The Union government’s decision to stop the Maulana Azad National Fellowship, meant for MPhil and PhD students belonging to minority communities – Muslims, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain and Parsi – has been widely perceived as a move to target religious minorities by students and critics of the BJP government.
Claiming that the MANF scheme was overlapping with several other schemes, Union Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani announced discontinuing the scheme from the academic year 2022-23, in the Lok Sabha in a written reply last week.
Protesting the decision, students at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Aligarh Muslim University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and other universities, demanded the government roll back the decision.
The MANF was launched in 2009 by the then UPA government following recommendations of the Sachar Committee report. Under the fellowship, eligible students would receive a monthly fellowship of Rs 31,000 for the initial two years for Junior Research Fellowship and Rs 35,000 per month for their remaining tenure. Students coming from poor economic backgrounds with an annual income of less than Rs 6 lakh are eligible. The BJP government’s discontinuation of the fellowship is seen as a move to discourage students from minority communities to pursue higher studies.
Speaking to TNM, Musab Qazi, the national secretary of Students Islamic Organisation, says, “Before MANF was discontinued, the pre-matric scholarship for students from Class 1-8 was also stopped. There appears to be a pattern by the government to undermine all kinds of educational aid and affirmative action to religious minorities.” In 2020, the Union government announced the stopping of pre-matric scholarships for students from Class 1-8 for students belonging to minority communities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes from the academic year 2022-23.
The discontinuation of MANF will result in the decline of enrollment of minority students in higher education, Qazi points out. “The minority communities are already lagging when it comes to education. In higher education, the enrollment of specifically Muslims forms only 3-4%, while their share in the population is 14-15%. There is a huge disparity in these terms. Unless these corrective measures are continued, we will continue to see such disparity. And this seems to be the objective of the government.”
He adds, “How will a student from a poor community pursue research without any financial support? At least he should be able to support himself. In the absence of a fellowship, they will simply drop out or look for other jobs.”
The data provided by the Ministry of Minority Affairs also shows a decline in awarding MANF to students. In 2019-20, the number of beneficiaries who sought the MANF decreased from 1,251 to 1,075 in 2021-22. Besides, the funds sanctioned for this scheme also plummeted from Rs 100 crore to Rs 74 crore in the last two years.
Only 1,000 students would be eligible for the MANF scheme, where 750 slots would be allocated for subjects under National Eligibility Test – Junior Research Fellowship (NETJRF) and the remaining 250 for Science category students through Council of Scientific and Industrial Research National Eligibility Test.
The discontinuation of the fellowship to religious minority students has also left other marginalised students, particularly the Dalit students worried.
Sabari Girija Rajan, president of Ambedkar Students’ Association, from University of Hyderabad says, “This just seems like the beginning. Next fellowships of other communities would be scrapped. The decision to cancel the fellowship citing overlapping with other schemes is unfortunate. Rather than correcting the anomalies and finding other solutions to the problems, discontinuing the fellowship altogether is a bad decision. We condemn it.”
The cancellation of MANF while efficiently implementing the reservation for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category, which is meant for the ‘upper castes’, has also left the students infuriated. While the income ceiling is less than Rs 6 lakh to avail the MANF scholarship, a student can seek reservation under EWS with an income ceiling of Rs 8 lakh per annum. “If they [Union government] can provide reservation for EWS category, they will also have money to provide scholarships to minority students. Already there are very few students from these economically and socially backward communities who are pursuing higher studies. A central university provides only Rs 8,000 for students without any fellowship. How can anybody without a scholarship continue with their education?” questions Sabari.
Professor K Laxminarayana, from University of Hyderabad, says that the move systematically targets religious minorities and treats them as “second-class citizens.” He expressed that the funding to other marginalised groups such as Dalits and Backward Classes would be stopped if they did not resist the government’s action. “This seems to be their strategy. They might claim that Dalits and BCs are part of the Hindu religion, but they will be excluded from the beneficiary schemes. The discontinuation of pre-matric scholarships to SCs, STs and OBCs shows that,” Laxminarayana observes.