Degrees Of Populism

One of the key recommendations of the Sachar Committee report was to openquality schools in areas of Muslim concentration. Stating that only about threepercent Muslims access madrasa education and that by and large Muslims prefer toenrol their wards in government schools, the recommendation, if made into apolicy, would have gone a long way in correcting the abysmal state of educationamong the Muslims. Rather than doing this, the present government is content todole out sops, primarily aimed at the madrasas. The recent governmentannouncement of making madrasa degrees at par with a college or universitydegree is one such example.

There is a lot to be said about this exercise in electoral populism. But first,the economics of it which seems to be fairly clear. The move is targeted at 7000madrasas controlled by various madrasa boards in India which enrol around 3.5lakh students. Without spending a penny, the government wants to show theMuslims that it is doing something for them. Providing quality education for theMuslims would have cost the government much more which it clearly does not wantto do. The whole exercise of making madrasa degrees equivalent to a regulardegree is thus an exercise in vacuous symbolism and will not lead to anysubstantive benefits to madrasa students.

It is important to understand that there are roughly two kinds of madrasas inIndia. Some madrasas are affiliated to madrasa boards in various states andapart from teaching Islam, they also teach subjects such as sciences and socialsciences. On the other hand, the vast majority of madrasas are independent ofthese various madrasa boards. They have their own system of examination and theyteach their students nothing except Islam. These independent madrasas havesuccessfully resisted attempts from various quarters, including the state, tochange their curriculum. Now, the government measure of equivalence of madrasacertificates will only apply to madrasas controlled by the various boards whichform only a small part of the madrasa network in India. What is the governmentdoing about the students enrolled in independent madrasas?

There are other problems which should have been thought about before making apolicy announcement. Where will the madrasa students gain admission? Madrasacertificates are already recognized for admission in the undergraduate programsof universities such as Jamia, Aligarh and JNU. The latest government move isthus not a novel instrument of policy but merely an extension of something whichis already in practice. That apart, most of the madrasa graduates get admissionin Urdu, Persian and Arabic departments of these universities. The equivalencecriteria will do nothing to change such a state of affairs. If anything else,this academic ghettoisation of Muslim students will only increase in the nearfuture. Without effective curricular reforms, madrasa students would not beadmitted in the science or social science departments. As stated earlier,madrasa controlled by the boards do teach modern subjects, but not in English. Amadrasa student, entering a university, without even a working knowledge ofEnglish, is bound to be involved in a frustrating struggle to cope up with hismore fortunate peers.

This frustration can have various political implications. It is important tounderstand that only few madrasa graduates access regular higher education. Partof the reason is their self-elimination through strategic thinking which tellsthem that it is futile to think about entering the domain of regular colleges oruniversities. They have their own religious economy which somehow is able tosustain them. The equivalence criterion gives them false hopes withoutsubstantially enhancing their educational capabilities. They would come toinstitutions of higher learning only to be disappointed with their inability tocrack the code of modern pedagogy. The universities and colleges in turn willlabel them as 'failures'. Cumulatively this will lead to new kinds offrustrations which could be channelised for a political mobilisation of a not sobenign nature. It is important to recall here that a similar exercise was donein Pakistan by the Zia ul Haq regime. While the move allowed madrasa graduatesto apply for jobs, the market rejected them as they did not have the requisiteeducational capital. The fallout of such a policy is there for all to see:Madrasa graduates form an important part of the landscape of terrorism in thatcountry. 

There are some pre-requisites for the policy of equivalence to succeed. Firstof all there has to be an all India madrasa Board. All madrasas, including theindependent ones, have to be compulsorily part of this board. This Board shouldadopt a common curriculum for all madrasas, which would include modern subjectsand English. Sufficient numbers of trained teachers for this purpose should beprovided for the Board. But for all this to happen, one needs to have a genuinepolitical will. It is true that the government did initiate a measure to form anall India Madrasa Board. But sensing opposition from the Ulama, the plan wasshelved in no time. It requires no deep thinking that the Ulama would alwaysoppose such a move by the government: After all why would they surrender theirautonomy, more importantly, their financial autonomy? The state, however, needsto look beyond the sectarian interests of the Ulama and focus on the interestsof poor and destitute students of the madrasa, even if that means bypassing themadrasa system altogether. The Ulama have been playing with the future ofmadrasa students for a long time. One can only hope that the state does not doso.

Arshad Alam teaches at the Center for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia MiliaIslamia