Madrasas ‘unfit’ places for children to receive proper education: NCPCR submits in Supreme Court

NCPCR highlights issues with madrasas, arguing they fail to provide quality education and violate children's rights.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the top child rights protection body in the country, has told the Supreme Court that madrasas are “unsuitable or unfit” places for children to receive “proper education”. The Commission said the textbooks in madrasas “profess supremacy of Islam”.

“Merely teaching a few NCERT Books in the curriculum is a mere guise in the name of imparting education and does not ensure that the children are receiving formal and quality education,” it argued.

NCPCR highlighted issues of curriculum, eligibility of teachers, opaque funding, violation of land laws and failure to provide children a holistic environment as problems associated with madrasas.

“The teachers appointed in madrasas are largely dependent on the conventional methods used in learning Quran and other religious texts. The “scanty and unregularised” working in madrasas creates a haywire system which just stands alone on the conventional ground of religion,” it said.

“Majority of madrasas have no idea as to how to plan social events or extracurricular activities, such as field trips, that could provide students with some level of experiential learning… Madrasa education is neither all-encompassing nor thorough. It is not helping children advance since it lacks so many crucial components of learning. Madrasas infringe on children’s fundamental right to a good education by failing to provide these basic requirements. Children are denied not only a suitable education but also a healthy atmosphere and improved opportunities for growth,” the Commission said.

It said children from faiths other than Islam were also studying in madrasas in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Providing Islamic religious education to non-Muslims was a violation of Article 28(3) of the Constitution, which upholds the right against forced participation in religious instruction or worship.

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