I was reading Tufail Ahmad's travels in the state of Uttar Pradesh, home to India's sixth largest Muslim population according to the 2011 Census. The political commentator's chronicles were published in Firstpost as a multi-part series to understand the mind of its Muslim community - its anxieties, aspirations and animating impulses.
There were some themes which stood out among the dispatches and I will try and address them one by one. This is by no means a criticism of Tufail's dispatches but a reflection on what he brings to the table of dialogue and discussion regarding Indian secularism and the integration of Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent - a region which already has a bloody history of 70 plus years and the trauma of the Partition still fresh in the collective memory.
The first theme which struck out from his first dispatch was ''peer pressure''. It was heartening to read that ''peer pressure'' and a latent and positive competition with Hindu girls is what was forcing Muslim parents to send them to school. Tufail attributes this statement to Arif Mohammad Khan, the reformist Islamic thinker and former Union minister. So external factors can do what internal factors have failed to do, ''...bring Islamic reformation and empowerment especially through non-Muslim institutions like democracy, education and sports (Tufail's words). He sums up that peer pressure may have persuaded madrasas to unfurl the national flag on Republic Day and Independence Day, but the rhetoric, articles, and leadership of some Muslim luminaries keeps the Indian Muslims at ''the cross section of integration and separation''.
The other theme which came up was co-existence which his dispatches suggest is a foreign word that the Indian Muslims are learning, that too only when their political and religious leaders have started demanding it in their speeches. It was refreshing to read that a change is coming over the Muslim leaders and they have at least started to speak the correct rhetoric in ''defense of liberal principles over religion-based identity politics that is eating at the roots of the Indian republic.''
Also noteworthy is Tufail's observation that most Muslim writers ''slip back into communitarian politics because they are not educated in liberal political philosophy''. An observation worth pondering over, considering Islamic scholars at one time championed reason as the primary guiding factor rather than texts. This out of the box, alternate thinking could be revived today. Any solution offered to get Muslims onto the path of progress does not necessarily have to be seen as treachery or blasphemy.
Tufail Ahmad paid a visit to his alma mater Aligarh Muslim University during his travels and was disturbed to see religiosity having made a permanent seat in the socio-cultural atmosphere of the campus. He goes on to describe the history of the advent of this phenomenon and boils it all down to the demand for separatism by Muslims, first for separate prayer rooms, then segregation, moving onto reservation quotas in a country, and so on and so forth. We all know how the history of the subcontinent folded out, the last time a demand for separation was put forward and entertained. As told above, integration and inclusiveness are alien terms for Indian Muslims.
It could be because of radicals masquerading as learned scholars, professing liberalism and advocating secularism whereas in fact they have very narrowed visions of these terms. The Bridge Course offered by AMU which an ex-SIMI man teaches, whose books in Urdu are known for radical ideas will not teach critical thinking to young men from madrasas who have never been exposed to geography, mathematics, social and physical sciences. They will only be co-opted in the academia of the University and will go on to spread narrow ideas further considering taxpaying money is going into funding muezzins and imams, and religious scholars in the Theology department of the AMU.
Close on the heels of the theme of separatism, Tufail explores how a University which should have been a bastion of the spirit of free inquiry, ''progress of scientific research, rational attitudes of academics, and freedom of thought and expression exercised by students across the world'' actually ''strengthens the psyche which militates against the spirit of free inquiry''. The proof is the imam of the main mosque at AMU getting the same pay scale as that of an associate professor from the central government.
He makes it clear that ''teaching of theology itself cannot be objected to if its purpose is to inculcate critical thinking among students''. But considering the theology department at AMU has not produced any Socrates, Plato or Avicenna, Ibn Rushd or Al-Farabi and instead, quoting a former professor of history at AMU, Shireen Moosvi, ''unreason is growing on campus'' then the State needs to assess what can be done about the retrogressive culture visible in the burqas and skull caps on the campus and the invisible censorship, corruption and promotion of selective ideas.
This may very well be done by quashing the minority status of AMU, a case which the Supreme Court of India is currently hearing, as the notion ''strengthens Muslim isolation and aids their religious consolidation, preventing the Muslims from integrating into India's social mainstream'', further sending an incorrect sociological message that it is the ONLY university where Muslims can come to study.
Of course, it is not like the whole of the Indian Education system is imparting ''critical thinking, knowledge and innovation'' but the excessive role of Islam in the lives of Muslims has shifted focus from progress and innovation to regressive aspirations and ghettoisation. It is scary to read Tufail's description of the ''cocoon'' of Aligarh created by the ''Aligs'' (old boys) of AMU. A haven for Muslims, it enjoys the status of one of the largest degree-awarding institutions in the country, but there is no scientific spirit and freedom of thought and expression, that define's a university's purpose''. There can never be - with students sporting long beards, and spending time in religious camps of the Tablighi Jamaat (an international revivalist movement with headquarters in new Delhi) getting better marks.
For me personally, it is scary to think of the Kashmiris settling in droves in the campus for years and bonding with the Tablighis and then returning to my home state with this ''cocooned'' mentality from the ''jannat'' of AMU. I am not averse to the State intervening and holding accountability for the content taught, but with the mirror happenings in the BHU and the Indian Science Congress regressing to idiocy, I am sure it won't happen for decades.
Not everything was gloomy about Tufail's dispatches. It was heartening to read about Maulana Tahir Qasmi's views, the Imam at Masjid Ratheri Wali and Nizam (chief executive) of MarkazBait-ul-Hikma Taleemi Al-Islami madrasa, both in Muzaffarnagar, who ''stresses the need for eliminating the gap between religious and worldly education in order to revolutionise the educational empowerment of Indian Muslims.''
Tufail rightly has concerns that his views will be taken critically by Islamic clerics as it blurs the lines between religious and non-religious spheres. But Maulana Tahir Qasmi offers it as the only solution which will enable students who study only the Dars-e-Nizami system of textbooks (named after Mullah Nizamuddin, d. 1748, an Islamic scholar, under whose supervision this system was supposedly made) and end up unprepared for life, rendering them jobless, not even able to fill a form for railway reservation. His offer of a practical solution of a seven-year Alamiat course inclusive of components of sciences, mathematics and English mandatory before awarding of any degree is echoed by other ulama (Islamic scholars). He is even supportive of girls taking up engineering, medical and other sciences.
Reading about how progress has been slow among Muslims since the four students of Maulana Mamluk Ali of Delhi went their separate ways - Maulana Qasim Nanautwi (Darul Uloom Deoband), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (AMU), Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi (Barelvi School of Sunni Islam), and of course, Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, I was filled with immense pride in the history of education in Kashmir, set up by the Missionaries and carried forward by progressive community leaders throughout the 1930s right up to 1990. A modest effort at summing it up is in the link below.
http://nation.com.pk/blogs/03-Nov-2016/burning-the-light-of-education-in-kashmir
It is sad to know that the madrasas established during the Mughal rule used to follow the madrasas of Europe and had religious as well as scientific education as part of their curriculum. But in recent times, this has degraded to just literacy and degree-conferring, with girls getting a token education to make them eligible in the marriage market.
All the dispatches from First to Five point to the internal problems - alien concepts of co-existence, and integration; need for separatism at every level; the fleecing of funds from the Centre for a medieval type education which has become retrogressive; the ''cocoon of Aligarh Muslim University''; the problematic Dars-e-Nizami system of textbooks; and the psychosis about the elimination of difference between religious and temporal education.
However, the silver lining is that ''peer pressure'' can contribute to a changing mindset as can State support by removing the status of a minority institution from AMU.
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-secularism-versus-communalism-at-election-time-3285792.html
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-is-rise-of-religiosity-on-amu-campus-a-precursor-to-another-partition-3284388.html
http://www.firstpost.com/india/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-should-taxpayers-be-funding-amus-imams-muezzins-theology-department-3285786.html
http://www.firstpost.com/india/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-how-bridging-religious-worldly-knowledge-gap-can-reform-muslim-education-3290658.html
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-be-it-kairana-muzaffarnagar-or-aligarh-india-is-headed-towards-multiple-partitions-3293748.html
http://www.firstpost.com/india/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-tracing-the-rise-of-barelvi-islam-in-indian-politics-3304570.html
http://www.firstpost.com/india/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-farangi-mahal-once-a-bastion-of-islamic-education-looks-to-regain-lost-glory-3310446.html
http://www.firstpost.com/india/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-understanding-the-shia-sunni-muslim-divide-in-the-country-3311436.html
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-govt-must-address-minority-syndrome-which-causes-social-conflict-3314366.html
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-mubarakpur-sits-at-the-junction-of-islamic-doctrinal-sects-divided-by-taqleed-3321246.html
http://www.firstpost.com/india/travels-of-a-political-pilgrim-madrassas-play-key-role-in-inducing-orthodoxy-among-azamgarhs-muslims-3337960.html
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