Author: Sakina Yusuf Khan
Publication: The Times of India
(web edition)
Date: March 18, 2001
The Darul Uloom Deoband has never
hogged so much media attention as it did last week. Journalists, hot on
the Taliban trail, discovered a couple of things about Deoband: that it's
not in Bihar, but near Saharanpur, just 170 km from Delhi; that this seminary
of Islamic learning, viewed by the Sangh Parivar as the hotbed of sedition,
had worked hand-in-hand with the Congress during the freedom struggle;
that the 135-year-old mother of all madarsas is not really a militant-producing
factory as some believe.
But yes, it still has a mediaeval
air about it. For the last 10 km leading to Deoband town, traffic consists
only of bullock carts and cyclists. We dodge our way past overflowing drains,
piles of garbage on the road and enormous swarms of flies that follow you
everywhere (the Uttar Pradesh government seems to have struck off this
place from its civic register). In the midst of all this squalor, the Rs
8-crore Taj Mahal look-alike masjid coming up appears truly incongruous.
As I get off the car at the Darul-Uloom
main gate, a bearded middle-aged fellow walks up and commands: ``Dupatta
sar par rahko''. I ignore that and ask for the VC's office. He commands
me more sternly. God, am I in Talibanistan, I mutter, but comply.
The vice-chancellor, Maulana Abdul
Khaliq, is not in his room. ``Aap Naazim saheb se milein,'' offers a helpful
functionary, pointing the way to the office of the administrator, Maulana
Adil Siddiqui. I walk in, half expecting to be thrown out. Head covered,
looking down, I demurely introduce myself in as chaste Urdu as I can manage.
Maulana Siddiqui's reaction throws me out of gear: seated on the carpet
surrounded by half-a-dozen young and old maulvis, he says in fluent English:
``Welcome, take a seat.''
For the next four hours, I'm given
a tour of this majestic but run-down campus -- the huge dari-covered lecture
rooms with low wooden platforms, dingy hostel rooms, unkempt lawns and
hedges. The 3,500 students, mostly from poor families from Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar and Bengal, are blissfully unaware of the world outside this Islamic
fortress. They spend 10 to 12 hours every day cramming the Quran, mastering
the Hadis and learning the intricacies of the Fiqh and the Sunnah.
They don't feel deprived at not
being allowed to watch television (it's banned) or doing the normal things
that adolescents do. ``We are happy with two meals of dal roti, hum ko
to bina takiye ke bhi neend aa jati hai (we sleep without pillows),'' says
a placid final-year student from Rampur.
With such an austere lifestyle can
you blame 10-year-old Taufique Ahmed if he has never heard of Amitabh Bachchan
and Sachin Tendulkar. What about the Taliban? ``Hum nahi jante,'' is the
stock reply. Only one 20-year-old, Ali Akbar, comes up with ``woh hamare
Musalman bhai hain.''
Who are their icons? No, not Gandhi,
Nehru, not even Jinnah. Their heroes hail from the Islamic world: Imam
Abu Hanifa and Qaari Siddiqui of Banda. This is hardly surprising in an
institution whose vice-chancellor holds the century-old fatwa declaring
India a Darul Harb (country of war or conflict) valid even today. ``For
me, India will continue to be a Darul Harb jab tak ke Mulsalmanon ko yahan
sataya jayega, unki ibbadatgah mahfuz nahi, aur unke madarse khatre mein
hain (till Muslims are persecuted here),'' he says.
