Author: Sumit Mitra
Publication: India Today
Date: June 25, 2001
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."
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.
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.
