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One has to grudgingly accept that
restoration of minority status had become essential for Jamia
Millia Islamia. It is a crutch on which the University must hobble
on for quite a considerable period of time in future. Otherwise,
in the mad race of merit, Muslim students will simply fail to get
any place in the seats of higher learning in the capital city of
India. But it would be better if the Jamia fixes up a timeframe
for itself to remain a minority university. It maybe 25 to 35
years. Not beyond. Within this timeframe, the Jamia must set up a
network of primary and high schools in the Muslim dominated areas
in and around Delhi to serve as future feeding centres. These
areas could be Okhla, Old Delhi, Mewat, the cities of Western
Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Currently Delhi and Aligarh together have three huge
Muslim/minority/Muslim managed universities. But they remain
without good feeding centres. A University of Jamia’s size should
have at least 200 high schools, of which 50 should be high-end
schools. But Delhi has hardly a dozen Muslim/Urdu high schools. As
a result, the Jamia’s huge intake has to essentially depend upon
high schools that send away non-minority students. While Muslim
students fill up its Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and maybe West Asian
and Islamic Studies departments to the tune of say 99%, the more
meritorious non-Muslim students claim major chunk of seats in
natural sciences, engineering, polytechnic, management and other
market-savvy, job-oriented courses. It is not that Jamia should
deny them admissions. But the fact is that no one among Muslims in
Delhi has ever spared a thought towards cogent planning for higher
education of the community.
Look at Bangalore, the Muslims here run as many as 250 English
medium high schools and take seats in the colleges run by all
communities on the basis of merit. They are yet to have a
university of their own. At least 50 of these high schools are
high-end and 60 per cent of the students on their rolls are
non-Muslims. This situation has come about only because the
community could think of its place in a future India where merit,
not minority, will be the consideration.
Understandably, the above situation
has compelled the Jamia authorities to think of seeking a minority
status in order that the Muslim students rejected in the merit
race in the open market, could at least gain a foothold in Jamia
where 50% seats would be reserved for them regardless of merit.
This is not an ideal step, but a pragmatic one, in the current
context. In the absence of minority status, earlier the Jamia used
to reserve 5% seats each for internal candidates (from its
schools), wards of its employees and Urdu schools. This was merely
to deflect the criticism of being pro-Muslim. But no one was being
fooled. Now the minority status would allow it to be upfront.
It is also high time, the Jamia
turned its school into English medium. Urdu should be necessarily
taught as a compulsory language under 3-language formula to all
those who register Urdu as their mother tongue. Opposition to the
English medium by a few is quite understandable. Elements who are
opposing the move are keen to make/retain the Jamia a family
institute. Even the so-called secular intellectuals are always
looking for Urdu medium, government-aided schools where their
newly-arrived bhabis, salis, bhateejis from Rampur, Pilibhit,
Bulandshahar, Meerut, Amroha and Sambhal could be accommodated as
teachers. This happened with the AMU too where most staff was
recruited from families from Deoband, Azamgarh and Lucknow. Lo and
behold! The very moment the AMU vacancies are announced, the
recruitment scene is a picture of battleground between these
cartels. The English medium schools would bring in a lot of new
talent from non-Muslim communities and the mould of inbreeding
would melt.
Inward-looking policies are always
the outcome of insecurities. Muslim minority should come out of
it. For this two steps are necessary i.e., pragmatic steps to
consolidate the present and visionary approach to shape the
future. Looked from this perspective, the Jamia Vice Chancellor
deserves a pat. Minority status would ensure that the Muslim
students have at least some place for them as of now. English
medium schools would ensure that in future they would not need
crutches of reservation and hop on to borderless world of academic
excellence, be it Delhi University, Indraprastha University or
even JNU for seats.
(Maqbool A. Siraj is a
postgraduate in Journalism from University of Madras. He began his
career as a staff reporter with Indian Express, Chennai.
He has
been working for the BBC World Service since 1996 in Bangalore and
regularly writes for Deccan Herald, Bangalore and several other
journals.
He is also senior
executive editor with Islamic Voice, English monthly from
Bangalore.)
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