Assam: Abolishing Madrasas or Converting Them into Dysfunctional Government Schools?
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
4 January
2020
The Assam
government recently passed an Act by which government madrasas in the state
will be converted into regular schools. The subsequent opposition within the
state, has created an impression that the Assam government has shut these
madrasas altogether. This is simply not true. What has been done is simply to
convert state controlled madrasas into government schools. No teacher of such a
madrasa is going to lose his or her job. Neither is her salary and service
condition to be compromised in any way. Rather than being teachers in madrasas
and controlled by the Assam Madrasa Education Board, now they will be directly
administered by the regular education departments of the state. The students
within this erstwhile madrasas will now be called students of regular
schools.
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Also
Read: When Assam Govt
Decides To Shut down Madrasas Muslims Agree on Madrasa Modernisation
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Certain changes will happen as a consequence of this Act. The
first is that the word madrasa will be dropped from the names of these
educational institutions. Secondly, religious content of the existing
curriculum will be completely dropped. A more long term consequence will be
felt in terms of employment within these institutions. Since it will now be
controlled by the state, they can appoint any ‘qualified’ teacher, without
paying heed to the religious identity of the appointee. The opposition (Muslims
and others) has criticised the move by positing it as an attack on Muslim
identity and culture. We need to scrutinise such claims more closely.
Madrasas literally means the ‘process of education’. Over
time, this process found a locale and now madrasa means a ‘place of study’. In
fact, in modern parlance, both madrasa and school mean the very same thing and
it is pointless to object whether an institution is called a madrasa or a
school, especially if the content and quality of education are comparable at
both places. Over the years, Muslims have come to regard madrasas as centres of
religious teaching but this is not true. History of this institution tells us
that religion was only one of the many subjects taught within these
institutions. In fact, in the 18th century curriculum of madrasas, the study of
Quran and hadis was peripheral whereas the sciences of the day like geometry,
medicine and philosophy were taught in much greater detail. The understating
that madrasas are about the teaching of Islamic religion is a specific
contribution of Deoband which fundamentally altered the pedagogy and curriculum
within madrasas. Most madrasas which were founded after Deoband followed this
model and simply ignored the teaching of modern subjects. It is rather rich of
this constituency now to turn around and demand the teaching of religious
subjects in regular schools.
State madrasas in Assam taught the regular government
subjects along with some Islamic theology. What the recent Act has done is to
throw out the teaching of Islamic theology and rename madrasas as schools.
Studies have pointed out that state run madrasa students are overburdened
because they have to study the government syllabus along with religious
content. This overburdening means that they are at a disadvantage as compared
to regular school students who can solely focus on the prescribed government
syllabus. For the students of these madrasas (now schools), it must be a huge
relief that they are now at par with the other school students.
However, this has become a problem for cleric run political parties like the AIUDF for whom this is move by the government is an attack on Muslim identity. One can only hope that better sense prevails amongst them and they should realise that matters of religious identity must be divorced from matters of education. Also, all schools needs better teachers, no matter from which religious group they come from. Over the years, Muslims have come to see even their government supported institutions like state madrasas less as centres of education and more as sources of employment. This attitude needs to change if the community has to progress educationally.
This conversion of madrasas into schools is being done in
the name of secularism. The government’s argument is that a ‘secular’ state
cannot fund the religious education of a particular community. Technically,
this argument is right, but the Indian practice of secularism so far has been
different. Both BHU and AMU are government funded universities and both have
departments which ‘teach’ religion. Moreover, the government organises and
funds many religious events like the Mansarovar pilgrimage and the Kumbh.
Coming from a BJP government, which positions itself as a ‘Hindu’ party, this
lecture in secularism will certainly not have too many takers, even within the
Hindu community. Over the last few years, Muslims in Assam haven’t had it easy.
The faulty implementation of the NRC has created considerable anxiety within
the Muslim community regarding the intentions of the government. Himanta Biswa
Sarma, the home minister and one who introduced the madrasa bill, indicated not
very long ago that Muslims were waging a war on Hindu culture and civilization.
It is not surprising therefore that Muslims are not trusting their own
government and are suspicious of the real motive behind transforming madrasas
into schools.
However, to be fair to the BJP government, this Act applies
only to state funded madrasas and not to those which are funded and controlled
by the community. For this reason, the argument that this constitutes an attack
on ‘Muslim identity’ does not sound convincing as the private madrasas are free
to teach any curriculum of their liking.
But that perhaps is a bigger problem for Muslims. At least
in government madrasas, there is regular teaching of modern subjects but in the
majority of community owned madrasas, only traditional religious subjects are
taught. As a result, the graduates from these institutions do not find any
employment in the modern job market and keep swelling the ranks of clerics.
Moreover, students studying in these madrasas number much more in comparison to
students in government madrasas. Actually, the community controlled madrasas
are in dire need of reform. From time to time, governments have adopted
policies to incentivise the introduction of modern subjects in these madrasas
but to little avail due to the opposition from clerics.
The BJP government has been particularly suspicious of these
community funded madrasas and have periodically labelled them as ‘dens of
terrorism’, without much evidence. In keeping the community funded madrasas out
of its reformist orbit, the Assam government perhaps wants Muslims to remain
educationally backward. Of course, this whole process has been willingly aided
and abetted by Muslim clerics who neither want to change nor are willing to let
anyone else change the state of madrasas.
It must be pointed out though that the state of government
schools in Assam, like elsewhere in the country, is hardly a model worth
emulating. Teacher absenteeism is rampant and a recent report pointed out the
presence of lakhs of ‘ghost students’ in government schools. At least within
the state controlled madrasas, there was some community oversight as some of
these institutions were managed by minority trusts. The community was therefore
able to put pressure on the management of these madrasas to put their affairs
in order from time to time. With this oversight gone, there is real fear that
standards within these ex-madrasas will suffer. It is up to the government of
Assam now to prove to the Muslim community that educational standards within
these institutions will go up rather than get compromised.
Changes effected in government madrasas are mere tokenism:
it is only a change in nomenclature. Its real intention perhaps lies in sending
an appeasing signal to the Hindu right wing voters that the government is
fundamentally ‘altering’ the structure of madrasas. At the same time, the
Muslim opposition to this move is facile. Instead of wasting their energy in
protesting against a change in name, their energies will be better utilised in
demanding better educational infrastructure in the state.
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Arshad
Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/assam-abolishing-madrasas-converting-them/d/123973
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