“Madrasas Boards pose multifaceted challenges to the realisation of rights of children, from not providing quality education to exclusion from mainstream education to lack of accountability,” states the NCPCR’s report titled ‘Guardians of Faith or Oppressors of Rights: Constitutional Rights of Children vs. Madrasas’. The Commission argues that constituting a Board or adhering to Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) Codes does not mean that the madrasas are following the provisions of Right To Education Act 2009 (RTE).
Recommending that children from the Muslim community who are attending madrasas should be enrolled in formal schools, the commission which has sent its report to all states with the letter underlines that “religious education cannot be at the expense of formal education which is a fundamental right under the Constitution of India.”
The commission has also recommended that all non-Muslim children enrolled in madrasas without consent of guardians or parents be taken out and admitted in schools for receiving fundamental education. Pointing out that Article 28 of the Constitution prohibits the imposition of religious instruction without consent of parents or guardians in case of minors, the report states that largely the states/UTs could not furnish the consent of parents of non-Muslim children for letting their children attend madrasas.
Data shared by states which have Madrasa Boards shows that there were 9,446 non-Muslim children in madrasas in Madhya Pradesh followed by Rajasthan (3,103), Chhatisgarh (2,159), Bihar (69) and Uttarakhand (42) which comes to a total of about 14,819. The Madrasa Board in Odisha said there were no non-Muslim students enrolled and Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal did not provide the data as per the report.
In the letter to chief secretaries, NCPCR chairperson Priyank Kanoongo said, “the exemption of religious institutions from RTE Act led to exclusion of children attending only religious institutions from the formal education system in keeping with RTE.”
“What was intended to empower children ultimately created new layers of deprivation and discrimination due to wrong interpretation,” Kanoongo added.
NCPCR states that the madrasas while providing religious education are not following the principle of secularism. “Also the exams administered by the Board of Madrasa Education and the books prescribed are not as per the curriculum given by NCERT and SCERT, keeping the students of Madrasas behind those who fall within the purview of RTE,” the report states.
The NCPCR report also drew attention to the need to map the unmapped madrasas in the country. “There are 19,613 recognised madrasas and 4,037 unrecognised madrasas in the country (UDISE+ 2020-21). The enrollment for recognised Madrasas is 26,93,588 and for unrecognised Madrasas is 5,40,744,” it is stated. “Based on the estimation of 1.1 crore Muslim children that are out-of-school and attending madrasas, there could be more than 80,000 unmapped madrasas in the country,” the commission noted with concern.