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STATES: WEST BENGAL
Crescent Classroom
An organisation has recast madarsa education in
a communal mould even as the Government seeks to secularise Muslim school
curricula
By Sumit Mitra
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CANONICAL: In the Rahamani madarsas the stress is on religious
and Arabic texts
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Murshidabad district
in West Bengal has the distinction of being a part of Pakistan for two
days, from August 15 to 17, 1947, until the Radcliffe award which respected
demography but not geography was amended bilaterally. The district reverted
to India as it is the link between south and north Bengal but its dominant
Muslim population (64 per cent in 2001) makes it a socio-cultural island
of sorts. The neighbouring Malda district too has a large Muslim population,
but Murshidabad is more of a fanatic oddity in a state not much given
to stand-offs along communal lines. This is evident in a religious-educational
movement that demands "Islamic education" for children. In many
Muslim homes, the madarsas run by the Left Front Government are scoffed
at for the dwindling content of the Koran and Arabic literature in their
syllabi.
The drive to "purify" education is
spearheaded by the Barua Rahamani Education Society (BRES), an organisation
of Islamic leaders with strong Saudi Arabian ties. BRES was registered
in 1993, but it has already opened 109 madarsas in the state, including
35 in Murshidabad, 22 in Malda and 10 each in Birbhum, North Dinajpur
and Nadia. Over 40,000 students attend the BRES classes and the number
is growing. It is not the number which is exceptional but the BRES' almost
totally communal syllabus which contravenes the secular ideals that have
shaped the state-controlled madarsa system. Says Sheikh Ainul Bari, president
of BRES and author of several textbooks, "The Islamic consciousness
of our children is stifled in the state-controlled madarsas." Bari
is also on the faculty of state-run Calcutta Madarsa, but the state Government
is clueless about Bari's parallel school education system.
 At
Beldanga in southern Murshidabad, the Barua Ahle-Hadis Education Society
begins Arabic lessons at the prep level. But more interesting is the society's
publication of the book on the Bengali alphabet, replacing the age-old
Barna Parichay of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar. The traditional textbook introduces
the first letter "aw" with the word "ajagar", Bengali
for python, but Bari's Salafi Barna Parichay says after "aw":
"awju korey pak haw-o (wash yourself to be pure before namaz)".
The second letter of the alphabet, "aa" is dinned into the child's
ears with the exhortation "Allah-r naam law-o (Take the name of Allah)".
The third letter, "ee", goes with the line "Embrace Islam".
The Talibani twist to such unorthodox alphabetic
drill frequently surfaces. For the letter "dh" the book has
a picture of dhol, the percussion instrument, with the line "dhol
tabla-e khodar la'nat (God's curse be on music)". For "r",
it is "rasool" (the Prophet) on whom shines "the first
divine grace". For "sh", it is the "shirk (crime)"
of comparing anyone with Allah, which is "too heinous".
Such being the fervour of religion with which
the first learning books are laced, it is but natural that it will hit
a frenzied key at higher levels, particularly at the secondary stages
in which BRES has begun courses. But the primary curricula have more surprises.
Sahitya Kanan, the 64-page Bengali textbook for Class IV, has two chapters
on Aurangzeb, the most controversial of the Mughal emperors. Neither of
these mentions the emperor's negative attributes like the cruelty he showed
to his father or his religious intolerance. One of them says, "Badshah
(Aurangzeb) was a religious devout. But that doesn't mean that he loved
his non-Islamic subjects any less. He donated a lot of land and property
to Hindu priests and Hindu soldiers." The incident of the Vishvanath
temple in Varanasi being pounded by Aurangzeb's artillery is understandably
not mentioned as it does not square with the general puff job of the most
unpopular Mughal emperor. The other chapter intones: "Very few emperors
in the history of the world have lived a life as simple as that of Aurangzeb,
full of sacrifices and untainted by greed. If the rulers of today had
followed his ideals, there is no doubt that nations would have been wealthier
and people happier."
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