The current data is a clarion call. J&K’s higher education has witnessed impressive growth in other domains; it cannot afford islands of neglect in a field so deeply intertwined with the region’s identity and heritage. The demise of Islamic Studies, if unchecked, represents more than departmental failure – it signals a broader erosion of scholarly diversity and cultural self-understanding. Islamic Studies, when taught with intellectual rigor, holds immense potential. Yet potential alone cannot sustain a discipline.
Muzzafar Uddin Bhat
There is a peculiar tragedy unfolding across the college campuses of Jammu and Kashmir – one that rarely makes headlines, generates no protest marches, and draws no attention from policymakers, yet quietly hollows out a discipline that once occupied a respected place in the region’s intellectual and cultural life. Islamic Studies, taught as a formal undergraduate discipline in dozens of government degree colleges across the Valley and Jammu region, is dying – not from any single blow but from a thousand small neglects, institutional and personal, that have accumulated over the years into a crisis of relevance and enrolment.
The numbers tell their own story, and they are stark. A review of recent admission data across colleges offering Islamic Studies as an Honours or Major subject reveals seat occupancy rates that would alarm any academic planner. At Government Degree College (GDC) Baramulla, only 18 students enrolled out of 40 seats in BA Islamic Studies (Hons). The prestigious Amar Singh College Srinagar fared relatively better with 67 out of 77, yet this remains underwhelming for an institution of its stature. The picture darkens elsewhere: College for Women, M.A. Road, Srinagar recorded a mere 11 out of 78; GDC Anantnag saw 19 out of 78; GDC Pulwama managed 50 out of 78 (one of the better figures); while GDC Bijbehara witnessed a catastrophic 3 out of 158. Several colleges reported near-total collapse—GDC Tangdar Kupwara (0 out of 26), GDC D.H. Pora (0 out of 59), Women College Nawakadal (0 out of 39), and GDC Bhaderwah (0 out of 36). Even larger intakes at GDC Pampore (7 out of 158) and Women College Anantnag (3 out of 158) underscore the crisis. Aggregate trends reveal that many programs hover below 10-25% capacity, rendering departments unsustainable and raising questions about their continued viability. (Data Available on https://jkadmissions.in/seat_matrix_public.php)
Why is this happening to a discipline that, on paper, sits at the intersection of theology, history, law, philosophy and Arabic linguistics- a subject with genuine intellectual depth and in a Muslim-majority region, obvious cultural resonance? The reasons are neither singular nor simple, but several strands are worth pulling apart.
The most structural of these failures begins long before college. Islamic Studies is largely absent as a subject at the 10+2 level in J&K’s school education system. Students arrive at the undergraduate gate having never formally encountered the discipline, its methodology, or its scope. They choose it – if they choose it at all- blind, often as a last resort when other subject combinations are unavailable or seats elsewhere are full. The subject is often perceived through a narrow devotional or madrasa-centric lens rather than as a rigorous humanities discipline amenable to modern academic inquiry. A discipline like other social science discipline with no feeder pipeline at the school level cannot expect a healthy stream of informed, motivated entrants at the college level. This is perhaps the single most fixable failure and the most persistently ignored one.
Closely tied to this is the market reality that students and parents both understand intuitively, even if no one says it aloud in admission counselling rooms: the job market for Islamic Studies graduates is narrow. Graduates with degrees in Islamic Studies face severely limited professional avenues. Islamic Studies alumni often confront perceptions of limited employability. Opportunities in academia are shrinking due to low student demand and neglect at Schoo;education, while roles in religious institutions do not require formal university credentials. Therefore, a subject perceived as economically unrewarding will struggle to attract enrollment regardless of its intellectual merit.
There is also a persistent public unfamiliarity with what Islamic Studies as an academic discipline actually entails. Many prospective students and their families conflate it with religious instruction of the kind offered in madrasas or mosque-based education, rather than recognizing it as a rigorous academic field involving comparative religion, Islamic jurisprudence, historiography and critical textual analysis besides the other. This unawareness discourages academically ambitious students from considering it a serious option, while simultaneously failing to attract those genuinely interested in religious learning, who often prefer traditional seminary routes instead.
Perhaps the most difficult reason to write about, but the one this data set forces into view, concerns the conduct of some of the very academics entrusted with the subject’s survival. It would be unfair and inaccurate to paint the faculty with a single brush – and it should be said plainly that there are professors who have worked hard, visibly and consistently, for the discipline’s upliftment, who surface repeatedly in this context, associated with sustained efforts to counsel, reinforce and motivate students into the subject at the different levels.
But alongside such efforts, there are also concerns – raised informally by students, teachers and observers of the subject’s decline, though not independently verified here — that some faculty members at both college and university level have shown little fervour for participating in admission and counselling processes, leaving prospective students uninformed and unenrolled. There are murmurs, again unverified but worth naming as part of the discourse around this crisis, that a handful of postings have seen the subject allowed to wither by design rather than neglect, with speculation that a shrinking subject makes an easier case for a transfer back to a preferred station. Whether such intent is real in any specific instance is not something this writing can establish. What can be established from the enrollment data is the effect: colleges with near-zero admissions sitting alongside colleges, sometimes not far away geographically, where enrollment is healthy – a disparity that raises fair questions about the role of local leadership and effort, even where it cannot assign motive.
There is also a broader complaint worth airing: that some academics cultivate a public image. In several colleges, there are allegations that some professors intentionally undermine enrollment efforts. Motivations appear personal: securing transfers back to home districts by allowing departments to wither, thereby justifying “rationalisation” of posts. This self-serving behaviour contrasts sharply with public personas cultivated on social media, where highbrow intellectual commentary on Islamic thought or regional issues abounds, yet practical efforts to nurture the discipline at their postings are conspicuously absent. Efforts by motivated faculty are often “vice versa”—reversed or neutralised—by indifferent or hostile colleagues, leading to fragmented departmental cultures. And the institutional failures are rarely only structural; they are enacted or resisted by people. A discipline cannot be sustained by policy alone if the people responsible for teaching and promoting it are, in some places, indifferent to its fate.
The flag-bearers of Islamic Studies—faculty, scholars, and administrators—face a binary imperative. Either commit wholeheartedly to its revitalization across the entire educational continuum- from embedding critical modules at the school level (10+2), strengthening undergraduate programs with contemporary curricula, fostering postgraduate research at universities, and creating visible linkages to employability or advocate transparently for a managed phase-out.
Conversely, if the collective will is absent, intellectual honesty requires voicing the difficult truth to higher authorities: resources allocated to unsustainable programs might be better redirected. Prolonging the agony through artificial respiration benefits no one- least of all the dwindling cohort of passionate students.
The current data is a clarion call. J&K’s higher education has witnessed impressive growth in other domains; it cannot afford islands of neglect in a field so deeply intertwined with the region’s identity and heritage. The demise of Islamic Studies, if unchecked, represents more than departmental failure- it signals a broader erosion of scholarly diversity and cultural self-understanding. The choice, ultimately, rests with those entrusted with its stewardship. Will they rise as genuine flag-bearers or preside over its quiet dissolution? The valley’s intellectual future may well depend on the answer.
This writing does not seek to romanticise the past or ignore genuine challenges. Islamic Studies, when taught with intellectual rigor, holds immense potential. It can foster deeper understanding of Kashmir’s composite culture, contribute to peace and conflict studies, inform ethical governance and engage with global discourses on religion and modernity. Yet potential alone cannot sustain a discipline.
mu******************@***il.com