Madrasa Case Study

815 Words2 Pages

Under the Mughals, the madrasa had become the key educational institution for producing civil servants and judicial officials. With the establishment of British rule, state patronage—the madrasa’s principal source of financial support—disappeared. Changes in the administration and economy introduced by the English East India Company meant that madrasa education lost its usefulness as a route to employment. As a consequence, madrasa education, rather than addressing both the religious and worldly needs of the Muslims, became increasingly otherworldly.9

To survive in the changed environment, the madrasas had to reorganize dramatically. To begin with, they had to now build a support base among the general populace. The shift from reliance on the court to reliance on the people proved too demanding for most of the older madrasas, including the leading ones like Farangi Mahal in Lucknow. It has been argued that lack of funding was one of the reasons for the eventual decline of Farangi Mahal.10 The Deoband madrasa was born in this changed environment. The ulama who set it up argued that in these changed times it was important for Muslims to …show more content…

Also, many ulama trained in the Deobandi tradition migrated to Pakistan.13 Given that Pakistan is predominantly Sunni, the presence of eminent scholars trained at Deoband resulted in continued expansion of the Deobandi tradition in Pakistan. As Malik shows, the Deobandi madrasas are the largest in number and thus most prominent.14 However, the external environment was no longer conducive to the flourishing of these madrasas: the newly created Muslim state carried on the British legacy of modernization. It did not even recognize madrasa education as such—to the extent that established religious scholars from madrasas with published books to their names were classed as illiterate and so excluded from the electoral register in the country’s first

More about Madrasa Case Study

Open Document