[Reader-list] :Book Review:Directory of Ahle Hadis Madrasas

[arshad amanullah]

Madaris-e-Ahle Hadis: Ek Tarikhi Dastavez (Directory of the Ahle Hadis Madrasas
                                     In India)
Compiler: Khalid Haneef Siddiqui
Publisher: Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadis, Delhi
Year        : 2004
pp. 622+xvi
INR: 200.00
Reviewed by: Arshad Amanullah


The Ahle Hadis, pejoratively known as 'Wahhabis', though emerged like
several other sects as a response to the crisis of the slippage of
political power from the Muslim ruling elite to the British, the sect,
unlike others, has a well-documented history as a group which offered
armed resistance to the Raj. The British suppression of the sect made
its ulama introvert and forced them to maintain a low profile. This
also gets reflected in the body of the academic literature available
on this section of the South Indian Muslims. There is absolutely no
serious empirical or sociological investigation about the people and
ulama of the sect in Independent India. By putting a first hand data
about several important aspects of  madrasas of the sect in public
domain, Siddiqui seeks to fill a very
important gap in our understanding of Muslim religious groups and
ulama activism after 1947.

This directory, report of the survery conducted under the aegis of
Markazi Jami'at Ahle Hadis, Hind, provides important information
regarding 1636 out of about 2500 Ahle Hadis educational institutions,
including   boys and girl madrasas, secular schools, technical
institutes and tibbiya colleges all over  country. In arranging the
data, the compiler has observed the following method: names of states
and districts are in alphabetical order; it divides the madrasas in
five categories (Fazilat, Alamiyat, Sanaviya, Motawassita and
Ibtidaiyya) ; each district starts from the highest level of the
madrasas i.e. Fazilat it has. Here he does not observe the
alphabetical order.

The section on every state begins with a brief but useful note on its
geography, demography and literacy rate in general. It points out
names of the districts which have the concentration of the Ahle Hadis
population and, as a result, that of the educational institutions. It
vaguely talks about the status of literacy and the economic condition
of the sect-members in a particular state. It places special emphasis
on mentioning names of the girl madrasas of the state. Moreover, it
mentions names of the Ahle Hadis magazines coming out of the state.
Libraries and publication houses of the sect also find place in the
note.

 The directory furnishes the following details regarding every
institution it enlists: year of establishment; name of founders;
present general secretary and principal; level of education; number of
the students(boys and girls) enrolled, whether they are day scholars
or avail the boarding facilities; number of academic and
administrative staff; nature of curriculum(religious, secular or a mix
of both); whether it is affiliated to any board or university; source
of revenue, whether it gets any financial grant from the government,
annual budgets; details  of the land  and the premises; number of
books available in the library if there is any; registration number(
if registered) and the full postal address with phone numbers. None of
them carry email address.

Though the directory is a remarkable shift in terms of the
presentation and content from its prototype Jama'at-e-Ahle Hadis Ki
Tadrisi Khidmaat (Contribution of the Ahle Hadis Sect to the Field of
Education, Jamia Salafia, Varanasi, 1984) by Maulana Azizur Rahman
Salafi, Siddiqui's compilation also leaves much to be desired. As the
maps enclosed in the beginning of the section on every state do not
bear any coloured or graphic representation of the presence or
concentration of the population and educational centers of the sect in
a particular region, they do not serve any purpose. Like most of the
Urdu publications, this directory does not have any alphabetical
index. However, towards the end, it incorporates two exclusive
indexes: one for those madrasas which provide education upto the
Fazilat level and another for the girl madrasas. The last page
contains names of 88 institutions on which no information is provided
in the directory. It ends with the promise to include them in the
second edition. Using deftly the available data, the compiler could
have made it more user- friendly. Like he could have very easily
inform the users about the number of people employed in the
unorganized sector of the madrasas as every madrasa had mentioned
total number of its staff. Moreover, the directory divides the
curriculum of a certain madrasa into two categories: dini (religious)
and asri (modern). One needs to know what they stand for as they have
not been explained anywhere.

Despite its limitations, very few books have proved as timely as is
the case with this directory. It is a must for scholars interested in
the South Asian Islam as it is an invaluable contribution to the
madrasa studies which has flourished so rapidly in the wake of rise of
Taliban and fall of twin towers.


arshad amanullah
35,masihgarh,
jamia nagar
new delhi-25.