Fast strides: Muslims march ahead on literacy in Central India, other states and rural parts

By Shams Ur Rehman Alavi

It may surprise you, but Muslims have been doing well in the field of education and even in literacy, Muslims in several parts of the country, have been ahead of the majority community.

Even if the data is available for long, it is neither mentioned, nor talked about. In fact, in many Indian states that are bigger than European countries in size and area, the Muslim community has better literacy.

For years, there has been a claim about Muslims lagging behind too much in literacy, but that’s just a perception formed on the basis of a look at the data, without a serious analysis. India is a huge country and in the last few decades, Muslim community has made fast strides.

The result is that the gap has narrowed between the two biggest communities in the country, and in large parts.

Muslims have done better. Also, pace of improvement has been high in the recent years.

Official data, if seen properly and analysed, shows that Muslims are moving ahead and though even last Census suggested it, the newspaper headings mostly missed the trend and the headings were on the same old lines that present a negative picture.

In newspapers, the casual reading of data & traditional view about communities, perhaps, remains same. People don’t bother to see the trend, visible shift, the change and it’s extent.

Take for instance Madhya Pradesh, a huge state that has an area more than Italy and Britain. This state in the centre of India is among the biggest states in the country and also has a population that’s higher than UK, France and Spain.

In the last census, Hindu community had a literacy rate of 66% and 49% for males and females respectively. However, Muslims had a literacy rate of 69.11% and 57.26% for males and females respectively.

Clearly, the figures suggest the pattern. However, even though the data has been in public for nearly a decade now, was it discussed or even came out in media—print or electronic.

Chhattisgarh has literacy rate of 77.9% for Muslim males and 67.7% for Muslim females. This is much higher than literacy rate of 68% and 50.6% for Hindu males and females respectively. However, despite such a difference, this data is not generally known, published or talked about even in these states.

Census was conducted in 2011 & its report came much later. By 2015, contents were in public domain. But regarding literacy, media reporting lacked depth. Rate  of increase & percent of change were not mentioned. Hence, several aspects of literacy data and other important aspects, didn’t get due attention.

How media ‘misses’ change, fast improvement on any indicator & ignore data

Even though Census report has been available for long, the most basic and clear data that sees a change, is not mentioned. Always, the heading is same and the fast increase or change, not even reported.

It’s not just about the entire Central Indian region, which had a population of 10 crore or 100 million, then, and is now having an estimated population of nearly 12 crore or 120 million, which is equivalent to population of Japan and more than that of Egypt, South Africa, Turkey and 190 other countries of the world.

In many other regions too, Muslim literacy rate has gone up and the community has taken a lead, but it is seldom talked about. Such is the perception bias, that any article on literacy and education starts on exactly same pattern.

As a result old data and same aspect, just one particular way of looking at it, no focus on other aspects and narrowing difference between Hindu and Muslim literacy, get attention. In search engines like Google, the old, established and ‘standard’ newspapers with circulation of millions, continue to make sweeping remarks and terms like educational backwardness or low literacy level, remain in circulation. Though, other surveys after 2011, also suggest that the Muslim community’s forward march is on.