At a meeting conducted on 25th April, 2017, an interview took place with the President of the West Bengal Board of Madrasa Education (Mr. Md. Fazle Rabbi) and the following opinions and statements have been recorded –
The Rehnuma Law Centre, Howrah team visited the Board to discuss the system of madrasa education run systematically by the West Bengal State Government. When asked about the participation of girls in madrasas (currently the male-female ratio stands at 65:35) across West Bengal, Mr. Rabbi stated that that the number of girl students appearing for exams has increased by 10%. There are about 615 ‘aided’ madarsas in West Bengal although there are ‘non-aided’ madrasas in almost every district, of which the concentration is in southern districts like Malda, Murshidabad etc.
“The madrasas which are non-aided are afraid on two fronts – sharing of power with the government and accountability to them.”
Being accountable takes their arbitrary power away, which has been unchallenged thus far. The ‘non-aided’ madrasas are also those which have access to community funding for the basic education provided therein which involves religious instruction mostly. However, he assured that the maktabs or schools which want to be registered as madrasas can simply follow the procedure set down by the West Bengal State Government and apply for registration. He referred to the case of Shajahan Mondal v The State Of West Bengal & Ors. when asked about the fear among madrasas regarding Government intervention in the curriculum design, noting that the curriculum in the madrasas is not wholly religious in nature. Students have a paper on Arabic and Theology and that’s just about it. He stated that there are currently 23 registered madrasas in West Bengal which have more Non-Muslim students than Muslim students.
Rehnuma 