Express News Service
LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh government’s approval to the proposal of introducing NCERT books in state madrasas and the push to subjects like Mathematics, Science, Computer, Social Science, Geography and Home Science in their curriculum has attracted both bouquets and brickbats from Muslim ulemas and muftis.
While prominent Muslim leaders have welcomed the move as an effort to make the madrasa students at par with their peers in government and private schools, the managers of seminaries have taken it with a pinch of salt. They doubt whether madrasa students would be able to cope with the load of modern subjects as there is a lack of trained teachers in the institutions. However, some maulanas see it as a design of saffron governments at both state and Centre to meddle with the set pattern of madrasa education.
While a few clerics of Deoband region opposed the move and rejected it as a conspiracy of the Yogi Adityanath government to target a particular community and its institutions. “This move smacks of an obstinate approach of the state government to impose its thoughts and policies on madrasas.
Pushing modern subjects, making the madrasa online, issuing madrasa-specific directives on Independence day, are the steps to keep the Muslim educational institutions under check,” says a senior ulema of Deoband on the condition of anonymity. There are about 15 lakh students across 16,000 madarsas in UP with just a little over 33,000 teachers.
