More than one-and-a-half century after events of 1857 sealed the fate of the Mughal Empire, two Muslim institutions that emerged in Aligarh and Deoband seem to have roles reversed. Both institutions are believed to having a lasting impact on Muslim psyche, imparting political as well as religious guidance.
While the immaculately dressed elite Muslim in Aligarh is in a mood to forgive the Congress, raising hopes of the assembly poll win for local Congress candidate Vivek Bansal, an alumnus of AMU, hundreds of miles away at Deoband, kafiya-clad Muslims are hardly in any mood to pardon the grand old party, they had backed through the freedom struggle.
The two world renowned institutions emerged from a fierce debate between two students of Molvi Mamlook Ali at a Delhi Madrassa, on strategy to infuse confidence among the battered Muslim community of South Asia soon after the debacle of 1857.
Though there was unanimity on creating a defensive mechanism in the form of promoting education, the two were poles apart on the nature of learning.
One of them, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan sought British help to establish Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University) in 1877 on the lines of Oxford and Cambridge.
The other student Maulana Mohammad Qasim Nanatvi, disturbed by the massacre of ulema (religious scholars) at Shamli in Western UP, founded a seminary in the dusty UP town of Deoband in Saharanpur district in 1866, primarily to create an anti-West clergy and a force to attend to the religious requirements of Muslims.
True to its fundamentals, the seminary remained at logger heads with the British, sided with the Congress, opposed partition and provided fodder to the war of Independence. In contrast, Aligarh produced western-educated elite Muslim class, who mostly sided with MA Jinnah.
At both places, however, people agree that Muslim religious leaders have hardly any political appeal, referring to Delhi Shahi Imam Ahmed Bukhari’s appeal to vote for the Samajwadi Party. Professor Abdul Wahid, director of Centre for Promotion of Educational and Cultural Advancement of Muslims in India at AMU, believes that appeals of religious leaders hardly carry any weight.
Leading figure of Deoband Maulana Nadeemul Wajdi also echoes this view, saying Muslims treat politics and religious affairs separately. “They don’t heed appeals of religious leaders in political matters. They respect Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband for its educational and religious responsibilities and not for political affiliations,” he says.
In Deoband, hints of involvement of madrassas in promoting fundamentalism in the wake of its opposition to Salman Rushdie’s visit to India are disturbing. The seminary is once again in focus and considered a major source of radical influence on the thinking of Muslims. “They blame Muslims for everything,” says Ashraf Usmani, spokesman of the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband. “Ours is a religious learning institute. We have nothing to do with the violence and anti-national elements,” he said.
On Rushdie, Usmani says the seminary will continue to challenge his “blasphemous” writings. “Our opposition in the past did not get media attention. May be this time, due to elections, we got space in the media,” he says.
In the classrooms of the Dar-ul-Uloom, hundreds of boys aged between 7 and 30 years are seated on the floor memorising the Quran. There are no TV sets and no common rooms. Censored Urdu newspapers are available at the library. But no student is allowed to subscribe to a newspaper in his hostel.
The main madrassa houses 4,000 students. There are other 300 madrassas in the townmaking student population not less than 15,000.
“Even before the government introduced mid-day meal scheme, we have been providing books and food free for over a century. Poor students get pocket money as well. In a poor and backward area like this, our madrassas are the only form of education,” says Maulana Shahnawaz, an alumnus. About elections, they whisper, Mulayam Singh Yadav had made life a bit easy, referring to his apology to police raid at another famous seminary of Nadwa in Lucknow.
As dusk gathers, the sunlight strikes the grand mosque and paints everything in gold. The streets choke with carts and tractors, laden with food grains and vegetables. They have come from far off districts, sent by rich Muslim farmers as ration to madrassa mess. “This is how this madrassa runs,” says Deoband spokesman Ashraf Usmani.
Iftekar Jeelani
Thanks DNA