Deoband's Muslims back <i>vikas </i>over politics

In the streets and alleys outside Deoband’s Darul Uloom, the buzzword is “vikas” or development. Inside the imposing Islamic seminary, the only such institution in the world besides Jam’a-e-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, the unstated code is “No politics please, we are here to imbibe theology”.

Mehboob Alam, an employee of the Deoband town municipality, invoked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s slogan “Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas (everyone with us, development for everyone)" — but located it in another political context. “The Akhilesh Yadav government (of Uttar Pradesh) has implemented this slogan in a real way, because it is a