Assam: After the government in the Assam state of India decided to shut down all the state-run madrasas and Sanskrit tols (schools) as it is “not possible for them to use public funds to teach religious scriptures”, the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) chief Badruddin Ajmal has said not a single Muslim will vote for the party if it implements the decision.
“If they close down the madrassas, the lives of the students enrolled in them will be ruined. At this hour, if they go ahead with this policy, BJP will be the loser. They have already announced that they will field candidates in Muslim areas, but no one will vote for them,” a report by Times of India quoted Ajmal as having said.
In this regard, the state’s Education Minister had said that the decision was announced in the state Assembly earlier. “There should be no religious education with government’s funding,” Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had said.
However, Ajmal had slammed the state government’s decision earlier as well, saying that if the state government decides to close down government-run madrasas, his party would take steps to re-open these educational educations after coming to power in 2021 Assembly poll.
“Madrasas cannot be closed. We would reopen these 50-60-year-old madrassas if this BJP government closes them forcibly,” Ajmal, who is also an MP, said.
Notably, Assam has 614 government-aided recognised madrasas – 57 for girls, three for boys, and 554 co-educational. A total of 17 madarasas teach students in Urdu medium. There are around 1,000 Sanskrit tols across Assam, of which around 100 are government-aided.
However, Ajmal said that he is confident that the state government will bring the process to a halt. “November is far away. Decisions change within minutes. The decision can easily be reversed during a cabinet meeting,” he added.
When asked regarding him being targeted by the BJP over a banner that was written in Arabic in one of his recent meetings, the AIUDF chief, according to the report, replied: “the Assamese language is not that weak that it will fade away by just one banner in Arabic. I didn’t even see the banner that was put up.”
According to the 2011 census, the population of Assam is roughly 31,169,272 out of which there were 10,679,345 Muslims, forming over 34.22% of its population.
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