Officials in Assam, a state ruled by Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu Nationalist Party, justified that education in these schools was poor. The opposition says that this is a continuation of political oppression by the BJP.
December 31, 2020 – 22:02 PM
School in Assam. Photo by Michael Foley / Flickr.
Last Wednesday, the state of Assam in northeast India passed a law, which would abolish more than 700 Islamic schools in the region starting on April 1. The majority government in this state is from the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
State officials say that they close these schools because the promotion of education there is of poor quality. But they also argue that schools should train professionals, not future imams. Assam Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma quoted Reuters as saying, “We need doctors, policemen, bureaucrats and teachers of Muslim minority communities instead of magnets for mosques”. Government officials say madrasas do not prepare “for the cosmic world and its worldly concerns”.
The opposition is not convinced that the formation of minorities or the quality of education is an extremist party governing India. The BJP has maintained an anti-Muslim stance and promoted discord to garner support among the majority Hindu, he claims.
Devvrat Saikia, the leader of the largest opposition party in Assam and the ruling party in India for decades, says the Congress party, Cnn The intention is to “consolidate more Hindu votes” through a “polarization strategy”. The Congress Party and the United Democratic Front of All India have left the discussion of the law in opposition to the measure.
In Assam, according to the censors conducted by the government in 2011, the Muslim population constitutes 34.22% of the total. The region made national and international news last year when two million people were not included in the National Register. For the government, these were illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. This was another way of protesting against the Muslims because many of these people, who have lived in India for many generations, had no means of providing the documents required by the government.
