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Gujarat Muslims try to wriggle out of the past by taking up higher education with a vengeance. Several of them seek admissions in medical and engineering schools even by selling their hard assets like land and houses.


A silent education revolution is on among Muslim youths in Gujarat. The myth, pre-Godhra, was that poor Muslims sent their children to learn craft to earn their livelihood. The details collected by two Gujarat based NGOs, which are involved in providing scholarships for medical courses for poor Muslim students have thrown some startling facts and put paid to such myth.


Out of the 7,017 enrolment in Gujarat’s medicals and dental institutes in 2006-07, Muslim boys and girls account for over 400, and about 50 per cent of these Muslims are sons and daughters of truck and auto rickshaw drivers or persons doing small jobs with annual incomes ranging between Rs. 30,000 and Rs. 50,000, hardly enough for a sustainable livelihood.


Some of these are so poor that they do not have enough space and light to prepare for their senior secondary examinations. They either studied in the mosques or homes of relatives who are comparatively well off. But it was their zeal and determination to win a seat in the MBBS or dental courses that kept propelling them for higher grades at exams.


Education awareness among Gujarati Muslims seems to have increased so much that a farmer, Kamran Sheikh of Dhoka, sold out part of his agriculture land to finance studies of her daughter Sanajabi Sheikh in the private-run SBKS medical institute at Vaghodia, 18 kms. from Vadodara. “My daughter always wanted to become a doctor. Since she could not secure a government seat, Shaikh said, I sold a part of my agriculture land to raise money for her admission and studies. Shahid Sheikh, when asked why did he sell his land to educate his daughter, said, “I would not have thought of it in pre-Godhra days. But Godhra changed my views altogether.”


If those working in the field are to be believed, more than 500 students belonging to wealthy families have sought admission in private medical colleges in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. And some of them have moved over to central Asians countries and a few to Russia too where medical education is relatively less expensive.


Maulana Habiburrahman Matadad, whose Iqra Education Trust has financed 35 Gujarati students in various medical college in Maharashtra and Karnataka, says Post-Godhra, lot of churning has gone into Muslim minds. In Gujarat Muslims are realising that they cannot live with dignity and respect and prevent incidents like Godhra if they are not equipped with the best of education. This, he says, is driving Muslim parents to send their children to educational institutions rather then teaching them crafts just to earn a living.


Similar views are echoed by Zuber Gopalani, a social activist associated with several newly set up educational institutions in Vadodara. “Gujarati Muslims seem to have been jolted by Godhra and trying to regain their loss by obtaining higher education”, said Zuber, who is running a school in Napa village of Anand district and three other institutions in Vadodara, two of them set up post-Godhra.


A social activist from Rajkot, Farooq Bawani, an activist in the field of Muslim education, says. “Post-Godhra, I have been flooded with students from poor families seeking financial help for admission to medical and engineering courses. In fact, it was at the behest of Bawani that the two Gujarat based NGOs began to offer Scholarship to medical students.


The survey by the Muslim NGOs is also corroborated by these finding. “There is a rising trend of Muslim students both boys and girls, getting admitted to medical institutes in the last couple of years,” points out Dr. Jayshree Mehta, dean of SBKS medical institute at Vaghodia.


Surely, Muslim students strength in my institute has increased post-Godhra informed Dr. H.H. Agravat, principal of Pramukhswami Medical College at Karamsad in Anand district.


“What I have particularly noticed is that Muslim medical students, unlike OBCs and reserved categories are very bright and talented” Agravat added.

Himmate mardan madade khuda. Efforts bring God’s help. The proverb rarely looked so true. It would have never looked true without the bravado and efforts put up by people like Fatima and her husband Shaik Salar, a young pani puri vendor who along with a young bride nurtured a dream. A dream of making his young wife, all of 15 years an engineer.


But the difference with this couple from ordinary dreams that never materialise was that both Fatima and her husband toiled for it for several years, at times sleeping without food, for they had to buy a book for her engineering course the next day, and Shaik putting in more hours at his pani puri cart to get some extra rupees to fund his wife’s college fee.


“But it all was worth it”, says Shaik Salar with full smile. People wanted to dissuade me from sending my wife first to school and then to engineering college saying that “my wife would leave me if she completes her engineering” Salar goes on to say.


Fatima, a brilliant student throughout was married off to Shaik Salar when she was all of 15. Her parents forcibly took her out of school and arranged her marriage with a young boy who sold pani puri on his hand cart. Not very uncommon throughout India. Fatima thought that with her marriage it was an end of her dreams. But dreams at times materialize from very unlikely places. When she shared her dream with her husband she found that he agreed readily. “When I shared my dreams with my husband to become an engineer some day he was very supportive” says Fatima. He started saving money from his meager income.


It was all the more difficult in an impoverished slum with majority of them Muslims to convince people that she was not doing an un-Islamic job by pursuing a course in engineering even after her marriage. “It is un-Islamic to go to college for a Muslim woman after marriage. She should stay home and look after her household work” people would suggest to both Salar and Fatima. The neighbours even went to the extent of approaching her mother to ask her daughter not to join the college, says Fatima. But her mother Razia stood with the young couple and never asked her what her neighbours were demanding.


Despite all odds Fatima was able to complete her course at Gayatri Vidya Parishad College of Engineering with high marks and was given a plum posting by Infosys, the software giant in a campus selection. The girl whose husbands was hardly able to get Rs 150 a day after working with his pani puri hand cart would be drawing an initial salary of around Rs 25000 a month. In fact, she is the first student from the college to get into Infosys.


Though Fatima was assisted by Andhra Pradesh State Minorities Finance Corporation that helped her pay her fee, it was Salar who paid Rs 60000 from his meager savings and some loan that he got from his friends.


Fatima would be joining Infosys after a three months training. And then both of them would relocate to her new office. Fatima is all praise for her husband. “It was only he who made it possible. He happily faced all the hardship only because he wanted to make my dream true” says she. (Courtesy Khabrein.info Exclusive)