Zameer Udin Shah, former Deputy Chief of the Army Staff and former vice-chancellor of AMU (Aligarh Muslim University) said on Thursday, “There is no discrimination, of course, discrimination is against the less-educated. This is the lesson I have been trying to put across to my community and the rest of India: don’t give the excuse of discrimination. If you are educated, nobody will stand in your path, and nobody will discriminate against you.”
He was speaking at the Festival of Ideas hosted by NewsX, TSG, and India News, which are part of the iTV network.
Talking about the reformations at AMU, he said that «Madarsa needs to be modernised, and we are on the path to reformation.»
AMU has done the most important research, like cleaning up the Ganga, and we also presented a paper to the Prime Minister, who gave us a responsibility to clean the Ganga in 5 years, not by sewage treatment drugs but by green technology. The second thing we are working on is desalination of seawater, he added.
Acknowledging the drawbacks of Madarsa, he said, «The problem with the madrasas is that the teachers do only the Quran and nothing else; they are not widely travelled, they are not well educated, they are only educated in Islam».
«So, we have carried out a programme of trained teachers where we get Madrasas teachers to try and communicate modern knowledge, and only once they have invited modern knowledge will they be able to pass it off». He added
Asking about the meeting in 2022 he had with RSS chief Mohan Bhagavad with the prominent members of the Muslim community, He said the meeting was very important and should continue, and we are having another one; we had already two, third one, see the problem between both the communities is the lack of challenge, we need to understand each other›s point of view, we need to just dispel the misunderstanding to call it 600 years or whatever it is, so this is important, a constant dialogue between the leaders of the social organisations and the masters of themselves.
We want an India that is progressing; we want an India that is simulated; all communities, all languages, all regions think this is the opening of the dialogue.