Vineeta Pandey

New Delhi: Finding husbands for highly-educated women is difficult. Co-education makes them go astray. Girls should be educated only till they attain puberty. And the ideal education for Muslim girls is religious, plus a modicum of general subjects to enable them to become good housewives.

These are some of the beliefs why Muslim women in India are educationally-backward, reveals a government-commissioned study.

Commissioned by the ministry of women and child development, the survey conducted to prepare a national plan of action for the advancement of Muslim women’s education found that the most common factors responsible for the high incidence of non-enrolment, alarmingly high dropouts and low achievement among Muslim girls were poverty, lack of women teachers, absence of separate schools for girls, observance of purdah, opposition to secular education, early marriage, community resistance and conservative attitudes.

Of the total out-of-school Muslim children aged 6-13, 45% are girls. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Orissa have the most low-literacy districts across religions. The southern states fare better, possibly because they have a large number of technical and professional institutions.

Finding appropriate husbands for highly-educated Muslim girls was a major hindrance because only a few Muslim boys go for higher education due to poverty and the perception of discrimination in government employment.

It was noted that the clergy had a stranglehold on the illiterate and poor strata of the Muslim society who were given diktats and injunctions on what a Muslim, specially a Muslim woman, can or cannot do.

The study found that there was considerable opposition to co-education as parents felt it might lead to girls going astray.

Only 12.5% of the people surveyed said they were not opposed to co-education. A majority of parents supported education for girls but only till the age of puberty and in all-girl schools and under female teachers.

However, Mohd Manzur Alam, member of the Muslim Personal Law Board, argues such beliefs are among other Indian communities as well. “Muslims girls are doing very well in education in the southern states while in north India, both Muslim boys and girls are lagging behind. Lack of security is a prime concern for parents of all girls in all states and all religions, so why underline only Muslims?” he said.

Contrary to popular belief, Muslim girls consider burqa a facilitator, not an obstruction. Among Muslims, there is a perceived sense of being discriminated against by the system. The fear that secular state schools which do not impart religious education would pollute the minds of Muslim children was heightened by the clergy who recommended only Islamic education to retain purity of thought and conduct.

Source : DNA