CS: Prisoners of their own leaders

While many Muslim leaders in Bengal celebrate orthodoxy, few care to do anything about the abysmal state of education, healthcare or human development of the community

Rajat Roy Kolkata

Close on the heels of the recent Deoband Declaration on Terrorism, the 20th Conference of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) was held in Kolkata from February 29 to March 2, 2008. The conference dwelt on issues like terrorism, the Uniform Civil Code, compulsory registration of marriages, social reforms, Babri Masjid demolition, among other subjects. The resolution passed by the AIMPLB — the 'Kolkata Declaration'— harped on Muslim unity in the face of all round attacks.

What is significant is that the Muslim society is gradually becoming aware of the crisis in which it is perennially trapped. According to Sultan Ahmed, a member of AIMPLB and well-known Congress leader in Kolkata, “The Muslim society as a whole is now convinced that it is being branded as a religious fanatic, backward-looking community. The targeted attacks launched by western political powers and the western media have now permeated into the mainstream Indian mindset as well. The Muslim response to these concerted attacks so far has been mute and confused. Now, they are trying to grapple with this problem.”

Despite this, he admits, the first push to regroup so as to meet this challenge, did not come from within the Muslim society. “It was the Sachar Committee report that opened our eyes,” says Sultan. Describing the conditions of Muslims in West Bengal, he sarcastically comments that people tend to forget that this minority community (25 per cent of the state population, as per the 2001 census) has achieved majority status in several other areas.

For instance, illiteracy is overwhelmingly high among Muslims — as much as 80 per cent. Surveys conducted by the AIMPLB and other Muslim organisations reveal that 80 per cent of the people of this community do not have any budget for expenditure, as they don't have any regular income. The majority of undertrials in the jails of West Bengal are from the same community. “A large number of girls in 'redlight areas' are Muslim and often use non-Muslim names to disguise their identity,” claims Sultan.

Similarly, he reveals, a majority of the beggars and victims of girl-trafficking are also Muslim. Social injustice, illiteracy and economic backwardness push them to this 'other world' of horror and tragedy.

 Not many are ready to admit this terrible scenario. In terms of a paradigm shift, Sultan Ahmed himself represents a minority in Muslim society. Most of its representatives are still looking for the cause of this vicious trap in the western world, such as the US-Israel axis, their machinations and the general western perception of Islam. The Eastern Post, a relatively new fortnightly published from Kolkata which claims to be the first representative mouthpiece in English of Indian Muslims, is full of reports on developments taking place in the Arab world, Kosovo and elsewhere, where Muslims are confronting the western world.

The AIMPLB in its Kolkata Declaration stated that Muslims should stand up for their legitimate rights but should always abide by the law. They know that the stigma attached to their identity as a community of religious fanatics can't be washed off easily. They are trying hard to dispel the notion that madrasas are the breeding ground of terrorists and religious fanatics. In the concluding session of the conference, while reading out the Kolkata Declaration, Abdur Rahim Quraishi, assistant general secretary of AIMPLB, appealed to the moneyed class among the Muslims to enter into media ventures to disseminate 'true information' to the Muslim community.

However, education and the urgent need to fight illiteracy did not find serious attention in the declaration. Perhaps, Muslim social leaders are yet to resolve the dilemma of how to embrace modern science-based education without compromising their religious identity. This dilemma is visible in the words of Basit Ismail, principal of a newly-established English-medium Islamic school in Kolkata. He says their aim is to produce “ideal Muslims who are compatible with this highly competitive world while, at the same time, learning about Islamic teachings”.

Torn between modern education and Arabic theology, Muslims are taking a tentative approach to education. The shortcomings are there, admits Sultan Ahmed. He points out that even today, after more than 60 years of independence, in West Bengal villages where Muslims are a majority, primary and high schools are extremely few in number. He stresses the need for more primary and secondary schools in backward village areas. While awaiting affirmative action from the state government, a section of the community has come forward to help its poor students. For the last five years, they have been arranging scholarships and coaching centres.

These efforts are changing entrenched stereotypes. Muslim students are now doing well in the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) — the entry point to engineering and medical colleges in West Bengal. Apparently, with material support, motivation and counselling, a few sons and daughters of rickshaw-pullers, peasant families and the poor are slowly becoming upwardly mobile — even as trained engineers and doctors.

These efforts, though commendable, fall short of the huge need to bring the mass of Muslim children in the arena of education. Gone are those days when educational infrastructure in rural areas was mostly developed by the rural gentry. Now, it is strictly being monitored and controlled by the state government. There is a State Madrasa Board, and a minister is specially designated to look after the education of Muslims.

However, it has been observed that any initiative coming from the Muslim community to spread education is often looked with suspicion. In 1996, the Al-Ameen Girls College was established in Kolkata, and the founders of the college applied for minority status. This was summarily denied by the state government. The leaders of the community lament the fact that while in South India, Gujarat and Maharashtra, governments are liberally awarding minority status to educational institutions, the West Bengal government is adopting a rather rigid attitude.

Besides, it is true that Muslims in Bengal are not vocal about the neglect and their abysmally low human development index. Instead, they are more vocal about other orthodoxies, which pushes them into the fundamentalist trap. A few months ago, Moulana Siddikulla Choudhury (leader of Jamiat Ulema Hind, West Bengal), Moulana Nur-ur-Rahaman Barkati (Shahi Imam, Tipu Sultan Shahi Masjid, Kolkata) and some others exerted massive pressure on the Left Front government to evict Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen from her Kolkata home. Now, the same leaders have issued a joint appeal to the government for lifting the ban on SIMI, a Muslim youth outfit, accused by the police of harbouring extremists.

Siddikulla Choudhury is also busy mobilising Muslims under the banner of his newly-floated political outfit. All these important figureheads of the community regularly propound archaic and retrograde causes. A Muslim teacher in a local college in Kolkata summed it up correctly: “In the absence of authentic,    forward-looking, secular and  enlightened social reformers within the community, Muslims in Bengal are still prisoners of their own leaders.  And  in  the context of the government and other political parties just using them as votebanks, they are eternally trapped in this subhuman condition of backwardness, illiteracy and poverty. This is the crux of the Muslim paradox in Bengal.”