Creation of Hindu ’madrasas’

PS: Sorry, I meant education is a concurrent subject

- Why in the world does any critique on anything wrong with India, by Indians, have to include something wrong in Pakistan? I am still hoping and wating to see a critique on India, by an Indian, that does not include the word, ``Pakistan`` in it.

I thought Indians weren`t obsessed with Pakistan.....

If the problem is with the saffronization of India`s educational system, then what benefit is it to quote Hoodbhoy on Islamic science? Does it give someone a feeling of confidence to point out that, ``Well we are doing something bad, and you know what we may end up like those Pakistanis, who are even worse.``

If Indians want to tackle a domestic problem, they need to get out of denials based on what is happening in Pakistan. Pakistanis maybe nutcases, but they are not as big a nutcase as many Indians make them out to be. Who knows, before you know it, Pakistani madrassahs could be history, while Indian madrassahs could be thriving. Why not just say, ``Hey India should not saffronize its educational system, because it is wrong - with no mention of Pakistan.``

- Secondly, the rise of madrssahs in Pakistan seems to be different from the rise of saffron madrassahs in India. In Pakistan, it is due to a collapse of the govt. educational system. It is not due to a deliberate attempt by the govt. (or the poor folk) to religionize Pakistan. The poor folk would much rather send their kids to Beaconhouse and LUMS than to Dar-ul-Uloom Haqania. But the Beaconhouses and LUMS are only available to people who have access to Chowk. And the Chowk folks (inlcuding me) are unwilling to start schools for the poor, while Fazl-ur-Rahman and Sami-ul-Haq are willing to take the poor in and look after them. The kids themselves would much rather go to the English medium schools than to the madrassahs.

In India, it seems like the attempt is to saffronize its equivalent of LUMS and Beaconhouse. It is a deliberate attempt by the govt. to change the system - not due to a collapse of the educational system.

- Thirdly, where in the world are these Islamic scientists that Hoodbhoy keeps talking about in Pakistan. I am in a scientific field and most of the Pakistanis I meet with are computer scientists/engineers etc. We discuss science all the time. I have yet to run into an Islamic scientist -whatever that term means. I have run into scientists who believe in Islam and Islamists who believe in science, but not an Islamic scientist.

All of the Pakistani scientists I have come across are quite logical and rational when it comes to science. They can be a bit illogical when it comes to religion, but on science, they follow all the rules. Every now and then, one might say that the US govt. had a hand in the WTC tragedy (like Gore Vidal seems to say), but I have yet to discuss jinnology with anyone of them.

Even the ones who do look at the Quran (like myself) to see whether it contains any scientific insights (after all, if you are going to believe in Islam, you should believe in it the whole way, in which case you have to accept that Quran is from God. If you cannot believe that, then what is the point of being a Muslim - why not become an athiest and enjoy yourself to the fullest) like its claims on the planets swimming around the sun (which is scientifically true) or the creation of a human from a clot of blood (true as well) would only consider something in the Quran to be scientific if and only if everything on the left side of the equal sign matched that on the right.

On the whole, good article but too many references to Pakistan.

P.S. Being an Indian Muslim, did the author feel compelled to downplay Pakistan, in order to gain credibility amongst his primarily Hindu audience?

re: qusman1


{If Dr. Joshi succeeds in teaching Vedic Astrology to IIT students, how will this affect their engineering skills? }

...if jerry falwell takes over harvard, how will it affect their reasoning skills?...

hamidm #20: Good points

hamidm #32: Someone had mentioned that your father was in the military, or your family was associated with it in some manner. Just wondering, whether that is true?

By the way, if it makes you feel better, the days of military officers sending their kids overseas is long gone. It died when the postings to Dubai and Saudi Arabia died. The last of that group is retiring in a few years.

For the rest of them, they can barely send their kids to decent local schools. Some are actually doing home education for a kid or two. Most of my ex-colleauges (not counting the ones with rich wives or rich civilian parents) have one suit, one motorcycle, a one-room rented flat, and can barely affort decent elementary school education for one kid.....

None of them could afford nearly the education, nor the living standard, you will be able to provide to your children - even though most of them are probably as talented and hard working as you (or me). My (future) kids will certainly have a much higher standard of living now, than had I been living in Multan or Nowshera making pennies as a Captain.....

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The response to this artcle form the indian/hindu side amazes me. Such an apologetic attitude to what is going on in india, Such reluctance to accept
reality. This from what appears to be an educated segment of indian society,
in the name of God/Goddess/allah/bhagwan whatever...... wake up.
So nothng is wrong , this will all die down, I dont think so .... what was the response of the P.M of india to the gujrat riots .
how was godhra used , what is the outcome of gujrat election.
HAS ANOTHER RIECHSTAG BEEN BURNT. so sit & ponder ways to refute , while the swastika has a second coming in a much much more impoverished & uneducated country.
As for how bad the christain missions are , keep your silly little anecdotes of minority atrocities to yourself, all you little Modis,& throw all your mission schools to the west of your border. Fair enough.

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Loosely referring to #8 by rsaxena on December 27, 2002 7:30am PT

Just to play the devil`s advocate: If Dr. Joshi succeeds in teaching Vedic Astrology to IIT students, how will this affect their engineering skills?

re:#13 by stuka
What has being a Khatri got to do with the religious fundamentalism facing the country? Was modi a Pundit? Were the people who voted him to power pundits? If you feel you can stop him and his ilk,i suggest you waste no time. Form a ``Khatri association``, float a party and see if you can stop this party.
Ideology has no religion though it often takes the hue of a religous fervour. BJP has been trying to unite all the caste under one banner so that it can get maximum hindu votes. It has used highly emotional issues like Ram mandir and terrorism to do this. This is not a high caste versus low caste agenda as you make it out to be.
Sridhar

#15 by ferozk
``Once they are educated in the mantra of RSS and are taught to believe in the invincibilities of their mythology, what happens when these graduates of ``saffron schools`` enter the work place and find themselves to be economically challenged``
Is there any evidence that these are anywhere like the madrassas in Pak? AFAIK, some of these schools are highly rated and teach everything from computers, science etc. There is no reason to believe that students coming out of here will not find gainful employment. Will these students be good human beings if they are taught to hate is a different matter.
Sridhar

re:#11 by Layman
If an average hindu has low self-esteem because he was ruled by muslims for many centuries and he hails from a poor country and is not doing well in sports as you put it, I can imagine how much loss of self-esteem an average Abdul from Pakistan would suffer from, coming as he does from a terrorist-infested country, which had been vivisected in 1971, whose population is being kicked around the world over and who is today under the vice-like grip of Uncle Sam. Is this the reason why the author of this article even posted this article? Did loss of self-esteem compel the author write something that does not exist viz hindu madrassa just to feel good?
Hindu madrassa indeed. When i first read this i laughed. We hindus have a long way to go to catch up with the kind of indoctrination of hatred, teaching of jehad that goes on in muslim madrassas in Pak.
Sadna is right. Hindu saffronisation of education is a reaction to a similar indoctrination going on in christian missionary schools especially in south india. Congress governments just looked the other way, as christian minorities (along with other minorities) formed an important vote bank. BJP is not looking the other way because its vote comes from the middle class hindus and minorities are not its constituency. Hence, its indoctrination will continue. Indoctrination is an attempt to unite the fractured hindu community (fractured along caste lines) into a single voting bloc. These are political fall outs of a long era of pseudosecularism of congress that saw minorities being pampered at the cost of majority community. It has assumed such a silly proportion that one muslim school in Lucknow some time ago refused to honor Vande Mataram as it was in sanskrit!
The need of the hour is to teach average hindus about his great heritage, about people like Vivekananda, sriAurobindo, other saints and sages. All this should be done without teaching hatred against any community. These are historical facts
Sridhar

Is it true that in latest interview to DAINIK BHASKAR Newspaper Mr Vajpayee claimed that Gujrat elections revealed true pic of Indian secularism and beofore that secularism was just a slogan?

i tried to find the link but its a hindi language newspaper which i cant read. i am not sure about it as its reported in a paksitani newspaper.

arjun

``the children of paki army officers have access to schools that would rival western schools in facilities... ``

........ and i specifically pointed that out .......... an army officer can send his kids to army public schools at less than half of what a civilian would have to pay(if he or she can get in) .......... on top of that they also have fauji foundation, bharia and shaheen foundation schools which are pretty decent .......... we are talking about the average man in the street who has to choose between eating and sending his kid to school - he is the one who ends up going to the madrassa and then dying in kashmir to do the job that the army can`t seem to do .............. the army officers` kids end up in silicon valley sipping latte at starbucks and pontificating on the chowk about the educational system in pakistan ............

Stuka,

Unfortunately there are some MAs who are sitting around unemployed; but of course they don`t have to be in a society that pays a teacher a living wage and not an athlete an exorbitant wage...its pretty obvious where NYC`s priorities are, isn`t it? Romantacise firefighters, teachers, etc., cause we all can sleep better knowing that they chose their jobs for altruistic reasons and that they dont expect a decent paycheck....meanwhile, somebody else`s kid is getting the brunt....

I dont have a problem with tech schools as long as they prepare students for a decent career and a living wage.

Arjun,
No Macy`s doesnt care...which is why I buy at places that support unions...and it still doesnt take a lot of brains to come up with capitalism...it does however, seem to require much less soul and character.

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Samina:

....let me guess; a big dollar sign statue that you would kiss and prostrate yourself beneath...

Well, what`s wrong with that? There are plenty of unemployed BA Pass type people roaming around because they are not trained for anything productive. In India there is a dearth of liberal arts graduates but there`s a huge shortage of skilled labor. Why not make society more productive by teaching students vocational subjects rather than pure acadamic ones which have no relevance in the real world?

In any case, I was referring to higher education, not high school. Post high school kids should learn productive subjects so they can get decent jobs, not do a BA and a MA and then sit around unemployed.