The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has suggested to the Centre to set up fully government-funded universities for educational empowerment of Christians on the lines of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and the Jamia Millia Islamia.
As part of its suggestions for a medium-term action plan to be implemented within seven years, the NCM also called for roping in educationists from the community to be given due representation in framing educational policies and be appointed on different expert committees.
“Christians should also be given universities for their communities, fully funded by the Government of India, like Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia University,” the NCM said in its annual report for 2016-17.
The report is expected to be tabled in Parliament during the next session, sources said. On being asked about the recommendation, NCM Chairman Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi said, “Such a move will help ensure educational empowerment of Christians.”
Rizvi said, like the AMU or the Jamia Millia Islamia, the university for Christians should impart education to students from other communities as well.
The NCM also said that the government should fully fund at least one university for Christians and it could do so in collaboration with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.
According to the 2011 Census on the education level of different religious communities for age seven and above, the literacy rate of Christians was 74.34 per cent. Muslims had the highest percentage of illiterates aged beyond seven years at 42.72, as per the census.
This percentage was 36.4 for Hindus, 32.49 for Sikhs and 28.17 for the Buddhists.
Earlier, The chairman of the National Commission for Minorities today dismissed Shia board chief Wasim Rizvi’s controversial “madrassas breed terrorists” remark, saying the Islamic institutions produced IAS officers, not militants. Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi said it was a “laughable” remark made to earn a few brownie points from the government. “It is laughable and juvenile to connect madrassas with terrorism. One or two isolated incidents cannot be used to defame madrassas,” he said. “Nowadays, children who studied in madrassas are becoming IAS officers and earning fame in multiple spheres. Madrassas don’t breed terrorists, they produce IAS officers,” he added.
Waseem-ur-Rehman from the Deoband in UP cleared UPSC in 2008. He got 404th rank. Maulana Hammad Zafar from Madrassa Ali Arabia in Mau, Madhya Pradesh cleared the exam in 2013, he said. The Shia Board chairman had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on January 9 in which he claimed that madrassas bred terrorists and demanded that the Islamic institutions should be shut. The Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind served a legal notice on Wasim Rizvi citing the ‘defamatory’ remarks. It sought for a written and unconditional apology from Rizvi and a payment of Rs 20 crore towards damages.
The minorities commission chairman said Rizvi’s letter would have no bearing on the government’s stance towards madrassas. “His comment was meant to earn a few brownie points from the government. But I am confident that the government will pay no heed to his statements. It instead wants to modernize madrasas,” he said. “There have already been changes in the madrassas. Modern education is being imparted there and the ones where it’s not happening, the government is working for them too,” he added.
