Tuesday 26 April 2016

MADRASA EDUCATION IN INDIA



Madrasa is an institution of learning, where Islamic sciences including literary and philosophical ones are taught. Their aim is to inculcate the belief and practice of Islam among its followers and guide them to follow Quran and traditions of the Prophet.  The foundation of Madrasa education is therefore, basically standing on two pillars of Quran (Collection of God's revelations to Prophet Mohammad) and Sunna (Tradition of Prophet Mohammad). Now how can that be inappropriate and why is this method of education in the eye of the storm today?

We do not need a Rajendra Sachar Committee to tell us that education is the only mechanism that enhances the process of social, economic, and cultural development of communities and along all these three parameters Muslims in India are faring worst. There are several reasons for their backwardness such as large family size, economic poverty, negative attitude towards girl’s education, high school dropout rates among Muslim students, lack of adult education among them, but along with all these reasons a major reason remains the lack of link between madrasa education and modern education which involves proficiency in English language and learning of new skills and technology relevant to the needs of changing world.                                                                                                                                                                                               
Madrasas and Maktabs were built across the country during two centuries of Mogul rule and there are more than 40,000 of them today. Initially their principal function was to train personnel for government service and accordingly curriculum was formulated to cater the administrative needs of Muslim rulers. Times have changed since then but Madrasas have failed to keep pace with the changing times. That is the reason why post Muslim rule these educational institutions have been at best objects of curiosity and at worst suspicious sleeper cells of orthodoxy, religious conservatism, obsession with medieval identity and now anti-national terror. They are today blamed for playing a prominent role in keeping the movement of Muslim separatism alive in this country. The question one needs to ask is that is it Muslim separatism or Muslim identity that they are trying to uphold.

When modern education was introduced during the British Raj Madrasa teachers became restive and developed a more rigid attitude towards religion-centric education for Muslims. The historic participation of madrasa leaders in 1857 revolt against British regime proved that the main objective of traditional Islamic education was to attune the Indian Muslims with aspiration for regaining of political power.  With Ulema playing significant role in the revolt, the British started suspecting madrasas as possible centres of disaffection. 

The British introduced modern education was a threat to the Persho-Arab legacy, which was being propagated only through the madrasas. Rattled by the British system, the Muslims launched a renewed madrasa movement by establishing an Islamic seminary known as Darul Uloom at Deoband in 1866 and by the close of nineteenth century madrasas like Farangi Mahal (Lucknow), and Nadwat-al-Ulama (Lucknow) emerged as vibrant symbols for Muslim separatist movement in India. 

But all Muslims did not think along the same lines. Contrary to Deoband movement Sir Syed Ahmad a British loyalist launched Aligarh movement and established Madrastul Ulum at Aligarh in 1873 for imparting education in modern branches of learning, which later became Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College and then Aligarh Muslim University. So when today we talk of modernizing the mardasas, this is a no new political bogey, the eminent educationist Sir Syed Ahmed knew even then the gross inadequacies of madrasa education! He criticized them for encouraging memorizing rather than real understanding and felt that by organically relating all forms of knowledge and gearing these to dogmatic theology the very sources of intellectual fecundity were blighted and possibility of original thinking stifled.

While Sir Syed Ahmed’s basic aim was to fashion the education policy for Indian Muslims and encourage them towards the mainstream of western education there was a major offshoot. An attitude of social exclusivism developed among the Muslims and it worked as catalyst in fostering Muslim communal consciousness causing major damage to Hindu-Muslim unity in the Indian sub-continent. Later it gave birth to the All India Muslim League and its two-nation theory, which ultimately resulted in the partition of India.

So the future of madrasa education in Hindu dominated secular and democratic Indian polity became an issue of primary concern for both the Nation as well as the madrasas. The Nation could not forget the pain of partition and remained always suspicious about what was cooking inside the madrasas. The madrasas in post-colonial India were plagued with the wrong impression about alleged Hindu-biased education.  Instead of joining hands with Hindus in national reconstruction programmes, Indian Muslims took up the problem of their separate identity as primary concern and failed to avail the equal opportunity provided to all the Indian citizens under constitution. Instead of being Indian first and Muslims next, they chose to become Muslims first and Indians next, insisted on an education system which will foster their religious identity rather than their national identity!

Even Islamic institutions like Deoband and Nadwa, which had maintained strategic opposition to partition of the country hardly, made any change in their courses of study and method of teaching even after Independence. They have, along with very many lesser known madrasas produced thousands of graduates, religiously and theologically strong and inflexible but practically unskilled and unemployable. They are therefore, equally responsible for the material plight of the Indian Muslims and for their economic, social and educational backwardness as we see today. Even the contemporary rationalist Muslim thinkers, who talk about Islamic modernism, have hardly overcome their medieval attitude of intellectual subjugation. They have in fact ignored the real problem that how far madrasa education would be relevant in contemporary social advancement of the country. If they still enjoy remaining under the subjugation of radical Islamists no one can stop them from slipping rapidly down the educational and economic scale. With fewer madrasas for girls and strict segregation of sexes the education of the girl child is worse hit and so automatically 50% of the future work force is remaining uneducated and obviously unemployable.

Memorization of Islamic scriptures without any rational understanding befitting to the contemporary cultural and social environment will surely not serve the real purpose of education. In view of the ongoing changes in the social, cultural, economic, and political environment drastic changes are required in madrasa system of education so that Indian Muslims could come to terms with the changing needs of contemporary Indian society. Computer science, Mathematics, foreign languages, vocational training, skill development, all need to go into this education system to make it socially relevant and make the students employable.

Without any concern for the material progress of Indian Muslims madrasas are only producing Alims and Fazils who are Islamic zealots so that they could remain loyal to Islam and to the political interest of Muslim community.  Emphasis on Islamic education at the cost of secular education is detrimental to national interest. There is no harm in having Quran in one hand if they have computer in the other and have a world view instead of a tubular vision, a medieval mindset and a rigid and sclerotic outlook.

Tuesday 19 April 2016

THE CASE OF DISAPPEARING WATER


Ancient civilization invariably grew on the banks of rivers may it be the Ganga and Yamuna in India, Tigris and Euphrates in West Asia or Yangtze and Yellow river in China. This is no coincidence because water is essential for life on planet earth not only for humans but for almost all species of plants and animals. It is this water which faces a global crisis today. The crisis is both of fresh water availability as well as portability. Is there enough water available and is it clean enough so that when we drink it we don’t get sick? This is a million dollar question today!

As all these years water was available in plenty, we have not attached a value to it, something which it always deserved. We have used less, wasted more and polluted most of our water sources. In much of the world, existing water supplies are insufficient to meet all of the urban, industrial, agricultural, and environmental demands.

The primary condition determining whether a region has a water surplus or experiences water scarcity is whether precipitation exceeds potential evaporation. In regions where potential evaporation exceeds precipitation, there is minimal runoff available to be intercepted and stored for later use, leading to a critical dependence on the timing and amount of rainfall.

The crisis is multi-dimensional:
1.       A crisis of management: are we managing the water resources efficiently, or, is there a government commitment to even deliver water to its people?
2.       crisis of economics: does a country have the wealth to build and maintain the infrastructure to treat and distribute water?
3.       crisis of understanding:  does the public and do our elected officials really understand what’s happening with water, nationally and globally? 

Groundwater depletion is a global phenomenon.  At least 2 billion people rely on groundwater as their primary water source, and most of their water comes from these aquifers that are at risk of running dry in the coming decades. As it is more than 1 billion people world over lack access to a reliable supply of potable freshwater and as days go by their numbers will be on the rise. As of today there is no law in as to how much ground water we can pump out and we are getting greedier and greedier!

For an agricultural country like India this is where most water is used and we need to urgently work on improved water conservation and efficiency. We can do so much more with so much less.  We need more efficient irrigation, better crop selection, more saline and drought tolerant crops, more greenhouse agriculture, and yes, better pricing. We need to incorporate technology in a very big way to conserve our most precious resource. Economic growth and environmental preservation are not mutually exclusive.  A green economy can be a very, very strong economy, and the water sector can be a big part of that. And remember, without water, we don’t even have an economy.

So what are the answers for our acute water shortage? The most basic is a change in our attitude. At first we really didn't understand how the water cycle worked so we did things like dump toxic materials right on the ground or directly into rivers; and a more recent phase in which we actually know better, but choose to do it anyway, because it’s easy and cheap. This cannot continue, we can’t continue with a bad habit because it is easy and cheap.

Then there are some technological advances and some lifestyle changes which we need to adopt:

1. Cloud seeding, practiced in China releases additional "nuclei" in the sky around which water condenses. These nuclei can be salts, calcium chloride, dry ice or silver iodide, which the Chinese use. Silver iodide is effective because its form is similar to ice crystals. We have to plan ahead with aircraft, locations, met help and chemicals needed so that we can execute it during the draught season over Marathwada, Telengana, Bundelkhand and other notoriously arid regions.

2. The parliament should start functioning for a change and pass a bill that demands water harvesting both for new and for existing homes, offices, factories, schools, colleges, everyone. Failure to comply should result in imprisonment and punitive fines. If politicians can’t do it, the Supreme Court should.

3. Changes in agriculture:
A. Order change of crop patterns and revert to low water demanding crops. Meet the vested interests objecting to genetically modified crops head on and evolve new paddy varieties that take lesser water to plant and harvest.

B. Shift from landscape flooding to drip irrigation method of watering crops. It is now scientifically proven that the latter is targeted or precise watering, and yields better crops as we have seen in sugarcane farms lately.
C. WaterSense Labeled Irrigation Controllers are weather-based, a type of "smart" irrigation control technology that uses local weather data to determine when and how much to water. Thus both water and money are saved.
D. Soil Moisture Sensors senses the amount of moisture the soil has and helps in tailoring the irrigation schedule accordingly.
4. Ensure strict "no leaking plumbing" compliance regulations for taps, pipes, joints and bends manufacturing and practice. ITIs is should train high quality plumbers to repair water tanks, pipes, taps. If water is taxed by Jal Nigam they should be held responsible for leaking taps and burst pipes in public places.
5. Water meters like electricity meters should be made compulsory in both urban and rural set ups and wastage at home or fields should be heavily penalized. Volume of water allowed per family should be counted according to the number of household members and per square feet land area of occupancy.
6. All religious ceremonies from birth to death should aim at keeping water clean and not polluting it. If Ganga is our mother then how can our religion not teach us to protect all rivers and water bodies? Religious organizations, temples, churches, gurdwaras and mosques should sermonize the devotees against wasting and polluting water.
7. Educate children at schools, parents and teachers on water preservation and management. Make it a subject in all schools and colleges. Children are best teachers of ignorant parents.
8. The Army has a lesser known Ecological Battalions which comprise of ex military veterans who plant and maintain, water 300,000 saplings a year with 98 percent survivability. Promote them and encourage them to have more such troops to wage a holy war against drought and deforestation.
9. Open free nurseries for people to plant millions of trees this Monsoon and maintain them.
10. Stop gifting useless items in all functions. Gift only saplings, endemic to that area and assist in afforestation. Offer free services on maintaining trees, planting the right kind at the right time.
11. As Corporate Social Responsibility, each private agency, public agency, school, college must plant trees and maintain them - for shade, fruit, air conditioning (trees cool the area), aesthetics. Public – private partnership in afforestation should be encouraged.
12. Get serious with rain water harvesting. The local municipality should not pass a house map if it does not have provision for the same. At a larger scale town planning should drastically change and cemented sidewalks should become narrow strips with greenery in majority of places.

Only after we've done these easier and cheaper things should we significantly ramp up our recycling and desalination efforts. I like the water train and the plans of cleaning rivers and inter-connecting them but these are costly tokenism at present.


The nexus of water and energy and food will define our quality of life in this century. It already is doing so. Ultimately, water will be the limiting factor in all respects, unless we learn to do more with a lot less, and to reuse and reuse more and more, and to manage our way to a sustainable water future. The case of disappearing water is not yet water tight!

Monday 11 April 2016

LETTER FROM A FATHER TO HIS SON WHO IS GETTING ENGAGED

My dear Ananya,

As the day of your engagement approaches, I am prompted to write a few words of advice to you, not because they are necessary but rather because I tend to the verbose. I have known your mother for 35 years now, and have been married to her for the last 31. Looking back partly because of my intelligent choice and mostly because of the grace of God, I am convinced that I could not have made a better choice!  All these years have been full of struggle and toil and sweat but because we had each other we enjoyed the journey and never endured it. So I, as a father who is perhaps otherwise none too wise, am immensely qualified to offer these tiny gems for what they may be worth to his fledgling prior to the momentous occasion.

In the last 31 years I have learned some things along the way – important things; vitally important things to maintain a relationship. I have learnt the need for trust, respect, honesty, equality and communication in a relationship. Your mother is not just my wife, she is my best friend and despite the presence of you and your younger brother, she remains the most important person in the world for me.

To trust the other person with yourself is vital in any relationship. To respect the dignity of another human being at all costs is non-negotiable. To seek the truth and be honest, always is of paramount importance. And to recognize your spouse as different, but equal is absolutely essential. Above all, to keep the communication channels open, even when you don’t feel like it is the only way to tide over the most difficult times.

 If you remember these things, almost any differences – and there will be plenty of those – can be resolved in a mutually beneficial way. Marriage is nice in the planning stage but is not easy in the execution stage. Sometimes it’s a challenge to remember those vows, even on a day-to-day basis. But it’s worth it. Human beings were made for companionship, to work in partnership, to experience love.

And remember that you can love someone but not always like them. Go easy on yourself; you’re only human. And so is Aditi. No one is perfect, and no one has all the answers. Everyone has good days and not-so-good days. But when the two of you work together, you’ll get through just about anything that life puts in front of you.

Remember, too, not to lose yourself in another person. There’s that wonderful part of the two of you that no one else can touch, but it’s so important to allow each other your own identities as well. You’ll be Aditi’s husband, our son, Aayush’s elder brother, Nani’s grandson, Mausi’s and Kaku's nephew …but you’ll also always be simply Ananya, with your own interests apart from those as a couple. The Ananya who never loses himself, yet becomes better because of his partner in life. That’s so important. Your and Aditi’s association should mutually enrich both of you.

What does one say about the joys and pitfalls? The joys are obvious, the pitfalls less so. While honestly I don’t remember when I had a difference of opinion with your mother that is not so because we did not have one but because she did not let me realize that there was one. We have always let the past rest in the past. Once you have resolved something, don’t keep bringing it up to re-hash it. That’s not fair. Once it’s done, it’s done. End of story. No name calling; don’t let the sun go down on your anger; no mind-reading; and what you say at home stays at home.

Remember, too: don’t keep score; marriage is a partnership and it is not a competition. It’s a partnership of equals. And don’t be afraid to ask for your own space…everyone needs to breathe, some times more than others. Also remember that your happiness is not Aditi’s responsibility – you are responsible for your own happiness and her as well. As for drama – well, keep that to a minimum. And don’t let friends or well wishers interfere – period.

I wish you happiness and joy, contentment and peace. But most of all, I wish you love. Always love!

We love you,

Baba