Madrasas in the SP Raj

When I was a young lad, I would wait eagerly for the then fortnightly India Today, and would lap it up cover to cover, new sooner the newspaper man would fling it into the house, slicked into the newspaper of the day.

The same news magazine today is like a cheap tabloid that would at all costs avoid to read.

I remember reading a report on Islamic fundamentalism. The article had to a large extent taken the routes of this to the madrasas. There were about 75,000 then, nondescript, hidden in the womb of populous gullies of muslim dominated geographies. These have been imparting colloquial Islamic education to poor muslims who donot have access to modern education. The medium is Urdu and Persian, which are the national languages of Pakistan and Iran. Products of this system are misfits in the modern world. They cannot seek any mainstream employment and sitting ducks and recruitment pools for extremist organisations.

Hindu organisations also run schools, colleges and universities. But they are imparting the mostly modern of education. An RSS college merely implies, starting the day with Saraswati Vandana. Rest of the curriculum is just like any modern school. A record number of their students enter IITs and IIMs and the still so coveted civil services. Just imagine what would happen to Hindus, should Hindu colleges teach only the Vedas and no science. Or education be imparted in Sanskrit, which is hardly spoken anywhere in India, saving stray courses in academic institutions. Akin to madrassas imparting education in Urdu or Persian. To top this all, politicians like Mulayam Singh are going to encourage madrassas just to gain cheap popularity amongst muslims. How are these madrassas going to help muslims. They will but help the Samajawadi party for sure.

That Islam is intolerant I always knew. I had personal experience on the fate of the coptic christians when I was visiting Egypt and a story about Iran. During a trip to Tehran, my agents played a lovely host. While trying to make polite conversation at dinner time, I mentioned, India has a population of Irani origin people ( read parsis ) who are doing exceedingly well in the country. Pat came the answer - if they were to come back, we would kill them. I was aghast to here this.