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Madrasa Imaginaries and the Politics of UP Government Reform Seen in the Light of Two Case Studies

Usha Sanyal

Abstract

This paper examines madrasa education in UP, with a particular focus on girls, during the 2017–23 period of BJP rule, led by Yogi Adityanath as chief minister. The paper is directed along three distinct lines of inquiry. First, I look back at British Indian colonial policy regarding institutions of higher learning, both Indian and Western, to understand the colonial roots of the current mistrust of madrasa education by secular Indians and the Hindutva-leaning public. Second, I ask how the UP government has handled educational policy toward Muslims, particularly that regarding madrasas. I focus on a statewide government survey of madrasas in 2022–23, the results and implications of which are ongoing as we speak. And third, I ask how and why many Muslims continue to support madrasa education, including girls’ madrasas, a relatively new addition to the overall educational landscape in UP and elsewhere in India. This section of the paper is based on fieldwork observations at two girls’ madrasas in UP. I conclude that despite some problems—curricular, financial, and other—girls’ madrasas play a valuable role in educating Muslim girls. Graduates enjoy greater respect in their families and communities because of their religious knowledge, and they acquire life skills which benefit their families and communities.

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Introduction

1Hindu nationalist (“Hindutva”) sentiment in India is not new. The animosity of this strain of thought toward the secular ideals of the Indian Republic was ably articulated by V. D. Sarvarkar (1883–1966) in his writings of the 1920s (see Jaffrelot 2021). In 1948 Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse (1910–49), was inspired by these texts. Although at the outset, independent India embraced its ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity under the slogan “unity in diversity” and repudiated the vision of a hegemonic Hindu nation, the supporters of such a vision laid low and bided their time. Now the tide has turned. The current Modi government incorporates many of Hindutva’s ideals, treating religious minorities as the Other in many respects, without any signs of change in the foreseeable future.

2We can tentatively trace Hindutva’s beginnings in contemporary Indian politics to December 1992, when the sixteenth-century Babri Masjid (mosque) in Ayodhya, east UP, was demolished by enthusiastic volunteers (karsevaks) under the leadership of the BJP’s L. K. Advani (b. 1927), a course of action that led to considerable loss of life, primarily Muslim. In 2002, horrendous killings of Muslims took place in Gujarat (where current prime minister Narendra Modi [b. 1950] was the then-chief minister) after a train carrying Hindu nationalists who were returning from the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the destruction of the mosque was attacked by Muslims at a local train station. The killing of thousands of Muslims in retaliation, without immediate intervention by the state police to stop it, has been well documented, most recently by the BBC.

3This paper looks at the 2017–23 period in UP, when the state came under BJP rule, and specifically under Yogi Adityanath as chief minister. The paper has three distinct concerns. First, I look back at British Indian colonial policy regarding institutions of higher learning, both Indian and Western, to understand the colonial roots of the current distrust of madrasa education on the part of secular Indians and the Hindutva-leaning public. Second, I ask how the UP government has handled educational policy toward Muslims, particularly madrasas. My focus is on a statewide madrasa survey that the government undertook in 2022–23, the results and implications of which are still ongoing as we speak. And third, I look at how and why many Muslims continue to support madrasa education, including girls’ madrasas, which are a relatively new addition to the overall educational landscape in UP and elsewhere in India. This section of the paper is based on my fieldwork observations at two girls’ madrasas in UP. I show in the paper that, from the perspective of the parents and students, madrasas and secular schools fulfill different goals, that is, secular education offers the promise of employment in the future while religious schools teach one how to live one’s life in accordance with Islamic teachings. Each form of education has its place.

UP Government Policy towards Madrasas since 2017

4Many Indians who have never been inside a madrasa (Muslim seminary) imagine that it is an outdated institution that produces social misfits, and may even propagate anti-national sentiments. In fact, this has been the premise behind the rhetoric of madrasa “reform” under successive Indian governments since independence, as I will show in this paper. However, it was not until the BJP came to power in UP in 2017 that this imaginary was translated into state-mandated action affecting madrasas at the local level, to the point that it began to threaten their very existence as a historical institution of central importance to Indian Muslim identity. As Borker explains,

August 2017: The BJP-led government in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have ordered registered madrasa[s] in their states to unfurl the national flag, sing the national anthem, organize a cultural program on Independence Day and submit photographs and video recordings to the respective madrasa boards. The state governments explain their order as just an attempt to record best practices in madrasas so that they can be replicated. (Borker 2018:253)

5This was one of Yogi Adityanath’s first steps toward controlling what happened in madrasas after he became the UP chief minister in 2017. His next step was to dissolve the Madrasa Education Board and set up an online portal where all recognized madrasas were required to register. The dissolution of the Board made it impossible for unregistered madrasas in UP to apply for state recognition for several years. However, in December 2022 the government reversed its decision (Financial Express Education 2022). That year, a case came to light that involved child abuse in an unregistered (and therefore unrecognized) boys’ madrasa in Barabanki, outside Lucknow, the state capital. This in turn prompted the government to undertake an inspection not only of that particular madrasa but of all unrecognized madrasas statewide, some 8,500 in all. They were subjected to a detailed questionnaire consisting of eleven questions which ranged from simple ones asking about the number of students they had, the kind of building they occupied, their syllabus, and so on, to their source of financing. This last question was viewed with some dread, as it raised fears of government interference in the madrasas’ means of raising funds through zakat donations and waqf revenues, among other things.

6Unregistered madrasas were required to submit their responses to the District Minority Welfare Officer of their district by the October 15, 2022 deadline. Thereafter they—and the public at large—had to wait for a response from the state for several months. As one journalist, Heena Fatima, reported:

  • 1 The NRC refers to the controversial National Register of Citizens Law, passed in 2019.

[the madrasa survey] sent a chill across not only UP’s madrasas but also the Muslim community that says this is meant to harass them. AIMIM (All-India Majlis-e Ittehadul Muslimeen) leader Asaduddin Owaisi even called it a “mini-NRC” exercise. Some madrasa managers talk in hushed whispers about the specter of the feared bulldozers razing [tearing] their institutions down. (Fatima 2022).1

7To put the survey in context, we need to consider how it fits into the larger political framework of Hindutva. There are three aspects to this: first, the government’s attempt through the media and public discourse to connect boys’ madrasas with jihad and anti-national activities and sentiments, which need to be stamped out through government surveillance and efforts to bring madrasas into the national “mainstream”; second, the imposition of new academic and nonacademic requirements on all madrasas, whether registered/affiliated or unregistered/unaffiliated and whether they be for boys or girls, which are especially difficult for the smaller madrasas to implement due to shortage of funds; and third, the requirement that NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) textbooks be used to teach certain subjects, at a time when the content of those textbooks has been changed to reflect Hindutva priorities and ideology. As this paper addresses girls’ madrasas in particular, the first point is not explored here. However, the second and third points are pursued in the course of the paper.

The Colonial Roots of Hindutva Stereotypes about Madrasa Education

8The Hindutva stereotypes about madrasa education referred to above have a well-known history in British colonial discourse about the inherent deficiencies of Indian knowledge traditions. Thomas Macaulay’s 1835 pronouncement that a single shelf of a good European library was worth more than the “entire native literature in India and Arabia” is well known. In his view and that of fellow British Liberals, their mission in India was “to create not just a class of Indians sufficiently well versed in English to help the British rule their country, but one ‘English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’” (Metcalf and Metcalf 2002:80–81). It followed from this that the British in India needed to create English-language schools and colleges that taught Western subjects. In the years that followed, the British did in fact create such colleges in cities such as Patna, Calcutta, Madras and elsewhere. In so doing they were reversing direction from the previous scholarly endeavors by Orientalists such as Sir William Jones, who created the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 in order to study Sanskrit texts (Metcalf and Metcalf 2002:1–62). Similarly, “Governor General Warren Hastings established the Calcutta Madrassa in 1780, initially out of his own pocket” and in “1791 Jonathan Duncan, British Resident in Benares, established Benares Sanskrit College and sought government support for his move, on the grounds that patronage of traditional Hindu learning would endear the government to the Hindus” (Seth 2007:170). But after the 1830s the ancient learning of India was no longer deemed worthy of study.

9In 1813, an Act of Parliament allowed Christian missionaries to open educational institutions in India. As the nineteenth century unfolded, there were ardent debates about the merits of religious (i.e., Christian) versus secular (government school) education and whether instruction should be given in English or in India’s vernacular languages. In the second half of the nineteenth century a number of north Indians began institutions of their own in order to offer an alternative to government and missionary schools. Among them were the Arya Samaj in Panjab, Muslim scholars (‘ulama) in Deoband and Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan in Aligarh (both in the United Provinces), and Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal, to name some prominent examples.

10However, despite a variety of criticisms of the content of government education, by the 1860s and ’70s many Indians were eager to receive a Western education at one of the prestigious government colleges. Moreover, they wanted it to be in English, not in a vernacular language (Seth 2007:19, 169). Similarly, after the birth of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and the growth of the Indian national movement in the early twentieth century, there was no demand for a return to the ancient Indian knowledges of precolonial times: “very few nationalists suggested a return to the ‘nonscientific’ learning of the tol [pre-colonial Sanskrit school] or the madrassa; few disputed that the day of nonmodern knowledges was long gone” (Seth 2007:168). What they proposed in place of the British system was a “national” education, a combination of modern subjects and subjects that instilled pride in the students’ Indian identity (Seth 2007:169–70). From the 1920s on, most Indian nationalists, especially Gandhi, wanted education to be imparted in the vernaculars. Gandhi also proposed the inclusion of practical skills training, such as spinning.

11This history shows clearly that the current debates on the content of Indian education and the bias held by the state as well as secular Indians against madrasa education are rooted in the colonial past and in nationalist sentiment during the early twentieth century.

Attempts by the Indian State to Reform Madrasa Education

12The rhetoric emanating from BJP officials and the Hindutva-leaning public shows that there is a straight line connecting the image of the “backward Muslim” who needed government assistance to get ahead during late-nineteenth-century colonial India (Seth 2007) and current BJP references to madrasas as the “weak organ of the body” (quoted in Borker 2018:259). After giving a brief summary of Government of India initiatives regarding madrasa reform in the post-Independence period, I turn in this section to the UP government’s madrasa survey of late 2022 and its latest mandates for what must change immediately in 2023.

a. Government Rhetoric Surrounding Madrasa Reform: 1980s to the Present

13Sikand (2005) and Borker (2018) together give us a broad understanding of how the Government of India has viewed madrasa education since independence in 1947. Borker sees three stages in government enactments. During the first three decades of independence, that is until the 1970s, Muslims, termed a “minority,” were clubbed together with other educationally deprived communities such as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and no specific government initiatives were proposed regarding madrasa reform (Borker 2018:256). In the second phase, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, the government directed several initiatives toward madrasa modernization, among them, the National Policy on Education (1986) which led in 1994 to the “Area Intensive Madrasa Modernization Programme suggesting the introduction of English, science, mathematics, and Hindi … on a voluntary basis” (Borker 2018:257). Alongside more detailed suggestions for change such as teacher training, infrastructural development, and the creation of state madrasa boards during the 1990s, Borker also identifies as problematic the “increasing politicization and visibility in media and popular discourse” of madrasa education in the national arena (Borker 2018:257). The third phase, which began in 2004, saw an intensification of government attention to madrasa issues: during the Congress-led coalition government of the United Progressive Alliance-I (UPA-I, 2004–08), a Ministry of Minority Affairs was created and the Sachar Committee Report (2006) and Ranganath Misra Report (2007) were submitted and made public (though there was little concrete follow-up). During the United Progressive Alliance-II government (UPA-II, 2009–14), the Central Madrasa Board Bill was introduced to create a mechanism to standardize madrasa education across the country (Borker 2018:258–59).

14A crucial difference between these initiatives and those that came after 2014 is the fact that all changes and improvements over existing madrasa educational methods were presented as recommendations to be adopted at the discretion of the madrasa authorities themselves. None were government mandates. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion and religious practice was explicitly mentioned in several official documents (see Borker, Appendix 2). In UP this changed drastically after the Yogi Adityanath government came to power in 2017.

15Among the many government initiatives on madrasa education over the past twenty years, I would like to single out one. This is the SPQEM (Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasa) of 2008. Under this scheme, financial assistance was offered to madrasas in the form of teacher salaries if they agreed to teach science, mathematics, social studies, Hindi and English, in addition to their regular religious subjects (Borker 2018:258, 285). The madrasas were free to accept the government’s offer or not. The matter was controversial among the ‘ulama. Some accepted the offer gladly but others did not, fearing that “in the garb of modernization, the government may deprive them of their independence and autonomy” (Borker 2018:261). According to Borker, those who accepted government aid constituted “a small fraction of the total” (Borker 2018:261) and did not include prominent madrasas like the Dar al-‘Ulum of Deoband or the Nadwa.

16The reason I call attention to this initiative is that its success depended not only on madrasas signing up (those that did so came to be known as “modern madrasas”), but also on the government paying the teachers’ salaries as promised. In UP, about 7,000 out of approximately 19,000 “recognized” madrasas were “modern” madrasas receiving government assistance for teacher salaries, with the center and the state sharing the cost at a 60–40 ratio after 2018. There were about 21,000 such teachers. Initially the scheme worked well. However, in 2022 and 2023 a number of newspapers—e.g., The Times of India and India Spend—reported that the teachers had not received the central government portion of their salary for many years. The backsliding had begun in 2013, gotten worse in 2016, and after 2017 the budget allocation for the salaries was a fraction of the amount needed. By 2022 each teacher was owed Rs. 8–9 lakhs of rupees in arears of pay. They went on strike at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, demanding their back pay (Times of India 2023; Jafri 2023; Sarthak 2022).

17Given the above, it is easy to see why madrasas distrust government intentions when they are encouraged to “modernize” and “join the mainstream.”

b. Results of the UP Madrasa Survey, 2022–23

18The results of the survey began to become public in November 2022. The first news item was simply the number of unregistered madrasas in the state—about 8,500—as their number had hitherto been unknown. Next, the wide scope of the government’s required changes was revealed at the end of February 2023 when the then-chairman of the UP Madrasa Board, Dr. Iftikhar Javed Ahmad, announced that the

Uttar Pradesh Board of Madrasas has started preparations to provide modern education along with religious instruction. … Madrasa children will also study the NCERT syllabus this year. Modern education will be given along with religious education. … Now Madrasa children will be able to study Computers, Math, Science. … Pre-Primary classes such as KG, LKG and UKG studies will start from March. (Devdiscourse 2023)

19In and of itself, the introduction of NCERT books into the madrasa syllabus did not sound alarming. As my fieldwork shows, some forward-looking madrasas had already adopted these books voluntarily. However, the new NCERT textbooks mandated by BJP governments introduced a number of ideological changes in subjects ranging from history to sociology to political science, and even science (Jaffrelot 2021:169–75). In April 2023, a number of concerned historians issued a public statement objecting to these changes and asked the government to restore the original wording and organization of the textbooks, which had been carefully vetted by professional, well-reputed, and accredited scholars (Statement by Concerned Historians 2023; Sharma 2023). When I visited the field in August 2023, I found that the new NCERT books had not yet reached the market and therefore the madrasas were unaware of the new content, especially in the history curriculum. They were still using the old NCERT books.

20Apart from changes in the madrasa curriculum, other UP government requirements dealt with details of the madrasa school day (times of operation, Sunday holiday being mandatory rather than Friday), administration of end-of-year exams (students were not to sit on the floor, as was traditional), and the installation of CCTV cameras that would vastly increase the surveillance powers of the government when implemented. Surveillance was already evident in August 2023 due to the presence of cameras in all the schools I visited, whether madrasas or private schools with CBSE certification.

21The madrasa survey was a major event in recent UP politics. It was a public statement by the UP government that madrasas were under active government surveillance and subject to punitive measures if found wanting by their standards. It thus created a palpable atmosphere of threat and fear.

A Brief History of Girls’ Madrasa Education in UP, and Reasons Why Muslim Parents Send Their Children to Madrasas

22So far, this paper has focused on how the colonial and post-colonial Indian governments have viewed madrasas and madrasa education. In this section I turn to a brief history of girls’ madrasa education in UP, as well as to internal Muslim debates and opinions on the merits or shortcomings of madrasa education, as reported in the secondary literature. At the end of this section I reflect on what I observed during fieldwork about the willingness of ‘ulama and other leaders to modernize the madrasa syllabus. This part of my paper thus takes us to local community efforts to address the need to improve Muslim girls’ literacy and intra-Muslim views on the subject.

23In general terms, unlike the largely negative views held by the British colonial government and the post-colonial Indian state, madrasa administrators and their supporters believe that without madrasa education, young Indian Muslim girls and boys would be rootless and ignorant of Islamic teachings. Moreover, because the state has failed to provide affordable and quality education for the poor, local community leaders have stepped forward to fill the vacuum, though support for girls’ madrasa education is relatively recent, dating to the 1990s and beyond. Although there is a vigorous intra-Muslim debate on the specifics of how to make madrasa education relevant to contemporary needs, especially those of boys, the people who hold such views do not question the value of a madrasa education in and of itself.

a. The Slow Growth of Girls’ Literacy Rates in UP

24As is well-known, girls’ literacy rates in South Asia have historically lagged behind those of boys. Despite extensive British debate on what kinds of education they should impart or financially support (via aided schools) in India, the literacy rate in colonial India was dismally low. According to the 1881 Census, male literacy in NWP (the North Western Provinces, today the western part of UP) was 6.6 percent (Hindu and Muslim figures were roughly the same, though Jain literacy was much higher, at over 50%), while female literacy was close to 0 (Stark 2008:14). Despite these low numbers, however, Bayly argues that “north India was a literacy aware society, if not a highly literate one. All the commercial classes would know how to count and read simple bills, just as all the Brahmin and writer castes would know the significance of writing and texts” (Bayly 2007:39). Literacy rates were higher in urban areas than rural ones, especially in newly rising commercial towns like Kanpur. Likewise, Muslim women in “middle-ranking families” (Bayly 2007:38) were taught to read the Qur’an in Arabic, though they were not often taught how to write (Naim 1987).

25Muslim girls’ education emerged slowly, around the early twentieth century—long after that for Muslim boys—on account of parents’ reluctance to allow their veiled (pardah nishin) daughters to leave home to study (Minault 1999). In UP, three pioneers were Sayyid Karamat Husain (1854–1917), who established a girls’ school in Lucknow that became a college and today bears his name (Minault 1999:191), and Shaikh Abdullah (1874–1965) and his wife Abdullah Begam (1886–1939), whose school for girls, the Aligarh Zenana Madrasa, founded in 1906, is currently Women’s College and a part of Aligarh Muslim University (Minault 1999:238–49). The men were reformers educated at Sir Sayyid’s Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College (which became Aligarh Muslim University in 1920) and received financial support from Sultan Jahan Begam (1858–1930), the ruler of Bhopal and an ardent advocate of Muslim girls’ education throughout British and princely India.

b. Girls’ Madrasas in UP

26In UP, as elsewhere in South Asia, girls’ madrasas currently vary in size and quality, most being small and unassuming, like the two madrasas addressed in the next section. One of the oldest girls’ madrasas in India is in Rampur, west UP. It began in 1956 as a school for little girls, and over time has grown into a fully-fledged institution for higher religious learning (jami‘a) with facilities and assets that most Indian madrasas can only dream of (Sanyal 2020:65–71). It belongs to the Jama‘at-i Islami school of thought. It was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, that girls’ madrasas in UP began to take off in earnest. The reasons for this were both positive and negative. On the positive side was the welcome growth in the overall literacy rate for both boys and girls since Independence in 1947. In UP, boys’ literacy over the age of 7 in 1971 was 24 percent and that for girls was 8.3 percent. Thirty years later, in 2001, it was 70 percent for boys and 43 percent for girls. In 2011, the most recent Census data available, it was 79.2 percent for boys and 59.3 percent for girls. This overall rise in literacy rates in UP (though lower than the national average) has led Muslim men to want more educated brides. Girls’ madrasas became popular with many parents in part because of their lower cost relative to English- or Hindi-language secular schools and also because of their role in Urdu language preservation and the perceived benefits of an Islamic education. In sum, attending a girls’ madrasa became a means of upward social mobility for some on account of its positive value in the “marriage market” (Jeffery, Jeffrey and Jeffrey 2004; Winkelmann 2005; Borker 2018).

27However, the larger context of the Indian economic and political climate in the 1980s and 1990s shows that there were negative factors at work as well. An important one was India’s change of direction in 1991 when, abandoning its hitherto socialist economic path following the Soviet model which had retarded national economic growth, the country made a dramatic about turn in favor of a capitalist free-market model. While this reduction in state-mandated bureaucratic hurdles, which limited private entrepreneurship, increased economic growth by promoting private initiative, it was accompanied by a substantial withdrawal of financial investment by the state in education for the overall population. Everyone was on their own. Muslims, who were economically deprived relative to Hindus and other religious minorities, were thus forced to come up with community-based solutions to meet their educational needs.

28There were other factors at work as well behind the push for girls’ madrasa education in the 1990s and beyond. As Yoginder Sikand writes,

Muslims are often accused of being fiercely opposed to modern education … It is as if the widespread discrimination by the state in recruiting Muslims to government jobs had nothing to do with the lack of Muslim enthusiasm for modern education. Or … that the growing Hinduization of the government education system, with its clearly anti-Muslim stance, has no bearing at all on Muslim interest in such education. (Sikand 2005:194–95)

29Metcalf, while noting shortcomings in the way that even the better madrasas teach “modern” subjects, sees religious education as “a functional solution to a range of everyday issues” in the lives of Indian Muslims who face a pervasive sense of threat (2007:90). It is noteworthy, she writes, that Muslims in Kerala are more successful in integrating both the religious educational institutional system and the secular state-sponsored educational one. The fact that Kerala Muslims are more prosperous than elsewhere in the country and more numerous as well (about 25% of the population) shows that when Muslims are not the target of discrimination, they are open to innovation and state-sponsored schemes of national integration (2007:98; Sikand 2005:122–39).

30These scholarly articles, as well as the reports of the national committees of inquiry known as the Sachar Committee Report (2006) and the Ranganath Misra Report (2007) provide a wealth of data about the discrimination that Indian Muslims faced in the early 2000s in different parts of the country and in multiple sectors of society. This was before the BJP assumed power in the center (2014) and in UP state (2017). Things have become much worse for Indian Muslims since then, as multiple sources ranging from independent Indian media, international commissions of inquiry, and academic studies have documented.

c. The ‘Ulama: Internal Debates Illustrating Different Points of View, and Personal Observations of Curricular Variations at Some Girls’ Madrasas

31Given the a priori assumption by the Indian government, as well as by outside observers, that madrasa education is outdated and signifies Muslim backwardness, it is not surprising that top-down government solutions to the question of what should be done to reform madrasa education and make it compatible with contemporary needs have not yielded the best results. So, let us ask, what ideas have the ‘ulama presented about what madrasa reform should look like?

32Sikand spoke with ‘ulama from many parts of India in the early 2000s and reports on many innovative madrasas from around the country. Here we are looking at madrasa education in general, not just that for girls. Some ‘ulama spoke about reforms needed in the religious curriculum itself. Thus, a prominent Deobandi scholar, Dr. Waris Mazhari, has been speaking up for several years about the need for new textbooks in fiqh (jurisprudence) and tafsir (Qur’anic exegesis), for example, so that the ‘ulama can address issues that confront Indian Muslims today, not those relevant to Muslims several hundred years ago. He thus advocates for a thorough revision of the religious syllabus (see Sikand 2005:172–73). Another issue that troubles the ‘ulama is the intra-Sunni rivalry that has characterized the north Indian Muslim landscape since the late nineteenth century (see, e.g., Metcalf 1982; Sanyal 2010; Ahmad 2010; Hartung 2006). One scholar proposed a uniform madrasa board and a common syllabus across madrasas of rival schools of thought which “would work for [Muslims’] collective welfare” (Sikand 2005:178–79). Unfortunately, intra-Sunni differences as well as the ‘ulama’s own turf battles and fears of loss of authority have so far held these and other suggested internal reforms back. Other major issues addressed by the ‘ulama are pedagogical methods: they have in some cases implemented new teaching and learning methods such as debates, interfaith dialogue, and teacher training centers (Sikand 2005:179–81).

33To supplement Sikand’s insights on how different ‘ulama conceive of madrasa education in contemporary India, I want to add observations of my own based on detailed examination of the syllabus of some girls’ madrasas belonging to different ideological persuasions (maslaks, often translated as “sectarian” groups, though the translation is inexact). While I agree with the argument that the official syllabus does not tell the full story of what girls learn at the madrasa (Winkelmann 2005; Borker 2018), I believe it gives us important clues about the educational vision of the madrasa’s founders. In 2012 I visited the Jama‘at-i Islami madrasa for girls in Rampur (mentioned above) and spoke at length with a leading administrator. In 2012 and 2013 I visited a small educational center of Al-Huda International students, of Ahl-i Hadith affiliation, in Bangalore, Karnataka, as a participant observer of their classes for women. From 2012 to 2018 I carried out extensive fieldwork in a Barelwi madrasa for girls in west UP (which I profile in my first case study below). Everywhere I went I asked for the madrasa’s syllabus. In 2022 and 2023, I visited a Shi‘i school in Lucknow for both boys and girls, founded by Maulana Kalb-e Sadiq (d. 2020), a Shi‘i scholar (‘alim), and learned about their inclusive religious philosophy and the importance they attach to secular learning.

34These visits have given me a broad understanding of the different educational philosophies across the spectrum of ‘ulama ideological persuasions. It became clear to me that the educational institutions of those deemed to be “Islamists” (that is, the Jama‘at-i Islami and Ahl-i Hadith) are more innovative and “modern” than those associated with the “traditionalists” (that is, the Barelwis and Deobandis, and the major offshoots of the latter, namely, the Nadwis and Tablighis). Thus, the Jama‘at-i Islami madrasa in Rampur teaches students about the Indian constitution and the psychology of education in addition to a rigorous religious course of studies and an emphasis on knowledge of Arabic. Their students are middle class and many women go on after graduation to living and teaching in parts of the Middle East. Similarly, Al-Huda students are middle class and many come to the Institute after successful careers in IT. They also have a good deal of international exposure. The students from the “traditionalist” streams, on the other hand, are more likely to be from working-class Indian families and to be first-generation learners. The syllabi of these madrasas are correspondingly less “modern,” though they include some instruction in the secular curriculum of Indian schools, such as English, Hindi, and arithmetic. Their students also easily read and write both the Devnagari and Urdu (Nastaliq) scripts, which ability is not shared by Muslim students who do not have a madrasa education. The latter are conversant with the Devnagiri script alone.

35I turn now to my two case studies.

Fieldwork Observations

36This section presents some of my personal observations at two girls’ madrasas in UP. The fieldwork data are somewhat uneven: While I have worked extensively on the madrasa in west UP, my knowledge of the one in east UP is more anecdotal, based on two visits to the school in 2022–23. The research for the west UP madrasa was conducted over several years (2012–18) before the Covid pandemic, while my visits to the madrasa in east UP took place after the height of the epidemic in 2020–21. Apart from financial losses incurred during the pandemic and the constraints of making ends meet with fewer teachers and reduced funds, madrasas were wary of talking to strangers because of the politics of post-2017 UP and the ongoing madrasa survey. When I was in UP in 2022, the managers of the girls’ madrasa in Lucknow were initially reluctant to talk to me because they feared I was an Indian government representative. Once I had reassured them on that score, they allowed me and my research assistant to meet them and their students. But their anxiety was evident despite our assurances. On a follow-up visit in August 2023, we were even less cordially received. I tried to get access to the larger girls’ madrasa out of which my target institution had grown, but they refused my request for an onsite visit (although they had agreed to one the previous year). The smaller school did give us a brief interview, but only after several requests. In similar fashion, a Shi‘i madrasa for girls made polite excuses for not being able to talk to us.

37Madrasas care greatly about preserving their autonomy from government control, especially in terms of curriculum and finances. Given how the UP government is obviously targeting madrasa education because of its supposed backwardness and lack of loyalty to the Indian nation, madrasas are now more vigilant than ever before about record keeping. The ones I visited in 2023 reported that they had fully complied with the survey and responded to all its questions. Those who had received onsite visits said that although they had passed the inspection, they now knew what they should expect in the future and would prepare their female students for male outsiders coming into the madrasa without prior notice and asking the students questions. They said they saw this as a challenge, and an opportunity to do better in the future.

38As the madrasa survey is a recent development, its effects on the Muslim community will take time to become clear. Meanwhile, the ‘ulama have been cooperating with the government. Some put a positive spin on the situation, saying that in the long term it will lead to the badly run madrasas being shut down and the good ones left standing.

a. The Madrasa Space

39How space is organized tells us not only about how its inhabitants use it, but also how those who created it think about it. In other words, it tells us about the culture of a place, and the social and hierarchical web of relationships that prevail between those who inhabit that space. In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault (1979) famously described the French prison as a panopticon, a place built in such a way that the state exercised total power over its residents, being omnipresent but invisible, exercising its control from a distance. So successful was the model it provided that colonial powers used the principles of enumeration, categorization, and regimentation on which the idea of the panopticon was based to rule over a variety of peoples in Asia and Africa, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see, for example, Mitchell 1991; Bayly 2007; Kumar 2007; Seth 2007). In modern nation-states such principles have been replicated in hospitals, workshops, and schools as well (Foucault 1979:204–05).

40Turning to the present moment, the Foucauldian concept of (prisons and) schools as “total institutions” leads me to ask: Is a north Indian girls’ madrasa a place of confinement and control, a forbidding place like a prison? Approaching a madrasa from the outside, as I have done several times, it does appear a bit forbidding. The visitor will usually see a tall boundary wall with a gate or gates punctuating its flat surface. The wall prevents outsiders from looking in. In some madrasas, there is a waiting room near the gate, and cameras and TV monitors record the movement of persons through the gate. Visitors must sign their names in a visitors’ book and be given permission to cross the threshold. The separation between the outside and the inside is starker in a girls’ madrasa because of the physical act by which female students, teachers, and staff remove their (usually black) burqas once they enter, carefully folding and storing them, to be put back on when they leave. The burqa, a loose gown which conceals the face and body from view, is worn when the women are out in public spaces but not within the privacy of the madrasa.

  • 2 On haveli architecture and family life in a haveli, see, for example Mehta (1981).

41Inside the madrasa gates, one enters a different world. Now, within the safety of the madrasa, the women reveal themselves to each other as individuals. Their heads wrapped in a long scarf or dupatta that descends to cover the chest in loose folds, they wear colorful and feminine tunics and loose pants (salwar kameez) that transform their appearance completely. They greet each other with hands extended and a warm smile. Once inside, one sees that the basic physical layout of most madrasas, especially small ones, replicates the traditional haveli in north India.2 Often the central feature is a courtyard that is open to the sky with classrooms and other buildings on three or all four sides forming a square or rectangle. Unlike madrasas for boys, those for girls have no mosque on the premises, as Indian Muslim women do not pray collectively in the mosque but in the privacy of the home. Emphasis on privacy rather than making a public statement of presence through architectural features such as domes and decorative arches, is also notable in some north Indian girls’ madrasas.

42For those studying or teaching in the girls’ madrasas I studied, it is a safe place in which the girls can study. Some madrasas are residential, where students spend many months of the year, as in a secular boarding school. This is where they will learn how to become “good” Muslim girls and daughters, and will prepare to become wives and mothers well-versed in Islamic norms after they graduate. In the west UP madrasa profiled below, the teachers stand in for the girls’ parents or older siblings at home, to be respected and obeyed. In this madrasa—and probably in many other girls’ madrasas around the country—discipline is coupled with nurture. Punishment, when meted out, is not corporal but takes the form of shaming (Sanyal and Farah 2019; Sanyal 2020).

43It is clear in a number of ways that I explore below that the madrasa space is a mirror of Muslim domestic space, though not identical to it. I am less interested in madrasa architecture than in the social relationships between those who inhabit these spaces.

b. A Girls’ Madrasa in West UP

44Jami‘a Nur (a pseudonym) is a small residential madrasa for girls in the city of Shahjahanpur, west UP. It belongs to the Barelwi school of thought (on Barelwis, see Sanyal 2010). It was started in 2003. Sayyid Ehsan Miyan (“Sayyid Sahib”), its founder, studied the dars-i nizami at Madrasa Manzar-i Islam, the madrasa for boys in Bareilly much prized by Barelwis because of its association with Maulana Ahmad Raza Khan (1856–1921), after whom the Barelwi movement takes its name. Sayyid Ehsan Miyan also became a disciple of Maulana Mustafa Raza Khan (1892–1981), Ahmad Raza Khan’s younger son. Many male administrators and teachers at Jami‘a Nur were disciples of the same Sufi master. They lived in towns or villages close by, including the neighboring district of Farrukhabad. Many were connected with Sayyid Sahib through marriage. Thus, at the leadership level there were multiple bonds between the founder and the faculty and staff of the madrasa.

45Like many Muslim educational leaders who invested their life savings and effort to the cause, Sayyid Sahib was assisted by members of his family. His two daughters, whom he had personally taught (and who were also his Sufi disciples) were teachers at the madrasa. Another teacher was married to one of his sons. He and his wife and children, and their respective spouses and children, lived jointly in a house right outside the madrasa’s gates, which meant that Sayyid Sahib and his wife could be called upon to assist in an emergency at all hours of day and night when needed. Not far away was a boys’ madrasa that Sayyid Sahib had founded before he founded Jami‘a Nur. At the time of my fieldwork (2012–18), the boys’ madrasa had about 200 students, whereas Jami‘a Nur had about 400. Jami‘a Nur was growing steadily, whereas the boys’ madrasa was doing less well as boys would join but leave before graduating, as they preferred to graduate from the better-known Madrasa Manzar-i Islam in Bareilly about fifty miles to the north, where Sayyid Sahib himself had studied. The problem, it seemed, was that the two boys’ madrasas were close enough geographically to make it difficult for the more recent Barelwi madrasa to succeed. However, the picture of these two Shahjahanpur madrasas is in keeping with accounts by other scholars who report a recent trend in north India toward the “feminization” (Borker 2018:39–42) of madrasas, as female students outnumber male students in some UP districts (Jeffery, Jeffery, and Jeffrey 2004).

46As I noted, madrasa space is modeled on domestic space while also differing from it in some respects. Let me explain. When listening to students refer to their teachers and other authority figures such as Sayyid Sahib, I was struck by the use of fictive kinship terms by students and teachers. While Sayyid Sahib is “father” or abba to his daughters, this term is used by all the students in the school, not just his two daughters. In fact, they call him Abba Huzoor (respected father), which signifies high regard, inspired in part by his Sayyid status but also by genuine affection for him because of his caring and loving nature. Similarly, one of the teachers, whose aunt was a warden at the school, used the kinship term Khala Ammi (aunt mother) for her aunt. This term became the one all the students used when referring to this beloved warden, one of the oldest staff members in the school until sickness forced her to leave for her village. Even after the young teacher left the madrasa upon marrying, the warden continued to be Khala Ammi to all the students. Moving to the generation of the teachers, who are only a few years older than the senior students, the students refer to them as Baji (older sister). Often there is genuine affection between teacher and student, as many of the teachers are recent graduates of the madrasa who have now returned to teach while waiting for their parents to arrange their marriage.

47Yet, despite the small age gap between the teachers and the senior students, respect for authority is always evident in the relationship between them, especially in the classroom setting. In these and other ways, patriarchal family relationships are reproduced in the madrasa. Likewise, students follow domestic practices in their observance of pardah (seclusion) when in the presence of male teachers who teach the senior students classes on hadith (prophetic traditions), tafsir (Qur’anic exegesis) and fiqh (jurisprudence) and qira’at (Qur’anic recitation) to beginning students. Either the students add a nose piece (a cloth that conceals the lower part of the face) when in the presence of a male teacher, or, in a form of “pardah in reverse” (Minault 1981) he teaches the students from behind an opaque cloth partition.

48In other ways, however, the madrasa space does not replicate domestic space. Thus, students are not allowed to cook for themselves and have no domestic responsibilities, as they would in their homes. (Indeed, the absence of their domestic help is a major sacrifice for many of their mothers and has forced some students to withdraw from the madrasa.) Instead, they must abide by strict religious obligations regulated primarily by the cycle of ritual prayers and secondarily by the class and study schedule. The five daily prayers, starting with the early morning (fajr) prayer and continuing through the day at predictable, designated times until the last (isha’) prayer, set the tone for the students’ and teachers’ daily routines. Ritual duties are interwoven with mundane schooltime obligations. Over time this strict routine engenders a new habitus and lasting personal transformation that the student carries over into her adult life (Sanyal and Farah 2019; Sanyal 2020). Additionally, Barelwi identity is created in subtle ways through the texts used and interpretive moves that teach the students how to live as “good” (Barelwi Sunni) Muslims who will guide the spiritual development of their families after marriage.

49In my view, the girls’ madrasa is a new kind of space, a “public private” one, as it brings together both the familiar domestic environment and a relatively novel school environment for girls, especially in residential madrasas. Here, students are exposed to unrelated kin and can form friendships with other girls of their age regardless of geographical origin or caste background, all far from the watchful eyes of family members (Gupta 2015). There are significant social implications resulting from the madrasa experience and the degrees that the madrasa confers on graduates. These range from financial benefits, as when graduates become madrasa teachers who earn salaries that benefit their families, to postponement of marriage by a few years on account of the time spent in acquiring this education, to increased respect and authority in the family for the graduate on account of her religious knowledge. Nevertheless, she must be careful not to transgress age and gender hierarchies in her marital family. Her madrasa education thus has the potential over time to change society from within, although she must still adhere to expected religious and familial norms.

c. A Girls’ Madrasa in Lucknow, East UP

50Moving now to a different part of the state, let us look at a small girls’ madrasa in Lucknow that is allied with the famous reformist Sunni seminary, Nadwat al-‘Ulama (on Nadwa, see Hartung 2006; Nadwi 2007; Taylor 2015). Like Jami‘a Nur, Jami‘a Fatima (a pseudonym) is concealed from outside view by a tall white boundary wall. It consists of a small three-story building reached by walking across a small open courtyard. At the first-floor landing there are two small offices, that of the male manager and the female principal. Beyond them are the classrooms, the library, and other madrasa facilities. In September 2022 there were 230 students and 15 teachers, as well as the manager, principal, and a few administrators.

51The management of the school is in the hands of a single family, namely, the descendants of the founder, recently deceased. The manager, in the first office, was the founder’s son, while the other office was occupied by the principal, who was his wife, and the manager’s sister (in other words, they were sisters-in-law). This is a day school where classes run from 7:30 am to 1:00 pm. Teachers leave at 1:45 pm after completing their work. The school operates on a shoestring budget. Student fees were modest, ranging in 2022 from Rs. 400 per month (approximately US $5) for the junior classes to Rs. 550 (approximately US $7) for more senior ones. Teacher salaries were capped at Rs. 7,000 (approximately $80) per month. The school exuded an atmosphere of optimism and enthusiasm on the part of the administration and staff. The teachers wore a lilac uniform: headscarves, long shirt dress, and loose pants (dupatta and salwar kameez) were all of this cheerful color. Classes were over when I visited, so I was unable to witness any teaching and pedagogy.

52The two sisters-in-law shared with me in a candid conversation in Urdu peppered with English vocabulary that things had been rough for the madrasa for a time because of Covid. For two years students were unable to attend in-person classes and enrolment had dropped off to a mere eighty students. Meanwhile, teacher salaries had to be paid, often from the personal funds of the founder, Maulana Muhammad Irfan, as student fees were insufficient to cover the costs. Other challenges included the high turnover of principals and teachers. The principal sets the tone of the school, they said, so a high turnover of principals means that the school lacks a clear vision and plan of action. Likewise, the turnover of teachers posed a persistent problem, especially as most young teachers left the school after they got married, as either their parents or in-laws would not give them permission to continue teaching. However, in 2022 the madrasa was coming out of this dark period, albeit without the guiding hand of the founder, who died in 2021. Leadership and management were now in the hands of his dedicated descendants, the ones whom I met and who discussed their mission and the challenges ahead with openness and candor.

53Alongside the challenges they discussed were some positive changes over time, as they saw it. Thus, whereas in the past Muslim parents saw madrasa education as a desirable option for their less capable or intelligent children and chose to send the brighter ones to secular schools, today they were seeing bright intelligent students in their madrasa. Moreover, the class composition of the students was changing as well. In the past, only the weaker (kamzor) sections of society opted for a madrasa education for their children, whereas today some students came from affluent families. The principal said that three of their students came from the prestigious City Montessori School (CMS) in Lucknow. These students’ parents felt that the madrasa would give them the religious education that they were unable to give them at home, in an atmosphere (mahaul) that was lacking in their English-language secular school. On a broader level, we can also link this development to the “saffronization” of education in Indian public schools, especially government schools, as noted by Sikand (2005).

54The most innovative aspect of this madrasa is its academic syllabus. From Class I to Class XII, the syllabus is designed to be both religious and secular. Thus, Class I is also known as Darja Ibtidaiya Ula (Grade for Beginners, One), which is the madrasa equivalent of this class. The list of subjects includes the Qur’an, religious studies (diniyat), Urdu, Hindi, English, Mathematics, Science (environmental studies), Islamic Ethics (akhlaq), and Drawing. This is the basic pattern of the syllabus all the way through to Class XII, though additional subjects are added as the child progresses. Thus, in Class II (this being Ibtidaiya Saniya in the madrasa system) one new subject is added, namely, Arabic, while in Class V (Ibtidaiya Khamsa) Social Studies is added. Thus, the student studies four languages—Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, and English—from Class II to Class XII. In Class VIII (Sanwiya Salisa) NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) textbooks start to be used for Urdu. In Class IX, NCERT books are used to teach Social Studies, Urdu, English, Hindi, and Science. Classes X and XI are referred to as High School, and Class XII is called Intermediate. From Class IX on, the list of subjects grows yet again, now including more advanced religious subjects such as jurisprudence (fiqh), Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir), and prophetic traditions (hadith). On the lighter side, students also study Home Science, which includes sewing and embroidery. At the end of Class XI students appear for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) high school examinations as private students, and at the end of Class XII they take the Inter examinations in the same way.

55As the madrasa manager and the principal mentioned, the syllabus requires a great deal of work on the part of students. Some have criticized the madrasa authorities, saying that they have included so much secular content that the school has ceased to be a real madrasa. But they counter by saying that they want to create as many opportunities for success for the children as possible. They don’t want graduates to be limited to simply opting for BA Urdu or Arabic. Instead, they want the students’ English skills to be good enough to allow them to choose other subjects at the college level that have greater employment potential. To this end, from time to time they also hold workshops and seminars to inform their students of current issues that relate to Muslims in India, bringing in outside speakers. Some examples include the NRC (National Register of Citizens Law, passed in December 2019) and the hijab. Clearly, the madrasa administrators have set themselves very ambitious goals. This is all the more remarkable, given that the students come from a working-class background, and would normally not have the opportunity to receive a good education.

Conclusion

56Although the quality of Indian madrasa education is highly varied and uneven, in my view girls’ madrasa education has been an agent of positive change. It helps raise literacy among girls and enhances their quality of life. The very fact that girls’ madrasas have been growing in number in the past thirty years is a “reform” in itself, as it helps to raise Muslim women’s literacy rates, which in turn leads to overall social uplift for the community. Beyond this, when we recognize that the overall purpose of girls’ madrasa education is to effect change in the family and community rather than to equip Muslim girls for a secular profession and career, it becomes clear that curricular changes of the kinds proposed for boys’ madrasas are less relevant for those of girls. In an important new development, some innovative madrasas are starting to give Muslim women the more advanced religious education needed to train female muftis (who are qualified to issue fatwas, which offer solutions to everyday problems facing the Muslim public, based on knowledge of the sharia or Islamic law). Thus, Justin Jones (2018) has reported on Muslim female judges (qazis) in some parts of India, who run women-only sharia courts for dispute resolution on issues related to marriage and divorce, the custody of children, and so on.

57Based on my research, I would argue that madrasas that have relied on their own efforts and funds, however limited, have fared better than “aided” madrasas which receive some government funding. This is also the case with secular education in the state. Since the Yogi Adityanath government came to power in 2017, earlier government adherence to the constitutional mandate giving religious minorities freedom to practice their faith without interference has all but ceased. Since 2017, madrasas in UP have experienced increasing interference in their internal affairs. Their loyalty to the Indian state is questioned and has to be demonstrated.

58The madrasa survey of 2022 has led to even greater state intervention. As noted above, it emerged from the context of current Hindutva politics regarding madrasa education, which is regarded as being outside the Indian national mainstream, potentially anti-national and jihadist, and in need of “mainstreaming” and surveillance. To do this, the government has imposed new regulations and demanded that madrasas make costly structural changes which threaten to overwhelm them financially and could force some of them to shut their doors. In the same way, the addition of newly revised NCERT textbooks in their syllabus will also lead to madrasa children having a Hinduized view of Indian history, thereby making Muslims feel and look like they don’t belong. The regime’s cultural nationalism is suffocating minority communities while depriving them of their constitutional rights to religious freedom. For the moment, madrasa authorities seem to be increasingly censoring themselves in order to be able to continue to serve their communities.

59These developments illustrate how far the current Indian state is willing to go in its embrace of a majoritarian religious outlook that endangers the well-being of its largest religious minority. We have to ask ourselves what government initiatives and promises like beti bachao, beti padhao (save the daughter, educate the daughter) really mean. Who is this daughter and what agency does she have?

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Notes

1 The NRC refers to the controversial National Register of Citizens Law, passed in 2019.

2 On haveli architecture and family life in a haveli, see, for example Mehta (1981).

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References

Electronic reference

Usha Sanyal, Madrasa Imaginaries and the Politics of UP Government Reform Seen in the Light of Two Case StudiesSouth Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal [Online], 32 | 2024, Online since 28 November 2024, connection on 16 February 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/9480; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/136ke

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About the author

Usha Sanyal

Wingate University

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