Tag Archives: Nadeem Hasnain

The abiding fame of Faizabad

Faizabad, UTTTAR  PRADESH :

EPITOMISING SYNCRETIC CULTURE Begum Akhtar
EPITOMISING SYNCRETIC CULTURE Begum Akhtar

“Shaharnama Faizabad” offers detailed information about the social and cultural life of the historic town

Although Faizabad had acquired prominence during the reign of the early Nawabs of Awadh, it lost some of its lustre when, soon after taking over the reins of the kingdom in 1775, Nawab Asif-ud-Daula shifted the capital from Faizabad to Lucknow.

Yet, it continued to enjoy a lot of influence until the last Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was deposed and banished to Matia Burz near Calcutta (now Kolkata). It was so because of its famed Begums who wielded considerable political and financial clout. However, in the last century, a Begum of a different kind brought the town national recognition when, at the end of every gramophone recording, she would proudly announce: “Mera naam Akhtari Bai Faizabad”. For most of her performing career, Begum Akhtar was known as Akhtari Bai Faizabadi and she truly represented the refined composite culture of Faizabad that abuts the Hindu holy town of Ayodhya.

Last year, Vani Prakashan had brought out an excellent book on Lucknow that offered scholarly research along with useful touristic information. Titled ‘The Other Lucknow: An Ethnographic Portrait of a City of Undying Memories and Nostalgia’, it was edited by Nadeem Hasnain and was based on a research project sponsored and funded by the Ayodhya Shodh Sansthan (Ayodhya Research Institute), an autonomous organisation of the Uttar Pradesh government’s Department of Culture.

FaizabadBookMPOs13jan2018

It’s a matter of rejoicing that this year, Vani Prakashan has published a companion volume on Faizabad with the help of the same Ayodhya Shodh Sansthan. The fact that this volume is in Hindi and it offers very detailed information about the historic town, its social and cultural life, and places of religious and cultural significance would warm the cockles of everybody’s heart. Hindi writer Yatindra Mishra, who recently won the President’s Golden Lotus award for his biography of Lata Mangeshkar, has edited this 640-page tome titled “Shaharnama Faizabad” (A Chronicle of Faizabad). A scion of the erstwhile ruling family of Ayodhya, Mishra’s love for Faizabad is evident in the care and fastidiousness with which he has performed this daunting task with the help of many experts including historians Salim Kidwai, Madhu Trivedi and Yogesh Pravin, Islamic culture scholar Mirza Shahab Shah and Kosala Museum’s Deshraj Upadhyaya, to name only a few. Mishra has not only edited the book but has also contributed a large number of detailed comments on the Faizabad region’s history and culture, making use of painstakingly done research into archival material and other sources.

The book is divided into five sections and opens with the history of Faizabad and the way its architecture and culture took shape under the Nawabs. After Nawab Saadat Khan ‘Burhan-ul-Mulk’ was awarded the Suba of Awadh by the Mughal Emperor, he built a temporary fort called Qila Mubarak near Lakshman Ghat in Ayodhya. After some time, he built a cantonment at a distance of five kms from Qila Mubarak and it was known as Bangla. During the reign of Nawab Mansur Ali Khan ‘Safdarjung’, Bangla acquired the name of Faizabad. This section also tells us a very interesting fact about the royal emblem of the Nawabs as it depicted fish (considered to be auspicious) along with the bow and arrow of Ram, the presiding deity of the adjoining Ayodhya. Detailed information about the arts, architecture, music, jewellery and ornaments, and prominent Nawabs and Begums and their Hindu and Muslim courtiers has been provided in this opening section.

The second section is one of the most interesting and valuable parts of this book as it deals with the events and heroes of the great revolt of 1857, often described as the First War of Indian independence.

Ripple effect

As is well known, the deposition of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah had also played an important role in spreading anger and anguish among the sepoys who hailed from the Awadh region in considerably large numbers. Mangal Pandey belonged to village Dugvan-Rahimpur of Tehsil Sadar in Faizabad district. We also come to know about Maulavi Ahmad Ullah Shah alias Danka Shah who, as early as in February 1857, had started condemning foreign rule in his public speeches. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Faizabad remained independent till January 6, 1858 and was defeated by the Nepalese army that attacked its forces and subdued them.

While the third section gives detailed descriptions of important religious places belonging to all the religions present in the region, the fourth section offers invaluable historical information about the writers, poets, courtesans, high-brow as well as folk musicians, folk art, village fairs as well as local festivals, bazaars and traditional haats, instruments and their makers, journalists, newspapers, magazines and printing presses of the region. It’s a fairly long list and offers a glimpse into the cultural richness of Faizabad.

The fifth and final section deals with prominent social workers, sportspersons, educational institutions and public libraries, thus completing a full circle. It’s not possible to discuss such a voluminous book in any detail here. Suffice it to say that those who are interested in knowing the history and culture of Awadh cannot afford to ignore this work.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books / by Kuldeep Kumar / June 16th, 2017

Indra on Wajid Ali Shah’s throne!

The city of etiquette -Bada Imambara complex of Lucknow / Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
The city of etiquette -Bada Imambara complex of Lucknow / Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

“The Other Lucknow” captures the syncretic traditions of the city

Guru Dutt’s immensely popular film Chaudhvin Ka Chand opens with a Shakeel Budayuni song sung by Mohammad Rafi and composed by Ravi. The song  Ye Lakhnau Ki Sarzameen sums up Lucknow and the essence of its famed cultural heritage. Perhaps, no other city in the sprawling Hindi-speaking region evokes such nostalgia, romance, devotion and attachment as Banaras and Lucknow do.

So far, for nearly a century, we used to go back to Abdul Halim Sharar’s classic “Guzishta Lakhnau” that vividly describes the city’s cultural and social life, customs, traditions and history in great detail. This was serialised in the form of articles between 1913 and 1920 in Urdu literary journal “Dilgudaz” that Sharar had launched in 1887. Later, the articles were brought out as a book with a rather longish title “Hindustan mein mashriqi tamaddun ka akhiri namoona: Lakhnau” (Lucknow: The last example of Oriental culture in India). However, the world knows it simply as “Guzishta Lakhnau” (The Lucknow of the Old). National Book Trust published a Hindi translation in 1971 titled “Purana Lakhnau” (The Old Lucknow) with a scholarly introduction written by eminent Urdu critic Mohammad Hasan.

Born in 1860, Abdul Halim went to Matiaburz when he was nine years old. Matiaburz was the place near Calcutta (now Kolkata) where the deposed Nawab of Lucknow, Wajid Ali Shah, had shifted in 1856. How close his family was with the Nawab can be gauged from the fact that his maternal grandfather had gone to London to present Wajid Ali Shah’s case before Queen Victoria.

When still in his teens, Abdul Halim started writing and adopted the nom de plume ‘Sharar’ (spark). His book is a treasure trove of information about the history and culture of Lucknow which was a truly unique city representing the famed Ganga-Jamuni culture.

Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab, was an accomplished poet, musician, dancer, actor and dramatist. Urdu drama owes its beginning to him and dance-dramas like “Inder Sabha”, which he commissioned, where Indra, the king of Hindu gods, would sit on a throne wearing a dress that resembled that of the Nawab himself and fairies would sing thumris in Braj bhasha while conversing in chaste Urdu. What better picture of a syncretic culture can we find elsewhere?

Sharar divided the book into three parts and devoted the first two parts to the history of Awadh and Lucknow and that of the nawabs of Awadh. The third and the last part is the one that introduces us to the way people of Lucknow dressed, talked, ate, sang and danced, set new standards of cultured behaviour and etiquette, gathered to celebrate religious and social festivals at fairs, and offered an example of harmonious communal living. It was also a great centre of the Shias.

TheOtherLucknowMPOs16jul2016

Now, Vani Prakashan, which is essentially a publishing house of Hindi books, has come out with a book on Lucknow in English in collaboration with the Ayodhya Research Institute, an autonomous organisation of the Uttar Pradesh government. Titled “The Other Lucknow: An Ethnographic Portrait of a City of Undying Memories and Nostalgia”, it is the outcome of a research project headed by social anthropologist Professor Nadeem Hasnain, who has put the book together.

NadeemHasnainMPOs17jul2016

The book appropriately opens with a poem that the Jnanpith award winning poet Kunwar Narain, who spent most of his creative life in the city, has written on Lucknow. It has been reproduced in Hindi which lends a special flavour to the book as the rest of it is a collection of articles, reports and analysis written in English. It is a sort of counterfoil to Sharar’s book as it brings the story of Lucknow in its fullness up to the present times.

“The Other Lucknow” is in a class of its own as it can equally serve a tourist as a guide book and an intellectual who wants to know and understand the history, culture, politics, arts and crafts, business and trade, literature, music and dance, architecture and religion – both past and present.

The book opens with a scholarly article “A Short Cultural History” by noted scholar Sandria Freitag followed by an excellent survey of the city’s social fabric underling its diversity. The survey is based on field research and informs us that Kashmiri Pandits, Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Malayalis, Oriyas, Maharashtrians and Assamese have also become an integral part of Lucknow’s population. It also offers a detailed description of the religious and caste communities residing in the city. In addition to paying close attention to the mohallas, mandis, bastis, landmarks, arts and craft, music and dance, religious places, Ram Leela, qawwalis and danstangoi, the book brings out the city’s Bollywood connection.

It concludes with an article on Dalit imaginations, laying bare the story of the mega monuments and parks created by former Chief Minister Mayawati to commemorate Dalit icons.

One is not surprised to read, as quoted by Nadeem Hasnain to begin his introduction, what William Russel, correspondent of The Times, London wrote in 1858 about Lucknow: “Not Rome, not Athens, nor Constantinople, not any city I have ever seen appears to me so striking and so beautiful as this.”

The writer is a senior literary critic

Corrections & Clarifications:

This article has been edited for a factual error.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Metroplus / by Kuldeep Kumar / July 09th, 2016