Author: Sunando Sarkar and Alamgir
Hossain
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: February 1, 2002
It is the largest madarsa in Beldanga,
the madarsa belt of Bengal's madarsa district, Murshidabad. It has around
250 residential students, none of whom needs to pay any monthly or annual
fee. It maintains, besides the students, a large three-storeyed, L-shaped
building in an area where three-storeyed buildings are talked about, not
built. It has finalised plans to buy a 54-cottah mango orchard. Local people
estimate the cost of the land at more than Rs 35 lakh.
Source of income, according to those
who run the institution: donations from the "poor and devout".
Source of income, according to the
administration, if the expenses are kept in mind: "unknown". In troubled
times, the word "unknown" almost always point westwards, more specifically,
West Asia-wards.
Not every madarsa in Murshidabad
is as rich as the Madarsa Jalilia Islamia Dar-ul-Huda. Some, like the Jamia
Anwar-ul-Ulum in Dhuliyan, are poor and show it. But, with whispers about
"big Gulf money" becoming officialese in these troubled times when suspected
ISI agents are fished out of Murshidabad's mosques and madarsas with amazing
frequency, the district's centres of Islamic study are under the scanner
as never before.
"'Check our accounts.' This is what
we tell the intelligence officials whose visits have grown more regular,"
says secretary of Al-Mahadus-Salafi Educational Complex Md Nayeemuddin.
The madarsa, the only one in the district having a separate computer section
for its students, is somewhere near the top when it comes to the list of
suspected Gulf-funded madarsas.
"Yes, we have received money from
the Islamic Development Bank," says Nayeemuddin. "The grant was routed
through the government of India," he explains. "We have now grown used
to keeping our documents ready for intelligence officials," he says. The
documents, however, have not slowed down the visits, he adds ruefully.
The very economics of running a
madarsa - illegible to intelligence officials who most often are not from
the minority community - adds to the "problem", says Surulia's Madarsa
Dar-ul-Ulum head maulana Mufti Abdul Quddus.
The madarsa with 300 students and
20 teachers needs a quintal of rice everyday. Muslims of 65 neighbouring
villages - the madarsa's hinterland - account for most of that. "Ashur,"
the maulana explains, "makes it compulsory for every Muslim to give over
2.5 per cent of his produce from the land to nearby religious institutions
if he produces more than 40 maunds of crop every year."
Then there is the fetra, which requires
Muslims to pay anything between Rs 15 and Rs 22 every day of the Ramzan
month, and the zaqat that is 2.5 per cent of a Muslim's cash and movable
property and has to be donated by every believer every year, he adds. "Add
that up and you will understand how we can afford annual expenses of about
Rs 10 lakh," says the maulana.
Officials, however, say the balance
sheet does not really tally for most of Murshidabad's madarsas. "Some do
really pull through somehow," a senior intelligence official said. "But
you can distinguish between the madarsas having legal and illegal sources
of funding," he claimed. "The strain of having to pull through hundreds
of students and teachers and retainers without any unknown source of income
has to show," he said.
According to information the administration
has, much of the foreign money coming into madarsas and mosques is routed
through the hawala trade. Another source of funding, according to the administration,
is the flourishing trans-border smuggling in cattle-hide.
According to police estimates, every
truck that goes illegally to Bangladesh carries hide worth more than Rs
5 lakh. "If the 2.5-per cent zaqat theory is true, just calculate the amount
of money that goes into the madarsas and mosques if even 100 trucks cross
over every day," the official explained.
Besides, there's "incontrovertible"
proof in the form of the sprouting madarsas and mosques, say officials.
Murshidabad has at least 10 times the official madarsa figure of 70; and
the official figure of 428 mosques in the district is even farther off
the mark.
"If madarsas and mosques are really
unprofitable, as almost every other madarsa managing committee tells us,
why at least one of either keeps coming up almost weekly?" a senior home
department official posted in Murshidabad asked. A sound, logical explanation
would stop the visits and interrogations immediately, he promised.
