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Uneasy Questions
A court
order seeking eviction of a madarsa from a defence estate in Mhow sparks
a controversy. An analysis by India Today's Special Correspondent Neeraj
Mishra.
On
the face of it, it is an unseemly dispute over an obscure madarsa located
in Mhow. But coming as it does in sensitive times like these, it has snowballed
into a full-fledged controversy, raising uneasy questions about on education
through the orthodox institutions in Madhya Pradesh. What, for instance,
are the credentials of those supervising their activities? Is there any
government control over them? And finally how are they benefiting the
the Muslims?
It was in October last that a Mhow court issued instructions to the Indore
district collector asking him to ensure the closure of the madarsa in
Khan Colony. The entire area is defence property and though the SDM has
control over it under the Public Places Evictions Act, several illegal
colonies have come up in the cantonment. The madarsa had been granted
affiliation by the Madhya Pradesh Madarsa Board in 1999 while the Waqf
Board later permitted it to start construction of a masjid. The Indore
collector temporarily permitted namaz in the building for three months
in December 2000. No application was made for renewal of permission though.
No objections were raised to the fact that the building stood on defence
land either.
Surprisingly the defence estate in charge also turned a blind eye to the
proceedings till the Indore commissioner found in March 2001 that the
whole affair was illegal. But for reasons best known to him, he too did
not issue any instructions for eviction. Finally, in October, a group
of citizens filed a public interest petition following which the Civil
Judge Class II ordered eviction from the property.
The citizens' move was driven by the fear that madarsas were becoming
a convenient route to appropriate land in the name of religion. There
were also apprehensions about the institutions being used by radical groups
like SIMI, as has been the case in one of general secretary Safdar Nagori
who operated out of Ujjain and belonged to Neemuch was frequently seen
at a masjid in Ujjain. After the ban on SIMI, Nagori went underground
and the visits to the madarsa stopped. "Other Muslims who came to
the mosque for namaz had also objected to the SIMI's activities,'' says
P. Thausen, Ujjain SP.
At present count, there are some 6,000 madarsas in the state with an estimated
3.5 lakh students. "Running of a school or a madarsa from private
premises is not illegal per se," says Akash Tripathi, SDM, Mhow.
"But the land on which the madarsa is built had been illegally occupied
and sold by a coloniser." Strangely, however, there has been no reaction
from the cantonment authorities.
Politically too, the controversy has its own implications. The Madhya
Pradesh Madarsa Board was formed by Chief Minister Digvijay Singh three
years ago to regulate the activities of Muslim educational institutions.
But its timing--just before the last assembly elections--was considered
a poor tactic to woo orthodox Muslims.
While neighbouring Uttar Pradesh has a history of education through madarsas
where even non-Muslims study, in other states it was mostly the expatriate
Bengali Muslims who turned to these institutions. There were mainly two
motivating reasons: poverty and an attraction for what is believed as
radical Islamism. Madarsas, which are generally attached to a masjid,
are also great churners of alims and muftis who carry on the tradition
of teaching the Koran.
The first resistance the Madarsa Board faced was from the clergy itself.
There were several misgivings about government interference in religious
activities. Many senior maulvis protested on the assumption that singing
the national anthem and song would be made compulsory at the masjid as
well. Others did not want "khairat" from the government as masjids
manage their own finances.
Says Chairman of the state Madarsa Board Professor Mohammad Halim Khan:
"There is a huge difference between the madarsas in Madhya Pradesh
and other theological syllabus with the State Open School and our students
take the Class X and XII board exams.''
A Muslim academic, Khan agrees that madarsas have not inspired confidence
in the public mind but instead of taking offence and becoming even more
rigid, he had gone about about educating his own people. Today 3,000 madarsas
are formally affiliated with the board. Khan has also started a process
of modernisation of the madarsas and has introduced computer education
in 12 places. Plans are also afoot to start madarsas only for girls. All
this apart, the Madarsa Board does not have the power to close down institutions
that do not adhere to its syllabus or process claims to their overall
legality. With the huge number of students in their fold, madarsas hold
the key to the future of the 75 lakh strong Muslim community in the state.
Whether they can stake their claim to join the mainstream or let their
places of worship slip into the hands of the unscrupulous land and narco-arms
mafia is what remains to be seen.
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