The fragile voice speaks in halting English: 'Welcome to Dar-ul-Uloom's computer department. Look, this is where we breed terrorists.' Wry chuckles fill the room, momentarily drowning out the whine of the ceiling fan.
For Adil Siddiqui, an elderly man with a wispy white beard, whose job it is to escort journalists visiting Dar-ul-Uloom, humour is the best way to dispel the belief that this 150-year-old seminary is the centre of global jihad.
'The world thinks we are making bombs here,' he says. 'But, as you can see for yourself, that isn't true.'
Dar-ul-Uloom, located in the grubby town of Deoband in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, is believed to be the ideological birthplace of the Taleban. One of the largest and most influential seminaries in the world - second in prominence only to Al-Azhar University in Egypt - Dar-ul-Uloom spawned Deobandism in the 19th century, an ideological strain of the Hanafi sect of Islam to which the Taleban, as well as several other militant groups like the India-based Jaish-e-Mohammad and Pakistani Harkat ul-Mujahideen, claim allegiance.
Dar-ul-Uloom schools some 3,500 students itself, and has inspired thousands of seminaries across South Asia - 1,500 in India alone.
Although the Taleban in Afghanistan claims descent from Deoband, Dar-ul-Uloom and its clerics have had no role in the movement. But several students from this ultraconservative madrassa - as well as affiliated Deobandi madrassas across India - have been linked with terror-related activities in recent years.
Mohammad Waliullah Qasmi, a former graduate and now a cleric, is one example. He was convicted on August 26 and sentenced to 13 years in prison for helping to carry out the 2006 bombing of the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi that killed 28 people.