| 16 September 2009
Name: Muslim Education in Contemporary India- A Classified and Annotated Bibliography
Author: Yoginder Sikand
Publisher: Hope India Publications
Year Of Publication: 2008
Price: Rs 595; Pages: 291
Reviewed by : Mushtaq ul Haq Ahmad Sikandar
Education Of Muslims in India started to decline with the onset of the colonial period.Since the partition also the sector of education among Muslims has been in doldrums and continues to be on decline.Not much literature is available on the Post-Partition position of education in India.Many factors can be attributed for the pathetic condition of education among Muslims.The present book under review by the seasoned author on Islam and Muslims in South Asia Yoginder Sikand is a literature survey on contemporary Indian Muslim education from 1990 onwards in English and Urdu.A lot of books and articles are reviewed and summarised in this annotated bibliography which are of varying length,depth and quality.This annotated bibliography is divided into five broad sections:
1.General Muslim Education
2.Madrasa And Muslim Religious Education:This being the largest chapter of the book.
3.Urdu And Urdu Medium Education
4.Muslim Girls Education and
5.Muslim Education And State Policy.
a)The rate of literacy and education among Muslims since independence has not shown any considerable boom or has been somewhat static or even on decline in some cases.
b)Majority of the poverty sticken Muslim masses consider it futile to join the regular government schools because of socio-economic as well as the discrimination of Muslims in public sector employment.
c)The majority of poor children find their safe-heaven in Madrasas,which is also considered a solitary way of social mobility or "Ashrafisation".
d)The syllabus(dars-i-nizami)and way of teaching in madrasas has been the same since centuries though there are strong voices in favour of reforms among these seminaries.
f)The growth of communalisation,Fascism and Intolerance among the Pluralistic Indian Society has made the common Indian language"Urdu" as being depicted as Islamic or Religious one.
g)In absence of any government effort to preserve this language Madrasas have taken up the cause of Urdu which has led to further marginalisation of this language from Non-Muslim masses thus making its scope narrower.
h)Urdu which has been a victim of Partition has sought refuge in the madrasas and common Muslim masses send their wards to these institutions for learning and preservation of this language as government has turned a deaf ear to the demands of this language as the Urdu medium government institutions are rare even in states like U.P and Delhi with considerable Urdu speaking population.
i)The literacy rate among girls has been far from satisfactory,even though more than 60 years has passed to independence.It mainly owes to the mentality that main concern for women is home as well as in paucity of Muslim husbands for well educated girls.
j)There has been an increasing trend among Muslim parents to send their daughters to schools,but in majority cases poverty retrograde them to madrasas and even there the drop out rate among girls is quite high.
k)The State Policies towards education though formulated since independence on certain pretexts continue to be far from properly implemented.
l)Even in some Marxist ruled states like West Bengal the literacy among Muslims is quite low as compared to their other minority counterparts.
m)The illiteracy of Muslim masses is used by certain politicians to garner the vote-banks.