Impressed by the state’s record, Chhatishgarh has made the West Bengal madrasa system its model and will be the next in the country — West Bengal is the first — to have English-medium madrasas.

Prodded by Chief Minister Raman Singh, Chhattisgarh minister Salim Raj — who also happens to be the national treasurer of BHP Minority Morcha — came to West Bengal last week and visited various madrasas, among them a couple of those where Hindus outnumber Muslims. He also had discussions with the Madarsa Board officials and the Minister of State for Minority and Madrasa System, Abdus Sattar.

“He was so happy after visiting the madrasas,” said Sattar. “I asked him if the BJP believes in good Muslims and bad Muslims. He said contrary to popular belief, the BJP was for better education for Muslims. We gave him all materials with details of what we have done, our madrasa syllabus, our syllabus for English-medium madrasas and he said he would follow them in Chhattisgarh after consulting the chief minister.”

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is the minister-in-charge of the department and on August 3, he laid the foundation stone of the first English-medium madrasa at Krishnanagar in Nadia.

From Raipur, Salim Raj, was eloquent about Bengal’s madrasa system.

“Tomorrow, I am going to meet our Chief Minister and I will urge him to write to Buddhadeb-babu, congratulating him for the wonderful job he has done in madrasa education.”

It is such a secular system, he said. “I am really overwhelmed with what the Marxists have done. I was especially surprised to see there are lots of Hindus studying in those madrasas. In some of them, Hindus are a majority and you will never see this anywhere in the country.”

In Chhattisgarh, there are 15 lakh Muslims among the 2.5-crore-strong population. There are 200 recognised madrasas.

Raj, who is also the chairman of Chhattisgarh Haj Committee, said they were interested in starting English-medium madrasas in the state.