Educational deprivation

The study finds that 26 per cent of educated Muslim women have illiterate husbands, a shocking indicator of
the low levels of education even among Muslim men. Since boys are frequent dropouts from schools, girls
who do reach high school levels, are made to discontinue because they'll be "over qualified" in the marriage
market! And hence you have a ceiling put on Muslim girls' education.
In higher education, Muslim women have an abysmal share at 3.56 per cent, even lower than Dalit women
(4.25). The authors note that Scheduled Caste women have probably managed a better percentage in
higher education thanks to reservation. "But in the bleak scenario, there are some interesting and surprising
facts. Muslims in the north have extremely high illiteracy levels (74.36 per cent) and very low proportion in
higher secondary level education (6.97 per cent)." But in higher education their share rises to 8.8 per cent,
marginally lower than the south (9.11per cent), and higher than in the urban west and east. This suggests
that despite a small base of literacy in the north, a decent number manage to go to college.
But overall the Muslim girl child does face educational deprivation. The constitutional goal of eight years of
schooling remains a dream with a Muslim girl getting barely 2.7 years of schooling compared to 3.8 years of
a Hindu girl. About 59 per cent never get into school and less than 10 per cent complete it. "But Muslims are
not uniformly poor and uneducated; they are much better off in the south and also in the west and certainly
better off than their counterparts in the west and east zones. The considerable better education levels of
Muslims in the south, and to some extent in the west, belie the view that religion denies them education,"
point out the authors.
Work: double disadvantage
In conservative and patriarchal areas like Bihar and U.P., where work is treated as a mark of low status, only
poor women or those from high income groups go out to work. Thanks to land ownership patterns in rural
areas and their exclusion from low-level jobs in urban areas, Muslim women's employment in the farm
sector and elsewhere is low. We're told that first as Muslims and then as women, they are twice as
disadvantaged in accessing jobs, even low-level jobs in the informal sector. This is borne out by National
Sample Survey data that shows that only eight per cent of uneducated Muslim women find employment as
casual labour in public works, compared to 21 per cent of Hindu uneducated women.
Through the 1990s, though women's employment percentage improved, Muslim women's number didn't go
up, perhaps due to lack of skills.
As at work, their status in the home is a dismal story too. The MWS reports that 20 per cent experience
verbal and physical abuse in the marital home, over 80 per cent from their husbands. A surprising revelation
in the book is that "Hindu women experience greater levels of violence than Muslims in all the four zones."
Rural women are worse off and domestic violence incidence decreases with higher levels of income but this
could be due to under-reporting by the educated and better-off women for "fear of further violence, shame
and rejection that are powerful reasons for women's silence." Extreme and chronic poverty, women's
economic dependence and lack of viable options outside marriage and a deeply entrenched culture of male
authority makes domestic violence endemic in India, the study concludes.
Decision-making
Coming to the important area of decision making, clearly an indicator of women's empowerment and
importance in the family, the study made a "modest attempt to understand the dynamics of decision
making" among both Hindu and Muslim women. The queries fell into three broad clusters; work related,
housed and family related and expenditure, income and investment related. Questions were asked about
who makes the decisions on women working outside the house, their income and how that income is spent
and by whom; and how and when a woman is allowed to begin work outside the home and when she has to
stop.

One third of the respondents in both communities said they made decisions on household expenditure and
children's education jointly with their husbands, and an equal number said these decisions were made only
by their husbands. Only 10 per cent of the women both Hindu and Muslim said that they take
independent decisions on these issues. Predictably, major purchase or investment decisions are made by a
negligible per cent.
Most shocking is the revelation on women's mobility; a whopping 86 per cent of Hindu and Muslim women
surveyed said they needed permission from their husbands to move out of the house. The chapter on
decision-making concludes that the combination of extreme material deprivation, neglect and patriarchal
control intensifies women's subordination. It quotes Srilata Batliwala to say that men's traditional power
over women "is reinforced by control over her body and physical mobility; by the right to abdicate from all
responsibility for housework and care of the children, the right to physically abuse or violate her; the right to
spend family income on personal pleasures (and vices); the right to abandon her to take other wives".
Participation in politics
There are no surprises here. While 85 per cent women have voted in elections, a staggering 95 per cent has
never participated in an election campaign. On contesting elections, nearly 80 per cent of Hindu and Muslim
women said, "No thank you". Though keen voters Muslim women being keener than Hindu women a
minuscule proportion, engage in political activities like election meetings or campaigning.
Access to mass media
The study found Muslim women's living standard to be lower than that of even the OBCs, and well below
that of upper caste Hindus. On consumer durables it found 45 per cent households with TV sets, 40 per cent
with radios, and only six and 19 per cent own refrigerators in rural and urban areas respectively.
The study found 43 per cent Muslim women literate compared to 59 per cent Hindu women. But only 20 per
cent of Muslim women responded to questions on reading habits and of these only a third said they read
newspapers and magazines regularly. About 45 per cent Hindu and 42 percent Muslim women watch TV
regularly.
The book should serve as a wake up call to the Muslim leadership on the urgent need for better education,
for men as well as women, and targeted campaigns to delay marriage the average age of marriage for a
Muslim girl is 15.6 years. In rural India, it is a shocking 13.9 years. More than purdah impacting a Muslim
woman's mobility, it is the attitude of the men that puts shackles on their mobility for education or work.
Overall, the findings are a grim statement on the gender scene in India, because the authors say that the
differences between Hindu and Muslim women, be it in marriage, autonomy, mobility or domestic violence,
are so insignificant that they point to similar cultural practices and patriarchal control across communities.

Muslim girls are among the least educated sections of Indian society. Yet, very little
literature is available on the education of Muslim girls, indicating a certain
indifference on the part of community leaders, the agencies of the state and nongovernmental organizations to their concerns, which makes this study a welcome
addition to the limited corpus of writings on the subject.

Based on findings of a survey conducted jointly by the authors and backed by official
statistics, the book highlights the dismal state of Muslim female education as well as
the efforts being made by several Muslim social activists in different parts of India to
address the issue. The authors claim that over 75% of Muslim women in India are
illiterate, literacy being officially defined rather generously to include just about
anyone who can read and write a sentence or two. The situation in the northern states,
especially in rural areas, is said to be particularly dismal. 85% of rural north Indian
Muslim women are unable to read or write. On the other hand, the situation in the
south, especially in urban areas, was found to be considerably better, with 88% urban
south Indian woman said to be literate.

In India as a whole, the authors reveal, Muslim girls school enrolment rates continue
to be low: 40.6%, as compared to 63.2% in the case of upper caste Hindus. In rural
north India it is only 13.5%, in urban north India 23.1%, and in rural and urban south
India, above 70%, which is above the all-India average for all girls. Only 16.1% of
Muslim girls from poor families attend schools, while 70% of Muslim girls from
economically better-off families do so, thus clearly suggesting that low levels of
education of Muslim girls owe not to religion but to poverty. Less than 17% of
Muslim girls finish eight years of schooling and less than 10% complete higher
secondary education. In the north the corresponding figures are 4.5% and 4.75%
respectively, compared to the national female average of 17.8% and 11.4%. Only
1.5% rural Muslims, both boys and girls, and 4.8% urban Muslim children are
enrolled in senior secondary schools. The average number of years that Muslim girls
study is a dismal 2.7 years, as compared to 3.8 years in the case of Hindu girls. The
number of years that a Muslim girl studies in north India is half that of her south
Indian counterpart In other words, on the whole, Muslim girls are characterized by a
low enrolment rate and a very high drop-out rate from the formal schooling system.

The study then moves on to examine the condition of Muslim womens education in
five cities in India: Delhi, Aligarh, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Calicut. It highlights the
efforts of valiant Muslim women, many of them from poor families, in promoting
girls education in their own localities by setting up small schools or launching
educational awareness drives. Through a series of interviews with these activists, the
study points to the numerous hurdles that these women face in their struggle to
educate their sisters. These include the indifference of the state to the conditions of
Muslim women, reflected in dismal budgetary allocation for their education;
widespread poverty in the community; opposition to co-education after a certain level;
shortage of girls schools and women teachers; and early marriages. The authors also

speak about a growing enthusiasm among many Muslims for educating their
daughters, although, they argue this is hindered by an anxiety to preserve their cultural
identity in the face of the Hindutva onslaught and what the authors term as a widelyshared lack of confidence in being employed by the government (p.17) (presumably,
a euphemism for discrimination). While this argument is valid, the authors do not
deal with the very contentious issue of the general Hindu ethos of the government
school system in large parts of India, the marked Hinduisation of the state school
curriculum as well as the negative references to Islam and Muslim personages that
abound in many state-approved text-books, which are crucial factors in accounting for
the reluctance of many Muslim families to send their girls to school. Likewise, in
accounting for the low levels of school enrolment of Muslim girls the authors ignore
the influence of the traditionalist ulama, many of whom frown on girls secular
education, especially higher education, claiming that it would lead them astray.
Further, while the authors claim that Muslim educational backwardness does not owe
to religion as such is tenable, since the Quran itself stresses its importance, it does not
interrogate the role of the traditionalist ulama in seeking to limit Islamically-valid
education for girls simply to religious education narrowly defined.

The study shows significant regional similarities as well as difference on the issue of
Muslim girls education. In Kolkata, where Muslims account for more than 15% of the
population, the study found that Muslims lag far behind other communities in terms of
education. Although Muslims form 22% of the West Bengals population, 64% of
them are illiterate, the figure being far more dismal in the rural areas, owing
principally to widespread poverty as well as neglect by the state. According to the
study, West Bengal has the dubious distinction of having the lowest proportion of
Muslim girls studying at the middle and matriculation levels in both rural and urban
areas and the highest disparity between Hindus and Muslims in terms of education.
The state, despite being ruled by a party that claims to be Marxist, has done little for
Muslim education, although the Muslims rank among the most economically deprived
communities in the state. A good indication of this, the authors say, is that in 2004 the
state spent only 1.84% of its allocation for implementing the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
programme meant ostensibly for the universalisation of education in the state.
Teachers in government schools in the state are often involved in politics and the
average number of days that they work a year is a mere 90. The report quotes a former
West Bengal minister as saying that the government is insincere in its profession of its
commitment to primary education for all. The party in power, he is quoted as saying,
plays a negative role in the education sector as illiteracy gives them an assured votebank. Literacy may lead people to switch their loyalties.

In Delhi, the authors note a growing enthusiasm for modern education among many
Muslim families, although this is generally thwarted by widespread poverty and the
fear that well-educated girls might find it difficult to find suitable husbands because of
the relative paucity of well-educated Muslim men. Another hurdle is the desperate
shortage of Urdu schools, which many parents would prefer to send their girls to.
There are only 15 Urdu-medium government primary schools in the city, and when
students pass out from these schools they are faced with either being forced to enroll
in Hindi-medium secondary schools or drop-out from the formal schooling system.
The Delhi Government has not appointed a single Urdu teacher in over a decade,
indicating its lack of interest in promoting Muslim education. There is only one
government Urdu-medium primary school in New Delhi, although a large number of
Muslims live in this part of the state as well. On the whole, Urdu schools in the state
suffer from shortage of funds, trained teachers, textbooks and inadequate
infrastructure, all of which make the task of promoting Muslim girls education
doubly difficult.

In Hyderabad, where Muslims form almost 40% of the population, the study found
that 84% of Muslim women are illiterate. However, a growing number of girls from
economically better-off families are now enrolling in English-medium schools and in
colleges. Girls education has witnessed a considerable degree of progress in recent
years due to economic prosperity among some Muslim families because of
remittances from relatives working in the Gulf, reservation for girls and for Muslims
in professional colleges and government jobs, state aid to Urdu schools, and
recognition of Urdu as the second official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh. A
similar enthusiasm among some Muslims for girls education is noted by the author in
Calicut and Aligarh, although, for the same economic and social reasons mentioned
above, Muslim girls continue to be characterized by a high drop-out rate from
schools. In addition, the book reveals that in recent years a number of Muslimmanaged girls schools have been set up that impart both modern as well as religious
education, which make them more culturally relevant and acceptable to many Muslim
families.

The authors conclude by stressing the need for Muslim community leaders as well as
the state to take the issue of educating Muslim girls with the seriousness that it
deserves. Given the poor condition of Muslim womens education, there is a special
need, they rightly argue, for the state to take a pro-active role in this regard in order to
promote social justice and the empowerment of Muslim women and to remove the
barriers that systematically reinforce their marginalization.

The major contribution of the book is the detailed statistics it provides that highlight
the levels of Muslim womens education in different states and in India as a whole, as
well as its analysis of the various factors that impede Muslim girls education.
Although the interviews of Muslim women working to promote girls education in the
five cities that this study looks at provide interesting information, they appear rather
superficial and lack the necessary depth and rigor, giving the book the appearance of
being done in a tearing hurry. In addition, some of the claims that the authors make
are untenable. For instance, they claim that 98% of Muslim girls study in government
of private schools and only 2% in madrasas, the majority being from poor families.
No reference is provided for this claim, which appears factually incorrect. The authors
do not define what they mean by the term madrasas, and appear to conflate maktabs
or mosque-schools and madrasas, institutions for higher Islamic learning. Other
studies have indicated a relatively high proportion of girls, from poor and lowermiddle class families, who study in maktabs, after which they often do not carry on
with any sort of formal education. In many places, girls outnumber boys in the
maktabs. Clearly, the figure of 2% that the authors provide is a gross under-estimate.
Further, the authors do not refer to the phenomenon of girls madrasas that are
intended to train girls as religious specialists (alimas and fazilas), some of which also
provide a modicum of modern education as well. Although the number of such
madrasas is still small, they are a growing phenomenon, popular not just among the
poor but also among some lower-middle class Muslim families, being seen as
providing a more culturally relevant and appropriate form of education than do
government schools. Yet, the authors seem to labour under the impression that
education is simply modern education, which explains why no t a single of the
people interviewed in this book is a madrasa or maktab teacher. This impression is
also reflected in the authors statement that appears in the very first page of the book:
The emergence and spread of womens education in India in the pre-independence
period is the legacy of British colonialism and nineteenth century reform movements
among Hindus and Muslims, which were primarily a response to the Westernisation
implicit in the colonial process (p.1). By thus equating education with modern or
Western-style education, the authors completely ignore the long history of Muslim
womens education in pre-British times. Likewise, ulama voices are totally ignored in
the book, further strengthening the view that what the authors consider as education
has little for traditional Islamic learning.

Equally untenable is the authors nave claim that Hyderabads Old City, where most
of the citys Muslims live, is thriving and prosperous (Indeed, a visit to the Old City
was an eye-opener because it bore no evidence of pervasive poverty; if we had not

been told we would not have known we were in the heart of the Old City, the authors
claim [p.105], although, three pages later, they speak of the fact that Muslims in
Hyderabad are among the poorest). So, too, is their argument that West Bengal has
the lowest number of government schools in the country (p.53). Readers are
presented with yet another unsolvable riddle in the authors claim that the government
of West Bengal has neglected Muslim education while they argue the fact that 27.7%
Muslim children in the state attend government schools in contrast to 18.6% in the
case of the Hindus suggests the large availability of such schools in Muslimdominated areas! Equally distressing are the numerous spelling errors: Qoran, instead
of Quran, salal-e salaam instead of salallaho aleihi wasallam (a phrase generally used
after taking the name of the Prophet to beseech Gods blessings on him) and upper
caste, instead of upper caste or so-called upper caste. All this, however, should not
detract from the obvious merits of what is undoubtedly a valuable and insightful book.