Quality education for muslims: a distant dream?
The fact that Muslims need reforms in each and every sphere of life is an open truth. Education being the most important one. When it comes to education, I need not give any stats to prove one simple fact that Muslims have a long way to go. Still, education for Muslims is the most politicized one. We have seen enough of drama about the minority status of the most revered educational institution for Muslims in India, i.e. the Aligarh Muslim University. In no time, questions were raised about the seat reservation in Jamia because it offers a 50% reservation for Muslims. What I fail to understand is, why only Muslim institutions?
In a country like India, where we have educational institutes run by different religious organizations like the DAV society, which is a chain of schools and colleges run by RSS, the Khalsa schools and colleges and numerous convent educational institutions. Convent schools and colleges too have a 50% reservation for Christian students. Some Convent schools in Delhi offer a seat to a non-Christian student if the family of the student agrees to bear the expenses of a Catholic child for a year. Whereas colleges under the Khalsa board give a preference to Punjabi students. Even those Punjabi students who are lagging behind academically make it to their desired courses in Khalsa. There’s virtually nothing wrong with these institutes if they give preference to students from their own community, the reason as to why only those institutes that prefer Muslims are put to test is hard to understand.
Can we have the same yard sticks please?
Time and again this issue is raised dramatically, soon acid support is gathered from all nooks and corners of India without even thinking about the rest of the minority institutions that enjoy the same status as AMU and Jamia. What’s wrong with the rationale and the conscience of those who think that everything that’s Muslim is going to prove fatal? The secular identity that India brags appears to be a distant dream when such issues are raised.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Don’t know all the details, but could it have something to do with government funding the institution in one case and the institution being private in the other? Just guessing here.