Why parents from Bihar’s poorest district send children to madrasas hundreds of miles away
· Scroll
Visit umafrika.club for more information.
Every year, Saddam takes children from his village in Bihar’s Araria district to a madrasa in Maharashtra.
In April this year, parents of 100 children from Bagdahara village gave Saddam the responsibility of taking them to the madrasa in Latur district, where they would be educated for free – and where Saddam is a teacher.
“That is how I studied too,” he said. “My friends and I studied at a madrasa in Gujarat for 10 years. Every year, an elder from our village dropped all of us by train.”
On April 11, Saddam boarded the Patna Purna Express from Patna station with the children. His six-year-old son, who too had been enrolled at the madrasa, his wife and three daughters were with him.
Three hours later, at Deen Dayal Upadhyay junction in Uttar Pradesh, a team of the Railway Police Force asked them to get down. A few more groups of children, who were travelling to madrasas in other states, were asked to alight too.
“We showed our documents. We also made a few parents talk to the police on the phone. They let us board the same train and continue,” Saddam said.
Eight hours later, as dusk fell, they were again disembarked in Madhya Pradesh.
A team of officials from the Government Railway...