In 1903, Muslim educationists, leaders, and community representatives met at the Anjuman-I- Islam campus near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus for the first ‘Muslim Education Conference’ in Mumbai.
The meeting, held under the leadership of Sir Badruddin Tyabji, the first Indian barrister in the Bombay High Court, a judge, and the founder of Anjuman-I-Islam, discussed ways to encourage Muslims to join the mainstream education system, learn English, and develop a scientific temperament.
On Sunday, educationists, lawyers, and other delegates met at the Madanpura office of the Urdu Markaz, which organises the Bhendi Bazaar Urdu Festival, to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the meeting that is considered historical in the movement to encourage Muslims to take up modern education.
The 1903 meeting, held between December 28 and 30, was one of a series of discussions held by the Muslim Education Conference across India.
The first was held in 1887, a year after the organisation was established. “Educational institutions set up were influenced by the conference,” said lawyer Zubair Azmi, director of Urdu Markaz.
Salman Ghazi, a former banker who is the managing director of Iqra Education Foundation which provides religious curriculum to nearly 200 regular schools run by Muslim management, said that after the 1857 War of Independence Muslims and the atrocities by the colonial army Muslims did not want anything that the British brought, including the modern education system.
“This was a problem for Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (who founded what became the Aligarh Muslim University). He wanted Muslims to take up the new education system because of the advantages it offered. He had the support of the nawabs and the elite, but the common Muslim was not convinced. This is how the idea of the conference was born,” said Ghazi.
The conference had the support of religious leaders like the Aga Khan, the head of the Ismaili community. The conferences were discontinued after some years, but the ideas from the meetings guided community leaders for decades.
Zafar Sareshwala, a businessman and educationist who attended Sunday’s meeting, said Muslims face challenges similar to those 120 years ago.
“Muslims have become politically irrelevant. The only way you get your relevance back is through education. How foresighted were the people who met 120 years ago.”
Ghazi said there has been a paradigm shift in educational aspiration among Muslims in the last few decades. “Muslim businesses are establishing schools. That awakening is there. Young Muslims feel that in an era of globalisation, there is less possibility of being discriminated against based on religion,” said Ghazi.
“There is an educational renaissance in the Muslim community which has largely gone unnoticed in the media,” said Sareshwala.
Zahir Kazi, president of Anjuman-I-Islam, also spoke at the meeting, Delegates resolved to revive the conference and involve other large educational institutions run by Muslim management.
