teachers, the rapid turn-over of the teachers and so on, the project has been able to at least help galvanise people’s interest in educating their children. The fact that literally hundreds of Kutchi Muslim children, whose families do not know how to read and write at all, are now able to recognize letters and write them and solve basic mathematical calculations, a result of the project, is no mean achievement.

The project has also had a positive impact on people’s attitudes towards education. As Saleem, a resident of Umrani village, puts it, ‘Now only very few people, especially the elderly, will say that there is no use educating our children because in any case they will not get a government job and because they will, like their ancestors, grow to become cattle-grazers. Even the poorest families are now aware of the need for education, and in this the Jeevan Talim project has played a central role’. ‘It has’, he adds, ‘made us feel that the centre and its work are our own, that through the centre the children can receive education joyfully’.

Another positive outcome of the project has been to undermine the process that was leading to the enforced ghettoisation of Muslim education, a result primarily of discrimination practiced by the state and large sections of the Hindu community. Although the vast majority of the children, teachers and supervisors associated with the project are Muslims, a substantial number of Hindus and Dalits are also closely involved in the project in different capacities, including as teachers, students and project support staff.

This gives the children, their parents and the ulema of the maktabs as well as Jamiat leaders opportunities to interact with people of other faiths in the course of the work of the Jeevan Talim centres, a process that helps undermine prejudices on both sides. As Maulana Hakimuddin Qasmi, in-charge of the Jamiat’s Children’s Village in Anjar, and closely involved in the Jeevan Talim project, says, ‘In the Quran, Allah says that we should help each other in good deeds. This also means that people of goodwill of all faiths should work together for serving the needy. That’s what the Jeevan Talim project is all about. Likewise, the Jamiat has built houses for some needy Hindus, whose houses were destroyed in the riots.’

‘Some people might ask us why we are working with non-Muslims for educating our children’, he goes on. ‘My reply to them is that after the Battle of Badr, the Prophet Muhammad agreed to release the prisoners of war if they would teach a certain number of Muslims to read and write. So, if he could ask the enemies of the Muslims to educate his people, why cannot we seek the help of those non-Muslims who are certainly not our enemies, people like the Udaan staff who are our friends, to help us educate our children? We all can, and must, learn from each other’.

Maulana Hakimudin also explains that although the Jamiat is associated with the Deobandi school of thought, several villages where the Jeevan Talim centres are located are associated with another sect, the Ahl-e Hadith, and one centre is located in a Dalit settlement. ‘As this illustrates, true religion means that one should work for the welfare of all needy people, irrespective of caste and religion’, he insists.

The Jeevan Talim project has also had an impact on several Jamiat leaders in terms of the vision that they have set for their organisation. ‘Experiments like the Jamiat’s Children School and the Jeevan Talim project have convinced us of the need for more ulema and ulema-led organizations to work on issues related to modern, including girls’, education and economic empowerment, in addition to religious education’, says Maulana Hakimudin. He reveals that the Jamiat now plans to set up two colleges in Kutch, having already launched some training courses for women at its centre in Bhuj. ‘All these years’, he notes, ‘because of persistent anti-Muslim violence and threats to Muslim identity, Muslim organizations have been forced to focus almost wholly on relief and rehabilitation and provision of religious education. But now we must expand the scope of our work.’

‘We need to get more professional’, he admits. ‘As of now, we can run only madrasas properly, and so we recognize the continuing need for working with NGOs like Udaan for the educational projects that we have in mind. I think that there is a lot of good that can come about if non-Muslim or secular NGOs work together with Muslim organizations, including those led by ulema, for the benefit of the marginalized. The ulema and other Muslim leaders must give this more serious thought’, he stresses.

Likewise, the impact of the project on local understandings of appropriate gender-related behaviour and notions concerning gender-relations cannot be discounted. For many families, their girl children are able to study for the first time because the centres are located in the village itself and because the instructors are from the local community. Besides, the female instructors in some villages and the female members of the Udaan support staff who regularly visit the various centres might, through their very presence, impact in a positive manner on local people’s ideas about the roles of girls and women. The same is true in the case of the ulema whom these women interact with, including both the maktab teachers as well as the maulvis of the Jamiat.

Thus, for instance, Maulvi Ghulam Muhammad Qasmi, rector of the Jamiat Arabia Ulum ul-Islamia, the large Deobandi madrasa in Bhuj which is associated with the Jamiat, who is also associated, through the Jamiat, with the Jeevan Talim project, says, ‘Initially, we did have some hesitations and misconceptions about working with a non-Muslim NGO, especially since many of its activists with whom we had to interact are women. But after several meetings with Udaan activists all our fears were put to rest. I have observed these girls, they are so respectful. They are now like my own children. Now, we regularly meet them and give them whatever help they want because we trust them. We believe that the work we want must be done properly, no matter by whom.’

The teachers and the villagers recognize the fact that the work that the Jeevan Talim project aims to do is actually the responsibility of the government, which is bound by the Constitution of the country to provide free and accessible education to every child. Thus, Hakim Bhai, a village elder from Tanka village remarks, ‘Our conditions can only change if the government is pressurized to do something’. ‘Till then’, he grimly adds, ‘the efforts of groups like the Jamiat and Udaan are welcome, but of course they can hardly suffice on their own.’