Imagine a Sherwani clad maulana addressing the inaugural session of IIT Kharagpur and emphasising on these words, “Institute must provide instruction of the highest standard, under the supervision of recognised authorities in their respective fields and that only men of the highest quality should be in charge of the different departments”. The great Islamic and contemporary scholar of modern India remembered and glorified as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was the first Education Minister of independent India. To his credit goes the foundations of Indian Institute of Technology, University Grants Commission(UGC), All India Council of Technical Education(AICTE), Sahitya Academy and Centre for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR). Gandhi described Maulana Azad as the Emperor of learning. A person of calibre of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras.

Maulana Azad has various unwavering identities attached to his personality. A distinguished freedom fighter, an able politician with deeper faith on India’s plurality and its secular ethos, an Islamic scholar detached from the conformity of thoughts and ideas on religion, avid admirer of art and culture and a renowned educationist. Remembering Maulana Azad becomes important for us when we want to understand how education was perceived by him and what were his great ideas behind shaping the education system of independent India. He also becomes important for us to re-discover his ideas and visions for a healthier democracy to flourish in India. He was deeply convinced that true secular credentials of Indian society and the State fully discharging its responsibilities for the welfare of its people would only help India break herself away from the shackles of poverty and deprivation after the 200 long years of colonial rule.

He was the foremost advocate for the free basic education to India’s citizens. While addressing one of the meets during his early days after observing the post of Education Minister of India he had exhorted the policy makers to never forget that it was the birth right of every Individual to receive at least the basic education without which he could not fully discharge his duties as a citizen. Reading his speeches on education it becomes clear that he was very much pained at the then prevailing situation of India’s education system and he wanted to see fast rising India on the status of literacy of its citizens and the expansion of higher education to the greater heights. He also took special interest in primary education and adult education. Despite the huge financial crisis India was facing, he had allocated considerable budget to education sector. His target was to raise the expenditure on education till 10%. For promoting the adult education he also wanted the government to ask the government employees to volunteer themselves in training the adults in basic education. Reading his speeches we find that he was very much aware of the ground realities of India and explained minute of the details to the policy makers in order to make them understand better the problems and challenges. Maulana also believed that the medium of instruction in schools should be in the mother tongue. His immediate targets under the ministry of education were four which he has frequently mentioned in his speeches.

The provision of basic education on a universal free and compulsory basis for all the school going children The provision of adult education in order to wipe out the colossal illiteracy of the masses. The improvement and expansion of technical education in order to solve the manpower for industrial and technical development. The reorganisation and improvement of university education from a national point of view.

India celebrates the birthday of Maulana Azad on 11th Nov as the Education Day. For me this is an important event to mark while taking the inspirations from the ideas and thoughts of Maulana. Probably this is the day which distinguishes the Maulana’s undisputed identity of educationist while being mostly admired as the longest serving Congress President. This is the day which invokes us to relook at what India has achieved in terms of education keeping the visions of Maulana alive.

Reading the life of Azad also highlights that he was the strongest advocate of free basic education to all its citizens. He also convinced the Constituent Assembly that it should be the responsibility of the State to provide free and compulsory education to all its citizens.

Reading the life of Azad also highlights that he was the strongest advocate of free basic education to all its citizens. He also convinced the Constituent Assembly that it should be the responsibility of the State to provide free and compulsory education to all its citizens. Finally we have seen that his vision gets enacted as a law in 2009 as something we popularly call as RTE. Right to Education Act was enacted by the Parliament in 2009 and it became effective on 1st April 2010 which guarantees the access of basic education to all children aged 6-14 as their fundamental right.

Despite 5 years have passed since the law was made effective, we still see that little has changed on ground in terms of providing basic education to the children aged 6-14. Neither the government nor the private sector has showed any interest on implementing its all provisions, especially the provision of 25% reservation for the children of deprived section to the Private neighbourhood schools is largely neglected. Several reports suggest that the teachers at government schools are not competent enough to make the education and learning process interesting for the children. They lack basic teaching skills and the state shows no interest in training them. Teacher training program at the national level was one of the important agenda of Maulana Azad and he wanted that government should specially focus on training the teachers as they are the ambassadors of education to the grassroots of the country.

Disheartening is the fact that government seems more interested in advertising the numbers of the toilets constructed in the government schools and then there is no other visible programme from the government in order to improve primary education in the country. Fact of the matter is that students of the government schools never find the competitive environment and joyful learning as it’s provided to the children of private schools. The disparity is created to the children of different social classes from the education at primary level itself. This is my personal experience that children of government schools remain under continuous psychological impression that they are the less privileged in education and that they can’t make the progress in their academics as the children from private schools can. Maulana Azad never wanted this to happen.

Many of us would not be aware that Maulana Azad had a tryst with Madrasa Education as well. During his house arrest days at Ranchi in 1916 his political, educational and journalistic activities had faced a sudden halt. He offered Friday sermons at a local mosque in Ranchi which invited people from far places to listen to him. He founded Madrasa e Islamia in 1917 at Ranchi, the land and money donated by both Hindus and Muslims. He said that Madrasa e Islamia was founded to represent the reformed madrasa curriculum, with a combination of the best of English and Arabic education.

Maulana Azad had special attention on higher education and he wanted to take note of the learning and best practices of other countries. In several of his speeches we find that he gave references to Japan, Egypt, Turkey, Iran and other European Countries that how they were utilising the radio and visuals to enhance the learning. He always wanted that concentrated focus should be given on research in education to make it more creative. For this purpose he had also set up Central Institute of Education.

Its irony that, the UGC which was founded under the guidance of Maulana Azad with the aim to the development of university education in India, has recently given an ambiguous notice for the discontinuation of the fellowships to the non NET research scholars. Students are up in arms against this decision of the UGC and #OccupyUGC movement has gained momentum across the major cities of India. The Wire published an article which says that WTO-GATS negotiations in 2005 have made education as a service and the offer had been made by the government opening the higher education sector to the international education trade. Final rounds of this discussion will be held at Doha in mid of December 2015 which would make these offers as the commitments. The article further mentions that by this commitment, India will transform students into consumers required to pay service charges to receive virtually any form of higher education, ranging from correspondence course to instruction offered by universities and institutions established by foreign and private players. We have seen that no government is sincere in increasing their spending on education sector. On the other hand the already allotted funds are curtailed citing various silly reasons.

It’s very important for us to look back at what visions Maulana Azad had garnered for the education system at India and how badly our successive governments have messed it up with. We hope that #OccupyUGC movement goes further to the entire country and wish that it succeeds pressurizing the government and policy making bodies to rethink their sinister pro market agendas of commercialising the education sector. At the same time Maulana Azad would continue inspiring us for the creative education he wanted for every citizen of India.

References:

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and the National Education System – S Irfan Habib

http://thewire.in/2015/10/28/the-occupy-ugc-agitation-is-about-saving-indian-education-14207/