A Madrasa with a Difference

By Yoginder Sikand

Contrary to how the media generally portrays them, madrasas in India are not entirely opposed to reform. Indeed, the winds of change are being felt even in the portals of the more conservative madrasas, such as the vast network of Deobandi seminaries spread across the country. One such instance is the recently-established Jamia ul-Umoor, in New Delhi's Muslim-dominated Abul Fazl locality.

Set up in 2005, the Jamia ul-Umoor is the brainchild of two young graduates of the Dar ul-Ulum, Deoband, India's largest and most influential madrasa. Maulanas Khalid Saifullah Qasmi and Azmatullah Qasmi, the men behind this venture, are both in their mid-twenties and represent a new generation of Deobandi scholars eager to embrace and promote modern knowledge along with traditional Islamic learning. After having received their degree from Deoband they enrolled at the Dar ul-Umoor, in Srirangapatanam, near Mysore, for a year's course in a range of 'modern' disciplines.

Like their teachers, the twenty-odd students at Jamia ul-Umoor are all graduates of the Deoband madrasa. Having completed a rigorous eight-year course in Islamic Studies there, in the Jamia they are now being exposed to a whole new world of learning. The two-year course that they are undergoing consists of lessons in English, Computers, Economics, History, Geography, Mathematics, Management, Political Science, Physical Sciences, Journalism and Comparative Religions—all subjects that they have had little or no exposure to in their years at Deoband. Judging by the ease with which the students converse in English, despite having studied it for less than half a year, they seem to be fast and eager learners and their five teachers, zealous instructors.

The students, neatly dressed in spotless kurta-pajamas and topis, sit in a circle on a large quilt. On being prompted by his teachers, Tauqir Qasmi, who has just turned twenty, stands up and delivers an impassioned speech in Arabic on the importance of modern education and on how Islam positively encourages it. His colleague, Aslam Rafiqi Qasmi, follows after him, with a remarkably clear speech in English on the problems of the Indian Muslims. He refers to the 'shameful and lamentable' Partition of India and the 'massive and most horrendous' killings of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs that ensued. The Indian Muslims, he says, 'continue to pay a heavy price for the Partition', being 'wrongly branded as anti-nationals by many Hindus'. He refers to the thousands of Muslims who have lost their lives in hundreds of organized pogroms and riots in India since 1947, and of the discrimination that they continue to face in many spheres. He ends his speech by stressing the need for Muslims to take to both religious as well as modern education.

 

 The welcome addresses over, I sit with the students and discuss their studies. One of them wants to know how to secure admission in the English department of the university I teach in. Another wants to know how he can get the articles he has written published in the Times of India. A third asks me, in impeccable English, 'Why are Muslims, especially the ulema of Deoband, thought of as terrorists by many, while they had actually played a leading role in India's anti-colonial struggle?'.

The students and their teachers insist that the Deobandi elders are not against modern education per se, as is commonly imagined. Hasan, a young student from Bihar, argues, 'Islam says that all beneficial knowledge can be acquired and so our ulema have never opposed what is good in the modern educational system. What they were opposed to, however, was Western culture. We can and, indeed, should acquire knowledge of all the beneficial modern disciplines, provided this is done according to our culture and that it helps us become better Muslims'. Ali, another student, adds, 'In Islam, there is no distinction between religious and secular education. All forms of beneficial knowledge should be had'. Says another student, Abdur Rahman, 'Learning English, Computer Applications and other modern subjects will help us in our task to telling others about Islam'.

Maulana Furqan, senior teacher, nods his head in agreement. He tells me that three graduates of Jamia ul-Umoor's first batch, which passed out last year, are now studying at a regular university, the Jamia Millia Islamia, in New Delhi. 'We want our graduates to go on to join universities and then take up a range of careers, not necessarily as maulvis or religious specialists', he says. 'In the past, madrasas produced both ulema as well architects, astronomers, scientists and so on', he informs me, 'and  so we must go back to that holistic conception of education and bridge the gulf between the ulema and those who have studied in universities'. 'Working in various fields, and not just as maulvis, our students can play an important role in promoting social reforms as well as communicating the message of Islam to others', he adds. 'In today's world, you need to know English in order to tell others about Islam. Also, there is a wealth of useful knowledge in English', he explains. 'Hence', he stresses, 'it is important that maulvis, too, must learn the language'.

 I ask Maulana Khalid Saifullah what he feels about the argument of some conservative maulvis that madrasa students should not enroll in colleges for fear that they might go astray.

 'It depends on the individual student', he answers. 'If the students' moral and religious training is sound, there is no reason to fear that their faith would weaken if they join universities. In fact, they might have a positive impact on other students, who might, by witnessing their example, seek to come closer to religion'.

 'To further strengthen their commitment to the faith', he adds, 'we arrange for pious Sufi scholars to come here to interact with the students, so that, by being in the company of men of God, they will learn to devote themselves to the faith, rather than to the pleasures of the world'.

 Maulana Saifullah tells me about the 25 other students of the Jamia ul-Umoor, who are enrolled in the hifz course to memorise the Quran. In contrast to most other institutions that specialize in hifz, the students here must also study English, Mathematics and Science. He also refers to his plans to arrange for his students to simultaneously enroll for the tenth grade examinations, so that after they finish their course they can join various different departments in regular universities. 'Our ulema must keep themselves abreast of modern knowledge and contemporary developments', he stresses. 'That is essential for them to provide proper leadership to the community'.

 Innovative madrasas like the Jamia ul-Umoor are increasingly visible today, although the media rarely, if ever, refers to them. These institutions indicate the possibility of bridging the rigid dualism that characterizes Muslim education, between the ulema and those who have studied in 'modern' institutions, something crucial for promoting education among Muslims more generally.

[Photos by Yoginder Sikand]

Advocating rights of Muslims in India: problems and challenges

By Yoginder Sikand

That the Indian Muslims, on the whole, are a marginalized community in terms of various economic, social and political indices is a well-known fact, and one which is acknowledged by the state as well. How the problems of the community, particularly the protection and promotion of their rights and their empowerment, can be articulated more effectively, by Muslim as well as secular and progressive groups is a major concern. The crucial point here is that articulating Muslim problems and concerns should not be seen, as is often seen by many Muslims and non-Muslims alike, as simply something to be done by Muslims alone.

A crucial means for articulating Muslim rights and concerns are civil society groups or NGOs, which also include human rights groups. NGOs are, of course, of various sorts and many of them are simply money-making machines that work to depoliticise people’s movements and cultivate a class with a vested interest in perpetuating problems instead of solving them. Yet, there are several other NGOs that are genuinely concerned and involved in working with marginalized communities and highlighting their concerns and issues. However, by and large, even these NGOs are blind to Muslim issues. For most NGOs, the typical ‘target’ marginalized groups, to use a term popular in NGO jargon, are Dalits, Tribals and Women. Muslims, who, as several surveys have shown, are as marginalized as Dalits and Tribals, and who, unlike them, do not have the benefit of reservations and special government development schemes, do not generally figure in their scheme of things as a marginalized community. This needs to change.

The poor response of the NGO sector to the plight of the Muslim victims of the state-sponsored genocide in Gujarat and to the victims of the recent quake in Kashmir as well as numerous such instances points to a hidden, and rarely talked-about, anti-Muslim bias or indifference that characterizes many NGOs that see themselves as ‘secular’ and ‘progressive’. It is thus hardly surprising that while many Muslim groups and NGOs from different parts of the country were very actively involved in relief and rehabilitation efforts in Gujarat and the quake-affected parts of Kashmir, few other NGOs were conspicuous by their presence. It would be very instructive in this regard to do a survey of so-called ‘mainstream’ NGOs that are heavily funded, both by local as well as international sources, to work with marginalized groups. It will undoubtedly be found that they have hardly any Muslim employees and that very few of them are actually working among or with Muslims.

Admittedly, some NGOs, particularly since the last two decades with the alarming rise of the Hindu Right, are seeking to extend their work to Muslims as well. However, much of this effort is focused simply on communal harmony, which, while laudable, is not enough. Harmony cannot be had or sustained in the absence of social justice, and this calls for these NGOs to go beyond slogans of Hindu-Muslim unity to actually take up the bread-and-butter and daily survival issues and the issues of the economic, educational and social empowerment of Muslims and Muslim rights as well. The same logic applies to human rights groups, some of who, while having done laudable work in highlighting cases of human rights violations of Muslims by agencies of the state as well as Hindutva forces, have rarely taken up the issue of structural inequality and institutional discrimination that are at the basis of Muslim economic, social, educational and political marginalisation.

Of late, particularly since Sept. 2001, international funding, particularly American funding, including from American government sources, is said to have considerably increased for sponsoring a range of projects to do with Muslims, not just in India but in many other countries. A number of seminars and conferences on Muslim issues, again funded by these sources, have taken place in India and elsewhere. It is important to be aware of the underlying political agendas of some of these activities. The important question to ask here is how they are related to the political imperatives of their financers. Much international, particularly American, funding that is now available for anything to do with Islam or with Muslims has whetted the appetite of some NGOs who see this increased funding possibility as a virtual God-send. The point to be raised is whether these NGOs and the projects that they are devising on issues related to Islam and Muslims are actually engaged in any process of enabling Muslim empowerment and, if at all this is the case, whether the projects are really being implemented in a manner that justifies the huge expenditures involved. Foreign-funded programmes, especially if done in this project-mode, each project lasting for say a year or two, often do not really empower the community, but, rather, make it more dependent on and beholden to the NGOs and their foreign funders, both of whom have their own agendas. Some of this funding that is now coming in for projects for sundry Muslim causes does not, despite what they claim, actually empower the community as such to articulate their demands both on the state and wider society for their rights as citizens.

Take for instance, this case of an NGO that has got international funding for a project on Muslim women’s rights in the shariah. The project aims at critiquing the traditional ulama’s understanding of women’s rights, offering more gender progressive understanding of fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence. This, of course, is a welcome thing and can also, in a sense empower Muslim women, but the point to also note is that the way the project is framed is such as to turn attention solely on the internal causes of Muslim women’s marginalisation, deflecting attention from the structural and institutional discrimination that Muslims as a whole, including Muslim women, suffer, the wider structures and processes, such as privatisation and globalisation that have hit large numbers of the Muslim poor particularly badly, and the communalization of the state and the wider society that are reinforcing the marginalisation of Muslims, including Muslim women. So, in the narrow conception of gender justice that the programme conceives, the marginalisation of Muslim women comes to be seen as simply the result of allegedly misogynist male mullahs, while the larger economic and political processes and structures of oppression and discrimination operating at the macro-level are completely ignored. Thus, the whole debate comes to be framed as one between ‘progressive’ Muslim women versus the mullahs, while the complex economic and political forces reinforcing the marginalisation of large numbers of Muslims, including Muslim women, come to be completely invisibilised.

All this is as far as non-Muslim NGOs and social activist groups are concerned. As for the role of Muslim groups in highlighting Muslim issues and rights, here, too, there is room for much improvement. It appears that large sections of the Muslim political and religious elite display little or no concern for the daily issues of survival and empowerment of the Muslim masses, undoubtedly because this might threaten their own claims to authority and leadership. This explains, for instance, their reluctance to take up issues related to what can be termed as ‘internal minorities’, such as women or so-called ‘lower’ caste Muslims, who are among the most marginalised sections of Muslim society. Often, when their issues are raised it is condemned forcefully as an alleged anti-Islamic plot to divide the ummah, and the merits of the case, even if framed in ‘Islamic’ terms, are dismissed. While cases of anti-Muslim violence are regularly highlighted, the issue of structural injustice, such as the economic, social, educational marginalisation and plight of millions of Muslims, are rarely, if ever, raised. This is reflected in the demands of Muslim groups made on political parties before elections, these being largely cosmetic and identity-related or issues that concern only a small section of Muslim, mainly north Indian and Udu-speaking, elites, rather than concerning livelihood issues of the poor. These demands have included issues such as the Muslim character of the Aligarh Muslim University, the teaching of Urdu in government schools, the protection of Muslim Personal Law, reservations for Muslims in government services, declaring the birthday of the Prophet as a national holiday and so on. Last year, in Bangalore, a Muslim organization held a large meeting and the sole demand it put before the government was that the new airport being constructed near Bangalore be named after Tipu Sultan!

It is not that these issues, even if some of them are cosmetic and identity-related or concerning only a small class of Muslims, are all unimportant. Some of them are indeed crucial, but the fact of the matter is that focusing on these alone, as many Muslim political and religious groups do, leaves out the crucial social, economic, educational and political issues of under-representation and marginalisation of millions of so-called ‘ordinary’ Muslims. Besides the fact that ignoring these issues might serve the vested interests of certain Muslim organizations, it also reflects the tremendous hiatus that exists between these organizations and ‘ordinary’ Muslims. Many of these organizations are letter-head organizations, badly-run, functioning in a very ad-hoc and unprofessional manner. There is a lot that these and similar Muslim NGOs and groups working with Muslims at the grassroots can learn from non-Muslim organizations. One way could be to promote interaction and exchanges between such organizations and their personnel, so that both can learn from each other. This has not happened on the scale it should have. Many Muslim organizations have little or no contact with non-Muslim groups, even secular groups that are committed to Muslim concerns. At least in the case of some Muslim groups, there is the fear or suspicion of the other that operates at some level and to some degree that inhibits such interaction. Then there is the fact of different world-views, cultural capital and cultural inheritance and of the language barrier. There is also the fear of rejection or of not being treated with respect or sensitively or of interference or of ordinary Muslims being exposed to what are seen as un-Islamic influences by too close an interaction with other groups. Many Muslim groups working on Muslim social, economic and educational issues and rights as well as against state repression or Hindutva are characterized by adhocism, poor management, lack of funds, nepotism and absence of professionalism, and often are centred around a key founder leader. Working on common issues with other organizations is thus imperative for helping improve their own style of functioning.

On the non-Muslim side often even with well-meaning groups there are similar fears at work. There is definitely this fear, for the most part ungrounded, that working with Muslims is risky as it might provoke maulvis to react with protest and fatwas. Then there is this other notion, again baseless, that Muslims are so wedded to religion and religious education and to the ulama that working with them on issues of social, educational economic empowerment is a waste of effort. These fears on both sides can be cleared to a considerable degree only by promoting personal interaction, which has not happened on the scale it should.

Another issue that needs to be seriously addressed by Muslim groups working on issues related to Muslim rights and empowerment is that of the need to expand the present normative discourse through which Muslim issues are looked at. For many religious groups that claim to represent all Muslims, the myriad social and economic problems of the Muslims and the solutions to them are seen simply through a narrowly-defined religious lens. For some, these problems are a result, not of macro or structural processes or discrimination, but, rather, because of the alleged misdoings of Muslims themselves. Thus, it is argued that if Muslims are poor or if they suffer violence at the hands of others it is because they have strayed from the path of the faith, and hence are being subjected by God to punishment. The only solution to their various worldly woes, it is said, is by becoming ‘full’ Muslims, strictly abiding by the faith in their own lives. Then, it is said, God will be pleased with them and their problems might be automatically solved. Some groups come up with novel theories to explain or even to justify Muslim marginalisation and to obviate the necessity of any practical effort, besides preaching the faith, to solve the issue. This is reflected in the literature produced by many Muslim publishing houses in India, most of which is on normative Islamic rules and prescriptions. So, while you will find several books on the ‘Islamic Solution to Poverty’ and ‘The Islamic Notion of Human Rights’ and ‘Social Justice in Islam’ and so on, in hardly any Muslim bookshop will you find empirically-grounded studies of the actual, living conditions of Muslims in India.

Muslim publishing houses and Muslim organizations urgently need to expand the focus of Muslim literature from this normative-centredness to also including Muslim lived realities. Only then will we be able to properly understand the various dimensions of Muslim marginalisation, advocate their rights and articulate their demands before the state and civil society groups and offer realistic solutions. Muslim organizations as well as universities such as the Jamia Millia Islamia, the Aligarh Muslim University and the Jamia hamdard, can play a key role in commissioning empirical research on Muslim social realities, something that has not at all been done in any sort of planned way.

To cite a personal instance, I have just completed preparing a bibliography of writings on Muslim education in India, and I have to say that more than 80% of the writings that I managed to gather were either on the concept of education in Islam or on the history of Islamic education in classical Islamic civilization or hagiographies of Muslim educationists such as Syed Ahmad Khan and the founders of the Deoband school and relatively very little on actual existing contemporary Muslim education. I once asked the editor of a Muslim magazine, which regularly publishes articles on the notion of education in Islam, as to why his magazine has not carried a single piece on existing problems and conditions of Muslims in different parts of the country. His reply was: “If Muslims were to fully practice Islam then all our problems would be automatically solved, so what is the need for doing these field surveys and wasting time and money, when we know what the single solution is?�. Since this man is a deeply religious person the way he sees the solution to the problem is understandable, but my own limited reading of Islam suggests that mere preaching in the absence of practical effort to ameliorate a social ill really has no sanction in Islam.

Yet another issue that Muslim groups that seek to articulate the rights of Muslims need to also seriously ponder is that of exclusivism. Since Muslims in many parts of the country find themselves marginalized, beleaguered and under attack by Hindutva forces as well as faced with the indifference and sometimes even hostility of the state, as in Gujarat, this exclusivist concern simply with Muslim rights is, to a certain extent, understandable. However, if they wish to be taken seriously by the wider society, there is an urgent need for Muslim activists and groups to look beyond just Muslim-related rights issues and join hands with groups struggling for the rights of other similarly marginalized communities as well, such as Dalits and Adivasis, as well as with groups working on issues that affect the wider society, of which Muslims are also a part, such as say the anti-globalisation and anti-imperialist movement, the struggle against environmental destruction, the peace movement, etc.. In this way they will be seen as not simply concerned about themselves, which will make others take Muslim issues and concerns more seriously. It will also help remove the enormous misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam and Muslims, which, today, in the face of mounting Islamophobia, has emerged as a really major challenge. At the same time, if Muslim voices for promoting Muslim empowerment and rights are to be heard by others it is important for Muslim groups to also speak out against cases of rights violations of non-Muslims, such as, for instance, in Kashmir, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. This is very slow in happening and the fault lies on both sides.

To cite a personal instance, I was at the World Social Forum some years ago in Mumbai. While there were dozens of Indian Dalit, feminist, Adivasi, environmentalist and other such groups present at the venue with their own stalls, I saw only two Indian Muslim stalls�and both these were simply selling literature about Islam. Now, the World Social Forum was a wonderful occasion for Muslim groups to reach out to others, not just about Muslim-related issues but issues of common concern to all, but this was not the case. This reflects the fact of the lack of organized and professionally or efficiently-run social action groups among Muslims, particularly in north India, the overwhelming concern of many existing Muslim groups with normative theological issues while ignoring existing social reality, and the lack of any meaningful interaction between these groups and other, non-Muslim groups that might well be interested in also taking up Muslim concerns but who might not be necessarily interested in the normative or religiously-defined way in which these were presented.

Finally, a word about the media and about the state.

It is really crucial that Muslim groups reach out to the media to articulate their opinions and concerns about their rights. Unfortunately, in the current context of rapidly mounting Islamophobia large sections of the media, both Indian as well as international, seem to have a vested interest in presenting Muslims and Islam in a particular light, and pick on the most obscurantist and extremist elements and present them as representatives of the Muslims. Alternate voices are rarely, if ever, allowed to be heard. Yet, there are sensitive people in the media who do think it important for alternate Muslim voices to be heard. Muslim organizations working on Muslim rights need to adopt a proper media policy so as to reach out to these people and through them to the wider society. Likewise, there is also an urgent need for Muslims to devise effective lobbying mechanisms to pressurize various political parties and the state to take seriously their crucial economic, social and educational issues and violation of their rights by Hindutva forces and often by agencies of the state itself and to insist that they cannot remain content with the politics of tokenism or with simply focusing on cultural rights instead of also taking up issues related to economic and educational needs and rights as well. In order to have their voices heard by the media and political parties and the state it is important to present these demands in a form that stresses that obvious fact that the welfare of India as a whole is crucially linked to the welfare and security of the large section of Indian society that the Muslims comprise of.

To summarise, in order to articulate the rights of Muslims as citizens there is an urgent need:

1. For NGOs and human rights groups, as well as the state, to recognize Muslims as a marginalized community, similar to Dalits and Adivasis, and to work out policies and programmes accordingly.

2. For these organizations to move beyond simply promoting communal harmony to alsoinclude Muslim social, economic and educational empowerment on their agendas.

3. For Muslim NGOs and groups to be more professional in their functioning and to interact with non-Muslim secular and progressive groups so that both can learn from each other.

4. For Muslim religious and political elites and organizations to go beyond simply identity-related or narrowly-defined religious demands or demands that benefit only a small class to include the social, economic and educational needs of the vast majority of the Muslims, who are deprived according to every indicator.

5. For a recognition by Muslim groups of the particular concerns and problems of ‘internal minorities’, such as ‘low’ caste Muslims, women and sectarian minorities.

6. For expansion of the normatively-defined discourse in which Muslim issues are often projected to include existing empirical social realities of Muslims.

7. For Muslim organizations to engage in systematic research, documentation and publication on existing Muslim social realities.

8. For Muslim groups to work with non-Muslim groups on issues concerning not just Muslims alone but also other marginalized communities and on issues of general concern.

9. For a more effective media and lobbying policy on the part of Muslim groups to have their views represented in the media and be recognized and acted upon by political parties and the state.

Ayodhya's forgotten Muslim past

By Yoginder Sikand

The Ayodhya controversy continues to drag on, with no sign of any solution in sight. Hindutva ideologues insist that Ayodhya must be theirs alone. Reinventing tradition and myth, they claim that Ayodhya has always been Hindu, thus promoting it to the status of a Hindu Vatican. Yet, as critical historians have pointed out, this claim is completely unsubstantiated. In his slim yet insightful booklet, Communal History and Rama's Ayodhya, Professor Ram Sharan Sharma writes, "Ayodhya seems to have emerged as a place of religious pilgrimage in medieval times. Although chapter 85 of the Vishnu Smriti lists as many as fifty-two places of pilgrimage, including towns, lakes, rivers, mountains, etc., it does not include Ayodhya in this list." Sharma also notes that Tulsidas, who wrote the Ramcharitmanas in 1574 at Ayodhya, does not mention it as a place of pilgrimage.

Budhhists Ayodhya

Long before the emergence of the cult of Rama and of Ayodhya as a place of pilgrimage in the Brahminical tradition, the town is said to have been a major holy city for the Buddhists. As Buddhism was forcefully challenged by Brahminical revivalists in early medieval India, many Buddhist shrines were taken over and converted into Hindu temples. It is thus possible that Ayodhya, too, met with the same fate. This explains why some Buddhists today are demanding that they be treated as an interested party in the current dispute.

The Buddhist claim is not unfounded. According to Buddhist tradition, Ayodhya, then known as Saket or Kosala, was a major city in the kingdom of Shuddhodhana, father of the Buddha. The fifth century Chinese traveler Fa-Hsien visited Ayodhya and mentioned a tooth-stick of the Buddha in the town that grew to a length of seven cubits, which, despite being destroyed by the Brahmins, managed to grow again. Two centuries later, another Chinese Buddhist traveler, Hsuien Tsang, came to Ayodhya, where he noted some three thousand Buddhist monks, with only a small number of town's other inhabitants adhering to other faiths. At this time, Ayodhya had some one hundred Buddhist monasteries and ten large Buddhist temples. The Hindutva argument that Ayodhya has always been a Hindu holy city is, as this evidence clearly suggests, patently untenable.

In the Hindutva imagination, the relation between Muslims and Ayodhya is characterized by continuous large-scale destruction and bloodshed. Serious historians have forcefully challenged this image, and have pointed to the fact that the spread of Islam and the emergence of Muslim communities in the area owed principally not to violent invaders but, rather, to the missionary work of Sufi saints. Considerably before the emergence of Ayodhya as the centre of the cult of Rama, it appears that several Sufis had settled in the town and its vicinity. With their message of love and compassion, based on an ethical monotheism, they attracted a large number of followers, particularly among the "low" castes, victims of the Brahminical caste system. In other words, Ayodhya's association with Islam and Muslims dates to a period much before the construction of the Babri Masjid in the sixteenth century.

khurd Makkah

As many local Muslims themselves believe, Ayodhya is a particularly blessed town. They consider it to be the khurd makkah or the "small Mecca" because of the large number of Muslim holy personages who are believed to be buried therein. These include, or so local tradition has it, two prophets, Sheesh, son of Adam, and Noah, or Nuh. In addition, there are said to be more than eighty Sufi shrines or dargahs in Ayodhya. Interestingly, most of these shrines attract both Muslim as well as Hindu devotees.

A number of Sufis made Ayodhya their centre for spiritual teaching and instruction from as early as the twelfth century. One of the first of these was one Qazi Qidwatuddin Awadhi, who came to Ayodhya from Central Asia. He is said to have been a disciple of Usman Haruni, the spiritual preceptor of India's most famous Sufi saint, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. Another great Muslim mystic of Ayodhya of pre-Mughal times was Shaikh Jamal Gujjari, of the Firdaussiya Sufi silsilah. According to a popular local story, the Shaikh would regularly go out of his house carrying a large pot of rice on his head, as the men of the Gujjar milkmen caste did, which he would distribute among the poor and the destitute of Ayodhya. This is how he earned the title of "Gujjari". His spiritual preceptor, Musa Ashiqan, who also lies buried in Ayodhya, would liken his distributing food among the poor to sharing the love of God with all mankind.

Ayodhya also seems to have been home to a number of spiritual successors of the renowned fourteenth century Sufi of Delhi, Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya. The most important of these was the famous Sufi Shaikh Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dilli, who lies buried in what is today New Delhi. Shaikh Nasiruddin was born in Ayodhya, where he learnt the Qur'an from one Shaikh Shamsuddin Yahya Awadhi. At the age of forty, he left Ayodhya for Delhi to live with Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya. Yet, he would often return to Ayodhya to visit his relatives and make disciples who, in turn, emerged as great Sufis themselves. These included people such as Shaikh Zainuddin Ali Awadhi, Shaikh Fatehullah Awadhi and Allama Kamaluddin Awadhi. Other khulafa or spiritual deputies of Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya from Ayodhya included Shaikh Jamaluddin Awadhi, Qazi Muhiuddin Kashani, Maulana Qawamuddin Awadhi and Shaikh Alauddin Nilli.

Ayodhya is also home to the shrine of a female Sufi saint, Badi Bua or Badi Bibi, sister of Shaikh Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dilli. She is said to have been particularly beautiful, because of which many men offered to marry her. She, however, remained single throughout her life, having devoted herself to serving God and the poor. When she was asked why she refused to marry she would answer, "I only love God and nothing else". She is said to have been greatly troubled by the local mullahs, perhaps because of her refusal to marry. One day, so the story goes, the mullahs of the town appeared before her, insisting that if she were really a pious Muslim she should follow in the path of the Prophet Muhammad and get married. To this she replied that she indeed did follow in the path of the Prophet, and offered to get married but laid down the condition that her husband must be a truly pious man.

The Kotwal, the chief police officer of the town, dispatched a messenger to her asking for her hand in marriage. Badi Bua declined to speak through a messenger and asked the Kotwal to come before her himself. The Kotwal willingly complied. When the Kotwal appeared before her, Badi Bua asked him why he wanted to marry her. His reply was that he was in love with her eyes. Without a momen's hesitation, so the story goes, she plucked out her eyes and gave them to the Kotwal. The shocked Kotwal, realizing that Badi Bua was no ordinary woman but a true devotee of God, repented at once and begged her for mercy.

Stories of these and other Sufis of the town are today almost completely forgotten, for there are now hardly any Muslims left, almost all of Ayodhya's Muslim families having fled in the wake of the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992. However, visible signs of centuries' old Muslim presence continue to dot the town-crumbling minarets of ancient mosques, neglected graveyards rapidly slipping under a dense cover of weeds, broken walls of what must have once been grand Sufi lodges. Some of these structures came down along with the Babri Mosque, vandalized by bloodthirsty Hindutva mobs more than a decade ago. In the violence that followed even hallowed Sufi shrines, such as the dargahs of Shah Muhammad Ibrahim, Bijli Shah Shahid, Makhdum Shah Fatehullah, Sayyed Shah Muqaddas Quddus-i-Ruh and the Teen Darvesh, were attacked.

Today, some Sufi shrines still survive in Ayodhya, continuing to be visited by local devotees in search of solace. Strikingly, and despite the almost total takeover of the town by votaries of Hindutva, several of them are carefully tended to by local Hindus, particularly "low" castes, a silent reminder of a past now rapidly being forgotten and one that perhaps can never be relived again.

Being Muslim in India Today: Some Reflections

By Yoginder Sikand

Communal prejudices, already deeply-rooted in the minds of most Indians, have been further reinforced owing to a series of events and developments in recent years, both at home and abroad. These prejudices are almost universal in India, and the state has never seriously sought to counter them except by pious proclamations of ‘Hindu-Muslim Unity’, ‘Respect for All Religions’ and so on. Being thus left largely unchallenged, these prejudices, actively promoted by various right-wing, conservative and traditionalist religious groups, have succeeded in preventing the emergence of a truly secular society.

Anti-Muslim prejudice and what is now called ‘Islamophobia’ are not a new phenomena, but these have received a tremendous boost in recent years. The attacks of 9/11, the blasts in Benaras, Delhi and Mumbai and the continuing conflict in Kashmir have further fuelled the flames of hatred and prejudice against Muslims among many Hindus, so much so that the claim that Islam preaches terrorism, hatred for other religions and their adherents, misogyny, disloyalty to states where Muslims are not a majority or the ruling community and so on, actively propagated by Hindutva forces, has become an integral part of the social ‘common sense’ of a vast number of non-Muslim Indians. This has been facilitated by ever-expanding media networks, few of which are controlled by Muslims, and many of which have clear Hindutva affiliations. The US-led ‘war on terror’ is only further exacerbating this, with Hindutva forces and large sections of the Hindu-owned Indian media lending support to what many Muslims see is an all-out war directed against Islam and Muslims in general.

The recent series of violent attacks have been used to tar all Muslims with the same brush, as essentially terrorists or potential terrorists. In the case of some of these attacks the actual perpetrators remain unknown but they are somehow automatically assumed by the non-Muslim media to have been the handiwork of Muslims. In the case of certain violent attacks where certain Muslims were indeed responsible, the underlying causes for growing resentment among Muslims, a host of economic and political factors, are ignored, and Islam itself comes to be projected as the underlying reason. Thus, for instance, supposing the recent Mumbai blasts were indeed the handiwork of a group of Muslims (a claim made by the media but not as yet fully ascertained), the fact that the slaughter of some three thousand innocent Muslims in Gujarat in a state-organised pogrom might have something to do with the anger that motivated the perpetrators has been totally ignored. Rather, most newspapers claim, it is simply the expression of an uncontrollable and blind rage, of irrepressible intolerance and hatred of non-Muslims that, they argue, Islam allegedly preaches. No such attribution to Hinduism was made, of course, when Hindu mobs embarked on that bloody slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat or in the case of innumerable cases of such violence prior to the Gujarat genocide, in which the principal victims were Muslims. Likewise, the killings of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, Koreans, Vietnamese and so on by American forces has never been attributed by the media to Christianity. One wonders why Muslims must be singled out as an exception in this regard.

What of the rich contributions of Muslims to the country’s composite culture? In large measure, this is now given mere lip-sympathy to, being ‘mummified’ and confined to museums and mushairas, and presented as a sort of exotic add-on to what is presented as ‘Indian culture’, which is defined in essentially Brahminical Hindu terms. But if Hindutva leaders were to have their way, even this ritual recognition would cease, and the cultural contributions of the Indian Muslims would either be destroyed or else appropriated and presented as actually ‘Hindu’, in the same way as, for instance, the Dravidian gods, Buddha, Kabir and Nanak later came to be heralded as ‘Hindu’ in order to negate their challenge to the Brahminical system. A classic case of Hindutva denial of the Muslim contribution to India’s culture relates to the Taj Mahal, with Hindutva ideologues now insisting that it was actually ‘Tejo Mahalya’, a supposedly Rajput Hindu palace, and that Delhi’s famed Mughal Red Fort was, in fact, the Hindu ‘Lal Kot’.

The most effective means to dissolve communal prejudices is through close personal interaction between people of different communities, in the course of which people begin to discover their common humanity, transcending narrow religious barriers. Although such interaction does take place between many Hindus and Muslims, in some communally-mixed workplaces and schools, scope for this is contracting. Muslims are being forced, through compulsion, fear, the need for security, poverty and mounting anti-Muslim prejudice, to move into their own neglected and squalid ghettos, obviously much to the satisfaction of communal forces, both Hindu and Muslim, who thrive on such geographical, in addition to religious, separation.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have a vital role to play in bringing together people of different communities to work on issues of common concern, such as economic and educational development and empowerment, and in the process, promoting inter-community interaction and countering communal stereotypes. One would have thought that in the face of growing anti-Muslim feelings in the country NGOs would have taken up this issue with the seriousness that it deserves. This, however, has not happened on a significant scale, for several reasons. In north India especially, Muslims have few such organizations and most of them work for Muslims alone. Further, most Muslim NGOs are religious charities devoted to Islamic education. This is both a result as well as a cause of the influence of the ulama, who, given the miniscule Muslim middle class, are able to present themselves as authoritative spokesmen of the entire Muslim community. And, given the insular sort of training that they receive, the ulama and the NGOs that they run are not best equipped to promote better relations with others. On the other hand, relatively few non-Muslim NGOs work with Muslims as a community, Muslims typically not being seen by these groups as a marginalized group in the same way as as Dalits or Adiviasis are, although the living conditions of most Muslims are almost as pathetic as theirs. The work of many of the few non-Muslim NGOs that are engaged with Muslims as a community is often limited simply to promoting communal harmony, ignoring, unconsciously or otherwise, the crucial issue of Muslim economic and educational empowerment, the lack of which is responsible, in part, for sustaining the authority of conservative religious groups among sections of the Muslim community, which, in turn, further strengthens negative stereotypes about Muslims.

The implications for mounting anti-Muslim sentiments for India as a whole, and not just for Muslims alone, are frightening, to say the least. Conservative ‘upper’ caste Hindu forces are actively fanning these prejudices among marginalized ‘lower’ castes so as to use them as foot-soldiers in organized anti-Muslim pogroms. Consequently, these marginalized castes are being subtly co-opted, their attention being turned from their real oppressors onto the imaginary and carefully constructed ‘menacing other’ in the form of Muslims. The dangerous consequences that this has for the struggles of Dalit, Adivasis and Other Backward Castes for their rights and empowerment are enormous. As the ‘Muslim question’ comes to dominate media discourses, the continued oppression of the ‘low’ castes, the social and economic mounting inequalities in the country, the ruling classes’ nexus with imperialist forces and so on, are all being deliberately displaced from public consciousness. And as anti-Muslim hatred is being so actively fanned at the same time as India is being sold to Western multinational corporations, Hindutva forces, who never tire of proclaiming themselves as super-patriots, appear least concerned about the prospects of civil war and continuous bloodshed that their actions are designed to promote.

That said, the general Muslim response to mounting Islamophobia has met with little success. Muslims are now forced on the defensive and somehow feel forced to prove their patriotism. Islam does not preach terrorism, Muslim leaders now tirelessly argue, but since Muslim organizations have few links with the non-Muslim media, and because large sections of this media have no interest in countering negative stereotypes about Muslims, these claims generally fall on deaf ears. The Urdu media, where these voices are mainly articulated, is read almost entirely by Muslims alone, and so non-Muslims are left unaware of Muslims seeking to clear Muslims of charges of ‘terrorism’. Muslim organisations lack a proper media policy, being run almost entirely by conservative ulama, whose knowledge of the complexities of the real world, including the media, is limited, to say the least. The ulama’s insistence that Muslims, by definition, cannot be terrorists because the Quran lays down that to take the life of an innocent is like slaying the whole of humanity has few non-Muslim takers, for non-Muslims have plenty of groups to point to, in South Asia and elsewhere, who define themselves as ‘Islamic’ and who seek to justify their actions in the name of Islam. Middle class Muslims, who might have played the role of countering anti-Islamic media discourses more effectively because of their different cultural capital, are, by and large, silent, content with their quest for material comfort, having little or no organic links with the community at large.

For the general masses of the Muslims, mostly of ‘low’ caste background, mired in desperate poverty and illiteracy, the mounting wave of Islamophobia, occasioned, in part, by the actions of self-styled champions of Islam, has meant even less hope for their myriad social and economic problems to be addressed. The media insists that Muslims themselves are responsible for their plight and that the main cause of their ‘backwardness’ is not, as the case really is, the macro-structures of heavily unequal distribution of and access to resources and assets, further skewed by economic ‘liberalisation’ and ‘globalisation’. Instead, it is argued, the fundamental causes of Muslim ‘backwardness’ are what are labeled as ‘medieval madrasas’ ‘obscurantist mullahs’ and radical Islamists. Hence, it is asserted, Muslim ‘backwardness’ does not require active state intervention, but, instead, can be ‘cured’ only if the ulama and their madrasas are ‘reformed’ and if Muslims take on the Islamists. In this way, both the cause of and the solution to Muslim ‘backwardness’ are sought by the media to be firmly located internally, within the Muslim community, as if state policies, international factors and anti-Muslim discrimination have nothing to do with this. This argument, tagged on to the growing indifference to the marginalisation of the Muslim masses promoted by mounting anti-Muslim propaganda in India and in the West, has made it increasingly difficult for Indian Muslims to press their claims on the state for economic, educational and political empowerment.

To add to this is the fact that as anti-Muslim feelings grow, conservative Muslim religious forces, too, receive a shot in the arm as a reaction, presenting themselves as saviours of Islam and representatives of all Muslims. And so the vicious circle of competing brands of religious conservatism and fundamentalism feeding on each other gets continually reinforced.

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The author works with the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

[photos: Bhopal Masjid by Umberta Croce; Tajmahal by Capt Suresh Sharma]

Combining the "secular" and the "religious": Madrasas with a difference

By Yoginder Sikand

Muslims are often accused of being fiercely opposed to modern education, being allegedly in the grips of a vicious set of clerics who are said to have a vested interest in keeping the community illiterate and backward. The Indian press regularly carries sensational stories describing generally obscure and unknown maulvis railing against modern education. In this way the educational backwardness of Muslims is recognized, but the blame for it is conveniently put entirely on the Muslims themselves, and their detractors conveniently absolve themselves of any complicity in the matter. It is as if discrimination in recruiting Muslims to government jobs had absolutely nothing to do with the lack of enthusiasm among many Muslims for higher education. Or, for that matter, that the Hinduisation of the state sponsored education has no bearing at all on Muslim interest in such education. This discourse on Muslim "backwardness" completely ignores the fact that many Muslims are forced to send their children to madrasas not because they want to but because for want of any other affordable alternative, owing to widespread poverty. Further, the denial that Muslims could at all possibly aspire to modern education completely ignores the creative efforts of numerous Muslims, including even some traditionally-trained maulvis, in evolving forms of suitably modernised and, at the same time, culturally appropriate, Islamic education in India today.

In recent years, Muslims have increasingly begun to recognize the need for modern education. One form that this urge for modern education has taken are the numerous schools set up by Muslims in various parts of the country that seek to combine religious with secular education. Questioning the dualism that has come to be developed between "religious" and "worldly" knowledge these institutions are driven by a vision that sees both forms of knowledge as Islamically valid and necessary.

A good illustration of this sort of institution is the Jamiat ul-Falah, located at Bilariyaganj, near the town of Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh. It is associated with thew Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. It is one of the largest and better-organized madrasas in India, with an estimated 5000 students on its rolls, including some 2700 girls, who study in a separate wing. It has more than 120 teachers, several of whom are graduates of the madrasa and have also been educated in various universities for higher education in a range of disciplines. Till the junior high school level it uses the government-prescribed syllabus and textbooks prepared by the National Council for Educational Research and Training, supplemented with selected books of its own choice. Thereafter, students do a seven-year specialized course in Islamic studies and Arabic, with English, geography, history, comparative religions, political science and sociology as additional subjects. The school also offers a two-year diploma course in Hindi. It has recently started a computer section, and computers are now a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Falah thus claims to provide a broad-based education, devised in such a way that its students receive a general grounding in both religious as well as modern subjects. This enables them to choose, once they graduate, either to go on to regular universities or else to pursue further Islamic education. Falah's degrees are now recognized by a growing number of universities in India and in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and this has opened up for them new job opportunities not available to products of traditional madrasas. Today, a growing number of Falah students, or "Falahis" as they are called, work as lecturers in colleges, journalists, translators, and as employees in business firms and Islamic institutions in India and in the Arab world. It is estimated that more than half of the students who pass the 'alimiyat or basic religious studies examination at Falah go on to take admission in regular universities, with less than a third staying on to complete the fazilat or higher-level religious studies course.

In contrast to many smaller madrasas, Falah provides its students with facilities for a range of extra-curricular activities. It has a large sports field, and students are encouraged to play a variety of games after school hours. The Jamiat ul-Tulaba, Falah's students' organization, organizes regular debates and essay competitions and brings out a college magazine containing articles written by the students themselves. The madrasa arranges for professors from universities to lecture to the students occasionally on subjects of contemporary concern. Falah boasts of a library containing over 20,000 volumes, housed in a new three-storeyed building, which also houses a well-equipped computer centre, a large seminar hall and several reading rooms.

Similar educational experiments inspired by the Jamaat-e-Islami have come up in various other parts of India. In Kerala there are estimated to be some 40 high schools associated with the Jamaat, where students train for the 'alim course and simultaneously prepare for a bachelor's degree from a state university. Likewise, in other states a number of regular schools, such as the Zikra High School in Hyderabad, the Millat High School, in Jalgaon, the Iqra School in Aurangabad and the Milli Model School in New Delhi, have been set up in recent years by members or activists of the Jamaat. Some of these are English-medium schools and use the regular government syllabus, with extra classes for Islamic Studies.

By seeking to thus harmonise religious and secular knowledge, schools such as these are playing a key role in promoting culturally more acceptable forms of education among some sections of the Muslim community. As these experiments show, not all or even most, maulvis are bitter opponents of modern education. Rather than being wrongly vilified as unrepentant conservative, their role in Muslim education needs to be recognized and possibilities of well-meaning non-Muslim organizations as well as the state in working with them for addressing the issue of Muslim educational marginalisation need to be explored.

For India and Islam: Maulana Azad's Vision of Religious Pluralism

For India and Islam: Maulana Azad's Vision of Religious Pluralism

Yoginder Sikand

More than fifty years after "ndependence, India is still struggling hard to come to terms with religious plurality. It is here that the example of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, one of the leading lights of the freedom movement, and one whose legacy is today little known, is particularly valuable. What is especially instructive about Azad's life was his firm faith in Islam as well as his passionate commitment to communal harmony and a secular state. In this he provided a firm rebuttal to both Hindu as well as Muslim communalists who believed that commitment to one's religion by definition meant unrelenting hostility to other faiths and their adherents.

As his title suggests, Azad was trained as a Maulana, an orthodox scholar of Islamic law and religion. Like many of his age, Azad's Islamic spirituality was deeply imbued a broadminded Sufi mysticism that was firmly rooted in Islamic tradition and, at the same time, comfortable with religious plurality. In some of Azad's writings one can even discern a celebration of religious diversity. The most striking instance of this is an essay that he wrote in 1910 on the famous Sufi, Sarmad Shahid, who was executed by Aurangzeb after being charged with heresy. Sarmad actually had a male Hindu admirer, Abhay Chand, and for his love for Abhay Chand was but an expression of his deep love for God.

Azad terms this relationship between the Muslim mystic and the Hindu man a manifestation of divine love, adding that through this Sarmad was able to reach the realm of truth which is far beyond what Azad described as empty debates on "belief" and "disbelief". Azad's faith in the essential oneness of humankind and of all religions stemmed essentially from the Sufi concept of wahdat-al-wujud or "The Unity of Existence". According to concept, the light of God is present everywhere and all of creation is His manifestation. As Azad so beautifully put it in his address to the Khilafat Congress in 1920, "Truth is one and the same everywhere, but it has various guises". The fatal mistake that human beings had made, however, Azad added, was that they had equated particular external forms this one Truth with the Truth itself, thus leading to endless religious quarrels.

In Azad's own words: "The misfortune is that the world worships mere terms and not their inner meaning". "Thus", he says, "though all may worship the same Truth, they will fight with each other on account of differences of the terms that they employ. If the veils of these externals and terms can be lifted so that Truth and Reality come before all unveiled, then, at once, all quarrels of this world will end, and all who quarrel will see that what all seek is one and the same".

Azad's commitment to the oneness of religion was itself deeply rooted in his own understanding of the Quran. The Quran mentions that God has sent prophets to every nation (qaum) without exception and that all of them, from Adam, the first, to Muhammad, the last, have taught the same religion "the Surrender (to God)" or al-Islam in Arabic. The difference in the message of these various prophets was in the externals or laws and rituals associated with this one religion or deen. The core of their message however, was one and the same-surrender to God and the performance of good deeds. As Azad put it in his commentary of the Quran, the Tarjuman-al Quran: "The Quran states that the difference which exist between one religion and another are not differences in deen, the basic spirit of religion, but simply in its outward form". In a celebrated work of his entitled Ghubar-i- Khatir, Azad drew close parallels between these Sufi concepts and the idea of pantheism of as expounded in the Hindu philosophic scriptures, the Upanishads. If, at root, all religions reflected the same message, then, for Azad, there was no room in Islam for religious hatred and prejudice. As he wrote in his journal al- Hilal in 1913:

"Islam does not commend narrow-mindedness and racial and religious prejudice. It does not make the recognition of merit and virtue of human benevolence, mercy and love dependent upon and subject to distinctions of race and religion. Rather, Islam actually teaches us to respect every man who is good, whatever his religion, and to be drawn towards merits and virtues, whatever be the religion or race of the person who possesses them. If human beings were to be free of religious prejudice, then how much more would God Himself have to be above such failings?"

Azad believed that all human beings, irrespective of religion, were creatures of God. God, he said, was, above all, the, Sustainer (Rabb) of all people and He would reward them all for good deeds and not simply for belonging to one religious community or the other. Azad's Islamic universalism led him on to fiercely oppose both Muslim as well as Hindu communalism that saw no place for a genuinely religiously plural and democratic independent India. This made him into a vehement opponent of the Pakistan scheme put forward in 1940 by the Muslim League and encouraged by the Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu chauvinist elements within the Congress Party. For him, as he put it in a speech in 1946, the very idea of dividing territories into "Pak"(literally, “pure") and "Na-Pak" (impure') was itself un-Islamic. Indeed, as he saw it, Partition would undoubtedly bad for India but it would, actually, prove to be even worse for the Muslims themselves.

Azad believed that it was fanciful to imagine, as Muslim League leaders apparently did, that the mere fact of following the same religion could provide the base for a separate state for all Indian Muslims, mirroring the Hindu Mahsabha's demand for Hindu Rashtra. In his book, "India Wins Freedom", Azad went so far as to write that: "It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religion can unite areas which are geographically, economically, linguistically and culturally different". For him the example of the Prophet Muhammad was itself revealing in this regard. After shifting to Medina from Mecca, the Prophet had entered into a pact with the Jews of Medina, bringing them and the Muslims into one "nation" (ummat). Accordingly, Azad suggested that this itself showed that Islam allowed for Muslims and non-Muslims to live together in one country, and he used this to stress the need for a united India of Hindus, Muslims and others.

Azad's passionate pleas for religious harmony and a truly plural and democratic India, however, fell on deaf ears as India descended into a blood bath in 1947, instigated by Hindu and Muslim communal forces, including sections within Azad's own Congress Party itself, and actively encouraged by the British. More than fifty years on, the lessons of history are yet to be learnt. And while fierce battles continue to erupt in the name of religion, memories of Azad's life-long commitment to genuine religiosity and religious large-heartedness no longer receive even lip-sympathy.

Ghettoisation of Muslims in India: Trends and Consequences

Ghettoisation of Muslims in India: Trends and Consequences
Imran Ali and Yoginder Sikand

A major issue afflicting Muslims in some parts of India is that of enforced ghettoisation. Periodic anti-Muslim riots and pogroms, sometimes instigated by state authorities in league with fiercely anti-Muslim Hindutva groups, have forced Muslims in several places to shift to separate localities for safety. The most stark demonstration of this process is the case of Gujarat, where, in the wake of the anti-Muslim holocaust of 2002, Muslims were forced to flee to separate areas to save their lives. In such places migration has been forced, for that has been the only way for many Muslims to save their lives. In other cases, even in places where there have been no riots, many Muslims prefer to live in Muslim-majority localities for fear that anti-Muslim violence can break out at any time. Living in their own localities gives them a sense of security.

Many middle class Muslims, too, prefer living in such areas although the levels of infrastructural provision are poor and even though they can afford living in more ‘posh’, ‘upper’ caste Hindu-dominated areas. Often, ghettoisation is promoted by the fact that Hindu landlords simply refuse to rent out their houses to Muslim tenants.

Ghettoisation has crucial consequences for the economic and educational conditions of Muslims and for relations between the different communities. This fact emerges in a study on Indian Muslims in which these two authors are presently involved, and jointly undertaken by Action Aid and the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi.

As this survey discovered, typically, Muslim ghettos are deprived in terms of government provided infrastructure, possessing few good schools, roads, sewage facilities etc.. Ghettoisation also leads to a steep reduction of opportunities for social interaction between members of different communities and, consequently, to the strengthening of an insular mentality, because of which the community is not able to properly articulate its views and concerns before the wider public. It also strengthens the hold of conservative religious forces.

No study of Indian Muslim economic and educational conditions can ignore the impact of the process of ghettoisation that is evident particularly in urban areas today. For this purpose, the Action Aid-Indian Social Institute study took up the case of Delhi and Ahmedabad in order to examine patterns of shifting residence among Muslims. In Delhi, the Muslim-majority localities of Basti Hazrat Nizamuddin and Mehrauli were selected for sampling, while in Ahmedabad Juhapura, the city’s largest Muslim settlement, was selected. In Delhi 304 respondents were interviewed, and in Ahmedabad the figure was 243.

55.6% of the respondents interviewed in the above-mentioned localities of the two cities have been living in the area for less than 10 years. This indicates a high level of migration or ghettoisation in recent years. 15.4% of the respondents were staying in the area for the last 10-20 years and 17.2% for more than 20 years. 45.7% of the respondents had moved in from Hindu-dominated localities, and 22.3% from areas with a mixed Hindu-Muslim population. Only 13.2% responded that they have moved in from Muslim dominated areas. This clearly implies that fear and insecurity was the most important reason for their shifting of residence from one locality to another. 31.4% of the respondents answered that they had migrated in search of better livelihood options. On the other hand, 42% of the respondents answered that the reason for their migration to Muslim-dominated areas was fear of anti-Muslim violence or the fact thereof.

There are significant differences between Delhi and Ahmedabad in this regard, which owes to the fact of the state-sponsored anti-Muslim genocide in Gujarat in 2002, which resulted in the deaths of some 4000 Muslims and destruction of Muslim property on a massive scale. Prior to this, too, there have been several anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, including Ahmedabad, which had led to a process of Muslim ghettoisation some three decades ago. Thus, while 33.9% of the respondents in Delhi said that they were relatively new migrants, living in their present localities for between 0-10 years, the corresponding figure for Ahmedabad was 82.7%. This indicates the massive scale of enforced ghettoisation in Ahmedabad in recent years, a fact which holds true for almost all other towns in the state of Gujarat. While 26.3% of those interviewed in Delhi had been residing in their present locality for 11-20 years and 29.6% for over 20 years, the corresponding figures for Ahmedabad are 1.6% and 1.59% respectively.

While 14.8% of the respondents in Delhi said that they had migrated from Hindu-dominated localities, the corresponding figure in the case of Ahmedabad was 84.4%. 54.9% of the respondents in Delhi answered that they had migrated to the locality in search of better livelihood options, 6.9% for educating their children and 6.3% because of communal riots and insecurity. In Ahmedabad, on the other hand, the corresponding figures were 2.1%, 0% and 86.8%, indicating that anti-Muslim terror was the major factor in causing inter-locality migration in the city.

Migration and consequent ghettoisation seems to have had a particularly deleterious impact on the economic conditions of the respondents in Ahmedabad. Some 52% of the respondents in Ahmedabad said that their economic conditions had markedly declined after migration, and the corresponding figure for Delhi respondents was 5.3%. On the other hand, in Delhi 60.5% respondents said their living conditions had improved after migration, and the figure for Ahmedabad was just 7.4%. Respondents were asked if they go out of their area of residence, particularly to those inhabited by Hindus, in search of employment. 77.7% responded in the affirmative, and only 16.6% reported in the negative.

A large number of Ahmedabad respondents said that while before their migration that had frequent and fairly cordial relations with non-Muslims, this had markedly declined after migration. 68.1% of Delhi respondents said they had friendly relations with Hindus, and the figure for Ahmedabad residents was only 2.9%. Many Ahmedabad respondents said that they feared and suspected Hindus, this being a result of the recent anti-Muslim pogrom and the enormous clout of Hindutva fascist groups in Gujarat. They also said that the infrastructural conditions in their new localities are far poorer than in the areas where they previously lived, attributing this to anti-Muslim discrimination on the part of government authorities.

Ghettoisation of Muslims appears to have an extremely deleterious impact on their overall economic and educational conditions. 32.5% of the children of the respondents were not attending any school. Of those children who were going to school, 6.0% were attending Urdu-medium schools, 17.7% English-medium schools, 15.4% Hindi-medium schools, and only 5.1% were enrolled in madrasas. Only 15.7% of the respondents said that religious instruction was being imparted in the schools in which their children were enrolled. A majority of the children were going to government schools, and the proportion of those in private schools was only 27.8%, indicating the high levels of poverty among the respondents. From these figures it emerges that the majority of parents in these localities prefer to send their children to regular ‘mainstream’ schools rather than to madrasas and Urdu-medium schools, contrary to widely-held notions as often depicted in the media.

Almost a fourth of the respondents were unskilled labourers. 39.1% of the respondents interviewed reported an annual income of Rs.10,000 or less. Only 5.5% of the respondents claimed an annual income of Rs. 60,000 and above. Despite the overall poverty and deprivation of most of the respondents, a significant 36.9% of them claimed that their economic conditions had improved somewhat after migration. On the other hand, 25.8% stated that their economic conditions were better before their migration, while 14.3% of the respondents felt that there had been no change in their economic conditions after migration.

In a religiously plural society, inter-community interaction at the personal as well as economic level are of utmost importance in preserving communal harmony and peace. Obviously, therefore, the trend towards increasing ghettoisation of Muslims in several places is a disturbing phenomenon that needs to be seriously and urgently addressed.

Indian Muslims and the "mainstream" media

By Yoginder Sikand

A complaint oft-heard in Muslim circles is that the ‘mainstream’ Indian media has a vested interest in painting Muslims in a particular light, tarring them all with the same brush�as unrepentant obscurantists, fanatically wedded to violence, vociferously opposed to ‘modernity and so on. Some Muslims even argue that the ‘mainstream’ media is wholly anti-Muslim and is engaged in a grand conspiracy to defame Islam, being allegedly in league with a host of ‘enemies of Islam’, such as the ‘West’ and Zionist forces.

Although this tendency to generalize about the media is disconcerting, there is no denying that there is some merit in the basic argument about bias against Muslims in large sections of the ‘mainstream’ Indian media. This media is owned and controlled largely by ‘upper’ caste, middle-class Hindus. The vast majority of the editors and staff of ‘mainstream’ Indian newspapers and media houses are of this caste-class background. This obviously shapes the way in which they look at and project Muslims as well as other non-‘upper’ caste Hindu communities. This fact about the caste/class background and interests of those who control the ‘mainstream’ Indian media is basic to understanding why it is that Muslims, as well as other marginalized communities, such as Adivasis, Dalits and Other Backward Classes, who together form the overwhelming majority of the Indian population, are often ignored or stigmatized in large sections of the ‘mainstream’ media. Negative portrayals of Muslims in the ‘mainstream’ media reflect, to a large extent, the widely-held assumption that Indian nationalism is somehow synonymous with Brahminical Hinduism, the bedrock of the world-view of the ‘upper’ castes. And today, with the Indian ruling classes, largely ‘upper’ caste Hindu in composition, slavishly toeing the American line, it is hardly surprising that the tendency to stigmatise Muslims and generalise about them has been given a new, powerful impetus by the ‘mainstream’ media.

One striking aspect of much Indian ‘mainstream’ media reporting about Muslims is an obsession with sensational events that are inevitably used to project Muslims in a particularly negative light, as a community marked out by a certain exceptionalism. This notion of Muslim exceptionalism is used as a means to reinforce the notion of the non-Muslim, particularly the ‘upper’ caste Hindu, as representing the norm or normality, any departure from which is seen as evidence of deviance or difference. Muslims are reported about in the ‘mainstream’ media almost entirely in the context of some controversy or violent incident. It is as if Muslims are considered ‘newsworthy’ only if involved in some tragic and horror-filled event, generally as perpetrators of violence, but sometimes (as in the case of some English media reporting of the state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 in Gujarat) as victims. A content analysis of ‘mainstream’ Indian media reporting about Muslims would reveal its obsession with such sensational incidents as fatwas issued by arch-conservative maulvis, Muslim women being divorced at will by hard-hearted, sternly patriarchal husbands, Muslims refusing to sing the ‘national song’, Muslim involvement in incidents of murder and mayhem and so on. Moderate or progressive Muslim voices are sometimes highlighted in the ‘mainstream’ media but generally only in the context of such controversial events.

The obsession of the ‘mainstream’ media with instances of Muslim ‘sensationalism’ forces Muslim organisations to spend their energies in seeking to clear themselves of the charges of ‘obscurantism’, ‘anti-nationalism’, ‘terrorism’ and so on that are constantly hurled at them, leaving them little space or energy to focus on constructive work of internal reform. A good illustration of this is the recent ruckus over the Vande Mataram song. The selling of India to multinational corporations, the relentless Western cultural invasion of India that dominant Hindu elites, who claim to be ultra-nationalist Indians, are now so enthusiastically embracing, the irrepressible and pervasive urge among India’s largely Hindu middle-class to flee India and settle in America and so on�all unambiguous expressions of anti-nationalism and self-loathing�do not qualify as ‘lack of patriotism’ for the ‘mainstream’ media, but the refusal by some Muslims (and Sikhs as well) to sing a song that is clearly Brahminical Hindu in ethos and inspiration and that forms part of a novel that is vociferously anti-Muslim in its tone and thrust is made to appear as the height of treason. And so, some weeks ago the ‘mainstream’ media was awash with stories about Muslims singing or not singing the Vande Mataram, as if it was the most pressing issue that India was confronted with, and as if patriotism could be had for a song. Thanks to the controversy stoked by the media, Muslim organizations were forced to react, issuing a flurry of statements on the subject, thus further strengthening the image of Muslims as the unwanted exception and reinforcing the unfortunate predicament that Muslims are faced with of being constantly forced to defend themselves and prove their patriotism.

Through this media obsession with instances of ‘Muslim sensationalism’, Muslims are projected as a ‘problem’ in the popular imagination. Positive stories about Muslims are hard to come by in the ‘mainstream’ media, thus further reinforcing the tendency to see Muslims in negative terms. The very real social, economic, educational and political marginalisation of Muslims as a community and the pathetic conditions in which the vast majority of the Indian Muslims live are almost never commented about in the ‘mainstream’ Indian media. By focusing on isolated, sensational events, it is sought to be suggested that Muslims themselves, particularly ‘obscurantist’ maulvis, are responsible for all their manifold problems, and that the state, the wider society and the structures of caste, class and institutional inequality and discrimination have nothing to do with these whatsoever.

In ‘mainstream’ media discourses about Muslims, it is often the case that the most conservative maulvis are projected as representatives of the entire Muslim community. This, of course, is precisely how these maulvis see themselves and would like others to see them. Being thrust by the media and by their own ambitions as the leaders of all Muslims, their views, often reactionary, come to be presented as that of Muslims as a whole. This further reinforces the tendency to portray Muslims in negative terms, as irredeemable obscurantists. This ‘media-maulvi nexus’ works to marginalize alternate Muslim voices, such as those of Muslim social activists and intellectuals working for reforms that sometimes influential sections of the ulama oppose since they threaten to undermine their authority or challenge their understandings of religion. The voices of ‘ordinary’ Muslims, desperately poor, living in squalid ghettoes, ignored by the state and the wider society, for whom the struggle for sheer survival is more pressing than the ulama’s never-ceasing debates about the intricacies of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, also almost never get reflected in the ‘mainstream’ media. Just as large sections of the ulama would wish it, the ‘mainstream’ media appears to be complicit in seeking to set the framework of discourse about Muslims in solely religious terms.

With the ‘mainstream’ media taking isolated Islamist ideologues or conservative ulama as somehow ‘authentic’ spokesmen of Islam and of Muslims in general, counter-voices that struggle to be heard in the great Muslim debate are often marginalized and silenced in media discourses about Muslims. These voices are sometimes represented in the Urdu press, but few ‘mainstream’ papers ever report on the happenings in the Urdu media, which has been reduced to the status of a marginalized and ignored Muslim ghetto. Some non-Urdu papers have a weekly section that summarises ongoing debates in the Urdu press, but these hardly do justice to the range of issues that are passionately debated by Muslims writing in Urdu papers.

A good illustration of the indifference of large sections of the ‘mainstream’ media to alternate Muslim voices and concerns that are articulated in the Urdu media is the coverage of the recent deadly blasts in Mumbai and Malegaon. The Urdu press was replete with reports of Muslim leaders and organizations denouncing the Mumbai blasts and insisting that, supposing the blasts had indeed been engineered by some Muslims, such acts of terror have no legitimacy in Islam. Yet, these voices were hardly heard in the ‘mainstream’ press. Likewise in the case of the blasts in Malegaon last week outside a mosque that killed more than three dozen people, almost all Muslims. While the ‘mainstream’ media seemed to automatically assume that the Mumbai blasts were the handiwork of radical Islamists, few ‘mainstream’ papers seriously argued that the Malegaon blasts could well have been engineered by a radical Hindutva group, which is what the Urdu media insists, a thesis that seems quite plausible. Instead, some ‘mainstream’ papers came up with the theory that the blasts may have been the handiwork of a radical Islamist outfit or the Pakistani ISI, thus seeking, in the absence of any confirmed evidence, to reinforce the notion of Muslim culpability and Hindu innocence. Such a skewed approach points to the desperate need for ‘mainstream’ media coverage of such sensitive and vital issues that involve Muslims to be much more nuanced than it presently is, and for a more diverse range of Muslim voices, such as those reflected in the Urdu press, to be represented and highlighted.

It is not just the ‘mainstream’ media that is to blame, however. Influential sections of the Urdu media are just as sensationalist as the ‘mainstream’ press, operating within a framework defined by a narrow understanding of religion and Muslim community interests. Communalism is just as rife in the Urdu press as it is in the Hindi press or, sometimes in more subtle ways, in the English media. The need for Muslims to introspect and to stop blaming others for all their ills is echoed only faintly in large sections of the Urdu media. Instead, there is a marked tendency in much of the Urdu media to blame all Muslim ills on what are routinely described as ‘enemies of Islam’ and to ignore cases of non-Muslim suffering, whether at the hands of Muslims or others. Many Urdu papers and magazines are controlled or staffed by conservative maulvis and madrasa graduates who have little knowledge of the complexities of the contemporary world, viewing the world through a narrow religious lens. Most of the scores of Muslim publishing houses in India specialize simply in Islamic texts, and hardly any of them produce literature on Muslim social, educational, political and economic conditions or on general issues that concern people irrespective of religion. Likewise, most Muslim-owned magazines, notable exceptions apart, deal almost wholly with religious issues or with issues that relate simply to Muslims alone and almost all their readers are Muslims. The new Muslim-owned television channels that have been launched in India in recent years are no different, concerned simply with Islam and Islamic instruction alone. Like most Muslim publishing houses and magazines, they cater to an almost entirely Muslim audience. This narrow focus on Muslim and Islamic concerns thus makes it difficult for any real dialogue with the non-Muslim media to take place. For their part, organizations run by Muslims, too, mainly focus on Muslim religious and communitarian concerns. By and large, they lack any effective media policy and have made few serious efforts to seriously dialogue with the non-Muslim media. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that their views and concerns are not represented or reflected in ‘mainstream’ media discourses about Muslims.

All in all, then, a pretty sordid state of affairs, hardly conducive to promoting sensible discourse on Muslim-related matters.

[photo: Steve Evans]

Judicial Absurdity: Recent Ruling on Muslims in UP

By Yoginder Sikand & Nigar Ataulla

A recent ruling by Justice S.N. Srivastava of the Allahabad High Court declaring that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh could no longer be considered a minority, has, predictably, stirred up a hornet’s nest. Although the ruling was stayed by a two-member bench of the same court the next day, it raised crucial questions that pertain to minority rights, secularism and democracy and the impartiality of the judiciary.

Muslim leaders were aghast and indignant at the ruling. Hamid Ansari, Chairman of the National Minorities Commission, critiqued it as ‘absurd’, and pointed out that the illogicality of the ruling is evident from the fact that the same High Court put a stay on it the next day. As Zafarul Islam Khan, editor of the New Delhi-based Mili Gazette, India's leading Muslim paper in English, put it, 'It is a very disturbing aspect of the current judicial activism that a single judge of a lower court can go against the judgment of a much larger bench of the Supreme Court. If the judge is not aware of the earlier verdict, he seems unfit for his post and if he chose to disregard that judgment he should be sacked right away. It is clear that the judge had some agenda of his own, as the case in front of him did not relate to the minority-majority issue’. ‘Instead’, he added, ‘it was a case against the rampant corruption in a certain government department where a certain educational institution says that it did not get government aid because it refused to pay a bribe’.

Logically, the ruling, as critics have pointed out, is deeply flawed. Firstly, it is for the government, rather than the courts, to decide which community can be officially considered as a minority. Secondly, the case that Srivastava was hearing did not require him to pass judgment on whether or not Muslims in Uttar Pradesh could be considered a minority. Thirdly, Srivastava has clearly got his mathematics wrong. Muslims, according to the most recent Census, form less than a fifth of Uttar Pradesh’s population. A clear numerical minority in the state, Muslims are also a minority in the sense of being a marginalized community vis-à-vis the dominant caste Hindus, lagging considerably behind them on almost all social indicators. Hence, there is no merit in Srivastava’s ruling that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh can no longer be considered a minority.

Some critics have argued that Srivastava's ruling reflects the right-wing Hindutva worldview, in which minorities are denied any separate identity of their own. This, in turn, is part of the Hindutva agenda of absorbing Indian Muslims into the amorphous Hindu fold. That Srivastava’s ruling plays directly into the hands of the Hindutva lobby, which has warmly welcomed his pronouncement, is obvious. Hamid Ansari of the National Minorities Commission argues that Hindutva forces have consistently denied the fact of Muslim deprivation, fiercely opposed minority rights and have condemned any measure on the part of the state for the amelioration of the pathetic conditions of the Muslims as unwarranted 'minority appeasement'. He opines that Srivastava's ruling must be seen in the light of the fact that following the recent release of the Sachar Commission report that investigated the conditions of Muslims in India, there is much talk about the high levels of deprivation that Muslims suffer in large parts of the country. The report led to demands by Muslim organizations for urgent steps to be taken by the state to make special provision for the educational and economic empowerment of Muslims. 'In response to this', Ansari says, 'Hindutva forces are now trying to confuse the whole debate engendered by the Sachar Commission report by bringing in specious arguments about who should be considered a minority. The controversial ruling should be seen in this light, as a considered approach, rather than an accidental or stray comment'.

In other words, if Muslims were not to be considered as a minority by the state, the recommendations of the Sachar Commission report would be scuttled and the limited state-funded schemes for Muslim welfare might be ended forthwith. The rights of Muslims as a minority, too, would be seriously curtailed. Says Syed Qasim Rasul Ilyas, member of the governing council of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, 'If Muslims are not treated as minorities, their right as minorities to run educational institutions of their own choice would be denied them. So too would the few government schemes meant particularly for minorities’. Clearly, Srivastava’s ruling is a serious blow to democratic rights.

Clearly, Srivastava’s ruling exposes what some critics have pointed out as the creeping saffronisation of the judiciary, which, in theory, is meant to be impartial. If today Muslims are sought to be denied their rights as minorities through such controversial rulings, it could soon be the turn of other marginalized communities, such as Dalits, Adivasis and Other Backward Classes. The ominous portents this has for the struggle for democracy and secularism in India are obvious.

Kashmir's Largest Madrasa: Dar ul-Uloom Raheemiyyah

By Yoginder Sikand

Established in 1979, the Dar ul-Uloom Raheemiyyah, located in the town of Bandipora, is the largest madrasa in Jammu and Kashmir. Founded by a graduate of the Deoband madrasa, Maulana Muhammad Rahmatullah, it currently has more than a thousand students on its rolls. Patterned on the Deoband model, it is one of the few madrasas in the state that provide Islamic education till the takhasus or specialization level.

The Trust that runs the madrasa also runs several other institutions, spread over three separate campuses. These include the Faiz-e Aam school for girls (till the fifth grade) and a similar school for boys (till the tenth grade). Both these institutions follow the curriculum prescribed by the Jammu and Kashmir State Board for Education, besides providing students with religious education. The madrasa is located on a separate plot of land, donated by a pious elderly woman, the late Aziz un-Nisa, who is said to have taught the Quran to hundreds of boys and girls in and around Bandipora. Adjacent to the madrasa is a four-storey technical institute which is scheduled to be opened this year, offering courses in computers, tailoring, painting and book-binding to students of the madrasa and others. Work on a mosque that can accommodate some six thousand worshippers is almost complete. A new library is coming up, whose collection includes numerous handwritten manuscripts in Persian and Arabic, some several centuries old. In addition, the Dar ul-Uloom runs some sixty part-time maktabs in and around Bandipora, most of whose teachers are senior students of the madrasa.

Mufti Nazeer Ahmed, aged 40, one of the elders at the madrasa, is known as a specialist in Islamic jurisprudence. His principal task is to dispense fatwas and hear disputes in the dar ul-qaza or 'house of justice' that is attached to the madrasa. Till date, the madrasa has received several thousand requests for fatwas.

When I enter his cell to meet the Mufti, I find him sitting in a corner on a carpet, surrounded by men and women who have come to him for advice. He asks an old woman, who cannot speak, to explain her problem. It relates, like many other cases that he daily hears, to marital and inheritance squabbles. He then hears out the others who are party to the dispute and eventually gives an opinion in the woman's favour.

As the crowd shuffles out of the room, he beckons me to sit next to him. I ask him if his madrasa's acceptance of modern education, as represented in the two schools that it runs, in addition to the madrasa itself, is unusual for the Kashmiri ulema community.

'Not at all', he replies. 'Many of our ulema believe that we need to have both modern as well as Islamic education, including even for girls'. 'Students with knowledge of both', he adds, 'can effectively communicate Islam, by their words and deeds, in a whole range of spheres, and not simply as religious specialists. A pious Muslim engineer or doctor is best suited for preaching Islam to engineers or doctors'.

Mufti Nazir offers added justification for this approach to education. 'If ulema acquire law degrees, they will be in a better position to offer fatwas. Or, if you want to establish an economic institution or system run on Islamic lines, a degree in economics can be useful. Or, if a madrasa graduate studies journalism, he can use his skills to present a proper understanding of Islam to others and to counter anti-Muslim media propaganda. And for this, madrasa graduates must also study English and other languages, so that they can communicate with people who do not know Urdu'.

The Mufti also refers to the need for technical training for madrasa students. 'This is important for those students who will not take up careers as ulema', he explains.

I ask the mufti about the Kashmir dispute, but he brushes aside my question politely. 'We have nothing to do with politics', he says. He stresses, however, that allegations about madrasas in Kashmir being allegedly involved in promoting 'terrorism' are false. 'We are completely transparent, an open book, and have nothing to hide. Anyone can come and visit us and sit in our classrooms', he replies. 'Not a single madrasa in Kashmir has been identified by intelligence sources as engaged in that sort of activity'. To brand the madrasas as a whole as 'factories of terror' on the basis of the activities of a few stray students is unfair, he stresses.

We talk about inter-community relations and what Islam has to say about them. It is wrong, the Mufti tells me, to equate all non-Muslims as 'enemies of Islam', as some fringe elements believe. 'You cannot generalize like this about any community. There are good people in other communities, just as there are bad people among Muslims. Our duty as Muslims is to approach others with kind words and a good heart and tell them about Islam and impress them with our good example'. For that, the Mufti says, peace is a must, so that others would be willing to listen to what Muslims say about their faith. Moreover, he adds, 'we must learn about each other's religions, not to condemn and denounce others, but to understand them'.

He tells me about a Hindu whom he met some days ago who had read about Islam and the stress it lays on ethical values. 'He told me that he appreciated Islam because of these values that it stands for, and not because of Muslims' behaviour. So, Islam must not be judged on the basis of the wrong actions of some Muslims', he says.

The call for the evening prayer comes floating in. As I get up to leave, the Mufti hands me a bunch of booklets that the madrasa has published, including its monthly magazine, Al-Noor, which is published in both Urdu and English. He asks me to spend the night if I want as it is getting late and I might miss the last bus to Srinagar. I would certainly have loved to—his cheerfulness, simplicity and hospitality have been so endearing, but I really must leave. I promise him that I'll try to return soon and spend a few days with him, to get a better understanding of madrasas from within, something that few writers on this much talked-about subject have actually attempted.

For more details, contact:
The Manager,
Dar ul-Uloom Raheemiyyah,
Bandipora,
Jammu and Kashmir, 193502.

Madrasas and terrorism charges: Indian Ulema respond

By Yoginder Sikand

Subjected to relentless attack by right-wing Hindu groups and by influential sections of the media as alleged ‘dens of terror’, madrasas in India are now often talked about within a narrow framework that is defined essentially by security considerations. Forced on the defensive, the response of the ulema, Islamic clerics who run the madrasas, is also now largely framed in similar terms, seeking to argue that madrasas have nothing to do with terrorism. Consequently, other crucial issues pertinent to the madrasas, particularly the question of curricular reform and the welfare of madrasa students, are increasingly being sidelined in public discourse about madrasas in India, and probably elsewhere too.

In response to media allegations against madrasas, in recent years Indian ulema organizations have, in recent years, organised several conferences and seminars seeking to put forward their argument that madrasas have nothing to do with terrorism at all. One such conference, titled ‘The Humanistic Role of Islamic Madrasas’, was recently held in New Delhi. It was organized by a faction of the Ahl-i Hadith movement, a school of Islamic thought ideologically close, if not almost identical with, the Saudi Wahhabis. In contrast to most other such conferences, this one brought together leading ulema of schools of thought other than the Ahl-i Hadith as well, such as the Deobandis and the Jamaat-i Islami. Not surprisingly, the Sunni Barelvis and the Shias, both of who consider the Ahl- i-Hadith Wahhabis to be virtually outside the pale of Islam, were conspicuous by their absence.

Allegations of terrorism leveled against the madrasas were a major issue of discussion during the two-day conference. The subject was the central focus of the keynote address by Maulana Rabe Hasani Nadvi, rector of the Nadwat ul-Ulama madrasa, Lucknow, and President of the influential All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, considered to be one of the leading ulama of India. Although Nadvi did not attend the conference, copies of his speech were distributed to the participants.

Nadvi’s comments reflect a widespread response on the part of the ulema to the charges leveled against the madrasas by their detractors as well as to critiques of madrasas by fellow Muslim advocates of madrasa reform. Nadvi insists that, far from being producing ‘terrorists’, madrasas are devoted to training students who, in his words, ‘posses high morals’, ‘nobility’ and ‘humaneness’. Critics of the madrasas, he argues, are motivated by base motives. They have inherited, he says, the legacy of European colonial rulers, who, for their own benefit, introduced a system of education that had no space for morality and spirituality, and that was focused, instead, solely on material acquisitiveness. This system of education was not concerned with the life after death but, rather, was centred entirely on worldly pleasures. Consequently, he argues, European colonialists sought to destroy the madrasas, and their ideological progeny today continue in their legacy. In thus seeking to defend the madrasas from allegations made against them, Nadvi offers a mirror image of the arguments of detractors of the madrasas, seeing madrasas as representing the ideal system of education in no need of any substantial change. On the other hand, he dismisses the ‘modern’, ‘secular’ system of education as a left-over from colonial times, critiquing it for, as he puts it, ‘ignoring the higher goals of a moral life and being, in one sense, opposed to these’, being allegedly wholly worldly.

Nadvi thus sees no merit at all in the arguments of the critics of the madrasas. Their intentions, he suggests, are ignoble and their arguments reflect the fact that they are products of a colonial education that sees religion and the ‘high humane values’ that he says madrasas stand for as a stumbling-block in the path of establishing their own hegemony. This is why, he says, imperialist forces are seeking to defame madrasas as ‘conservative’, ‘fundamentalist’ and as ideological factories of ‘terrorism’. In this determined defence of madrasas, the difference between theory or rhetoric and actual practice is completely erased. It is as if the graduates of madrasas, unlike their counterparts from ‘modern’ schools, are the very epitome of virtue. As Nadvi puts it, ‘The role of other forms of education in promoting people’s morals and character appears much less than that of the madrasas’. The critique of madrasas articulated by their opponents is thus dismissed as having not the slightest validity at all.

In Nadvi’s determined defence of the madrasas there is no recognition of the obvious fact that not all madrasa students live up to the high moral standards he insists that madrasas maintain. There is no admission of the fact that sectarian prejudice is actively cultivated in many madrasas, a fact much lamented by Muslim modernists, with almost every madrasa being associated with one or the other of several competing schools of Islamic thought, one of their main functions being to rebut the claims of their competitors to representing normative Islam. Nor is there any reference to the fact of patriarchal attitudes and what Islamist feminists would argue are misogynist and ‘un-Islamic’ interpretations of the shariah that are routinely articulated in the speeches and writings of numerous ulema associated with the madrasas. What Muslim advocates of interfaith dialogue would contend are the ‘un-Islamic’ positions on inter-faith relations and perceptions of other faiths and their adherents that are associated with some significant sections of the ulema are also completely invisiblised in this uncritical praise of the madrasas. There is not even a hint of recognition of the fact, as claimed even by several sympathetic Muslim advocates of madrasa reform, that madrasas often promote a narrow, insular mindset. That madrasas generally focus on the nitty-gritty of medieval fiqh or jurisprudence on a host of issues that have completely lost their relevance or else are interpreted in such a manner as to be incompatible with modern sensitivities, thus failing to equip their students to creatively engage with contemporary challenges and demands, is also ignored. In Nadvi’s uncritical adulation of madrasas there is no allusion to fact that at least some madrasas in neighbouring Pakistan are engaged in promoting militancy and sectarian strife, a fact that detractors of the madrasas have used to wrongly brand Indian madrasas as ‘dens of terror’. It is thus as if there is no need for madrasas to introspect, to recognize the fact that there might be at least a hint of merit in some of the arguments put forward by some of their detractors.

Nadvi, however, is probably right when he argues that Indian madrasas are not engaged in actively promoting ‘terrorism’. This is something that even some senior government officials have testified to. In contrast to madrasas in India, literally thousands of schools run by right-wing Hindu organizations instill in their students relentless hatred of Muslims, Christians and other non-Hindu communities. Yet, like the hardcore, right-wing Hindu detractors of the madrasas, Nadvi’s defence of the madrasa system reinforces the tendency to frame public discourse about madrasas solely in terms of their possible or alleged security implications. Consequently, other crucial issues related to the madrasas, particularly the question of curricular reform, so necessary for providing madrasa students better worldly prospects and for enabling them to interpret Islam in a more relevant manner, are increasingly sidelined. With security considerations shaping the way in which the debate on madrasas is sought to be conducted both by the traditionalist ulama as well as anti-Muslim ideologues, the welfare of millions of children studying in madrasas is increasingly being regarded as of little or no concern. Neither the traditionalist ulama, with a vested interest in preserving madrasas largely as they are, nor hardcore Islamophobes, vociferously opposed to the existence of the madrasas, thus appear particularly interested in going beyond the narrow confines of a security-driven discourse to put the welfare of madrasa students at the centre of the madrasa debate.

Madrasas, 'Terrorism' and the Indian State

By Yoginder Sikand

In recent years, along with the rise of Hindutva in India, the coming to power in Afghanistan of the Taliban, and especially the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001, madrasas, or Islamic schools, have been much in the news. Tarred with the same brush, they have been collectively accused of being `dens of terror' and of churning out thousands of `Islamic warriors' all set to swamp India. Predictably, Hindutva leaders have been vociferous in demanding that madrasas be closed down, claiming that they are working in tandem with `enemies' of the country. They have alleged that the Indian madrasas, particularly those located along India's international borders, are being used by the dreaded Pakistani secret service agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to spread `terror' in India.

Similar claims have been made by Indian journalists and even by senior Indian government officials from time to time. A detailed Indian intelligence report issued some years ago claimed that some madrasas were functioning as training grounds for ISI spies and anti-Indian `terrorists'. The report went on to suggest that muftis, maulvis and imams in these schools may have been replaced by what it calls `highly fanatic agents of ISI', secretly working for the break- up of India. In May 2001, a ministerial group for the `reform of internal security' headed by the then Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani, released a 137-page report that recommended, among other measures, a close scrutiny of madrasas. Curiously enough, no mention was made in this report, as well as in the numerous similar reports of Indian intelligence agencies, of schools run by a range of Hindutva groups that are systematically engaged in spreading hatred and supporting violence against Muslims, Christians and other similarly marginalized communities in the country.

Predictably, Muslim organizations have been quick to register their protest against allegations leveled against the madrasas. The Delhi-based Muslim paper Milli Gazette, which sent a team to inspect several madrasas along the Nepal-India border, where a number of `radical' madrasas were alleged to have come up in recent years, reported that none of the dozen Muslim seminaries that the team visited had any association whatsoever with the ISI. In not one of these madrasas was any sort of physical instruction, leave alone military training, being imparted.

Apparently, these madrasas had no history at all of provoking Hindu-Muslim conflict. In fact, one of them had several Hindu students and teachers on its rolls, while another had several regular Hindu donors. The Milli Gazette's rebuttal of allegations against the madrasas, echoed by numerous other Muslim papers, gains further credence from the fact that state authorities have so far failed to name a single madrasa that is involved in ISI-related activities. In fact, some senior government officers have gone on record to admit that the charges against the madrasas are baseless. Thus, for instance, while claiming that the ISI was active along the Indo-Nepal border, Uttar Pradesh's Director General of Police (DGP), Sriram Arun, denied that madrasas were being used as hideouts by the ISI. Likewise, the DGP of Rajasthan admitted that madrasas in the border areas were `neither centres of ISI nor have they ever participated till date in any anti-national activities'. Clearly, the madrasas are being made to bear the brunt of a crude propaganda exercise.

There are several thousand Islamic schools spread all across India. Most mosques have a primary religious school or maktab attached to them, where Muslim children learn the Qur'an and the basics of their faith. For children who desire to specialize in religious studies and train as imams and maulvis, numerous larger seminaries or madrasas exist, with each Muslim sect having its own chain of such institutions. For many poor families, madrasas are the only source of education for their children, since they charge no fees and provide free boarding and lodging to their students. Madrasas are often the only available educational option for children from poor Muslim families. They have thus been playing an important role in promoting literacy among the Muslims, who have the dubious distinction of being, along with Dalits, the least educated community in India. Historically too, some madrasas have contributed to the national cause. Graduates from the madrasas played an important role in India's struggle against the British, a fact that is conveniently ignored in our school history text-books. Prominent `ulama led uprisings against the British in the 1850s, and for decades after numerous `ulama kept aloft the banner of defiance in the Pathan borderlands till they were forcibly put down by the British. Many `ulama, though by no means all, vehemently opposed the Muslim League, its `two-nation' theory and its demand for a separate Muslim state of Pakistan, insisting on a united India where people of different faiths could live in harmony with each other.

This is not to suggest that all is well with the madrasas today. Some madrasas in Pakistan, for instance, have emerged as training grounds for self-styled jihadists. It appears that it is experience of these madrasas in Pakistan that has fuelled the fear of madrasas in India also following the same path. However, such a fear is misplaced, there being, so far, no evidence of Indian madrasas being actually involved in similar activities.

Instead of targeting the madrasas as potential sources of instability, the state needs to adopt a cautious, yet sensitive, strategy to engage with them, in order to help promote Muslim education. The state needs to recognize the role that the madrasas are playing in promoting literacy among the Muslim masses, a task that actually relieves the state of its responsibility in this regard, saving the public exchequer millions of rupees every year. This would also help assuage Muslim fears of their identity being under threat in India, a fear on which the conservative sections of the `ulama are able to capitalize to stake their claims of being authoritative spokesmen of the community. Winning the confidence of at least some influential `ulama of the madrasas, the state can also use the influence and prestige that they command among many Muslims abroad to promote Indian interests, most crucially to help influence the policies of countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Islamist groups active in these countries, towards India. Leading Indian madrasas, such as the Dar ul-`Ulum at Deoband, the Mazahir ul-`Ulum at Saharanpur and the Nadwat ul-`Ulama at Lucknow are widely respected all over the `Muslim world'. Building allies with some of the leading `ulama from these madrasas, might help in assuaging the radical appeal of jihadist groups in Pakistan.

Most critics of the madrasas have probably never visited a madrasa, and so much of what is said about them in the press is pure hearsay. Yet, it is true that in many madrasas students are taught to see all non-Muslims in far from flattering colours. This understanding of the `other' is something that they share with Hindutva ideologues, whose image of Muslims is no less lurid. The notion of an irreconcilable hostility between Hindus and Muslims is as central to radical Islamist agenda as it is to the Hindutva worldview. The targeting of the madrasas can thus only play into the hands of both Hindu as well as Islamist militants, and further reduce the receding prospects of Muslim-Hindu inter-faith dialogue�and, with it, the possibility of changing the way some madrasa students might be taught to look at people of other faiths.

If madrasas continue to be targeted, there seems little hope for them to be able to drag themselves out of the morass of redundancy they find themselves in. Many madrasa teachers as well as students are increasingly concerned with what they see as their outdated and increasingly irrelevant curriculum and methods of teaching. Reforms, they believe, are long overdue, but obviously cannot be forcibly imposed. It is only in a climate of peace and security, when Muslims are free from what they perceive to be threats to their faith and identity, that madrasas can actually begin a process of reform. Instigating attacks against them and fanning the flames of anti-Muslim terror will not only undermine the conditions for reform, but might even make militancy a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Maulanas in the News

By Yoginder Sikand

A maze of pot-holed lanes winds its way through a squalid slum at the far end of the sprawling Muslim locality of Zakir Nagar in South Delhi. The lanes are lined with open drains, clogged with garbage and blanketed with clouds of mosquitoes. Tiny hutments and half-constructed buildings cluster together haphazardly. A muddy by-lane, rendered almost unusable due to the recent rains, leads off towards the Jamuna beyond. Half way along, a tin board nailed on to an unpainted brick wall announces the Rabita Islamic News Agency (RINA). 

The brainchild of Maulana Muzzammil al-Haq al-Husaini, a graduate of the Deoband madrasa, and former editor of al-Kifah, the Arabic organ of the Jamiat ul-Ulama-e Hind, RINA was set up in 1987. For more than a decade it functioned in a somewhat perfunctory manner, the amiable middle-aged Maulana tells me, but for the last two years it has been working in a more organized way.

Maulana Muzzammil explains the aims of RINA and the way it functions. 'We want international news, especially about Muslims and Islam in the other countries, to reach Urdu newspapers. We also want Indian Muslim news to reach papers abroad'. For the former purpose, RINA culls information from a host of Arabic and English websites, newspapers and magazines, translates this into Urdu, and sends it in the form of summarized reports to more than 150 Urdu publications across India. 'It is otherwise very difficult for many of these papers to access this material. It also saves them the trouble of having to arrange for this material to be translated into Urdu', he says. These reports are sent through email to some papers, and in the form of a weekly news bulletin, titled 'Alam-e Islam Ki Khabrein' ('News From the Islamic World'), which is sent by post to papers that do not have access to the Internet. 

The other major service that RINA provides is news about Indian Muslim affairs to Arabic and English publications, the latter both in India and abroad. 'Despite the fact that India has such a large Muslim population, people in the Arab world have little or no knowledge of the Indian Muslims', the Maulana points out. 'I traveled to the Arab world and I came across people who asked me, in all seriousness, if Muslims are allowed to build mosques in India! Considering the fact that Muslims, as well as others, enjoy considerably more religious freedom in India than in many Arab countries, such lack of knowledge of Indian Muslims in the Arab world is really distressing', he continues. 'This is both because the Arab press gives very little coverage to Indian Muslim issues and also because we have done little to tell others about ourselves'. 'Many Arabs', he adds, 'have this much distorted understanding of the conditions of the Indian Muslims. They think that we are all very poor and deprived. Many people go to the Gulf and paint a very sordid picture of the Muslims here in order to seek to garner funds in the name of the community. It is thus important for us to present the facts about ourselves as they are'. 

To get the Indian Muslim viewpoint across to an Arabic- and English-knowing readership, RINA has recently launched a features and news service in both languages. It selects material from Indian Urdu papers and gathers reports from its correspondents in different parts of the country and translates them into Arabic and English. This material will shortly be made available on RINA's website, which is presently under construction, and in the form of printed weekly newsletters. 'We want to focus on news about Indian Muslims that receive little or no coverage in the English and Arabic press', the Maulana explains.

 Maulana Muzammil of RINA in his office

 

RINA is one of the few news agencies that focus solely or largely on Indian Muslim issues. It might have more room for improvement, though, particularly in the quality of the news that it sends out. The absence of feature stories is also something that could be addressed. But that said, the Maulana and his enterprising team of four young colleagues—three being graduates of the Deoband madrasa and one from the Nadwat ul-Ulama, Lucknow—exemplify what difference even a small group of dedicated activists, operating from a single room in a squalid slum, with just a fax machine and a computer at their disposal, can make.

 

For more details about RINA, contact Maulana Muzzammil al-Haq al-Husaini on rinaislamicnewsagency@yahoo.co.in / Tel: 91-11-26984980 website: http://www.rina.co.in/

Mayhem in Mangalore

By Yoginder Sikand

Early this month, a series of violent incidents rocked Mangalore and several nearby towns and villages in coastal Karnataka. Two people were killed, dozens injured and property worth several lakhs was destroyed. Although a semblance of peace has now been restored, tension remains, as I discovered after a recent trip to the area along with some social activists from Bangalore.