Uttar Pradesh: Deoband, a town in the Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, lies deep within the province. Many of its streets are crowded with young men carrying books and bags, dressed in white kurta-pyjamas and white skullcaps. According to locals, this is the result of about 300 seminaries or madrasas in the town alone, which house about 6,000 students, many of whom hail from Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Deoband is also home to Darul Uloom Deoband, an Islamic seminary founded in 1886 that has become a revered global centre for Sunni education.
Despite the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, the seminary has again been in the news. Although the Taliban follow the Deobandi school of Islam, locals maintain that it is an extremist version that has little to do with them. According to ThePrint’s Arshad Madani, the connection between the two organisations is purely historical. In his view, the Deobandis of India taught their counterparts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but only during the 19th century, when there was an effort to drive the British out of the subcontinent.
‘Our ancestor Maulana Mahmud Hassan Deobandi, known as Shaykh-al-Hind, was a freedom fighter in the Indian freedom movement,’ Madani said. ‘In order to fight the British, he created a jamait of freedom fighters. He sent his close ally Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi to Afghanistan to create an allied force to aid the Indian freedom movement. Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi established relations with the Afghani people in order to set up the first provisional government of India in Afghanistan under Mahendra Pratap Singh, who advocated jihad against the colonial rule,’ he said.
According to Madani , the town has no connection with Afghanistan of the recent times. According to him, the person who started the freedom movement in Afghanistan was a Deobandi, and the Taliban who claim to be following Deoband are likely to be descendants of him three generations later. ‘Students from all over South Asia come here; for 800 seats, we get about 10,000 applications every year. Students are selected based on different parameters that we have’.
‘Students from Afghanistan or Pakistan can only come to India if the Indian government grants them a visa. Therefore, all new students must go through a formal administrative process. There is no doubt that the government has all the information about international students’. This isn’t the first time that Deoband town has been in the news. The New York Times recorded, in the wake of the 9/11 attack in the US in 2001, a story on the Indian town of Deoband: ‘Indian town’s seed became Taliban’s code’.
The Indian media has begun to focus on the town and its school of Islam. According to a Darul Uloom spokesperson, who did not want to be named, Darul Uloom no longer talks to the media because of ‘twisted narratives’.’ We are a school of religion and Indians as well. We should not doubt our integrity every time the Taliban spread terror,’ he said.
Likewise, a 60-year-old farmer who has lived in Deoband for three generations shared his views. It is unfair to link terrorists with a school of religious teachings. ‘It is worse to blame Islam for their actions,’ the farmer said. Neither Islam nor any other religion teaches anyone to kill or maim. The Taliban have hurt women and men in a way that goes against Islamic teachings. Locals argue that if they were proponents of radical Islam, they would have occurred in other countries where the students are from.
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Deoband and orthodoxy
The main criticism of Deoband Islam is that it promotes extreme orthodoxy, especially in the case of women, denying them access to education and jobs and also denying them their rights . Locals and maulanas in Deoband, however, feel that they are being misrepresented. Mohammed Arshad Faruqi, chairman of Darul Uloom’s online fatwa services, told ThePrint that according to Islamic teachings, women have the right to education and equal job opportunities, but only if they maintain purdah (full cover). Ziya Fatima, 53, a homemaker in Deoband, says the Sharia law imposed on women in Afghanistan is extreme and does not follow Islamic teachings.
‘My daughters are educated; they live in the Middle East,’ she said. Our religion does not restrict us from doing these things, like going to the market and doing our daily chores. What they did to the women in Afghanistan is wrong; women should be a part of the system and given equal opportunities,’ she added. Likewise, women are instructed to wear loose clothing in our religious text, which is often translated into burqa, but the same instruction is given to men as well, according to Ziya Us Salam, author of the book Women In Masjid: A Quest for Justice. ‘Men are supposed to cover up the area between their navel and their knees with a loose garment. We don’t see women telling men how to dress because in India, religious power is held by men across all religions’.
An ATS centre
The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to set up a training centre for Anti-Terrorist Squad commandos (ATS) in Deoband in the wake of the Taliban takeover. ‘Amid the Taliban’s savagery, here’s some news from UP. Yogi Ji has decided to open a commando training centre in Deoband,’ CM Yogi Adityanath’s media advisor Shalabh Mani Tripathi tweeted in Hindi.
‘In spite of the communal overtones, residents and maulanas in the area welcomed the decision. There is nothing wrong with what we teach, and we welcome the ATS staff to attend our classes whenever they like,’ Madani said. Residents said it will only make them feel safer. It is better if they come here and learn the truth. Tehseen Khan, a lawyer living in the town, said that perhaps These connections between Deoband and the Taliban may stop. ‘In the current polarised times, we will feel safer knowing there is a security force in the area’, he added.
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