Name of the Book: Madrasa Education in India: Eleventh to Twenty First Century
Edited by: S.M.Azizuddin Husain
Publisher: Kanishka, New Delhi
Year: 2005
Pages: 185
ISBN: 81-7391-741-8
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand

South Asia’s madrasas, or Islamic schools, have come in for considerable discussion and debate in recent years. Much has been written on the madrasas, often by people who have little or no understanding of the subject. This book, a collection of essays, examines various aspects of madrasa education in India in a historical perspective.

In his introduction, Azizuddin Husain deals with the concept of knowledge in Islam, arguing that the notion of a rigid distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge is foreign to the Islamic scriptural tradition. All forms of beneficial knowledge are considered to be ‘Islamically’ legitimate, he says. This explains how early Muslim scholars studied both ‘religious’ subjects as well as those that would now generally be considered as ‘secular’ and made remarkable strides in both. He then turns to Islamic education in medieval India, pointing out how while many Muslim rulers generously patronised scholarship, others sought to restrict it to the elites, mainly of foreign extraction. While Islam mandates learning for all, irrespective of caste, class and gender, these rulers sought to make it a close preserve of the ruling class. In turn, Azizuddin tells us, this was actively critiqued by numerous Sufis, including among them leading ulama. Azizuddin notes the development and flourishing of ‘worldly’ knowledge under the patronage of various Muslim rulers but also remarks on the fact that a significant section of the ulama sought to put a curb on new developments by arguing that there was no longer any scope for ijtihad or personal effort to develop new perspectives on a range of issues on which the previous ulama were believed to have arrived at some sort of consensus.

Broadly the same points are covered in Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui’s paper. Siddiqui also discusses the content of madrasa education in medieval India, showing that it was not restricted only to what are commonly seen today as ‘religious’ subjects. As the principal institution of education in medieval times, madrasa students were able to take to a wide range of careers, not just as religious specialists. Mansura Haider takes the argument further by discussing the impact on Indian madrasas of their counterparts in Central Asia, with which some of them had strong ties. In particular, she deals with the impact of the noted seventeenth century Iranian alim, Mir Fatehullah Shirazi, whose stress on the ‘rational’ sciences exercised a particular influence on many Indian Muslim scholars. Partly as a reaction to the growing importance of the ‘rational sciences’, Mujeeb Ashraf argues in his paper, late medieval India witnessed the emergence of ulama who stressed the ‘revealed’ sciences, particularly the Hadith, traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Ashraf discusses this in the context of the seventeenth century alim, Shah Abdur Rahim and the Madrasa-i Rahimiyah that he set up in Delhi, which went on, under his son Shah Waliullah and his descendants, to play a key role in moulding the shape of Islamic studies throughout much of the Indian subcontinent and even beyond.

The remaining articles in the book deal with madrasas in colonial and contemporary India. Nasim Akhtar’s paper focuses on women’s madrasas. Stressing that Islam mandates education for both men and women, the paper discusses the role of numerous women, particularly those associated with the Mughal ruling elite, in scholarship and patronage of learning. It then turns to the emergence of a number of girls’ madrasas in contemporary India, examining their curriculum and pointing to their crucial role in promoting girls’ education and carving out new roles for women as religious authorities in their own right. Quite the same points are made in Talat Aziz’s paper.

Perhaps the most interesting article in the book is Mohammad Sajjad’s piece titled ‘Resisting Colonialism and Communalism: Madrasas in Bihar’. Arguing against the view of madrasas as ‘anti-national’, so central to right-wing Hindu discourse, he shows that numerous madrasas in Bihar were actively involved in India’s freedom struggle and, opposing both Hindu and Muslim communalism, demanded a united India with equal rights for all religious communities. In this regard he discusses the role of a charismatic alim from Bihar, Abul Mohasin Muhammad Sajjad (1880-1940), founder of the Imarat-i Shariah and one of the key actors in the formation of the Jamiat ul-‘Ulama-i Hind. Abul Mohasin played a leading role in mobilising the ulama as well as ‘ordinary’ Muslims in the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements against the British. In 1937 he established the Muslim Independent Party, which was resolutely anti-imperialist and also took up the demands of Bihar’s oppressed peasantry. The Party advocated a united India, supporrted the Congress and opposed the Muslim League, while also insisting on adequate safeguards for Muslims. In the 1937 elections, the party won 15 of the 40 seats reserved for Muslims in Bihar, carving out a particularly strong base among the ‘low’ caste Muslims of the province. Abul Muhasin also set up a number of madrasas among the ‘low’ castes and through the Hizbullah, an organisation that he founded, he sought to promote communal harmony between Muslims and Hindus in Bihar. Immediately after the Muslim League’s 1940 declaration, which paved the way for the launching of the Pakistan movement, Abul Muhasin came out with a carefully-worded statement denouning the ‘two nation’ theory of the League, according to which the Hindus and Muslims of India were two completely different ‘nations’. Abul Muhasin insisted that India’s Muslims, Hindus and others were members of the same nation and he appealed to Muslims to shun the Muslim League and to work for a united India based on a loose federation.

Masroor Hashim’s piece looks at methods of teaching employed in many madrasas and advocates suitable reforms, a subject that has been written about extensively before. The essay by Qamaruddin, published elsewhere previously, sheds light on the little noticed reforms already underway in many madrasas in India. The essay argues that the vast majority of Indian madrasa teachers do indeed want that their students learn at least a modicum of ‘modern’ subjects, without this diluting the essentially religious character of the madrasas. This effectively challenges the stereotypical notion of madrasas as wholly impervious to change.

At a time when misunderstanding about madrasas abounds, almost any book written by well-meaning scholars is to be welcomed, and hence this book deserves a careful reading if only for that reason. Several of the essays are marred by clumsy use of language. Numerous essays simply repeat what other essays also included in the book argue. Much of what many of the contributors have to say has been said before by other scholars, and, in that sense, the book does not add substantially new to the subject. Important issues related to the madrasas in contemporary India, such as allegations about madrasas and efforts of the ulama to counter the propaganda against the madrasas as ‘dens of terrorism’, new experiments underway to combine ‘Islamic’ and ‘seclar’ education within and without the madrasas, policies of the state vis-à-vis the madrasas, the role of madrasas in preserving and promoting Islamic identity as well as in sustaining inter-sectarian rivalries and so on, have been left out, making the book, overall, much more concerned about the past than the present. This calls for more empirically grounded studies of madrasas in contemporary India in order to shift the debate from the historical legacy of the madrasas to the question of their multiple roles today.