Illegal madrassas: A breeding ground of Islamic Terror

At class V level in these madrassas, students are taught that Hindus helped the British set up their empire in India. In class VI and class VII, the students are clearly told that there is no way in which they should reconcile with India, since the only way to attain total freedom is by fighting and becoming martyrs.
Vicky Nanjappa

Intelligence agencies are worried about nearly 9,000 illegal madrassas which have mushroomed across India without requisite approval by the authorities.

India has over 21,000 registered madrassas approved by the respective state governments and the Wakf Board.

IB sources say efforts are on to shut down illegal madrassas and the state authorities have been warned about their operations. Intelligence officials suspect Pakistan-based outfits may be using these illegal madrassas to carry out their operations in India, after the crackdown on terror modules and sleeper cells.

IB officials say nearly 3,000 illegal madrassas have been set up in the last year, with Maharashtra and Kerala having the maximum concentration. They claim that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence has managed to pump in nearly Rs 20 crore to fund these illegal institutions.

These institutions do not report to the Wakf Board and their syllabus is the same as the one followed in madrassas in Pakistan, say IB sources. The syllabus is based on the Anwar al-Awlaki school of thought, which has been adopted by Lashkar-e-Tayiba's front organisation Jamat-ud-Dawa, and speaks of 44 different ways to perform jihad

At class V level in these madrassas, students are taught that Hindus helped the British set up their empire in India. In class VI and class VII, the students are clearly told that there is no way in which they should reconcile with India, since the only way to attain total freedom is by fighting and becoming martyrs.

Earlier, the various terror outfits concentrated on recruiting people for sleeper cells and modules, but soon realised that the concept of jihad needed to be introduced at an younger age to encourage fundamentalism. The illegal madrasas want to ensure that the students learn to internalise the jihadi school of thought.

Tracking such madrassas poses a problem for intelligence agencies, as they keep shifting base, and the fact that most of their students are children invariably shields them from any kind of suspicion.