Community organizations and educational development among Muslims: Lessons from the ‘Kerala Experience’

ABSTRACT

The overall image of Indian Muslims today is of a community deprived of a minimally decent life, having low educational attainment and experiencing socio-cultural stagnation. But, interestingly, Kerala's Muslims stand out in sharp contrast to their counterparts in most parts of the country as they are doing well, not just in education, but in most other aspects of life as well even as a century ago they were put in a defined image box and appeared to represent a community steeped in illiteracy and poverty. Equally interesting is their story of overcoming barriers to socioeconomic and educational development at the heart of which is the role played by social agencies though not fully captured in the available literature. Against this backdrop, the present paper aims to bring into sharp focus the role of social agencies, notably non-political community organizations, in shaping educational development among Kerala's Muslims. By foregrounding the ‘Kerala Experience’, this paper argues that structural barriers to education of a community, Muslims in the present case, are neither fixed nor immutable. It is possible for Muslims to address their educational backwardness by themselves through sustained, engaged and organized forms of efforts. The paper also discusses the lessons from the Kerala Experience and ask if the ‘Kerala Model’ is worth emulating for overcoming educational backwardness of Muslims in other parts of the country. Key words: community organization, education, Kerala, Mappila, Muslims, voluntary organizations.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Of late, religion-based inequalities in socio-economic and educational attainment have spawned a large body of empirical literature in India. See for example, Shariff and Razzack (2006); John and Mutatkar (2005); Sachar (2006); Basant and Shariff (2010); Alam (2012, 2013).

2 Also see Alam (2012) for a critical review of these explanations.

3 Malabar, the locale of Mappila Muslims, has gone through many realignments. It was part of the ancient kingdom of the Cheras until the twelfth century, when the chieftains of this region declared their independence. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the northern part of Malabar was brought under the Kingdom of Mysore, and subsequently became part of the Madras Presidency as an administrative district during the British colonial period. The former Malabar district comprised almost half of Kerala as it now is and extended over the present-day districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram and much of Palakkad district. At the time of Independence (in 1947), the Madras Presidency became the Madras State and Malabar continued to remain part of it. With the adjustment of state boundaries on linguistic basis in 1956, the Malayalam-speaking region of Kasaragod was merged with Malabar, which in turn was merged with the state of Travancore–Cochin to form the state of Kerala.

4 As per the 1931 census, Muslims accounted for 32.9% of the Malabar district. However, they were unequally distributed across the talukas within the district. They were about three-fifths of the population of Ernad Taluka; over two fifths in Ponani; over a third in Kurumbranad; and over a fourth in Walluvanad (Census of India, 1932). By and large, the same spatial pattern of concentration continues. At present, they constitute less than half (43.5%) of the region’s population. Most of them are concentrated in the Malappuram district where they account for three-fourths (72%) of the total population, followed by Kozikhode (39.2%), Kasaragod (37.2%); Kannaur (29.2%), Wayanad (28.6%) and Palakkad (28.9%) (Census of India, 2011).

5 For instance, Miller (1976, p. 84) observes: ‘All considered, Islam in Kerala had never been in greater distress since its advent’.

6 The role of non-state actors in educational progress in Kerala has been well documented. In the late nineteenth century, there were various groups of missionaries that were active in setting up schools. By 1908, there were about 2198 schools run by missionaries and indigenous churches (Thakaran, 1984). While the lower castes benefited from these efforts, their literacy and educational status were still deplorably low. However, radical change in the lives of the lower castes took place and social disparities in literacy and schooling began to narrow substantially owing to the impact of largescale social movements initiated in the early twentieth century, especially the ones led by Sree Narayan Guru and Sri Ayyan Kali. At one level, these movements put pressure on the government to declare government schools open for all, a goal that was achieved in 1910. At another level, they led many civil society organizations to spring up. Organizations like Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) and Sadhu Jana Paripalana (SJP) created networks of educational institutions. See also Eapen (1985); Mathew (1999).

7 This statistical purdah was finally cast off in the 1990s when the NSSO began to publish figures on a range of socio-economic and educational parameters for religious groups. After much public debate and sustained demand, the Indian Census resumed the practice of publishing educational and economic figures by religion in 2001.

8 The figures presented in Table 3 and Figure 1 are extracted from the raw data files of National Sample Surveys (50th and 68th rounds). These household surveys with all India coverage (both rural and urban tracts) and very large sample size are conducted by the NSSO. They collect a variety of socio-demographic, educational and economic activity status information for individuals. The extracted raw data files (in SPSS/STATA format) allow researchers to carry out any sort of analysis. The NSSO is an agency within the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India.

9 It may be noted that the decades leading into the twentieth century saw the emergence of strong caste organizations in Kerala. Not only did these organizations make strenuous efforts to improve the circumstances of their respective castes, they would also press for larger share in educational opportunities and power structures (Mathew, 1999).

10 On the activities of the South India Muhammadan Association and the coming forward of enlightened Muslims for the promotion of education in the community the Director of Public Instruction of Madras Presidency remarked: ‘Recently also a memorial was submitted to Government by the Muhammadan Association of Southern India making suggestions for the improvement of Muhammadan education and praying for further concessions and privileges in the matter of scholarships, appointment, etc. Muhammadans have for many years been prominent in asking for special privileges, but it is now gratifying to observe from the utterances of the leading members of the community the growth o£ a feeling among them that the best way to work out their salvation is by strenuous efforts to help themselves. The existence of such a feeling is evidenced by the fact that they have started a fund, which so far appears to have elicited a fairly liberal response, for the purpose of helping Muhammadan lads of promise to prosecute their studies in England and qualify for the higher services’. (Progress of Education in India, 1901, p. 02, p. 382).

11 Notable among such measures were grants-in-aid to special schools for Muslims, scholarships for Muslim scholars and appointment of Muslim School Inspectors (Ali, 1990).

12 It was formed under the leadership of Kottapurath Seethi Muhamad Sahib. Many prominent members of the community including Manappattu P. Kunhahammad Haji, Sheik Hamadani Thangal, E.K Moulavi, K.M Moulavi and Sikhandar Haji were also associated with the Sanghom.

13 The KMAS published two periodicals – Muslim Aikyom in Malyalam and Al-Irshad in Arabic-Malyalam to propagate its ideas. It socio-religious reform movement, among other things, rejected the Islamic priesthood and authority of legal schools, and asserted that the Quran and Hadith were the fundamental authorities to decide upon religious and moral issues in Islam. But the seminal contributions to this movement came from Vakkom Moulavi, one of the founding members of the KMAS. As well as being an Islamic scholar, he was a journalist and wrote extensively in his journal Muslims on the need for socio-religious reforms, forging community spirit and shedding the tendency to oppose modern education. In particular, he challenged the view held by consevatives that learning, history, geography, science, mathematics, arts, literature and other topics was un-Islamic. Also see Abraham (2014) for a detailed account of Vakkom Moulavi’s contribution to spreading the ideas of KMAS.

14 Currently, it offers 20 and 15 courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, respectively. In 2017–2018, the total intake was about 3000 students. More importantly, girls (mostly Muslims) constitute the majority of students. For more information see: https://www.farookcollege.ac.in/library/uploads/2019/01/NIRF-Overall.htm.

15 Also see: https://tkmce.ac.in/tkm-trust.

16 After the partition of India in1947, the All-India Muslim League was disbanded. However, the party was reorganized as the Indian Union Muslim League and became politically very active in Kerala. It championed the cause of the Muslim community and rose in prominence in the state’s electoral politics. It shared power in coalition governments since 1967. By holding the education portfolio in most of them, the IUML has been instrumental in creating educational institutions in the Malabar region (Rahim, 2013).

17 Also see: http://meskerala.com/institutions-glance/

18 See, Sebastian (2019). For a list of technical/engineering institutes owned by religious minorities in Kerala see: https://www.aicte-india.org/downloads/backup%20minority/Kerala.pdf

19 The ‘Aligarh Movement’ refers to a congeries of efforts pioneered by Syed Ahmed Khan in the city of Aligarh (situated in the present day state of Uttar Pradesh) in the late nineteenth century to encourage Muslims to take advantage of modern education. Given its impact on the Muslim community, the Aligarh Movement symbolized the renaissance among Muslims. However, it died out rather too early (Lelyveld, 1978).

20 These states include Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Assam, together accounting for over half the Muslim population of India. It is particularly in these states that Muslims cut a sorry figure in terms of educational and economic attainment. They are more likely than others to be poor, to occupy the lower rungs of the occupational structure and to experience lower educational attainment (Sachar, 2006). Worse still, there has been little progress over the years (Kundu, 2014). Moreover, barring a few sporadic individual attempts, there have not been organized efforts within the community for the educational advancement in the past seven decades (Hasnain, 2007).