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What really happens inside a madrassa?

We speak to Dr Shabistan Gaffar, Chairperson on Girls’ Education, National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions, on education for Muslims.
by Humra Quraishi

shabistan-gaffarMost people wonder what really goes on inside a madrassa – what is taught there? Are these places really recruiting grounds for impressionable young minds to take to terror? I decided to put the question to Dr Shabistan Gaffar (in pic on left), Chairperson, Committee on Girls Education (National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.

Are there madrassas for girls, too? How are you upgrading them towards mainstream education? Are you also trying to introduce vocational training schemes to benefit many more from the economically challenged backgrounds?

Yes, there are madrassas for girls, too. There are two specific schemes for the development of all madrassas, whether for boys or for girls: the Scheme for Promotion of Quality Education in Madrassas (SPQEM) and Institutions for Development of Madrassas and Minority Institutions (IDMI). Here it is important to add that there are only a few institutions for girls imparting them madrassa-based education beyond the Maktab Level. Some of these institutions also provide education in modern subjects and girls can switch over to modern education after elementary education.

Vocational skill is what the educationally backward minorities need the most for retention. It is important for girls of educationally backward minorities to acquire some skill simultaneously, or on cessation of their education, to learn something which could help them in adding to the family income.

Comment on the slants by vested political interests on the very concept of madrassa education, linking it to fundamentalism and terrorism.

Those comments are political in nature and also arise because of communication gaps. All that I can say is that those who comment along these lines are either ill-informed or are not interested in knowing the reality. The reality is that the madrassas have always, and even today, play a very significant in educating hundreds of our children. They impart education that is both traditional and modern.

There is this grim reality, too: there are several within the Muslim community who are challenging Muslim women’s rights, such as the move to ban women worshippers from the sanctums of Sufi shrines, etc.

Our Commission is trying to reach out in trying to bring about awareness, and we are trying to do so through the teachings of the Prophet and the Quran where great emphasis is laid on girls’ education and on the fact that there should be no discrimination between girls’ education. They ought to be encouraged to take up different, challenging vocations. Let me also point out that already there is a change in the existing attitude, and this holds especially true in the South of the country, where these prejudices and narrow outlook do not exist.

The Justice Sachchar Committee had painted a rather dismal picture of the Muslim community lagging behind in education. What steps is the NCMEI taking to get more Muslims in education?

The National Commission for Minority Education institution (NCMEI) has been set up under an act of Parliament to safeguard the educational rights of the minority enshrined an article 30(1) of the Constitution, instilling confidence in minorities in general and Muslims in particular. The Commission has generated awareness among the Muslim community about the importance of quality education, as a result of which 1,04,75,000 children of the Muslim community were enrolled in primary school in 2009-2010. Out of this, 49 per cent were girl children.

One of the major breakthroughs came with the Commission persuading the Muslim community of Murshidabad (West Bengal) for establishment of schools. 621 primary schools were established in that region alone. To achieve the objective of women empowerment through women’s education, the NCMEI constituted a committee for girls’ education in 2007.

It is said that the Muslim community’s educational backwardness in the country is linked to vote bank politics and lack of political will. Your comment? 

Yes, till date, suitable educational institutions are not available to all sections of the Muslim community to participate in higher education. There are less numbers and a lower percentage of Muslims going in for higher education and, perhaps, that could be one reason that are not able to participate in the political sphere.

(Pictures courtesy www.signindia.org, www.robinwyatt.org)

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On the occasion of Women’s Day

A Spanish tradition, a bold photo exhibition and a doctor who took to Sufism…women continue to fascinate in many ways.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Today is International Women’s Day, and naturally, everyone’s talking about women and the realities they face in today’s times. But there are some positive signs of women being celebrated the way they deserve, and sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

Last week, at the opening of Italian artist Simona Bocchi’s exhibition, I was introduced to the cultural manager of New Delhi’s Instituto Cervantes. When he gave me his visiting card, I was somewhat intrigued by his name on it. He explained, “My name is Jesus Clavero Rodriguez. In our Spanish tradition, we put the father’s and also the mother’s name along with our first name. Jesus is my name and Clavero is my father’s name. My mother’s name is Rodriquez.”

Well, what a wonderful tradition! And after Women’s Day ends this year, I hope we consider doing something of the kind.

Last fortnight, I viewed a photo exhibition on the girl child, at the India Habitat Centre. Photographs by the Delhi-based photographer Mansi MidhaMansi Midha (in pic on right), who has been travelling to Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and around the capital city capture some absolutely hard-hitting shots of the girl child. Mansi did this project with support from the National Foundation for India.

She says, “In the midst of hollow claims of development, the reality is that even in this day and age, there is blatant discrimination against the girl child. It begins even before she is born with female foeticide being an ongoing, horrifying reality. Those who are fortunate to survive are treated as a ‘burden’ and face challenges at every stage.

“In a large number of homes, she could be married off as a child if not burdened with home chores. She is used as child labour, toiling in the heat and stench of landfills, working in the fields for long hours, picking rags in city streets or could be stashed away as a domestic servant. We live in a country where 74 per cent of child domestic workers are between the ages of 12 and 16. Though the Constitution of India guarantees free schooling to all children up to 14 years of age, gender disparities are a marked feature of the unequal access to schools.

“With her childhood snatched away, the girl child’s basic right to education is trampled upon. According to the World Bank, in 2010 India had the third highest number of out-of-school girls in the world with more than 3.7 million. 44.5 per cent of girls are married before the age of 18 and among the reams of material on trafficking in India, there is a staggering Government statistic that a girl child goes missing somewhere in the country every eight minutes …”

I think this exhibition ought to travel to lesser-known locales, so that people become aware of realities to ponder over, and not just on Women’s Day.

I recently met a doctor, Dr Jolie Choudhary Sabiri, who one day decided to give up her medical practice and take to Sufism. I couldn’t believe that this attractive 59-year-old doctor from Assam gave up all her worldly comforts and now goes travelling to Sufi dargahs.

She says, “I was born in a Hindu family in Assam and studied in a Christian school, at the Loreto Convent in Shillong. I have now taken to Islam, I call myself a Muslim Sufi. Somehow, as a medical doctor, I felt like a misfit, for I was always inclined towards literature. I was pressurised to pursue the medical profession because my father and grandfather were well-known doctors. I practiced for many years, even served in Bhutan, but about 10 years ago, I gave it up and moved towards Sufism. Now I travel to Sufi dargahs. Maybe one day I will write a book on my travels and on the Sufi tradition.”

But is she any happier today? She says, “I have gone through terrible tragedies in life. Today, though there is loneliness, I am at peace. It is hard financially, as I am living on my savings. Travelling is tough for a single woman, but I’m so drawn to these dargahs that nothing can hold me back.”

One hopes that this doctor-turned-Sufi will write a book. It will be refreshing to read about this woman born in an upper middle class family, give it all up in the search for a higher truth in far flung locales of this land.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Storyand co-author of Simply Khushwant.

 (Pictures courtesy www.bbc.co.uk. Featured image was one of the photographs on display at Mansi Midha’s exhibition)

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Diaries

Locked up inside her house…for 10 years

Ishrah Jahan’s younger sister Musarrat Jahan talks of the terrible years after her sister was killed in a police encounter.
by Humra Quraishi

Part 3 of the ‘Women’ Diaries

The case made international headlines when the news first broke – Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old student of a Mumbai-based college, was gunned down with three male friends, by police on a lonely stretch of road between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar in 2004.

Ishrat Jahan encounterHer family back home in Mumbra heard about the case from the media headlines screaming out details of the encounter – it transpired that Ishrat had been on a ‘mission’ to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and was a trained LeT operative. How and why this bright 19-year-old student of B.Sc at Khalsa College got mixed up in the business is still unclear. However, both Narendra Modi and his closest aide Amit Shah have got clean chits in the matter.

After a long fight to get justice for their slain sister, Ishrat’s siblings and their mother are trying to rebuild their lives, though it is an ordeal. Shunned by society and friends, and left to their own devices – after all, who wants to associate with ‘terrorists’? – the family rarely interacts with anybody. However, younger sister Musarrat staunchly maintains that Ishrat was innocent and killed needlessly.

She also says that she has rarely stepped out of her house since Ishrat’s death in 2004. That’s 10 years of locking oneself inside one’s home.

Ishrat, the daughter and loving sister

Ishrat’s mother last heard from her daughter just three days before the former was killed on June 15, 2004. Ishrat had called from Nashik – she had gone from Mumbai by bus to meet her employer Javed there – and informed her mother that she had met him. She had been working as an assistant to Javed Shaikh – her family says that she’d met him just a month before the encounter – who offered her a job in Pune. The job involved frequent travel in India, and Ishrat would be frequently gone for a few days. Though her mother disapproved of the travel, the family was in such dire financial straits that there was no option but to allow her to go.

The family had lost its breadwinner – Ishrat’s father Mohammad Shamim died in 2002 after a long illness – and Ishrat, her older sister Zeenat and younger sister Musarrat started taking tuitions at home to make some money.

I first spoke to the family in the aftermath of the killing, and it was a depressing interview. It was difficult to not be depressed by the pain with which Ishrat’s younger sister, Ishrat's familyMusarrat and her mother Shamima Begum recalled the second oldest child of the house, how she had been financially supporting the family after the death of their father in 2002.

When I spoke to Musarrat again for this interview, I could hear the sorrow in her voice once again. It is apparent that in these last 10 years, the family has not been able to recover from Ishrat’s cold-blooded murder by the officers of the Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch.

I ask Musarrat if there is any change in their station or the realities they live with today, especially after it is now officially acknowledged that IB officers were involved in Ishrat’s encounter. Musarrat says, “Even now, we have not got insaaf (justice), because the two political men (at whose behest the murders were carried out) are not touched and they have not been named as culprits.”

I ask her to elaborate. She says, “That encounter in which my sister was killed was staged for political gains, so what justice is there if the two politicians – Narendra Modi and Amit Shah – are given a clean chit? After all, these two politicians had concocted the false charge that my sister had gone to (Gujarat) kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and so they had her killed in that encounter! They are responsible (for her death) and yet they are not named. Why?”

Home alone

Though in severe financial problems, Ishrat’s mother and sister continued to wage a battle for justice. To this day, the family stoutly maintains Ishrat’s innocence, and instantly refute the charge that she was mixed up in terrorist activities.

Still, I ask Musarrat, given the people she is dealing with, is she scared about being so outspoken about the issue? “If my family and I were scared, we wouldn’t have fought this case all these years. It’s been very tough for us. We have been ruined, devastated but we are still fighting for justice…we are determined to remove this terrorist tag thrown at my innocent sister, at us, at my entire family. You can’t imagine how difficult it has been for my mother and us to survive all these years. We have been ruined completely, but we are not giving up the fight.”

She adds, “It [Ishrat’s death] was such a blow, on all fronts – emotionally, socially, financially…ever since Ishrat was murdered, we just kept to ourselves and seldom moved out. We have become wary of stepping out and meeting even the neighbours. Our studies got disrupted completely and we were ruined…it was difficult to even survive, forget about books and studies. For five years I sat blank, in a trance-like condition. I gave up my studies, stopped going out, and didn’t meet even any relatives.

“All those years of our life are simply wasted. It’s only now that I have started doing a course, but only through correspondence. Even financially, our situation worsened. Most of my father’s relatives are no more. My maternal grandmother lives on her pension in her native place in Bihar and my mother’s brother also lives there. He is a salaried employee, so he just about manages to support his own family.”

The now 26-year-old Musarrat says that her family, originally hailing from Bihar, has been living in Mumbai for decades. Her father was a small-time builder who suffered heavy losses and died of a brain tumour in 2002. With the  death of her 50-year-old father, the entire responsibility of the family fell on the eldest siblings – Zeenat and Ishrat. Ishrat had even begun taking up part time jobs together with her college studies to keep the money coming in.

Musarrat says that to this day, the family has received no help from the Women’s Commissions which are supposedly there to help and support hapless women and their families. “No Ministry or even any political party has come forward to help us,” she says

And so the struggle continues…

Tomorrow’s diary: ‘I’m a traffic cop, but you make me feel inadequate’.

(Featured image courtesy Musarrat Jahan, other pictures courtesy archive.indianexpress.com, www.kashmirmonitor.in)

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Election winds

Based on the current level of sloganeering and speeches by political parties, the upcoming elections should go exactly as planned.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

The upcoming elections will probably move along expected lines, judging from the preparations for it. The so-called leaders of the country are running all over the place giving speeches, all hoping to convert their words into votes.

Funnily enough, when the SP’s Mulayam Singh tried going towards the Aligarh Muslim University to address a seminar there, he was stopped even before he could set foot on the campus; there were strong protests by students and teachers. The seminar was cancelled and Mulayam beat a hasty retreat.

The BJP’s Narendra Modi comes to the national capital this week, at the Habitat Centre, where he will launch two books and brag about what his State is doing for the welfare of women. Women’s Day comes next week, and Modi is not one to let go of an opportunity to boast of his many achievements.

I wish someone in the audience would quiz Modi on the blatant gender bias and factual blunders in the text books teaching children in his State. These books in the syllabi are published and printed by his State Government. His own knowledge of basic history is pathetic, to say the least, and now he is doing the unpardonable – relaying factually twisted and wrong information to school children of Gujarat.

His Government is also trying to do what the earlier NDA-led Government at the Center had done, with the then HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi trying to twist the facts pertaining to minority communities. In this context, the text books in the State of Gujarat are trying to omit some important facts. A recent news report carries this vital input: ‘Apart from gender stereotyping, instances of gender bias abound. The chapter on the Supreme Court in the social science textbook does not mention the first woman SC judge Justice M Fathima Beevi…’ 

Meanwhile, the AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal addressed Muslims at the India Islamic Cultural Centre. He spoke of the disasters that communal politics drags along with it, and focussed on communal politicians.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.blog.sagmart.com) 

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Of blackouts and divided States

What could have been a crucial political debate was blacked out on Lok Sabha TV. We can only wonder why.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

It was a crucial moment in the country’s history – a debate preceding a process to carve out a new State in the country. The Lok Sabha TV, which has monopoly rights over the telecast of house proceedings, would have shown the country what transpired during those 90 minutes set aside for the exercise.

And what happened? There was a blackout!

At the end of it all, the expected result still stood – there was to be a partitioning of the erstwhile State of Andhra Pradesh. Yes, the Congress party managed to secure the Lok Sabha’s nod for the creation of Telangana State, albeit amid an unprecedented TV blackout. Lok Sabha TV went mysteriously blank during the crucial 90-minute long debate.

Amidst the fury that citizens expressed over the blackout of the proceedings, also stood the rather apparent support of the BJP in the passage of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill. Or did you not notice this? 

Any such division is like a divorce, causing innumerable fault lines to surface. And what stops others from demanding separate States – Vidarbha has been clamouring for a separate State from Maharashtra for a while now. Even before the actual divisions are announced and marked, we stand to divide people who earlier shared a common geography, as well as a history, as contentious as it may be!

There are too many loopholes in the system, which the top brass of leadership seems to take easy advantage of, but which common citizens like you and I can never hope to touch. It has never been tougher than the present time to fight the establishment, and tougher still is to fight it from outside the system.

You would have to be an Arvind Kejriwal to take to political recourse. I admire Kejriwal’s idea of moving away from Anna Hazare and getting right into the thick of politics. This paved the way not just for his own success, but his ability to attack popular notions and emphasise his opinions. As an apolitical citizen, he couldn’t have moved ahead – he would have been sidetracked for years to come, until at last he would run out of steam…

We’re all still waiting to see what Kejriwal does next, now that he is no longer CM of Delhi.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Picture courtesy www.livemint.com)

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Letting books be banned

The withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book raises one important question – when will freedom of speech truly prevail in India?
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

Books have been in focus all since last year and even into 2014, but one book is the cynosure of all eyes at the moment – it is Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History.

With the publishers (Penguin India) deciding to take the book off the shelves, it is time to ask ourselves some hard questions. Does anybody have the right to ban or withdraw a book because it offends somebody? Have we really not ‘developed’ yet? Where are the proofs of our so-called civilised thinking? Where are the people that support free speech? Most importantly, why are hardcore fringe elements allowed to sabotage creativity?

It is time that publishers, authors and academics dwell on these aspects at the ongoing World Book Fair, from January 15 to 23 at New Delhi’s Pragati Maidan. They must dwell also on this irony – every second city in this country is hosting a literature festival, yet we are becoming an increasingly intolerant society, and worse, a society that panders to the wishes of a handful of bullies.

While on the subject of books and publishers, I want to talk of the few people who have had the grit to self-publish their books. One such writer is Rajiv Soni, a chartered accountant-turned-writer. He has written two novels, Seher and Aaliya.

I had to ask Rajiv (in pic on right) about the ways of self-publishing one’s books. This is what he had to say, “When I approached some known publishing houses in 2010 for Seher, my first book, I rajiv sonimet with the following responses: ‘Oh, you’re a chartered accountant – why don’t you write a book on Accounting? Or, ‘Please leave your manuscript with us, we’ll get back to you (and not before three months),’ or ‘You’re a new author so please be ready to take 5 per cent (or even less) and that too, after six months.’

“I’ m so glad all this happened because I decided to go it alone. I built a small team comprising a ‘hard to please’ editor, a hardworking typesetter and a printer with good knowledge of paper GSM and ink types, a creative graphic artist who would understand what I wanted my cover to convey. The important issue then, is distribution. Fortunately I have a database of students whom I have taught over last few years…15,000+ in number. There is then a cascading effect if the book is ‘good’. Word of mouth is important…”

Selling hard copies via the web is an avenue that is also important – Flipkart, Snap Deal, Amazon and others can help with this. And now, with self-publishing possible in the form of Amazon’s Kindle platform (which enables an author to instantly start selling their books on the world’s biggest book marketplace) new authors are coming to realise that they no longer need big publishing houses to get their works out into the world and start making money.

Rajiv adds, “All in all, I’d still be happy to be associated with a reputed publishing house, but if that’s going to be like aspiring to have breakfast on Mars, then I might as well use that energy and thought into writing my next books: Karma in America, sequel to Seher.’

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.lokvani.com, www.newswala.com)

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