M. Akhtar Siddiqui, “Empowerment of Muslims Through Education�, New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies,
2004, ISBN: 81-85220-58-21, pp.374.
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand

Muslim educational marginalization is an accepted fact, and, according to official figures, Muslims rank among the least educated communities in India today. This owes to a host of social, economic, cultural and political factors, which this admirable book very succinctly points out.

The first part of the book deals with the classical madrasa system of education in India. It provides a broad historical survey of madrasas in India, and then focuses on the contemporary situation. In the aftermath of the Partition, the author says, Muslim education suffered a tremendous set-back, with the dissolution of princely houses and feudal estates on which numerous madrasas had depended for patronage, and discriminatory policies adopted by the state vis-à-vis the Urdu language. Siddiqui shows how Muslims in north India have sought to maintain and promote the tradition of Islamic education in the face of tremendous challenges through novel experiments. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, as a response to the marked Hinduisation of the government school syllabus and the numerous negative references to Islam and Muslim personages in government-prescribed textbooks, the Dini Talimi Council established a number of maktabs that provide religious and secular education as well as Urdu till the fifth grade and allow their students to join government schools thereafter.
Similarly, the author refers to the government-recognised madrasa education boards in some states that provide teachers’ salaries and prescribe a syllabus for affiliated madrasas that combine both religious as well as secular subjects. In Assam and Maharashtra, he says, some madrasas are now directly affiliated to the State Board of Secondary Education, which has allowed for their students to join the educational ‘mainstream’ because their certificates are recognised by the Boards.

The author stresses the need for modernisation of the madrasa curriculum, and points to the often ignored fact that many ‘ulama themselves are in favour of such changes, provided, however, that the religious core of the madrasas remains intact. He also argues that the ‘ulama, in general, believe that reforms in the madrasas should be initiated by the ‘ulama themselves and not by the state as this might impact on the autonomy of the madrasas. If state assistance is at all to be accepted, the ‘ulama believe, it should be in kind, in the form of books, teaching equipment etc., and not in the form of money. Similarly, Siddiqui says, many ‘ulama do favour state-level madrasa boards but they insist that it should be outside the direct control of the state.

Siddiqui challenges the notion of madrasas being impervious to change, offering examples of several Indian madrasas that are seeking to modernise their curriculum. An interesting model that other madrasas could emulate, Siddiqui suggests, is that provided by the Jamaat-i Islami’s Darsgah-i Islami in Rampur, western Uttar Pradesh, which includes both secular and religious subjects in its primary level eight-year course and then specialises in religious education in its secondary level seven-year course. Several madrasas in India are said to follow the Darsgah’s syllabus, enabling their students to prepare both for the ‘alimiyat degree given by the madrasas and for the senior secondary examination conducted in regular government schools. Another interesting experiment in madrasa reform is the Jamia Hidaya in Jaipur, established by the noted Naqshbandi Sufi and ‘alim, Maulvi Fazlur Rahman Mujaddidi. Students study both secular and religious subjects, and after the initial four-year course, which begins after the sixth grade, they can choose to continue with religious education or else join a regular school. Students intending to become religious specialists are obliged to learn one among a range of numerous trades and crafts.

The next part of the book deals with the conditions of Muslim schools in India. Siddiqui sees the state’s discriminatory policies vis-à-vis the Urdu language as one of the major reasons for Muslim educational backwardness, particularly in north India. However, he argues, while Urdu is ‘an important element’ of Muslim identity, it is wrong to identify the language as ‘Muslim’ as such, even though today, for all practical purposes, non-Muslims have abandoned it, as a result of which Urdu is today restricted largely to madrasas. This is one reason why many Muslim families prefer to send their children to madrasas instead of schools, he says. In the Urdu ‘heartland’ of Uttar Pradesh, Urdu today languishes, dying a slow death, there being hardly any Urdu medium schools in the state, this being a gross violation of the Constitutional right of Muslims to be taught in their own mother tongue. The situation is considerably better, however, Siddiqui points out, in states beyond the Hindi-Urdu belt, such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, where state governments have funded several Urdu schools, although their standard is said to leave much to be desired.

In the face of state indifference, if not hostility, to Muslim education, numerous Muslim organisations are today playing an important role in the field of education. This is particularly marked in Maharashtra and southern India. Siddiqui provides interesting details about the schools, colleges and vocational training centres run by a number of Muslim NGOs in these states, contrasting this with the grim situation in north India, where, he says, Muslims run relatively few educational institutions other than madrasas. While Siddiqui welcomes this investment of community resources in education, he points out that much of this investment has been in institutions of higher learning, such as engineering, medical and technical colleges, while basic education, especially for the poor, has been ignored. Further, many of these
institutions have more non-Muslim than Muslim students on their rolls because of the high capitation and other fees that they charge. Many of them are actually commercial ventures and do little for the community, especially for the poor among the Muslims.

The third section of the book deals with the state’s policies on minority education. Given the magnitude of the problem of Muslim educational marginalization, Siddiqui stresses that Muslims cannot address the issue alone. Rather, they have to work in tandem with the state. Siddiqui quotes with approval the Programme of Action for Minorities laid down in the National Education Policy of 1986, in which, for the first time, the state recognized Muslims as an educationally ‘backward’ community. Yet, he laments, little has been actually done by the state to ameliorate the situation. One reason for this is that the suggestions put forward in the Programme document were left to the state governments to be implemented, and many of these are indifferent to Muslim education.

In fact, Siddiqui argues, many state governments deliberately create hurdles for Muslim organizations that wish to set up educational institutions. Hence, Siddiqui suggests, there is need for statutory action at the Central level to fully implement various minority-related programmes funded by the state and to streamline the procedure for recognition, affiliation and funding of minority educational institutions. This could possibly be done by providing additional statutory powers to the National Minorities Commission and the various State Minorities Commissions, each of which should have a separate unit to deal with educationally marginalised minorities, or by establishing a Minorities Education Board at the Central as well as state level to help the governments implement various programmes meant for educationally deprived minorities.

Another major difficulty in developing effective educational programmes for Muslims and other educationally marginalized minorities, Siddiqui says, is the acute paucity of publicly available statistical information on Muslim education and employment. Although the government has these statistics, it refuses to make them public, on the specious grounds that this would promote ‘communalism’. Siddiqui rightly argues that suppressing such vital information leads to ‘worse results, untested hypothesis, and unfounded claims and complaints’, and insists that these figures be made available so that the extent of Muslim marginalization as well as the role of state policies in addressing it can be gauged.

Yet, gathering and highlighting statistics are not enough, and, in the absence of political will, surely this cannot work wonders. Siddiqui refers to the High Powered Panel headed by Gopal Singh in the 1980s to look into the conditions of the Muslims, and which found that Muslims were one of the most marginalized communities in the country, hardly better off than the Dalits, providing detailed statistics to back this claim. It also suggested various measures for the state to undertake to help address the problem of Muslim educational and economic marginalization and to prevent communal riots.

The then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, had issued a 15-Point Directive after the submission of the interim Report of the Gopal Singh Committee, laying down elaborate rules and guidelines for promoting Muslim education, which was later reiterated by her son and successor Rajiv Gandhi. Yet, no action was taken. Recognising its failure to do anything substantial in addressing the issue of Muslim educational ‘backwardness’, in 1992 the Union Government came out with what it called a Revised Programme of Action, whose pious proclamations on Muslim education later met with entirely the same fate, with both the Union and several state governments showing clear lack of interest in doing anything about Muslim education at all. In this light it appears that the present Congress government-appointed ‘High Powered’ Committee set up by Manmohan Singh and headed by Rajinder Sachar to look into the socio-economic conditions of the Muslims might meet the same dismal end.

Elaborating on his argument of state neglect of Muslim education, Siddiqui provides detailed information on the failure of various government-funded schemes ostensibly meant for minority education as well as the routine harassment that Muslim educational institutions seeking recognition and grants-in-aid are subjected to in many states. Even schemes that were officially declared to be ‘successful’ were often a mere hog-wash, Thus, for instance, the Programme of Action 1992 claimed that all 41 districts in India with a high minority concentration had been covered under the community polytechnic scheme but in many districts it was found that Muslim representation among the students of such polytechnics was between 3 and 12 per cent, much less than the Muslim proportion in the total population of the district. In several places it was also found that the polytechnics were located at a considerable distance from Muslim localities.

Another scheme that was advertised as a ‘success story’, the setting up of resource centres in selected universities with a high Muslim presence, soon turned defunct. Other schemes proved to be major flops. The scheme of providing Urdu teachers, Urdu textbooks and Urdu teachers’ training facilities, envisaged in the Revised Programme of Action, proved to be a non-starter. A good indication of the indifference with which the government greeted the scheme is the fact that in Uttar Pradesh, home to the largest Urdu-speaking population in the country, there is today only one Junior Basic Training Institute for Urdu-medium primary school teachers. Likewise, despite the Programme of Action’s show of firm commitment to the official three-language formula, it still far from adequately being followed in many states, with
Urdu-speaking Muslim children denied their right to learn the language in state schools.

Yet another much-touted government-funded programme�the Madrasa Modernisation Scheme, launched in 2000�failed, being hardly taken seriously, by the government, the bureaucracy and the madrasas themselves. The scheme provided for small grants to madrasas to employ part-time teachers for mathematics, science, English and Hindi, plus a one-time small grant of Rs.7000 to each madrasa to purchase science and mathematics kits and set up libraries. The scheme failed due to several reasons, not least because in many madrasas who joined the scheme the teachers did not get their salaries and also because of suspicion on the part of the madrasas about the intentions of the government, given the fact that the coalition ruling the Centre at that time was headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, notorious for being anti-Muslim. On the other hand, as Siddiqui points out, some other schemes, such as the Area Intensive Programme, are said to have benefited at least some Muslim families in various states.

Overall, Siddiqui argues, despite its ambitious programmes for minority education the Union government has been able to do little in this regard due to a combination of various factors: apathy and indifference; political compulsions; lack of funds; and inability to force state governments, who are responsible for implementing the schemes, to comply. Such is the state’s indifference to the plight of the minorities that, Siddiqui laments, that for several years now the annual reports of the Minorities Commission have not been tabled in Parliament although the Commission is actually obliged to do so, thus making the Commission, in the author’s own words, ‘an exercise in futility’.

While recognizing the culpability of the state in perpetuating Muslim educational marginalization, Siddiqui also recognises the role of the Muslim leadership in this regard. He says Muslim leaders’ apathy towards education of the community might have further encouraged many state governments to ignore the schemes conceived by the Union government. This apathy might well be due to the vested interests of sections of the leadership that sees mass education as a challenge to its own claims to authority, but, Siddiqui opines, is could also reflect the fact that many Muslims have completely lost all faith in the state and its promises. This situation cries out for urgent remedy and Siddiqui argues that addressing Muslim educational backwardness requires joint efforts on the part of the state and Muslim community organizations. It also requires a climate of peace and tolerably good inter-community relations which can allow Muslims to focus their attention on community development, rather than, as at present, on defending their lives and identity in the face of a hostile or indifferent state and Hindutva chauvinists thirsty for Muslim blood.

Siddiqui concludes by providing an impressive list of suggestions for promoting Muslim education: establishing adult education and vocational training centres, involving Muslim youth in state developmental programmes, modernization of madrasa curricula, using madrasas as adult education centres, encouraging the ‘ulama to participate in educational awareness drives, forcing the Muslim leadership, both political and religious, to make education a top priority, and encouraging Muslim NGOs to work with the state to promote awareness of and to implement various development projects. He calls for the Union government to set up stricter regulatory mechanisms to ensure that state governments actually implement various schemes meant for minority education. He suggests that the Minorities Commission be armed with
statutory powers, which it presently lacks, to address the educational and other problems of the minorities, which generally go ignored by state and Union governments. He proposes the setting up of a Minorities Educational Financing Corporation or Bank in each state, with initial capital from the Union government, to provide soft loans to minority educational institutions and NGOs working for minority education. Along with this, he asks that the government substantially raise the meager corpus fund and annual grant of the Maulana Azad Education Foundation to help improve infrastructural facilities and quality of teaching in minority educational institutions.

For their part, Siddiqui suggests, Muslim community organizations should seek to mobilize zakat, sadqa and other such funds for educational purposes, including for scholarship schemes, girls’ hostels, research on Muslim education-related issues and curricular and teacher development programmes in Muslim-run institutions. Siddiqui also points to the need for Muslim NGOs to be run more efficiently and in a more professional manner, arguing that they should work with non-Muslim organizations and the state in order to improve their own standards and be more effective.