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STATES: WEST BENGAL
Prayers Dominate Curriculum
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EDUCATIONAL GHETTOS: Flush with Arab funds, the Rahamani society
has opened 109 madarsas catering to over 40,000 students
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At the BRES schools,
every student must wear a cap as prescribed by the religion from the nursery
stage onwards. Islamic prayers in Arabic account for 200 marks out of
500 in the "infant" class. The prayers even include the ones
for visiting the latrine. By Class V, the little faithful has learnt four
languages-Arabic, Urdu, Bengali and English-and has a nodding acquaintance
with mathematics, science and geography. Memorising all the ayats of the
Koran has been completed in Class IV. At Dhulian, the Jamiya Rahamania
boys (there are, of course, no girls after Class V) study The Economics
of Islam written by one Moulana Mohammed Abdur Rahim and published by
Khairun Prakashani of Dhaka. The book tells the students that the chief
source of national income is-hold your breath-the divine act of "expropriating
the property of vanquished enemy". The history textbook for the higher
classes, Mukammal Tarikh-e Islam written by Mufti Shaukat Ali Fahmi and
published by Deen Duniyah in Delhi's Jama Masjid area, has a striking
interpretation of why Mahmud of Ghazni destroyed the Somnath temple. It
says, "As the kings of Hindustan lost out to Mahmud the conqueror,
the pandits and Brahmins of Gujarat began a conspiracy and they turned
the temple of Somnath into the centre of their political activities. Mahmud
came to hear about the devious plans of the king of Gujarat and the conspiracy
of the pandits hatched inside the temple. He rushed to Gujarat and by
415 Hijri, he brought the temple under his grip." This version, far
removed from accepted history, is taught to a group of Muslim students
in a state whose rulers swear by secularism.
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Unlearning ABC
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Instead of the innocuous A-for-apple method,
the alphabet is given religious extensions.
Islamic thoughts pervade the text. "Dhol"
introducing the letter "dh", for example, goes with the
line "God's curse be on music".
History books also betray sectarian feelings.
While Aurangzeb is eulogised, the Somnath temple's destruction has
been justified.
At a senior-level school, the economics
textbook teaches that the chief source of national income is expropriating
the property of vanquished enemies.
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BRES is flush with Arab funds. The Dhulian unit
received $1,64,000 (around Rs 73.8 lakh) in 1997 from the Islamic Development
Bank of Jeddah in compliance with the Foreign Contribution (Regulation)
Act (FCRA). Earlier, the Beldanga unit received $1,76,000 (Rs 79.2 lakh)
from the same source. West Bengal School Education Minister Kanti Biswas
says his Government does not allow "any foreign donation in the school
sector". The minister is obviously not sufficiently informed. Murshidabad
District Magistrate Vivek Kumar admitted that two foreign donations to
schools under FCRA had been "cleared" by him last year. The
fact is that the Marxist Government does not have much access to information
regarding funding of schools that do not depend on it for financial assistance.
Nor has it a clear knowledge of the syllabi and the curricula followed
by the 507 private madarsas outside the control of the West Bengal Madarsa
Board.
In the community, however, the madarsa education
is no longer regarded as mandatory. Last year, while 80,000 Muslim students
appeared in the Class X examination of the state Board of Secondary Education,
only 16,700 appeared for the corresponding madarsa examinations. "Muslims
want to join the mainstream. They don't want to rot away in educational
ghettoes," says Abdus Sattar, president of the Madarsa Board. That
seems to be the Left Front Government's view too. It is out of this perception
that the Madarsa Board has, over the years, drastically "secularised"
the High (modern) Madarsa syllabus, downgrading the Arabic language studies
(short-hand for Islamic theology) to a mere 100 marks but leaving 750
marks for the general subjects. In keeping with its belief that religion
has no place in education, the Government has now appointed A.R. Kidwai,
former West Bengal governor and current chairman of the newly formed Madarsa
Education Committee, to oversee a thorough overhaul of the system allowing
for more secularisation and introduction of vocational training.
The more the leftist government tries to separate
Islamic religion from the community's education system, the more impetus
it gives to fundamentalism. "Our movement is a reaction to the infidelity
encouraged in the general school education," says Bari. Integration
with the rest of the society is hardly BRES' objective. At Beldanga, Ariful
Islam, 10, is being taught to read only the Koran. The day begins at the
school with his quivering recitation: "Quaf wal quaraanil majid (I
promise in the name of the great Koran...)." At Dhulian, Zahiruddin
Mandal, 23, is working towards a scholarship at Jamiya Islamiya of Medina
which will earn him a life-long allowance if he agrees to spend his life
as a mullah. In West Bengal now, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, fundamentalism
gets a boost when Marxists are out to prove their secular credentials.
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