An Open Letter to Asaduddin Owaisi: Aim for An India Where Hindus Boast of Studying at Ancient Bukhara and Samarkand Like Madrassas
By SA
Aiyar
August 30,
2020
Dear
Asaduddin Owaisi,
Recently
you bemoaned the growing literacy and school attendance gaps between Muslims
and other communities. You cited the NSSO’s 75th round report showing that 22%
of Muslim girls aged 3 to 35 have never enrolled in a formal educational
course. The attendance gap for Muslims, especially girls, is low at the primary
level but rises sharply for higher levels.
Asaduddin Owaisi
-----
You define
the problem as “successive governments have refused to invest in education for
Muslims.” Your solution is government scholarships for all. I am glad you
highlight the importance of education in improving the economic and social
backwardness of Muslims highlighted in the Sachar Committee Report. But a lack
of scholarships affects all communities. Christians, another Indian minority, fare
very well educationally compared with all communities, including Hindus, and
not because of more government scholarships.
Instead of
depending on the state, Christians have long created their own educational
institutions of excellence (e.g. St Stephen’s College and St Columba’s School
in Delhi). So good are top Christian schools and colleges that Hindus and
Muslims pull all possible strings to get into them. This is not because
Christians have more money. Muslim Wakf Boards have thousands of crores of assets.
The Muslim practice of zakat provides vast sums annually from well-off Muslims
for charitable purposes, including education. The Muslim community has the
means to create world class schools and colleges.
It has
created a few universities of reasonable quality like Aligarh Muslim
University, Osmania and Jamia Milia Islamia. Southern Muslim institutions like
Kerala’s Muslim Education Society have done good work. Yet these are
exceptions, so Muslims remain educationally backward.
Overall,
Muslim institutions do not remotely match the reputation or cachet of Christian
institutions. That is why thousands of new private schools give themselves
“convent” names like Holy Mother or Saint Peter’s, because convent schools are
associated with high quality education. Muslim schools are not, nor even Hindu
ones.
Christian
missionaries came not just to educate Indians, they had a religious agenda too:
good schools helped make Christianity attractive to potential converts. Yet the
missionary schools never focused on religious studies. They aimed at excellence
in every aspect of education.
During
early centuries of Muslim rule, India was known as a great centre of learning
and visitors like Ibn Batuta reaffirmed it. Some Muslim rulers aimed to improve
and extend education. But the sad overall story is that India slipped
educationally far below the West, in both Muslim and Hindu kingdoms. Nothing
like Oxford, Cambridge or the Royal Society came up. Literacy was just 3.2% in
the 1870s. It rose under British rule but was still a pathetic 14.1% in 1941.
Madrassas ceased to be great centres of learning and Waqfs used them mainly to
teach kids the Quran.
Many
critics say Muslims are backward because they rely on low-quality madrassa
education, so the solution lies in reforming and modernising madrassa
curriculums. Sorry, but the Sachar Committee showed that only 4% of Muslims
attend madrassas. This is not the root of their educational backwardness. One
reason could be Muslim elite traditions for centuries emphasising military
training over education. Prominent Muslims like M J Akbar have grieved that
Muslim reluctance to educate girls will tend to keep half the community
backward.
But this
cannot be the whole story. Muslims were once world leaders in science and medicine.
I learned while visiting Uzbekistan that the medieval madrassas of Samarkand,
Bukhara and Khiva were great universities with some of the best scientists and
mathematicians in the world. Ulugh Beg, grandson of Tamerlane, was the greatest
astronomer of his time. Khiva was the birthplace of Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, who
pioneered algebra, algorithms and the decimal point. Ibn Sina (called Avicenna
in the West), foremost medical expert of his time, taught at Bukhara and Khiva.
No scientists of remotely comparable greatness arose in Indian madrassas.
Mr Owaisi,
the quality of government schools in India is so poor that giving more
government scholarships will do little for Muslims or any other community. The
Waqf Boards and well-off Indian Muslims have ample financial capacity to create
a string of world-class educational institutions.
Ulugbek Madrasah, Bukhara
-----
Why not
start by creating 200 top-class schools good enough to attract foreign
students, and gradually expand that to 2,000? Next, aim for at least three
world-class universities. Recalling ancient Bukhara and Samarkand, why not call
them madrassas? You could even name them after Ulugh Beg, al-Khwarizmi and Ibn
Sina. Today thousands of Hindus boast that they studied in St Stephen’s
College. Please aim for an India where thousands of Hindus one day boast of
studying at Ulugh Beg Madrassa.
Original
Headline: Education for Muslims needs a little self-help
Source: The Times of India
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-society/an-open-letter-asaduddin-owaisi/d/122779
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