The State and Madrasa Reform: An Indian Deobandi
Perspective

Yoginder Sikand

In recent years state authorities in several
countries, particularly India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, in addition to the West, have been voicing
the demand for what they call the ‘modernisation’ of
madrasas, traditional Islamic seminaries. While some
ulama or Muslim clerics have gone along with their
governments and have secured state assistance for some
half-hearted ‘modernisation’ schemes, many
traditionalist ulama are vehemently opposed to the
offer of state largesse. As they see it, state
assistance is aimed at interfering with their
functioning, curtailing their autonomy and meddling
with their curriculum so that, by introducing secular
subjects, ultimately the madrasas would be ‘reformed’
out of existence. For its part, the state typically
sees the madrasas as ‘traditionalist’ and even
‘obscuranist’, and hence in need for reform. The
autonomy of the madrasas is regarded by the state as a
challenge to its own hegemonic agenda, which explains
the urgency with which it looks at the project of
‘reform’, which is intended to bring madrasa education
under the firm control of state authorities. In India,
the state’s agenda of madrasa ‘modernisation’ is also
a reflection of the Hindu majoritarian underpinnings
of the state and of the official nationalist narrative
which reflects an ‘upper’ caste Hindu worldview,
brooking little space for other cultural identities.

Numerous Indian ulama have reacted strongly to
suggestions by state authorities in India that
madrasas should ‘modernise’ and have turned down
offers of assistance for this. As some of them view
it, the state’s ‘modernisation’ agenda has ulterior
motives, as being allegedly aimed at destroying Muslim
faith and identity. This, for instance, is the
confirmed opinion of a Bihari Deobandi scholar and a
graduate of the Dar ul-‘Ulum Deoband, Maulvi Abdul
Basit Hamidi Qasmi, author of a recently-published
book titled Nayab Taqreerey (‘Rare Lectures’). The
book contains short prefaces by several teachers of
the Deoband madrasa, suggesting, therefore, that the
author’s views are widely shared among many of his
fellow Deobandis.

As Qasmi argues in his book, the state’s argument that
madrasas must ‘modernise’ is not a novel development.
Rather, he says, it is a continuation of the British
colonial policy that was aimed at destroying Islam in
India. This is why, he asserts, the British
consistently opposed the dars-i nizami, the syllabus
employed in most Indian madrasas. Despite the terrible
tortures that the ulama had to suffer at the hands of
the British for refusing to abandon the dars-i nizami,
he writes, they held on to it firmly and ‘refused to
leave their intellectual treasure at the mercy of
enemies’. In this way they ‘proved that students who
had studied the dars-i nizami were far more capable
than university-educated students’.

Qasmi sees the present-day Government of India as
walking in the same path as the British colonialists
and as being goaded by the same alleged motives,
accusing of it being similarly opposed to the dars-i
nizami. The Government, he says ‘does not want the
dars-i nizami to exist’, although ‘it is this syllabus
that Muslims have been following from the very
beginning’. Here, of course, Qasmi is patently wrong,
because the dars-i nizami, as it exists today, was
formulated as a syllabus only in the early eighteenth
century during the reign of the Mughal Emperor
Aurangzeb, and so cannot be said to have been used by
Muslims ‘since the very beginning’.

The Government’s appeals for madrasas to ‘modernize’
and for Muslims to go in for modern education, Qasmi
insists, is actually a ‘conspiracy’ because ‘by taking
to modern education Muslims will go far from the noble
teachings of Islam, and, like students in modern
educational institutions, will become useless’. Qasmi
argues that if, as the government suggests, modern
subjects are included in the madrasa curriculum, ‘it
will become very difficult for Muslims to protect
their religion and identity’. It is precisely because
of this, he alleges, that the Government ‘instigates
some ignorant Muslims, telling them that in this
modern age they need modern education and that, hence,
the dars-i nizami should be reformed’. Consequently,
he claims, ‘many gullible and innocent Muslims have
fallen victim to this propaganda’. Qasmi appeals to
them to realize that ‘the aim of the Government is to
cause Muslims to distance themselves from religious
learning and to destroy Muslim identity’.

Qasmi claims that he is not opposed to modern
education as such, which he seems to equate simply
with learning the English language. The ulama, he
says, have never forbidden the learning of English,
because even the Prophet instructed Zaid, one of his
followers, to learn a foreign language—Syriac—as it
was then needed, just as English is required today.
However, he adds, the ulama are opposed to Muslims who
want their children to study only modern subjects and
ignore religious education. The ulama believe that
Muslim children can indeed learn English but thus must
begin only after they finish their religious
education. English, he says, should not be included in
the madrasa syllabus because then the syllabus will
‘get mixed-up’ and the ‘real aim of madrasa education
will be destroyed’. Instead of ‘reforming’ the
madrasas, Qasmi argues, modern educational
institutions should be reformed to include Islamic
Studies for Muslims enrolled therein.

Reforming the madrasa syllabus, Qasmi insists, is none
of the business of the government, because it is the
ulama of the madrasas themselves, and not the
government, who shoulder the responsibility of
managing them and arranging for their finances. In
fact, Qasmi says, the madrasa syllabus is hardly in
any need of reform, and here he quotes the late Qari
Muhammad Tayyeb, rector of the Deoband madrasa, as
saying, ‘As far as the syllabus is concerned, it is
totally satisfactory. This syllabus has produced great
ulama and, as far as minor adaptations are concerned,
these have been made in the past and will be made in
the future as well’. Qasmi also quotes the Deobandi
scholar Ashraf Ali Thanvi as saying that the Arabic
texts selected by the ulama of the past as part of the
madrasa syllabus ‘contain everything necessary and the
only thing is that they need to be understood
properly’. If the books included in the dars-i nizami
‘are studied even by a person of medium intellectual
capacity’, Thanvi adds, ‘it will produce amazing,
unbelievable powers and capabilities, such capacities
that a person with a degree from America, London and
Britain cannot walk in front of a student of a
madrasas, because the dars-i nizami is a treasure
house of knowledge’. To further back his argument that
the dars-i nizami is in no need of major change, Qasmi
refers to the leading Pakistani Deobandi scholar Taqi
Usmani, who, when asked about certain books included
in the dars-i nizami, is said to have ‘shouted out in
excitement and declared that these books create
strong capacity and should never be abandoned’.

Qasmi ends his lecture by declaring that the Muslims
will not tolerate any change in the dars-i nizami,
because, he says, the fact that Islamic faith and
identity are far stronger in South Asia than anywhere
else in the world owes largely to the present syllabus
and system of madrasa education. If the syllabus is
changed, he argues, madrasas might continue to exist
but they would be ‘bereft of religion and the
religious spirit’. In the face of the Government’s
‘opposition’ to the dars-i nizami, he declares in
conclusion, Muslims must not lose hope because even
the prophets and other revered personages of the past
great faced tests and trials.

Not all ‘ulama would go to the same extent as Qasmi in
defending the dars-i nizami. In fact, many of them are
critical of some aspects of it and have been demanding
suitable reforms while keeping its religious core
intact. Likewise, not all ulama would view the
‘modernisation’ proposals put forward by the state in
wholly negative and hostile terms. Yet, voices like
Qasmi’s appear significant enough among the ulama to
make dialogue between the state and the madrasas
difficult, if not impossible.