03/08/2026
Subject: Education for the Neglected — A Collective ResponsibilityMadrasas are no doubt doing commendable service. They play an important role in providing education within Muslim communities, especially in areas where access to mainstream education may be limited.However, there is still a large population that cannot afford to attend madrasas, let alone formal schools. Globally, nearly 300 million children do not go to school. In India alone, the number is 89 million. We constitute almost one-third of the world’s illiterate population, and our share of Muslim illiterates may be around 25 million.We do not blame the government. Every government has opened schools, even in the remotest areas — in mountains and across rivers. Yet children do not attend school due to economic compulsion.Why don’t slum children go to school?People living in slums survive on minimal means. If a child goes to school, they may receive one meal for themselves, but there will be no dinner at home and the family will go hungry. So they work menial jobs or pick rags, earning ₹50 to ₹100 a day. If two brothers work, they earn ₹200 a day. The mother often works as a housemaid, while the father, invariably, lies drunk at home.We, the educated elite, never address this stagnation. I had the opportunity to study the areas around the AMU campus.Draw a circle with a 1.5 km radius around the AMU campus, where some of India’s most educated Muslims live, and you will find that 45% of Muslims in that circle are uneducated. This is a collective shame for us who take pride in being ‘Aligs’. We use their services but fail to educate them.In 1953, a progressive AMU Students’ Union President from South Africa, Mohammad Ameen Bulbulia — an advocate who passed away on 8th October 2008 in Cape Town — opened ‘Union School’ for Class IV employees.In the 1990s, my friend Akhtar Zaheer Rizvi, alias Gamma Bhai, upgraded Union School and established two large branches.The organization we started a decade ago in Aligarh — UMEED EDUCATION & WELFARE — began with 12 children on 12th August 2016. It now runs 33 education centers with over 1,600 children, boys and girls, aged 3 to 15.These children come with zero prior education. Therefore, they study the same syllabus while sitting together on carpets or chairs — some in makeshift sheds, others in pucca rooms. The more intelligent among them are shortlisted, take tests in formal schools, and if they pass, are admitted to mainstream education.We had one center in Lucknow and one in Allahabad, but both closed during the COVID-19 crisis.Everyone opens coaching centers for professional courses or public service commission exams. We ignore the large population that has no future plans and no guidance.I have repeatedly drawn the attention of educated people to this neglected section of society, but I have failed to mobilize enough support.I wish for such education centers to be opened across the nation. We teach children who are below ground level, bring them to the surface, and then send them to formal schools.We receive no government aid and no foreign aid. Only local sponsors support centers in the names of their elders to keep their memory alive.Every town should have such centers. We are willing to guide others in logistics and implementation
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