Plight Muslim Children in Non-Madrasa Schools

Syed Ali Mujtaba

There is an interesting book titled “Mothering a Muslim” by Nazia Erum (2017) that gives a lucid account of the plight of Muslim Children in Non- Madrasa Schools. The author captures some hard realities of what it means to be a Muslim in non-madrasa schools in India.

The author has given a number of anecdotes where Muslim children are subjected to slurs from their non-Muslim peers and there are none to stop such kind of kind of harassment meted out to them. It’s a book based on testifiers.

1-    The book says, a Muslim boy testified that they don’t feel like going to school because the teachers always single them out and beat them. The teachers don’t let us participate in any sports. Class monitors are always chosen from among Hindu boys. The teachers insult us by saying; ‘You children come to school only to play and don’t want to study.’ Whenever they check our workbooks, they make negative comments about our work and throw the workbooks at our faces.

2-    Another testifier told her mother that her teacher says: ‘You Muslim people have no brains, you read only Quran and pray to Allah and don’t respect knowledge.’

3-    Another testifier said that a substitute teacher had said in the class that the floods in Uttarakhand happened because Muslims have opened meat shops there. Uttarakhand is a place of worship for Hindus but because of the Muslims, the disaster happened. Hindus had to pay for their sins. The child felt bad when such things are told about Muslims in the class.

4-    Another boy, said: Whenever the teachers are angry, they call us Mullahs. The Hindu boys also call us Mullahs because our fathers have beards. One father of our classmates had come to submit a form to the school. The teacher referred to him as ‘the man with a beard and laughed at him. All the Hindu children laughed too and made fun of him in front of the whole class. We Muslim students felt terrible at such gestures.

5-    Some Muslim children complained to their mothers that they don’t like to be Muslim because they feel insecure in their school. They said some Hindu boys laugh at them and in case of a fight most Hindus gang up to beat the Muslim boy. 

In some fancied schools where there are negligible Muslim students, the school management decided to keep the Parents Teacher Meeting on Eid-ul-Fitr day, ignoring the national holiday. The mothers of the Muslim children are coxed to attend the meetings on their festival day and they did for not being singled out as being troublesome mum. The same school had declared Karva Chauth a holiday because all the teachers were Hindus and busy fasting for their husbands.

So, this is where we are today, some non-Madarsa schools still blame a Muslim child for his religious identity.  Why Muslim children in non-madrasa schools are made to suffer in their classrooms. This needs serious discussion.  However, no one likes to do any tough conversation on such issues because it's a non-issue for the majority community.

 Certainly calling Muslim children names is not an act of nation-building rather it’s an anti-national activity. If that is what is happening in non- Madrasa Schools, with the Muslim children then advocating reform in the Madrasa should think twice it gets implemented. 

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 Syed Ali Mujtaba is journalist based in Chennai.