By TCN Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: In a damning indictment of the attitude of state towards education of Muslims, the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions, (NCMEI) has severely criticized the state governments for, what it termed as, depriving Muslims of the “liberating capability” of education.
What prompted this salvo against state governments by a three-judge Bench, led by the commission’s chairman Justice M S A Siddiqui, was a petition filed by MIC Orphanage Upper Primary School at Kaipamangalam in Trichur district, a little-known Muslim orphanage school, against the orders of the Director, Public Instructions refusing upgradation of the Orphanage into a high school. This was going on since several months in spite of the fact that the state education department had given recommendations in favor of the school.
An MCD school in Zakir Nagar, a Muslim dominated area in New Delhi
The commission termed the Kerala case as a “glaring example” of “Muslim deprivation in the field of education.”
Making an insightful observation about the state of education among Muslims, the commission said, that the community is still “scratching the educational barrel of the country”. It unanimously observed that the Constitution of India gives minorities the rights to run and administer educational institutions of its choice and this right can’t be “sacrificed” at the altar of state policy.
“The Central government has made some positive efforts to address various aspects of Muslim deprivation and also to enhance the inclusiveness of the Muslim community. But the larger malice of exclusion has to be fought at the national and state levels. Education can be a liberating capability, but often access to it is made difficult by some misguided elements in the state government,” said the bench which has Mohinder Singh and Cyriac Thomas as its two other members.
The commission was constituted by the HRD Ministry in 2004, to look into specific complaints regarding deprivation or violation of rights of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.