Agnostic, humanity, non-religious and secular. These are among the options that some colleges in Bengal are offering as choice of religious identity for applicants seeking admission to undergraduate courses in their institutions in this year’s admission cycle.
Kolkata’s State-run Bethune College, the country’s oldest women’s college, set the ball rolling by offering ‘humanity’ as a choice in the mandatory ‘religion’ column in its application form, which became viral on social media.
The move was hailed across various sections of society and now about 50 colleges in the State are offering varied options against ‘religion’ to applicants seeking admissions.
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Maulana Azad College, Rammohan College and Women’s College Calcutta are among the Kolkata-based colleges that have all followed Bethune College’s example, while Maharaja Srischandra College in Howrah district and Midnapore College in Midnapore town are some of other institutions offering ‘humanity’ as an option in the ‘religion’ column.
Other than ‘humanity’, the 189-year-old Scottish Church College in the city offers an option to include “secular” or “agnostic” in the ‘religion’ column of the application form. And Kulti College in Bardhman district allows applicants to state that they are “non religious”.
Interestingly, while education authorities have not made it mandatory for colleges to seek information on a student’s religion, universities have chosen to seek the information to enable them to provide granular enrolment data to the University Grants Commission (UGC) and other surveys that rate institutions offering higher education.
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“Data on student enrolment is sought after by numerous agencies including the University Grants Commission,” a senior official of a State-run university said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “For surveys like the All India Survey of Higher Education, universities and institutions are required to provide data on student intake depending on their religion, caste and even nationality,” the official added.
The University of Calcutta, which had started a similar initiative of allowing applicants to refrain from disclosing their religion in admission forms in the 1990s, dropped the move in the early 2000s after the Sachar Committee sought data on the enrolment of students in higher education as per religion. The Sachar Committee report became a major issue in Bengal politics after it was found that the percentage of Muslims enrolling for higher education and jobs in the State was low.
“There are about 4% Muslim students in higher educational institutions in Bengal,” Sabir Ahamed, a researcher with Pratichi Trust observed. “Moreover, if students opt for ‘humanity’ or ‘non religious’ identity there will be no accurate data on participation of religious groups in higher education,” he cautioned.
A publication titled ‘ Living Reality of Muslims in West Bengal ’, released by Professor Amartya Sen in 2016 pointed that only 4.4% Muslims were enrolled in graduation courses and only 0.6% in postgraduate courses. Mr. Ahamed, who has worked on enrolment of Muslims in higher education, said that certain universities like Jadavpur University do not keep a record of students on religious basis and had denied replies to RTI queries on data of Muslims enrolled in the University.
Sabyasachi Basu Roychowdhury, Vice Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University (RBU), said the data of students selecting options like ‘humanity’ or ‘secular’ compiled for a few years could provide an interesting perspective on the new generation’s views on religion. The RBU too planned to provide similar options during the admission process from 2020, Prof. Basu Roychowdhury added.