It has been reported that the VHP General Secretary P.B. Togodia, in the speech at Bangalore on 18 March, 1999 gave the number of Madarsas in the country at the time of independence as 45. This appears to be an absurd figure. I do not know, on what authority this figure is based.

Madarsas of various levels - from Maktab to Universities - existed in thousands. Also to make a comparison between 1947 and 1999, one needs to grades the Madarsas and take into account the tripling of the Muslim population during the last 5 decades.

Every religious group has its place of worship and its institutions for religious instruction and for training religious functionaries. In fact, Hindus have many more religious Pathshalas, Vidyalayas, Gurukuls and Maths all over the country. The VHP itself plans to establish many more institutions to teach about Hinduism not only to the Hindus but also to the non-Hindus. Why should he object only to Madarsas?

Incidentally Islam does not regard man as God but as the highest creation of God.