Former Vice President Hamid Ansari expressed grave concern over educational backwardness of the Muslim community and urged them to focus on timely relevant education, primary education and women education. He said if we lag in education today, we will always remain backward. He was addressing a public meeting at India International Centre in New Delhi on 9 October. The meeting was held to inaugurate Saiyid Hamid Foundation founded to take forward the mission of the renowned Muslim educationist and Jamia Hamdard founder late Saiyid Hamid.
Emphasising the timely relevant education, Mr. Ansari said, “Education was an issue and agenda in the time of Sir Syed and even today it is an issue and agenda. Then the question arises why it is so. When Sir Syed took the responsibility of education, I don’t know how many of you know that he established a scientific society before founding the college. Its aim was to aware the community of the achievement of science through translation at that time. He focused on the same thing in Aligarh too. There was never lack of education overall except in some sections. But there was extremely lack of education that is relevant to the time since 1857. That’s why his focus was on education that is relevant to the time in 1870. It was accepted by the community to some extent. That message is still our onus. Today, the education which we need is not of 1870 but 2017 and ahead of it.”
Urging the Muslim community to focus on the primary educational institutions, he said, “Then what we need now for that. We established institutions a lot. It is very much in south India and less in north India. People have established engineering colleges. People got happy because of these colleges. Those colleges got minority status as well but they did not get students. The question is why this happened. This happened because we built second and third floors of the building but we didn’t lay the foundation. I think the first need is the primary education. If you ask what works have been done under Sarv Siksha Abiyan, the overall figure is not bad. But if you ask how many schools were opened in minority concentration areas, then the figure turns reverse. The work which we ourselves should have done, we leave it to the government. The things about the condition of the Muslim community which used to say covertly were publicly prepared and released in the form of Sachar Committee Report. Despite that it was never discussed in Parliament. I can say it with full responsibility. There is a mentality we can’t defeat that by mere relying on others and hoping that we will get rid of this. The thing which the community should have done has not been done to the larger extent.”
Expressing grave concern over the backwardness of women in education, he further said, “There is an important issue that is women education. We are extremely backward in terms of women education. Statistics are available to prove that. We will have to bring this change in the society, else cannot do it. We will have to do ourselves. There is absolutely no inequality between man and woman according to the Shari’ah. All the duties and parameters which are for men are also for women. But in our social structure we reversed those duties and parameters. The matter begins from the family – the food is served to the boys first then the girls. In the matter of education, boys are given more importance than girls. As a result of which, this discrimination reflects to the larger extent which is comprehensively mentioned in the Sachar Committee Report. We can’t hold any government institution responsible for this. This is the thing we need to do ourselves. If we don’t do so, we will remain backward in education. If we lag in education today, we will always remain backward.”
Apart from Hamid Ansari, Justice Rajinder Sachar, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, Naseem Ahmed, former Chairperson of National Commission for Minorities, Zafar Mahmood, Chairman of Zakat Foundation of India, Amanullah Khan, Managing Trustee of Saiyid Hamid Foundation and Dr. S Farooq, founder of Himalya Drugs were also present on the occasion. They addressed the meeting and expressed their personal association with Saiyid Hamid and lauded his contributions and qualities.