Right to education: status of muslim girl children in rural Uttar Pradesh

Muslims in India are in the developing stage in socio-economic fields. At the same time they are lagging many fields such as education compared to other religious communities. This paper enhances the various reasons for the educational backwardness of Muslims especially Muslim girls in the country. For this purpose the author conducted a study among the parents and teachers of the dropout girls from Muslim and other disadvantaged groups. The objective of the study was to understand the various factors affecting the discontinuation of girl children’s school education. The following factors are identified as the outcome of the study i.e. the conventional understanding, financial background, school infrastructure, social environment, and security, standard of education and government schemes. The Constitution of India assures women equal rights and opportunity in every field. In spite of the Constitutional guarantees and others safeguards still girls in general and Muslim girls in particular are still lagging behind in education. There might be various barriers affecting girls’ education such as poverty, traditional customs, cultural practices, gender based discrimination, and traditional notion of the family. Therefore, it’s an urgent need to address these problems which are faced by the Muslim girls, so that they could contribute to the nation development.