India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Uttarakhand Waqf Board chairman and BJP leader Shadab Shams has announced that the Board’s 117 Madrasas will teach its students the story and values of Sri Ram. It will start with four madrasas initially.
Earlier, he had said that the state government would form a committee to survey all the madrasas in Uttarakhand.
According to Shadab Shams, the Waqf Board will implement the changes from the coming March. For this purpose, the first four madrasas are to be selected from Dehradun, Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar and Nainital.
In his statement, Mr. Shams brought in the name of Aurangzeb to compare with Ram. He said that on the one hand we have characters like Ram, Laxaman and Sita and on the other hand, “We have characters such as Aurangzeb, who killed his brother and jailed his father. We will not teach Aurangzeb at any cost but teach Shri Ram and Mohammad (PBUH) Sahab.”
He reiterated the BJP line that Sri Ram belonged to everyone. He asked, “Who does not want a son like Ram who left everything to fulfill his father’s promise?” He asks that who will not like to have a brother like Lakshman and a wife like Sita? He said that these are great characters and they should be taught in madrasas.
He did not stop at just bringing in Aurangzeb but also took the RSS line on ancestors and referred to the Arabs. He said, “Indian Muslims should follow Ram because we are not Arabs. We are converted Muslims and changed our way of worship but we cannot change our ancestors.”
Mr. Shams said that the great poet and philosopher Allama Iqbal had referred to Sri Ram as Imam-e-Hind or the leader of India. He claims that by describing Ram as Imam-e-Hind, Allama Iqbal wished that the Muslims followed Ram.
According to him, the idea of teaching the Ram story came after the consecration ceremony of Sri Ram at Ayodhya. He said, “The way the entire country is celebrating the consecration of Shri Ram in Ayodhya, we thought we should teach Shri Ram in madrasas.”
He informed that the Uttarakhand Waqf Board will start looking for qualified teachers for the curriculum from February.
Earlier, Mr. Shams had announced that the syllabus of NCERT would be introduced what he calls ‘modern madrasas’ where classes will run like modern schools from 8 am to 2 pm.
Mr. Shams told The Indian Express, that in the model madrasas, namaz would be offered five times a day. He added, “After the early morning namaz offering around 6.30 am, one hour will be designated for Quran studies.”
Mr. Shams is also working to introduce Sanskrit in the Waqf registered madrasas of the state. He claims that the Hindu seer community is favouring the implementation of Sanskrit in the madrasas. He wishes that the seer community should adopt the financially weaker madrasas of Uttarakhand.
He is of the view that introducing Sanskrit in madrasas will narrow the gap between Islam and Hinduism. He claims that the modernisation of the madrasas will also encourage Hindu students to study here.
Last year, the Waqf board had announced that to modernise the madrasas in the state it would introduce the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus. It had also announced that better infrastructure would be provided to the Waqf registered madrasas but there is no news on what happened to that promise.
