Author: Out Political Bureau
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: February 10, 2004
It may have been the umpteenth time
that New Delhi raised the issue of mushrooming madarsas across the Indo-Nepal
border with Kathmandu, but the latter's rejoinder last week asking what
steps India had itself taken to regulate their growth on its side of the
border, had senior Union home ministry officials nonplussed.
At the meeting of the Indo-Nepal
joint working group on border management in Kathmandu last week, the then
Union home secretary, Mr N Gopalaswami, confronted his Nepalese counterpart
Ananta Raj Pandey with intelligence reports documenting the unprecedented
growth of Islamic learning centres in border areas of Nepal. He is reported
to have complained that not only these madarsas provided shelters to the
ISI and indoctrination centres for future jehadis, they were also trying
to bring about a demographic change in Indian border districts by "converting"
poor families to Islam by luring them with a job offer for at least one
of its members in Middle East/Gulf countries.
The madarsas, he told Mr Pandey
quoting inputs from the Intelligence Bureau, were replete with illegal
foreign funds, mainly from Gulf-based Muslims and fundamentalist organisations.
What was alarming was the large-scale immigration of Bangladeshis in areas
with centralization of madarsas, such as Terai in Uttaranchal, a hotbed
for underworld gangsters such as the late Dilshad Baig, Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar and West Bengal.
But when home secretary sought action
by the Nepalese agencies to contain the growth of these madarsas, he is
said to have been politely reminded of India's own ineffectiveness in addressing
the problem. "Tell us the steps you have taken to check the madarsas located
on your side of the border, and we will emulate the same," he told the
home secretary. The former home secretary, who fully realized the Centre's
limitations in dealing with the problem due to lack of cooperation from
the state governments concerned given its communal implications, was taken
unawares by the posse and preferred to remain silent, putting the sensitive
issue on the back-burner.
It is no secret that the Centre
has been unable to enlist the cooperation of the state governments concerned
- a Congress one in Uttaranchal, Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh,
RJD government in Bihar and Left Front government in West Bengal, all of
which value their minority votebank - in cracking down the thousands of
madarsas that have come up in their border districts. With law and order
a state subject, the Centre can do little to set the house in order. Although
West Bengal has a law to control religious places, it has not really implemented
it allegedly due to the risk of losing precious minority votes.
It may be recalled that the Kalyan
Singh government in UP had dared to bring the controversial UP Religious
Places Bill, but it too died a slow death as the Centre itself sat over
it when it came to the President for clearance.
