What Does It Mean To Be A Muslim Child In A Non-Madrasa School In India?
By
Syed Ali Mujtaba, New Age Islam
26 December
2022
Kids Are Apparently Calling Their Muslim Peers
In Primary Schools Are ‘Osama’, ‘Baghdadi’, And ‘Mullah’, And Are
Asking Them To ‘Go To Pakistan.’
-----
A recent
book “Mothering a Muslim” by Nazia Erum captures some of the
realities of what it means to be a Muslim in non-Madrasa Schools in India.
A day after
a bomb blast in Europe in 2018, a teacher at a popular Noida school read out
headlines to her Class VI students. A student loudly called out the name of the
only Muslim boy in class; ‘Yeh Kya Kar Diya Tumne?’ he asked. The
teacher heard the exchange but did not say a word. Some of the things that kids
are apparently calling their Muslim peers in primary schools are ‘Osama’,
‘Baghdadi’, and ‘Mullah’, and are asking them to ‘Go to Pakistan.’
Katuwa, Jihadi, and Mussallah are other such slurs that are
non-Muslim kids' favourite vocabulary, to address Muslim peers in school.
Some
thirteen years ago, a friend’s son was in a fancy Delhi pre-school, voted by a
leading education journal, as “the best preschool in India”. It decided to
schedule its annual PTA meeting on Eid-ul-Fitr – the ‘big’ Eid, a joyous
celebration at the end of the month-long Ramzan fast. I don’t have to tell this
audience that it is the biggest Muslim festival of the year, on par with Diwali
for Hindus and Christmas for Christians. The mother of the Muslim child gently
chided the Principal and the teacher but eventually went for the PTA.
But there
was more to come. One day, a phone call
came from the principal. “You know, it was Eid on November 17, and now December
17 is Muharram. Is that important to you? Because you see, due to the
Commonwealth Games, we lost a lot of working days and there are only three
children, who are Muslims in the school, and one of them is a Pakistani
diplomat’s child, and they are out of town anyway. None of our teachers are
Muslim, so I will speak to the one remaining parent to keep the school open, is
it is OK with you?” My friend was in fury, the same preschool had declared
Karva Chauth a holiday because all the teachers were busy fasting for the
wellbeing of their husbands. She ranted, she raved but she ‘did not escalate
the matter’. “I don’t want my three and half-year-old child to be singled out
as the one with the troublesome mum,” she said.
Salman, 13
years old, was one of three Muslim boys in Class VIII in the upper primary
school at Nandnagri, in Delhi. Most children participating in cultural programs
are Hindu. I want to participate in cultural programs too. I learned a
patriotic song but the class monitor in charge of deciding who gets to
participate refused to take me to the event…. Sometimes I don’t like being
Muslim. I feel insecure when there are Hindu- Muslim fights because most Hindus
get together and surround the Muslims. My mother asks me not to stray too far
from home when there are communal tensions.
Sara, 14
years old, in Class VIII in a government upper primary school in Nandnagri,
regrets choosing Urdu instead of Sanskrit as her second language. All the girls
who chose Urdu sat in the same classroom. There are some teachers who… say:
‘you Muslim people have no brains, you read the Quran and pray to Allah, but
don’t respect knowledge.’
… A few
months ago, we had a substitute teacher who said the floods in Uttarakhand
happened because Muslims have opened meat shops there. She said that it’s a
place of worship for Hindus but Muslims go there and treat God badly. It’s
because of Muslims, she said, the disaster happened, to pay them for their
sins. We felt really bad when she said all this about Muslims. The whole time
she kept saying Muslims do this, Muslims do that, and no one in the class
objected because we were afraid of being hit by her.
Sahir is 12
years old, in grade 5 in a government school in Qutub Vihar in southwest Delhi
says; we don’t feel like going to school because the teachers always single us
out to beat us. The Hindu boys laugh at us. The teachers don’t let us
participate in any sports. Class monitors are always chosen from among Hindu
boys and they always complain about us Muslim boys. The teachers never believe
us. They insult us by saying ‘You children come to school only to eat and to
collect [scholarship] money, but you don’t want to study.’ Whenever they check
our workbooks, they make negative comments about our work and throw the
workbooks at our faces.
Another
boy, Javed, from the same school, said: The Hindu boys are allowed to go to the
toilet but we are not given permission. Whenever the teachers are angry, they
call us Mullahs. The Hindu boys also call us Mullahs because our fathers have
beards.
One of our
classmate’s father came to submit a form to the school. The teacher referred to
him as ‘the man with the beard’ and made fun of him in front of the whole class
and laughed at him. All the Hindu children laughed too and we Muslims felt
terrible. … Only the Hindu boys are happy in this school.
So, this is
where we are today. A nation forged from the fires of Partition was promised a
secular India but 75 years later the nation still blames 9 and 10-year-old
Muslim children for sins their fathers did not commit. Why our classrooms are
paying this price for such tough conversations we never had?
The Indian
education system is one of the largest in the world with over 1.5 million
schools, 8.5 million teachers, and 250 million children. If that is what is
happening in non- Madarsa Schools, then advocating reform in the Madrasa system
of education should think twice about which system of education needs reforms,
the non-Madrasa school or the Madrasa. Is calling Muslim children names, an act
in nation-building or an anti-national activity? The moot point here is those
who are working for reforming the education system in India should stop the
kettle from calling the pot black.
This piece
is an excerpt from Farah Naqvi's talk delivered on October 19, 2022, at the 5th
Anita Kaul Memorial Lecture, 2022, titled ‘The Elephant Outside the Classroom:
Education for a Democratic India.’ It was delivered at the India International
Centre, New Delhi
---
Syed Ali
Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai.
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/muslim-child-madrasa-school-india/d/128714
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic
Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism