Uttar Pradesh’s highest honour Yash Bharti award was given to 46 personalities on Monday. Among them, nine Muslims were conferred the award by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in presence of Mulayam Singh Yadav. The award is given annually by Culture Department of UP government.
Yash Bharti comes with a cash prize of Rs 11 lakh, citation and a shawl. The awardees are also eligible for a monthly pension of Rs 50,000 for their life.
Yash Bharti award were constituted in 1994 by the then CM Mulayam Singh Yadav but were discontinued between 2007 and 2012 by Mayawati. It has since been revived by CM Akhilesh Yadav.
1. Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan Classical singing Born- 3 march 1931, Badaun
Belong to Rampur Sahaswa Gharana in classical singing. Conferred honorary citizenship of Baltimore and Maryland in 1986. Padamshri in 1991, Sangeet Natak Academy Award in 2003, Padam Bhushan in 2006 and Rashtriya Tansen Award in 2008.
2. Professor Irfan Habib Historian Born-12, August 1931 in Baroda. D.Phil from Oxford
Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research 1987-93, 1993-96. Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1968-70, D.Lit from BHU (2008), Vishwa Bharti (2008), Kalyani Vishwavidyalaya (2009), North Bengal University (1990) and Ravindra Bharti University (1989). Padam Shree in 2005.
3. Dr Nahid Abedi Sanskrit literature and philoshophy Born—12 February 1961, Mirzapur D. Lit from Lucknow University in 2009. Padam Shree awardee. Several books and papers published in Sanskrit.
4. Iqbal Ahmed Siddiqui Ghazal singer Born—November 9, Allahabad
Performed at All India Radio and Doordarshan. Released 17 cassettes. Sang one song in film Rama O Rama.
5. Anwar Jalalpuri Urdu poetry and writing Born—6 July 1947
Several awards on Urdu poetry like UP Gaurav Samman, Mati Ratan Samman, Iftikhar-e-Meer Samman etc.
6. Dr Nawaz Deobandi Poet and educationist Born—16 July 1956, Saharanpur
Chairman, UP State Urdu Academy. Established Rafiqul Mulk Mulayam Singh Yadav Urdu IAS Study Center in Lucknow. Several awards like Kaifi Azmi award, Dushyant award, Rotary award etc.
7. Aleemullah Siddiqui Artist Born—10 June 1953, Lucknow
Artist using stem of wheat plant, painting on cloth etc. Acted in play Dilli Ka Akhirir Mushaira and Main Urdu Hoon.
8. Imran Khan alias Imran Pratapgarhi Literature Born—6 August 1987 Pratapgarh.
Internationally acclaimed poet and attended Mushairas in Oman, Bahrain, Dubai, Sharjah etc. Received Urdu Academy award in Saudi Arab, Red Cross Society Orissa’s Vishist Vidyarthi award and Sadbhavna award by Maharashtra Municipal Corporation.
9. Wazeer Ahmed Khan Chess Born—4 February 1947, Rampur
Participated in Chess National B competition in 1972, 1980, 1995, 1999, 2004 and 2008. UP Champion in 2004-2005. First prize in Asian Senior competition in Iran in 2015.
source: http://www.twocircles.net / TwoCircles.net / Home> Arts-Culture / by TCN Staff Reporter / March 22nd, 2016
Asiya Siddiqi (1928-2019) (Pic Courtesy: Obaid Siddiqi)
Siddiqi also broke new ground by studying 20,000 HC insolvency records to recreate the lives of an array of 19th-century city inhabitants.
In an age that sometimes overrates quantity and is beguiled by grandiloquence, economic historian Asiya Siddiqi, who passed away on Monday morning, went against the grain.
A chronicler of 19th century India, she wrote just two books. But each was a culmination of decades of painstaking original research, presented in prose that many might describe as being quietly elegant. In between working on the two books, she edited a volume on trade and finance in colonial India.
She broke new ground in both her books by closely reading new or underutilised primary sources. In the second book, Bombay’s People, 1860-1898: Insolvents in the City, published in 2017 by the Oxford University Press, she not only tapped a voluminous new source, namely about 20,000 insolvency records in the high court, but also incorporated the innovative conceptual approach of microhistory to illuminate the past.
She admired the work of one of microhistory’s founding scholars, Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, especially his book ‘The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a 16th Century Miller’. Microhistory focuses on small units of research, such as a village, a single event or an individual, instead of large ones such as nations, kingdoms and cities. Siddiqi’s chapter, ‘Ayesha’s World’, the story of an unlettered butcher’s wife, is a gem of this genre.
“She was a first-rate historian, approaching her work with a craftlike precision,” said Mariam Dossal, a friend of hers who is an urban and maritime historian of 18th and 19th -century Mumbai and a former professor at the University of Mumbai, where Siddiqi worked for everal years. “In Bombay’s People, her view was so rich and broad that it covered every kind of person who inhabited the city, from the wealthy Jamshetji Jejeebhoy all the way to Ayesha. One marvelled at her beautiful use of language, through which she recreated the worlds of these inhabitants. For Asiya, everybody deserved a history.”
Her early work on the 19th-century opium and cotton trade based in Mumbai was also influential, in particular her article ‘The Business World of Jamshetji Jejeebhoy’, which appeared in the Indian Economic and Social History Review in 1982. She worked for years on the private papers of the merchant who was a central figure in those two trades to offer a finely-etched view of the entrepreneurial climate of that period, while also shedding light on the ways in which Mumbai supported the growth of the British economy.
A large portion of these papers consisted of letters in which Jejeebhoy had recorded both his business dealings and social life in great detail. Because the papers were disintegrating in the heat and humidity of Mumbai, she got them laminated with help from her uncle Saiyid Nurul Hasan, who was then the union minister of state for education, Dossal recalled.
Asiya Siddiqi’s first book, Agrarian Change in a Northern Indian State: Uttar Pradesh, 1819 to 1833, published in 1973 by Oxford Clarendon Press, grew out of the thesis she did for her DPhil at Oxford University. In what became a classic of South Asian economic history, she analysed the relevant records with characteristic rigor, becoming one of of the earliest to show how colonial trade policies contributed to a severe agricultural depression in the region.
She grew up in Lucknow, and from 1962 worked in and on Mumbai for four decades. She moved in the late 1990s to Bangalore, where her daughter said she passed away peacefully in her sleep. Her husband was the eminent biologist Obaid Siddiqi, who founded the biology department at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Colaba and the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. He passed away in 2013.
Asiya Siddiqi balanced her research with bringing up four accomplished children: the eldest Imran, a leading plant biologist based in Hyderabad; Yumna, a professor of English in the US; and fraternal twins, Diba, a visual artist and high school social science teacher in Bangalore, and Kaleem, a computer scientist in Canada.
Siddiqi seemed happiest working by herself in the archives, as an independent researcher, although she had two productive teaching stints: one at Aligarh Muslim University, where she met her husband just after getting a bachelor’s degree at Oxford University, and the other at Mumbai University.
She quit teaching when, at one point she found it difficult to commute from her home in south Mumbai to the university campus in Kalina while also keeping up with her research and and raising four children.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or or liability for the same.
source: http://www.mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com / Mumbai Mirror / Opinion > Columnist / by Sumana Ramanan / October 11th, 2019
‘I invite any Indian who claims to be a nationalist to the core to have a conversation with me,’ Rana wrote for The Wire in 2017.
Munawwar Rana (1952-2024). Photo: Youtube
New Delhi:
Urdu poet Munawwar Rana died on Sunday, January 14. He was 71.
Rana, who had been suffering from throat cancer, breathed his last at the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow.
The poet is survived by his wife, four daughters and a son, PTI has reported.
Rana was an outspoken artist and was vocal against communal politics.
In 2021, Lucknow police registered an FIR against him for allegedly inciting religious feelings for his comments on Valmiki, who wrote Ramayan.
“Valmiki became a god after he wrote the Ramayana, before that he was a dacoit. A person’s character can change. Similarly, the Taliban for now are terrorists but people and characters change…When you talk about Valmiki, you will have to talk about his past. In your religion, you make anyone god. But he was a writer who wrote the Ramayana, but we are not in competition here,” Rana had said.
In 2017, the poet, who wrote the famous Maa, wrote for The Wire:
“I invite any Indian who claims to be a nationalist to the core to have a conversation with me. Let him decide the time and place. If Allah wills it, they will emerge as traitors; and we will emerge as nationalist Indians. You say ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. My friend, we kneel on earth and kiss this soil 94 times in veneration while offering our prayers.”
On social media, many have condoled his passing.
source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Books / by The Wire Staff / January 15th, 2024
The Telegraph visits the haveli where the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements came to be mergedThe Telegraph visits the haveli where the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements came to be merged.
Farangi Mahal in Lucknow. / Photo courtesy: Adnan Abdul Wali
Stepping into Farangi Mahal in Lucknow after skirting rows of low-priced chikankari salwar kameez shops and their steady din is somewhat like stepping into the stillness of a forest after having left a busy city. Only, Farangi Mahal is anything but a forest. It is a cluster of buildings that hold within them a bit of history that has been almost forgotten, as the past often is in India, obscured by new settlements or construction, or billboards, if not demolished altogether.
In Farangi Mahal the past is difficult to see also because of the turn Indian politics has taken.
I am part of a group from Calcutta visiting Lucknow last October.
Inside Farangi Mahal, located in the old neighbourhood of Chowk, we enter its elegant and serene courtyard. The lime-and-mortar white exterior is tinged with a blue, peeling off in places. The afternoon sun slants down on the pillared arches and the exposed bricks but does not take away from the fragile beauty of the structure.
Adnan Abdul Wali, a member of the family that owns the house, the Farangi Mahalis, ushers us into the courtyard. His Urdu and Hindi are as impeccable as his courtesy. He is a direct descendant of Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahali, who was a leader of the Khilafat Movement.
Farangi Mahal’s story, however, goes back beyond the nawabs and the British. It was occupied by French merchants during the rule of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and that is how it got its name. The merchants, owing to some offence, lost the property and Aurangzeb gave it to Abdul Bari’s ancestors, who needed a safe haven.
The farman issued by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb decreeing that Bari’s ancestors could live here / Photo courtesy: Adnan Abdul Wali
“The Khilafat movement started from here,” says Wali. Farangi Mahal is where the idea of joining the Khilafat Movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement was born and Abdul Bari was the architect of the plan. It was a glorious moment of Hindu-Muslim unity in Indian history and Lucknow played its part in it.
Abdul Bari, an eminent religious scholar who belonged to the tradition of highly respected scholars from his family, was also an astute politician. He had travelled across many Muslim countries and was acutely aware of the impact of British imperialism on the Islamic world.
In March 1919 came the Rowlatt Act, which was to be followed by the horrors of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in April 1919, one of the events that would lead Mahatma Gandhi to launch the Non-Cooperation Movement. Before that happened, a large number of Muslims in India were already disturbed by the threat of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey following World War I and the jeopardised future of the Caliph, the Ottoman head of state, who is nominally the supreme religious and political leader of Sunni Muslims across the world. Turkey had been defeated by the Allied Forces, which included the British.
Adnan Abdul Wali, a direct descendant of Abdul Bari and the family that owns the house. / Photo courtesy: Adnan Abdul Wali
Abdul Bari was convinced that in India, Muslims needed to be made aware that the fate of the Ottoman Empire was their religious concern — and the articulation of the Khilafat (Caliphate) cause needed a larger, national platform.
From around 1919, Abdul Bari was raising support in the countryside, says Francis Robinson, a historian who specialises in Islam in South Asia. Abdul Bari had founded a newspaper for the purpose. But more importantly, he wanted to woo Gandhi to the Khilafat struggle.
Gandhi came to stay in Farangi Mahal for the first time in March 1919 and within six months, Abdul Bari had won him over, says Robinson. This also led to a period of a very special friendship between the two men, which was rooted not only in a common political cause but also shared spiritual beliefs and a love for mysticism, as embodied in Sufi philosophy.
Politically, the campaign for Khilafat and Gandhi’s stamp on it saw Abdul Bari reaching the height of his influence during 1919 and 1920.
Abdul Bari and his Farangi Mahal relatives, with the help of the lawyer Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman, drew up the constitution of the All-India Central Khilafat Committee, says Robinson. “He devoted enormous effort first to persuade the Khilafat Committee to adopt non-cooperation as a policy and second, at the Allahabad meetings in June (1920), in persuading the committee to accept Gandhi as chair of the group that was to put non-cooperation into action,” adds Robinson.
From then on till September 1920, Abdul Bari successfully campaigned to organise a significant Muslim presence at the Calcutta Special Congress, which was held from September 4 to 9, 1920. The session passed the resolution of the Non-Cooperation Movement with a demand for Swaraj. The Khilafat Committee and the Congress came together with non-cooperation as the common goal.
After March 1919, Gandhi stayed at Farangi Mahal three times, recounts Wali proudly. Other leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Sarojini Naidu stayed here as well. During Gandhi’s second visit, in September 1919, Muslims in the area abstained from cow slaughter during Bakrid as a mark of respect to Gandhi and appreciation for his support to the Khilafat cause. “Abdul Bari had requested Muslim families to make the gesture,” says Wali.
This was somewhat different from the recent celebration of November 25 as No Non-Veg Day by the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh. The announcement was made to honour the birth anniversary of Sadhu T.L. Vaswani and slaughterhouses and meat shops were required to remain closed that day. There is a world of difference between giving up meat voluntarily and being forced to do so, as there is between non-violence and violence. But such distinctions perhaps do not make much sense anymore in Lucknow, once the capital of nawab-ruled Oudh, now ruled by the BJP with Yogi Adityanath at its helm. Like the No Non-Veg Day, the city has several streets and institutions named after lesser-known Hindu saints.
Abdul Bari is said to have introduced Gandhi to the sufi saint Bakhtiyar Kaki, disciple and successor to Moinuddin Chishti. Three days before his death, Gandhi delivered his last public address at the shrine of Bakhtiyar Kaki in Mehrauli.
Abdul Bari had earlier invited Gandhi to Ajmer, where Chishti is enshrined. At Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Gandhi is said to have experienced his first qawwali on Chishti. It was there that he asked Abdul Bari about Bakhtiyar Kaki. He had first visited Ajmer Sharif in 1921 and would visit it again.
In 1922, after the Chauri Chaura incident, Gandhi withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement. Abdul Bari did not relent; he was not sparing of Gandhi either, says Robinson, but one has to remember his politics was primarily religious in inspiration. His influence declined steadily from this time and he died in 1926, a disappointed man, according to Robinson.
His name is often seen missing now from the roll call of prominent Khilafat leaders.
And yet Abdul Bari was not only a politician but also an eminent educator, Wali reminds. His ancestors had established a madrasah that became well-known all over the Islamic world and had introduced a syllabus, Dars-e-Nazami, which became a much-respected system of learning.
As a revered teacher in his family tradition, Abdul Bari introduced major changes to the curriculum by stressing the learning of Western sciences and discouraging rote learning.
Wali breaks down. It is very difficult to reconcile the present with the past, he says. Lucknow was never a utopia; communal riots had broken out here around the time of Gandhi’s visits to Farangi Mahal. But now the very fabric of society has changed, he feels. He reads from an Urdu book, and though the meaning of the words remains elusive, the music lingers. Farangi Mahal, with Wali bent over his book, look almost unreal.
But Farangi Mahal still stands, held up by its ancient, sturdy, flat bricks, and memory. Some things stay.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph Online / Home> Culture / by Chandrima S Bhattacharya / January 07th, 2024
Sabahat Afreen’s life will make you believe in the adage: where there is a will there is a way. Being born into an educated and prosperous family, Sabahat realized early in her life that her family was not open to women coming out of the four walls of the house, bracing against all odds to create their identity. She was raised seeing all women in her family in purdah.
However, somewhere in her heart, Sabahat Afreen was like a Secret Superstar of the Hindi movie by that name. Afreen was raised in a small village in Siddharthnagar district of Uttar Pradesh by her advocate father and a homemaker mother.
Sabahat Afreen started living in purdah in 10th class and after passing her 12th standard, She was not supposed to move out of the house alone. This resulted in her not attending college and opting for home study and writing examinations as a private student for her graduation years.
She was completing her master’s degree when she got married. Her husband’s family was politically connected and prosperous. She could have easily lived in comfort; Sabahat did not like to dress up like a doll wearing jewelery and expensive sarees and lounging around all day.
She said, “My mother was fond of reading and writing. She had an impact on me too. I used to write poems and stories in my childhood. Mom and Dad always encouraged me. It is a different matter that my works were never sent for publication as they didn’t believe in getting a picture of their daughter printed in the newspaper.”
Sabahat Afreen with her book
She also realized the environment in her in-laws’ house was less conservative. “My father-in-law knew that I write, so he used to gift me a diary and pen; my husband also supported me.” She told Awaz-the Voice.
After marriage, she opened a secret account on Facebook and did not use her pictures for the DP. “I started writing stories on Facebook, my posts went viral. Someone suggested that I should send my stories to Neelesh Misra, (Editor, Gaon Connection, lyricist, and storyteller). His storytelling was popular. I emailed my story to him and he liked it. From that point, I was in his circle.”
Like Insia Malik (Played by Zaira Wasim) of Aamir Khan’s 2017 film Secret Superstar, she revealed her talent to the world by hiding her identity. Soon Sabahat Afrin was writing audio series, stories, and books for magazines and many apps across the country. She moved her two little daughters out of the closed environs of the village to Lucknow.
As it happens in such cases, most of the people who had opposed her once now praise and respect her. Her family is proud of her.
Recently her first story collection Mujhe Jugnuon Ke Desh Jaana Hai (I Want to Go to the Land of Fireflies)(Rujhan Publications, Rajasthan) was released. In it, Sabahat imagines in this country of fireflies women are also enjoying the same freedom as men, the doors of their hearts cannot be guarded, they too have the freedom to remarry after divorce, and they have the right to decide if they want to return to their husband’s house after feeling unwanted there.
Sabahat Afreen with friends
Her stories are set in the backdrop of Muslim culture, but she manages to show that when it comes to the status and rights of women, it’s the same every year. Sabahat wants to free the fireflies from the clenched fists of Afreen women.Her first remuneration of Rs 30,000 as a writer was encouraging for Sabahat. She felt that being financially strong should be the priority of a woman. Now she shares her pictures on social media and with her stories.
Sabahat has written amazing stories that she must have picked up from around her and kept in the secret chamber of her heart to let them metamorphose into another form. Her stories look familiar to readers; after reading each one of her stories, the reader feels that he has seen these incidents.
Sabahat has adapted one such incident into a captivating story. The story Khoobsurat auratein (Beautiful Women) starts with this sentence – “even good looks are like a punishment, wherever she went people’s eyes were fixed on her.’ The heroine of the story, Alia, is very beautiful.”
Sabahat Afreen with her daughters
Women are at the center of all Sabahat’s stories. The joys and sorrows of a woman, her dreams, her desire to fulfill them and social restrictions are the key elements in her stories. Sabahat is seen breaking these restrictions and traditions. Women in her stories are silent protesters except for Alia from her story Beautiful Women. However, they encounter opposition and in some cases, it’s also effective.
Sabahat becomes emotional while narrating her stories. She wishes to create a world for women where they have the freedom to fulfill their wishes and make their dreams come true. Her stories reflect her progressive thoughts.
Sabahat says that she never went to the market alone and yet when people knew about her through her stories, she felt confident to move to a big city with her daughters. “I reached Lucknow and rented out an apartment and enrolled my daughters in a good school. Today my daughters are studying, and life has become a bit easier for all three of us.”
source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Story / by Onika Maheshwari, New Delhi / January 03rd, 2024
Lucknow topper Alisha Ansari has remained distant from social media sites to score 94% in board exams.
Class 10 student Alisha Ansari has secured the first rank in Lucknow and ninth in Uttar Pradesh with a score of 94 per cent. Apart from sheer hard work and support from parents, Alisha has had remained distant from social media websites, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to attain this position.
Alisha, who comes from a middle-class family, has a younger brother and an elder sister. Her father, Mohammad Rizwan Fazli, is a teacher in a private engineering college and her mother, Shabana Ansari, is a housewife.
Kanti Mishra, Principal, Bal Nikunj Inter College, said, “Alisha has been a hardworking student. Also whenever she had a doubt in the subject, she would immediately ask school teachers.”
Appreciating her hard work and talent, her mother, Shabana Ansair, told, “We have always given our daughters equal opportunities to study.”
Moreover, she shared that she would want her daughter to become a doctor and it is just the beginning of her journey of success.
Also, her father, Mohd. Rizwan Fazli, expressed his happiness, saying that he is extremely proud of her daughter.
source: http://www.indiatoday.in / India Today / Home> News> Education Today> News / by Ashish Srivastava, Lucknow (UP) / June 27th, 2020
A total of 33 students from various districts of Uttar Pradesh have found their place in the Class Xth 2020 list of top ten.
Uttar Pradesh 10th Result 2020:
Three Muslim students – Alisha Ansari, Arshad Iqbal and Arshima Sheikh, have cracked the 2020 UP Matric High School Class 10 exam 2020 and have been included in the list of Top Ten.
A total of 33 students have found their place in the 2020 list of top ten. While Alisha Ansari secured 9th rank, Arshad Iqbal and Arshima Sheikh have bagged the 10th rank in Uttar Pradesh Class 10 Merit List 2020.
Alisha Ansari Mohd Rizwan Fazli of Bal Nikunj Inter College Lucknow has got 564 marks (94%) out of the total 600 marks and jointly shared the 9th rank with five other students
Arshad Iqbal Iqbal Hussain of PT RN MHSS Shahjahanpur and Arshima Sheikh Aftab Ahmad of St Xaviers School Kanpur have got 563 marks (93.83%) and secured the 10th rank with 02 other students.
Uttar Pradesh Class 10 result was Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UPMSP) Saturday at 12:30 pm by Dy CM and UP Education Minister Dinesh Sharma.
The overall pass percentage of Uttar Pradesh board Class 10 this year is 83.31 percent – an improvement by more than 3% as compared to last year. In 2019, the overall pass percentage was 80.07%.
Riya Jain Bharat Bhushan of Shri Ram SM Inter College Bagpat has topped the Uttar Pradesh board in 2020 High School or Class 10 (UPMSP Class X) exam result of which is declared today.
Ria Jain has secured 96.67 percent marks to secure the 1st position in the 2020 Merit List.
Abhimanyu Verma Ramhut Verma of Shri Sai Inter College Barabanki came 2nd with 95.83% marks and Yogesh Rajendra Pratap Singh of Sadhbhavna Inter College Barabanki came 3rd with 95.33%.
“All toppers will get laptops and cash rewards”, Dy CM Dinesh Sharma and UP Education Minister said while declaring the result.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> Education & Career / by Ummid.com News Network / June 27th, 2023
Ahmad’s book, Caste and Social Stratification Among Muslims in India, is celebrated as pioneering work in the field.
Imtiaz Ahmad (1940-2023). Photo: Twitter/@syedurahman
New Delhi:
Imtiaz Ahmad, renowned scholar who taught political sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, has died. He was 83.
Ahmad’s book, Caste and Social Stratification Among Muslims in India, is celebrated as pioneering work in the field.
Ahmad got his BA and MA degrees from the Lucknow University in 1958 and 1960 respectively. He started as a senior research analyst at the Institute of Economic Growth at the Delhi University in 1964 and two years later, became a lecturer in sociology in the same university.
After three years as visiting professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri in the US, Ahmad joined JNU as associate professor in political sociology in 1972. He became a professor in the department in 1983 and taught there for three decades.
Among his numerous publications are those which throw light on Muslim empowerment, minority rights, the role of education among Muslims, how Islamic ideologies mesh with social realities, how Muslim women are studied in India and communalism.
Ahmad also wrote critically on the Gujarat riots of 2002 in particular and communal politics in general. His work has been lauded as having shed light on the composite culture of India.
source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Education> Society / by The Wire Staff / June 19th, 2023
Jilani died during treatment at Lucknow’s Nishat Hospital in Qaiserbagh and is survived by daughter Maria Rehan, sons Najafzafar Jilani and Anaszafar Jilani, and wife Azra Jilani. The family resides in Qaiserbagh. Jilani was buried at the Qaiserbagh graveyard late Wednesday evening.
All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) secretary and senior advocate died at a Lucknow hospital on Wednesday after a prolonged illness followed by a fall in May 2021 during which he suffered brain haemorrhage. He was 73.
Jilani, a former Additional Advocate General for Uttar Pradesh, was the convenor of the Babri Masjid Action Committee and had argued in the Ram Janmabhoomi case in different courts over decades.
Jilani died during treatment at Lucknow’s Nishat Hospital in Qaiserbagh and is survived by daughter Maria Rehan, sons Najafzafar Jilani and Anaszafar Jilani, and wife Azra Jilani. The family resides in Qaiserbagh. Jilani was buried at the Qaiserbagh graveyard late Wednesday evening.
“He had multiple health issues for which he was being treated. He had a urinary tract infection which had spread to his lungs. His kidney and brain were also affected. All these issues started after he fell in May 2021 and suffered brain haemorrhage,” said a family member.
Jilani, a native of Malihabad town, was among the decorated alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University, from where he got his law degree.
He will be remembered for his soft-spoken nature and his in-depth knowledge of law, said his colleagues and peers.
Senior advocate SFA Naqvi said, “He was among the most soft-spoken and kind-hearted people I knew. There was a grace about him which is hard to put in words. But his arguments were never soft in court, and he had the law on his fingertips. We have lost a pioneer in law, and he will be missed.”
“During his time as the Additional Advocate General, even when I was arguing against him, he forgot all about it once we were outside the court. Then, we would go back to being friends. He always kept what happened in court to the courtroom only,” added Naqvi.
After the Supreme Court verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi case in November 2019, Jilani had remarked, “The judgement has just been pronounced, it says a lot of things about the Constitution and about secularism. We are very dissatisfied with this judgement. Article 142 does not let you do this.”
After a special CBI court on September 30, 2020 acquitted all 32 surviving accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case, citing lack of evidence, Jilani had told The Indian Express , “The verdict is wrong. It is against the law and evidence (in the case). It is an erroneous judgement. However, a judgement is a judgement. We will avail the remedy available. The remedy is with the High Court. It has the power to reverse the judgement and we will go to the High Court.”
Advocate Rakesh Chaudhary, former president of the Oudh Bar Association, Allahabad High Court, said that Jilani had a great equation with everyone in the court. “He was a very helpful person, who never took anything personally. He had great sportsmanlike spirit,” said the lawyer.
Sarah Haque, a Delhi-based lawyer who worked alongside Jilani on the Babri Masjid case before the Supreme Court, said he was one of the kindest and most respected members of the Bar. “His demise is a huge loss to the legal fraternity. He was extremely passionate in his craft and made commendable efforts towards the pursuit of justice,” she said. “His attention and commitment to the Babri matter was laudable and he will be remembered forever.”
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> News> India / by Asad Rehman, Lucknow / May 18th, 2023
Mrs. Aaesha Munawar, General Secretary, U.P. Judo Association, has been nominated as a member of the Infrastructure Committee of the Indian Olympic Association.
Mr. Amitabh Sharma is the Chairman of this Committee. Apart from Aaesha Munawar, the other members are Mr. Bhola Nath Singh, Mr. Vaghish Pathak, Mr. Akhil Kumar, Mr. Ravi Bengani and Dr. Amit Bhalla. This Committee will serve till the year 2026.
This is for the very first time that a female Judoka from U.P. has been nominated in an IOA committee.
Mrs. P.T. Usha , President,IOA ; Mrs. Alaknanda Ashok , Joint Secretary, IOA; Mr. Harpal Singh and Mr. Bhupendra Singh Bajwa – Executive Council Member, all congratulated Mrs. Aaesha on her nomination.
Munawar Anzar, CEO, U.P. Judo Association.
source: http://www.ismatimes.com / Isma Times / Home> News> National / by Afzal Shah Madudi / March 13th, 2023
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