Madhya Pradesh local body elections: In the first phase of the local polls held on July 6, Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM won four seats.
Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM contested civic body polls in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh for the first time
Bhopal:
The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) on Wednesday won three seats in the civic body elections in Madhya Pradesh, taking its overall tally in the local polls held earlier this month in the state to seven.
In the first phase of the local polls held on July 6, the Asaduddin Owaisi-led party had won four seats, while in the second phase conducted on July 13, the counting of votes for which is currently underway, it won three seats so far, officials said.
The Hyderabad-headquartered party won these three seats in the Khargone Municipal Council (KMC).
This is for the first time AIMIM contested civic body polls in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.
AIMIM’s Aruna Bai won from ward number 2 of KMC by defeating her nearest rival and BJP candidate Sunita Devi by a margin of 31 votes.
Aruna Bai, who belongs to the Scheduled Castes (SC) community, said she joined AIMIM as she was influenced by Mr Owaisi’s views on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.
Two other winners from the AIMIM are Shakeel Khan from ward 15 and Shabnam from ward 27 in KMC.
The BJP won 18 seats in the KMC, the Congress three and independent candidates eight.
In the first phase results on Sunday, the AIMIM won four seats – two in Jabalpur and one each in Burhanpur and Khandwa.
Mr Owaisi had addressed public meetings in Khandwa, Bhopal and Jabalpur to campaign for his party’s candidates for the polls held earlier this month.
The local body elections in Madhya Pradesh for 413 municipal bodies, including 16 municipal corporations, 99 municipal councils and 298 Nagar Parishads, were held in two phases – on July 6 and 13.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source: http://www.ndtv.com / NDTV / Home> All Indian / by Press Trust of India / July 20th, 2022
A tribute to a polymath historian who recently passed away.
Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Shakeb at the Qutb Shahi tombs in Hyderabad, October 2013. Photo: Author provided
I first met Dr Mohammed Ziauddin Ahmed Shakeb in the summer of 2011, as a naïve PhD student who’d arrived in Hyderabad from Los Angeles wanting to “read Shah Jahan’s documents”. He asked me the very standard question asked of research students in India, “What is your topic?”
I only had a rather incoherent answer to give to Shakeb, the man who had, among other things, created the Mughal Record Room, in what is today known as the Telangana State Archives. Located in a nondescript building at the periphery of the Osmania University campus in the dusty precinct of Tarnaka, this institution has undergone numerous transformations over the course of a half-century of its existence in Hyderabad. But institutions were often narrow and unimaginative places for sustaining a towering figure such as Shakeb. He went on to have a long and eclectic life and career that consistently defied the logic and constraints of institutions, for he was himself an institution. The loss of Shakeb is thus far more than the loss of an individual.
His was a formidable generation of post-Independence intellectuals from different parts of the subcontinent who, from the 1950s, devoted themselves to preserving its languages, repairing and reconstructing our scattered archives and libraries, and re-imagining our past(s) long before colonialism. Shakeb embodied, above all, a boundless curiosity coupled with a complete disregard for trends, ‘schools,’ cliques, and fancy theories.
He was not interested in being a Marxist or a nationalist nor in chasing the Western academy’s greener pastures. In some ways, his foremost allegiance was to the detritus of the past itself – to what paper, ink, and materiality mean and what they can tell us about our past and present selves. He asked, what a document or manuscript had gone through over centuries, how had it come to be, and how can we best preserve thousands of paper fragments for future generations so we can continue to tell their stories?
This rare commitment to the study and preservation of archival knowledge led him to write the landmark catalog, Mughal Archives Vol I: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Documents Pertaining to the Reign of Shah Jahan, in 1977, followed by many publications for The British Library, State Archives Andhra Pradesh, and other repositories, universities, and auction houses. I remember asking Shakeb once why he was so committed to creating reference tools to access rare historical materials, and he answered, “because I know no one will care to read them in the future!” In some ways, he was right.
Today, when the stakes for writing about the subcontinent’s pasts are fraught and closely tied to an ongoing project of hollowing out academic institutions, it’s worth remembering a very different kind of Indian historian.
Shakeb standing in the second row, in a group photo from a conference in March 1968 at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. Also pictured are G.H. Khare, Mohibbul Hasan, V.K. Bawa, P.M. Joshi, Suvira Jaiswal, Burton Stein, and Eugene Irschick, among others. Photo: Author provided
Born on October 21, 1933, Shakeb grew up in Hyderabad and Aurangabad. He studied Political Science and English at Osmania University before heading to Aligarh Muslim University in 1956 for his Masters, where he was taught by Mohammed Habib and S. Nurul Hasan. In 1962, he returned to the south where he was employed as an archivist at what was then known as the State Archives Andhra Pradesh. There, Shakeb acquired the unique training of deciphering documents and identifying their categories, genres, and forms from the last generation of the traditional jagirdari staff of the Nizam’s state who were retiring when he joined the archives. He also worked under Yusuf Husain Khan who had begun the work of processing Mughal administrative documents. The archives thrived under the directorship of committed scholar-administrators such as Hadi Bilgrami and V.K. Bawa.
As rich documentary caches from families, Sufi shrines, and samsthanams were discovered and deposited into state institutions, post-independence archivists and historians confronted challenges, including the reluctance of individuals to part with materials that had been in their homes for centuries. Debates and disputes ensued about what constituted a ‘valuable’ manuscript or document, how to classify materials, and to which regional-linguistic nationalism a remnant ‘belonged.’
These were debates that had already begun in the pre-Independence period, in the work of institutions like the Indian Historical Records Commission. Recent studies of the debates between Jadunath Sarkar and the Maratha historians have traced the longer history of such tensions. Part of the problem was the mutual suspicion between scholars oriented to modern social sciences and those with a more ‘traditional’ orientation and training. Shakeb, the archivist-historian, was at once both and neither.
At a distance from the halls of JNU and Aligarh, where the Mughal state’s merits were being debated, Shakeb inhabited yet another set of worlds. He was at ease reconstructing the household library of Chishti Sufi Abu’l Faiz Minallah in Bidar, discussing the southern India Cholas with the American historian Burton Stein, and discovering a shipwreck off the coast of Masulipatnam in the late 1960s.
Based on newly-processed materials, in 1976, he would complete his doctorate under P.M. Joshi at Deccan College in Pune, a connected history that examined circulation and political diplomacy between Safavid Iran, Mughal India, and the Golkonda sultanate. Shakeb’s study brought the question of mobility and exchange to the centre stage at a time when the norm was to study either the Mughal heartland (often synonymous with Delhi or the northern Indian plains) or select one province of the empire. After many years in archives and universities, Shakeb charted his own path beyond academia. His forensic ability for assessing manuscript provenance, material objects, and documentary genres, allowed him to thrive in other professional contexts, leading to work as a consultant for Christie’s in London.
But, to restrict myself to Shakeb the historian would fail to capture the range of subjects, languages, and disciplines over which he had complete mastery – Persian and Urdu literature, Islamic studies, geography, philosophy, linguistics, and art history. Shakeb always kept the historian’s arrogance in check by reminding her of the literary critic’s skills. The study of prosody and poetics was just as important for making sense of an India without and before English.
Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Shakeb (L) with his friend Dr Leonard Lewisohn (R) at Bidar fort in January 2012. Photo: Author provided
Literary circuits would light up the minute Shakeb landed back in Hyderabad (as they often would in London). He had been working for many years on translating Iqbal’s Persian poetry into Urdu. He was equally committed to the study of Bedil, Ghalib, Dagh, and Amir Minai. He would unveil to students the unique phonetics and cadence of Dakani, the pan-regional literary idiom of southern India, with many living poets and a long literary history, which he emphasised, is yet to be fully understood for its role in shaping classical and modern Urdu.
When he published his dissertation, Relations of Golkonda with Iran, in book form in 2017, he dedicated it to his grandchildren – Itrat, Taha, Mahamid, Khadija, Tawsin, Mahd, Istafa, Fatima, ‘Ali, Nuha – all of whom embody their dadasaab’s fortitude and resilience. I haven’t sufficient words to describe the patience of his wife, Farhat Ahmed, and the enormity of what she has taught me over many years about balancing the scholarly life with everyday living. It was this reminder that grounded Shakeb’s engagement with multiple worlds. His hands that treated every piece of archival paper like a newborn child. Lethal scoldings hurled at junior scholars too convinced of their own greatness. And, never forgetting to make fun of people who take themselves too seriously. With Shakeb’s passing, we are reminded how fragile the threads are that connect us to the past, and how dependent we are on a handful of such individuals. It’s difficult to imagine what, if anything, might come after such larger-than-life figures.
Subah Dayal is Assistant Professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her research is on social and cultural histories of the Deccan and the Indian Ocean world.
source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> English> Culture> History / by Subah Dayal / February 10th, 2021
Barely visible from across the new Errum Manzil metro and crushed between rows of commercial buildings, lies an abandoned citadel of knowledge: Idara-e Adabiyat-e-Urdu.
Once a core institution of the city for scholarship of the Deccan, this vast library and its museum, Aiwan-e Urdu – like much of Hyderabad’s heritage – exists in a state of disrepair. It is one of Hyderabad’s fast disappearing independent archival institutions connected to a time before – as ruins beneath the consumerist ravages of the new city. And yet, as we step inside, walk up the stairs to the library in its tower, rummage through dusty catalogues and forlorn books – it feels as though we have entered a magical portal into another world.
Established in 1931 by Syed Mohiuddin Qadri Zore (1905-1962), the most prolific scholar of the Deccan, and built upon lands donated by his wife, the illustrious poetess Tahniyatun-Nissa begum, the Idara houses a vast archival collection. That the library and museum continue to exist at all is due almost entirely to their 73-year-old son, Rafiuddin Qadri, who has devoted himself to managing this house of knowledge. Containing over fifty-thousand books and printed materials, including manuscripts and paintings and artefacts, the purpose of the Idara was to preserve the art, history, and multilingual Deccan literary cultures in Urdu Dakkhani, Persian, and Arabic.
At a cursory glance, the closed doors of the book shelves seem dense and inaccessible. But if one is willing to subject themself to the rigours of an erstwhile knowledge production circuit and has the patience to listen to its many stories rendered in multiple languages and idioms, these doors open up fascinating worlds.
Here, beneath dusty glass encasements, is an original eighteenth-century painting of warrior queen Chand Bibi of the Deccan, and a book about Deccan Radio. The museum is typically kept locked and desperately needs restoration. A dusty lithograph of sixteenth-century Qutb Shahi tughra emerges in fragile condition, alongside an original photograph of Kishen Pershad, an erstwhile prime minister of Hyderabad State under the Asaf Jah Nizams. The museum contains rare royal firmans, inscriptions, maps and genealogical trees, arms and weapons, coins, old garments and cloaks that are not available anywhere else.
Behind this seemingly random collection from the past is the erudite vision of Zore, who was not only a scholar himself but also carefully curated and fostered the production of knowledge.
Rafiuddin Qadri at Idara-e-adabiyat-e-Urdu.
Zore’s son Rafiuddin Qadri sits at a desk in the main hall, surrounded by construction workers, painters, and piles of decaying books and magazines. The sound of traffic on the main road tends to drown out his voice. He is the last of a generation to remember why institutions such as the Idara emerged in Hyderabad during the early to mid-twentieth century. He is soft-spoken, donning his characteristic vest and topi. He carries a dignified scholarly attitude resonant with an earlier time. Exceedingly generous and patient, Qadri carries on a legacy that no longer is valued by the current trends of historical knowledge production in India.
Archives and libraries everywhere in India are under threat of some kind, as history literally rots away . Hence, when serious historians come across independent archival institutions and archivists devoted to the preservation of historical knowledge – like Rafiuddin Qadri – it is worth telling their story.
Once a core institution of the city for scholarship of the Deccan, this vast library and its museum, Aiwan-e Urdu – like much of Hyderabad’s heritage – exists in a state of disrepair.
Descended from a Sufi family of Qandhar and North Deccan, Rafiuddin Qadri’s ancestors came to Hyderabad in the late nineteenth century. His father, Syed Mohiuddin Qadri Zore maintained close ties and commitments to Sufism, both in institutional ways regarding his familial lineage and his philosophical approaches in terms of the spiritual values attributed to seeking out knowledge. Sufi dargahs have traditionally been not only spiritual centres but also major arenas of producing knowledge. At the same time, Zore was a modern visionary, establishing a major institution of learning in Hyderabad, in keeping with the time. “The dawn of the twentieth century was an era of renaissance in the Deccan,” and “a number of institutions such as Asafia Library, Osmania University, Dairatul Maarif, Dar-ul-Tarjuma, Salar Jung Museum, were established which contributed immensely to the production of knowledge about the history and culture of Hyderabad.” Zore was not only a major scholar-administrator – publishing hundreds of books and editing the magazine Sab Ras – he was a key figure who brought together intellectuals while establishing and overseeing the Idara, with the help of his friends, ranging from scholars to local politicians and administrators. This spirit lives on in Rafiuddin Qadri.
Rafiuddin Qadri at the Idara Museum.
Schooled as we have been in the contemporary formalities of accessing archives, when we asked if there was a fee we ought to pay to access the library, Rafiuddin Qadri said, “No, not at all,” and then explained his father’s legacy. “Knowledge should be free”, is the principal hallmark of the Idara. “It is completely against my father’s ethics that one should charge money to scholars as this is a place for them to study and learn freely.” This ethics of scholarship and the writing of history is lost as a result of the commercialisation of intellectual production as well as the privatisation of education in India. “It was meant for the youth of Hyderabad,” says Rafiuddin Qadri, about one of the main purposes of establishing the Idara. “The youth were involved in the world of politics constantly, at a very turbulent time,” referring to the anti-colonial nationalist movements of the 1930s and 1940s. “A quiet space of inquiry was needed where they could go to do intellectual work and to study.” The Idara, then, is a physical space and has served as a much-needed refuge from the noise of the world’s polemics, to think, ponder, reflect, and read, without the constant interruptions of the fast-paced intensity of daily urban life in India, and its demands.
‘Scholars come from all over the world. They say, how did Zore know I would need this document so many years later! He had preserved it!’
The extraction of knowledge out of India and into the corridors of more powerful contexts of intellectual knowledge production – such as academia in the West – has contributed to diminishing the role of those who have cultivated the very libraries and institutions so central to academic research about India. It is often suggested that only British libraries and archives are worth perusing when it comes to various aspects of India’s past, given the colonial codification of Indian knowledge – brought there often by way of loot – were preserved there. Moreover, popular histories of the Deccan for a commercial market dominated by elites and their publishing houses tend to overlook vast swathes of historical knowledge produced in languages other than English, such as Urdu. Zore had been vital to Hyderabad in creating a space, a physical place, a free and open library – of which there are few and far between today. The very idea of a library – one of the few spaces which anyone can visit without having to spend money – is itself a revolutionary idea in contexts such as India. The institution Zore created is today preserved by Rafiuddin Qadri, who belongs to the last generation of living reposit.
The Idara Museum.
Rafiuddin devotedly handles the materials, and carefully walks the corridors he has seen during the many seasons of his life. His eyes light up when he narrates the stories of researchers: “Scholars come from all over the world. They say, ‘how did Zore know I would need this document so many years later! He had preserved it!’”, he muses.
Deccan: A region that resists categorisation
“Even though local Indian historians may know more about the Deccan, they won’t get published as easily as outsiders in the top international presses.”
“This is true. But I feel like we do the same thing unfortunately. Produce knowledge for the West.”
“History as a profession in India seems so dead. The assault is coming from all sides. The propagandistic writing to fit the current ruling ideology, the evisceration of educational spaces, the lack of care, no thought.”
“It’s so depressing.”
“So, how do we talk about the Deccan amidst all this? No one seems to care.”
“Just keep going to the archives and keep writing.”
“Yes, Rafi Sahb is waiting.”
“Is he there now?”
“Yes, he is.”
Calligraphy at the Idara-e-adabiyat-e-Urdu.
Rafiuddin Qadri points to the calligraphic poetry of Dakkhani Urdu gracing the high arches of the main hall of the Idara, with its main chandelier, overlooking what once was a clean and orderly library. “This place is not what it once was, there are very few people who are interested in doing serious work like this in Hyderabad,” he says. It is true. The archivists and knowledge-keepers of these earlier institutions are passing away while their knowledge is not being passed down. As we ask Qadri questions about our respective research projects, he says, “Did you ever meet Zia Shakeb?” We shake our heads. Qadri puts his hands to his head. “Oh, that is too bad. He knew so much. And now he is gone. So much is gone and lost.” In describing the history of the Idara-e-Urdu-e Adabiyat, Qadri also shares with us some old photographs detailing the networks of people instrumental to this library.
Zore imagined Idara, with a differently rooted aesthetic, as a space for people from different languages of the Deccan to work together, to have intellectual camaraderie without being subjected to the pressures of capitalist cycles of publish or perish production.
Qadri shuffles slowly between different rooms of the Idara, all under some kind of construction. He seemingly is displaced not only by time, but also between the once vibrant rooms of his family’s library. Over cups of chai, as we discuss historical research, he advises us about specific catalogues and indexes as he repeatedly issues unheeded calls for the library staff to retrieve particular titles.
What happens once these archives, knowledge, and the custodians of stories about the past are lost? One easy answer is that the region takes on a new identity, more sectarian, more oppressive and discriminatory, built around invented histories that weaponise pasts as archives diminish. Perhaps, a more creative and bolder answer would be, that we increasingly become a society alienated from oneself, lost and rootless – our understanding of history diminished by corporate and profit-making knowledge enclaves such as within the dystopia of a hi-tech city and financial district, Hyderabad’s rapidly developing new urban core. It is the responsibility of professional historians to keep stories of the past in circulation, in the hope that they might make us more empathetic, caring and humane.
Although Qadri claims his memory is fading and not what it once was, we marvel at his ability to recall catalogues, titles, essays, authors, scholars, poets, and multiple editions of books and magazines, produced about the Deccan between the 1930s and 1960s. This earlier period of scholarship about Dakhaniyat is largely ignored, as knowledge produced in the languages of this region, such as Urdu, is not considered as worthy as compared to knowledge produced in English.
The Deccan has long been configured as a region of hope in history, offering alternative ways of belonging, those that do not fit within the nationalist frames of India and Southasia overall.
It is in response to European dominance over the circuits of knowledge about India, that Zore imagined Idara, with a differently rooted aesthetic, as a space for people from different languages of the Deccan to work together, to have intellectual camaraderie without being subjected to the pressures of capitalist cycles of publish or perish production. Accessing the Idara today is not just about mechanically sifting through catalogues until you find what you need, and extracting it – but more about setting the pressures of clock-time aside and the arrogance of earned professional degrees aside, to learn from a life-long archivist. It means opening one’s self up to the humbling, slow and feeble processes of identifying voices in history, which are increasingly lost in the maddening clamour of the market and the deafening contours of nationalist totalitarianisms and fascisms of today.
Interest about the Deccan is growing in India, and new works of popular history have emerged in recent years. There has been some recent acknowledgement that the history of the Deccan has been marginalised, and as one headline pronounced, “Indian history without the Deccan is like European history minus France” for it seems that comparisons to Europe must be made, if Southasian regions are to exist at all within the historical imagination or reading public. Overall, it is the north-centric perspective of India’s historical narratives that continue to dominate Southasia’s study of the past. This is a perspective that largely ignores the Deccan region – today, home to the four linguistically organised states of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. Southasian historians continue to favour and focus upon Punjab, Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, it is the Mughal era that dominates scholarship on Southasian Islam when turning to India’s medieval and early modern past. Turning to the Deccan region thus challenges the north-centric perspective of Mughal imperial development that dominates histories of India’s Persianate past.
Syed Mohiuddin Qadri Zore (1905 – 1962).
And yet, it is impossible for any serious scholar or historian undertaking research about Deccan or about Hyderabad – once India’s largest and wealthiest princely state – without coming across the legacy of Syed Mohiuddin Qadri Zore.
Rafiuddin Qadri points out a special issue in Sab Ras about his father in which the author points out that, “Dr. Zore gave voice to the Deccan,” during a period of time in India’s history when communal tensions were on the rise. His was a utopian project of “knowledge for the people,” about a region of Southasia with its own distinct role and shared pasts that cut across religious, linguistic, and communitarian identities. It is to Zore’s credit that the Deccan was situated at all in the historiography of the subcontinent, being one the first scholars to research and write seriously about this region. Zore’s legacy is astounding, and he is, in fact, a key figure in India’s intellectual history. Yet, he has been ignored by historians of India. To write about him means having to situate oneself between the missing pages of Southasian historiography and history, between emphasising the importance of ethical citational practices amidst fast disappearing archives.
The Deccan has long been configured as a region of hope in history, offering alternative ways of belonging, those that do not fit within the nationalist frames of India and Southasia overall. Nawab Ali Yavar Jung, the Vice-Chancellor of Osmania University in the first session of the Deccan History Conference held in April 1945, which was sponsored by Zore said “…the history of the Deccan is, in miniature, the history of India. It mirrors all the great reflexes of Indian History and throws its own reflection back on that larger screen…. Separateness in the midst of geographical unity, isolation in the midst of invasion, such have been its characteristics. The resistance of the south to northern pressure provides an instance of the centrifugal forces which baffled successive efforts to establish one and the same rule over the length and breadth of India…” The region carries the spirit of sovereignty and diversity and this was championed by Idara and Zore. Though not like what it once was, in Hyderabad Deccan there still continues the intermingling of the languages of Telugu, Urdu, and English, with a sprinkling of Marathi, Kannada and Tamil.
Archival image of Aiwan-e-Urdu.
The pluralism and cosmopolitanism of the Deccan is reflected in the physical building of the Idara itself, whose construction occurred in 1955, with the patronage of the Government of India, the Nizam Trust, and several other entities in and outside of Hyderabad, from the state of Andhra Pradesh to Kashmir – where Zore was eventually laid to rest. The Indo-Islamic architecture and designs are inspired by Qutb Shahi domes, Indic lotuses of Hindu mythology, Bahmani latticework, flowering buds of the Egyptian Nile, and Spanish minarets and arches, with a main front door meant to represent the gates and doorways of so many forts of India.
Not only was Zore among the chief intellectual architects of Dakhaniyat, he was responsible for building several educational institutions and was at the helm of vast intellectual production. His entire education through his Masters degree was completed in Hyderabad. Born in 1905, Zore was educated in a primary school in a Kayasth Pathshala, where he learned English, and where his fondness grew for poetry, public speaking and debate. By high school he had not only already established a debate society but also a small library. He later joined Darul Uloom and City College and ultimately the College of Arts and Social Sciences at Osmania University.
Descended from a Sufi family of Qandhar and North Deccan, Rafiuddin Qadri’s ancestors came to Hyderabad in the late nineteenth century.
Osmania University is the first university in India to introduce a vernacular language (Urdu) as the medium of instruction. It aimed, among other things, to translate knowledge, including science textbooks into Urdu, which was a remarkable project, and contributed to a cosmopolitan ‘worlding of the Deccan.’ There, Zore eventually became Head of the Department of Urdu, where he was a founding member of ‘Mujalla-e Osmania’, the first Bilingual English-Urdu magazine at Osmania University. He was the first to work seriously on Urdu-Hindi linguistics and phonetics, and later published a book called Ruh-e-Tanqid, which was one of the earliest works of Urdu literary criticism. Widely travelled, journeying to London, Paris, as well as to Germany – where he learned French and German and translated Dakkhani Urdu poetry into European languages – Zore also travelled extensively within India, and to Kashmir and wrote the first book about Dakhaniyat. A polyglot, linguist, and philologist par excellence, Zore had studied Sanskrit and Gujarati as well.
During the mid-1930s, he embarked upon a project to prepare an encyclopedia in Urdu, inviting Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sarojini Naidu, and Jawaharlal Nehru to write for it – many of whom had met with Zore. Though the encyclopedia project itself was not realised, the attempt signalled the yearning to produce knowledge about the world for citizens of Hyderabad, to bring in a perspective from the Deccan and its relationship to the wider world. And yet, his legacy is in danger of being forgotten, as Zore’s understanding of the Deccan has never been included in the story of India. The Idara-e-Urdu-e Adabiyat and the Aiwan-e Urdu are institutions that themselves could form the subject of an entire PhD dissertation as well as serious scholarship about Hyderabad’s institutions.
Erasures: The city and the politics of historical memory
Hyderabad’s past is rendered almost invisible: over the past 75 years, there has been tremendous upheaval: from a former Muslim princely kingdom – capital of the Asaf Jahi dynasty – to its violent annexation by the Indian state and army in 1948; and then its incorporation into the state of Andhra Pradesh in 1956; its land reallocations by the linguistic state in the 1970s and 1980s; the neoliberal economic reforms of the 1990s; and then being cast as the capital of the new Telangana state in 2014, the same year India was met with the political triumph of Hindu nationalism. And, it is not only upheavals.
Hyderabad’s history is also marginalised by most historians of India, who have simply not paid close enough attention to this city and its past. Then, there is the fact that popular historians write of Hyderabad’s history in romanticised ways, subjecting its past to their own perspectives, whether nationalist or colonialist, while Hyderabad’s elites produce accounts imbued with relentless nostalgia. Since 1948, there has been a steady demolition of Hyderabad’s historical pasts, inaugurated by the Indian state as well as by a combination of other factors – including the increasing out-migration of the city’s elites who were once patrons of major institutions. They have been replaced by a new elite who care more for malls, sports cars, and bars – and see no value in patronage or cultivation of the arts, cultural activities, or historical knowledge.
Today, the erasure of Hyderabad’s pluralist past is occurring at a resounding pace. The assault upon this city’s history and the shared heritages of its people is tremendous. Buildings torn down, monuments subject to land-grabs by the state or by private entities, and the city’s heritage continues to be destroyed by new capitalist ventures, as the old sixteenth century urban core and the modernising reforms of the Nizams in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is decimated by hyper-development, political expediency, and the corrupt scions of progress.
Yet, at the same time, there do exist responses to these assaults by Hyderabad’s numerous heritage activist groups and citizen historians, who daily record, bear witness to, and struggle against the demolition of monuments. While they are few and far between, they frequently lack political backing. There are organisations and individuals on the ground in Hyderabad who are constantly challenging the assaults on Hyderabad’s heritage. Local heritage activists and citizen historians, to several social media groups which have cropped up in recent years, are imbued with a very strong historical consciousness – doing everything from pleading with authorities to preserve heritage, leading heritage walks, to writing extensively about it in newspapers, such as The Siasat Daily – which regularly contains articles about Hyderabad’s heritage. One has only to bend one’s ear and take the time to listen.
Existing alongside these erasures of Hyderabad, is the continued persistence of historical memory among the people of the region. They consistently recall the shared past of the city across different communities and frequently invoke history. Even such mundane activities as providing directions in Hyderabad, constitutes broken maps of history. Directions include not only present landmarks, but also the names of people, properties, and heritages that existed in those same places of an earlier time, for Hyderabad once had the characteristics more akin to small town life – rather than the megapolis it is today. The lanes of Hyderabad are full of oracles who narrate the past. One octogenarian asks, “in the Nizam’s rule, Hindus worked as prime ministers, can Muslims now even be peons of government offices?” voicing some facets of changes the city and the nation have seen. Once the Muslim elites’ lands were confiscated and thoroughly eviscerated by the state, through their displacement as well as their own migrations to the Global North, the past few decades have witnessed the arrival of a set of new elites to the city. They are all too happy to culturally appropriate the memory of the Nizam, while at the same time encroaching on lands in celebration of an “India Shining” with its new temples rooted in the free-market economy – just one endless shopping centre–part of a larger drive that is flattening and homogenising India.
Meanwhile, the politics of the memory of Hyderabad are complicated and are constantly reframed, sometimes they take the shape of the claiming of a shared “Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb” (Hindu-Muslim culture or harmony), at other times, equating the entire Nizam period with communal rule. What is lost here in the polemics is the complexity of the Deccan, and the region’s capacity to uphold diversity and resist totalitarianism. Qadri’s and Zore’s Idara, and vanishing documents enable us to tell these stories of defiance in the face of erasure.
Women in history, women doing history
The role that women have played in the production of historical knowledge tends to be cast aside in the writing of institutional histories of India – where they are frequently rendered into a separate category of appraisal. In the anthology of poetry produced by Tahniyatun-Nissa begum (1911-1994), who donated her lands so that the Idara could be established, the poetess writes, “bahut baatein hain yun tou tahniyat dunya mein karne ki / hum apne shauq ki apni lagan kii baat karte hain,” “There are many things celebrated for discussion in this world/I follow my own desires, and speak of things which are close to me.” The couplet is an apt reminder of following one’s own individual path amidst that world’s demands for conformity. A devout woman, who was linked on her maternal side to the respected ‘ulema [religious scholars] of Firangi Mahal in Lucknow, Tahniyatun-Nissa begum was educated at Mahboobia Girls High School and went on to pass Senior Cambridge exams in the late 1920s. At the time, for Muslim women to be formally educated at this level, was itself a significant achievement.
Tahniyatun-Nissa begum wrote a great deal of poetry, her specialisation was in ‘Naat’, a genre of Urdu poetry in praise of the Prophet Muhammad. She is reputed to be among the first female poets to have a collection of published works in the Naat genre. There are at least three collections of her poetry, including Zikr-o-Fikr (1955), Sabr-o Shukr (1956), and Tasleem-o Raza (1959). Aside from her poetry, Tahniyatun-Nissa begum was devoted to sustaining the inner everyday workings of the library and museum. Qadri speaks of his mother fondly, recalling how the Idara was managed not by Zore alone, but with the magnanimity of Tahniyatun-Nissa begum. Her existence graces these halls, as he points to where she would organise gatherings for women who were scholars and writers in their own right, and even acknowledging the steps from which she once had a fall.
The Idara initially was a male space, but it was not long before the library began to open its doors to women. Qadri discusses how it was important to his parents that a place and space be made for women scholars. “Today, it seems that it is mainly women scholars who come to seek knowledge here,” he says, reflecting on the irony.
Hyderabad’s history is also marginalised by most historians of India, who have simply not paid close enough attention to this city and its past.
As Qadri unlocks the museum, hidden at the top of the tower of the Idara, it is the portraits of women that are most immediately noticeable, gracing the walls above the filigreed and cobweb-covered windows. They include notable women of Hyderabad State, such as Mah Laqa Bai Chanda, the 18th-century poetess of Urdu, and frequently known as the earliest major female poet of Urdu – though there were others before her. There are at least two portraits of her on the walls – she was a high-ranking court noble of the Asaf Jah state, talented in music, the arts, dance, as well as poetry and hunting. Her devotion to Maula Ali is evident by her mausoleum near the Maula Ali Dargah in the city.
There are paintings and sketches of Premamathi and Taramati – a kuchipudi dancer and the courtesans of the Quli Qutb Shah dynasty from the sixteenth century.
There exists today a serai (caravan station), named after one of them, the Taramati Baradari, built under the reign of Ibrahim Quli Qutub Shah. According to local legends, the sultan was awed by her voice when she sang for the weary travellers and the sounds of her song were carried by the breeze all the way to Golconda Fort.
At a short distance away, there is a mosque of Premamati – and both dancers are buried in the Qutb Shah mausoleum, north of the serai. There is also a portrait of Bhagmati, a legendary courtesan (and later queen of Muhammed Quli Qutb Shah, the founder of Hyderabad city in 1591). Bhagmati’s very existence, or lack thereof, is today the source of considerable controversy.
There is too, a rare portrait of the sixteenth-century warrior queen Chand Bibi, a regent of two Deccan Sultanates.
About Chand Bibi, Zore was critical of how she was dismissed by scholars of his time, writing in 1938 that the “king’s birth, pedigree and influence of Chand Sultana of Ahmadnagar who was his aunt should have been dealt with in a detailed manner…it was she who made him a man of letters, a broad-minded gentleman, generous king, and valiant warrior.” That there was an entire section dedicated to the women of the Deccan, during the early twentieth century – when there is yet to be any serious scholarly books today in English focused upon women and female power within the Deccan – itself indicates attempts for inclusivity within the imagination of the Idara.
Yet, beyond these more well-known names, the Idara itself opened its doors to female scholars and poets of the twentieth century. Qadri tells us the story of how women scholars were patronised by the Idara, and that the institution accommodated them as “gosha-purdah” women would come here to study and research. At the time, this was a novelty, signalling new forms of educational possibilities for women. Today, almost one hundred years later since the conception of the Idara, the historical profession in India continues to be dominated by men, who in turn, continue to produce visions of the past in which women do not exist, with the frequent claim that obtaining records of their existence is next to impossible. It is perhaps not a coincidence that today, we are two women inviting some reflection and further research about the Idara, with a reminder that the legacies and the lineages of the past continue into the present.
***
It is 8pm in the evening and we have finally found a quiet spot in the city. We have taken the steps up to Maula Ali pahaar, at the top of which is an old Shia shrine. We take our place upon an expansive rock formation, offering its vast open natural space to us, with some quiet space all around, and stare out to the city of lights below. As we dream and talk about the need to create and preserve spaces of plurality, free inquiry, openness, and camaraderie, the historical city of Hyderabad vanishes beneath us.
*** SARAH WAHEEN AND YAMINI KRISHNA
Sarah Waheed is Assistant Professor of History at University of South Carolina. She is the author of Hidden Histories of Pakistan: Censorship, Literature, and Secular Nationalism in Late Colonial India. She is a Fulbright Scholar writing her second book, about Chand Bibi and women of the Deccan: The Warrior Queen Who Died Thrice: Gender, Sovereignty and Islam in Premodern India. She can be reached at sarah.f.waheed@gmail.com.
C Yamini Krishna works on film history and urban history. Her work has been published in South Asia, Historical Journal of Film Radio Television, Widescreen, South Asian Popular Culture, The news minute, Caravan and Scroll. She currently teaches at FLAME University. She can be reached at yaminkrishn@gmail.com.
source: http://www.himalmag.com / Himal South Asian / Home>Commentary> Culture> India / by Sarah Waheed and Yamini Krishna / July 19th, 2022
Steering clear of the actor’s controversial life, a new biography focuses on India’s notion of stardom and celebrity instead
A recent bout of illness and feeling all round wretched had me turning to my favourite comfort food — Hindi movies (I refuse to call them Bollywood movies) from the 1990s. That I was simultaneously reading Devapriya Sanyal’s Salman Khan The Man The Actor The Legend, a deconstruction of bhai’s celebrity, proved an adequate road map to my film choices…
Rather than start with Salman Khan’s big, fat blockbuster, Maine Pyaar Kiya (1989), I chose Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), also directed by Sooraj Barjatya (who had made his directorial debut with Maine Pyaar Kiya). The film, which cemented Khan as a bonafide star, actually gave his co-star, Madhuri Dixit, higher billing, a fact which Sanyal’s book mentions.
Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! unlike that other game-changer of the ‘90s, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), has not aged well, Dixit’s phulkari-inspired jacket notwithstanding. The film plays out like a loosely strung together series of incidents, songs and comic interludes. How is a dog playing an umpire at a cricket match supposed to be funny is one of those unsolved mysteries. And while we are on the topic, hope Tuffy, the dog, was treated right on set.
Defence of toxicity
Sanyal’s book mostly steers clear of all the scandals and controversies that followed Khan like faithful shadows. While there is mention of the 2002 hit-and-run case, his tumultuous relationship with Aishwarya Rai and its fallout, and the blackbuck hunting and Arms Act violations cases, the book focuses on decoding Khan and India’s notion of stardom and celebrity through his career.
What little we glimpse of Khan is through his good friend Kailash Surendranath’s reminiscences. Surendranath, who knew Khan from his days as an eager 15-year-old getting his first break in modelling for Campa Cola (remember?) to his decade-spanning superstardom, remembers Khan dropping by for late night paratha-bhurji (scrambled eggs) and his motto for working on his body — “When you have no work, work on yourself.”
An introduction sets out what Sanyal intends to do through the book in great detail. The shortest chapter is the one called ‘With Human Failings’, which lists Khan’s headline-grabbing misbehaviour. His public brawls and brushes with the law are explained away as the cost of celebrity, which does not cut much ice as one cannot sweep bad and outright criminal behaviour under the carpet of “boys will be boys”. The book is at its weakest when trying to defend Khan’s toxicity.
An engaging journey
On the other hand, Sanyal’s book is its most engaging when deconstructing Khan through his roles especially in the chapter, ‘The Journey from Prem to Chulbul Pandey’. The chapter introduces the concept of the Emploi, “a theoretical framework as developed by Erving Goffman in his book, Frame Analysis.” The emploi, Sanyal posits “is a category that accounts for the close interaction between performance and reception.”
Just as Amitabh Bachchan’s angry young man was invariably called Vijay (is his Jai in Sholay a diminutive for Vijay?) and Shah Rukh Khan’s many versions of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’s Raj went towards building an on-screen persona, so too does Salman’s Prem emploi create a film version of Salman Khan.
Sanyal traces Khan’s development through his 15 different portrayals of Prem. From the slender, doe-eyed Prem of Maine Pyar Kiya, the naughty ‘devar’ Prem in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, the Prem who sets things right in Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999) and the slightly dim-witted Prem of Andaz Apna Apna (1994), who nevertheless gets the girl to the tongue-in-cheek narrator Prem of Ready (2011), the cheating-on-his wife Prem of No Entry (2005), the dating guru Prem of Partner (2007) and the travelling theatre artiste Prem of Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015), in his fourth collaboration with Barjatya.
Since the chapter details Khan’s journey from Prem to Chulbul Pandey, there is an analysis of the characters he played who are not named Prem, including Akash in that slightly cringy but melodious triangle Saajan (1991), Sameer in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s exotically colourful Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), the obsessed lover, Radhe Mohan in Tere Naam (2003), the tapori Radhe in Wanted (2009), Devil in Kick (2014), Bajrangi in Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) and Tiger in Ek Tha Tiger (2012) and Tiger Zinda Hai (2017), Laxman in Tubelight (2017) Sultan in and as Sultan (2021), and of course the corrupt but loveable cop Chulbul Pandey in the Dabangg movies.
Sanyal, who teaches English literature at the University of Delhi, has written a thesis on the anatomy of fame with academic rigour— right down to how Khan’s perfect body also contributes to his iconography. Wish the book was better proofed as there are silly errors that grate coming on the back of such a well-researched book.
All looking for salacious details of Khan’s life will be disappointed while those seeking the magic in the bottle of stardom will not. And I am going back to watching Khan fight off the evil Crime Master Gogo in the delightful Andaz Apna Apna.
Salman Khan The Man The Actor The Legend; Devapriya Sanyal, Bloomsbury, ₹699.
mini.chhibber@thehindu.co.in
source: http://www.thehindu.com/ The Hindu / Home> Books> Review / by Mini Anthikad Chhibber / July 22nd, 2022
The 23-year-old Ramandeep clocked 3:00.04s and clipped more than 13 minutes from Priyanka Goswami’s earlier national record of 3:13.19s.
Juned Khan of Haryana and Ramandeep Kaur of Punjab. (Photo | Twitter/ ians india)
The 23-year-old Ramandeep clocked 3:00.04s and clipped more than 13 minutes from Priyanka Goswami’s earlier national record of 3:13.19s, set in the World Athletics Race Walking Championships in Muscat last month. Goswami did not take part in the 35km event on Sunday. She had taken part in the 20km event on Saturday but could not finish the race.
Ramdeep’s Punjab team-mate Manju also came inside Goswami’s earlier national mark to take the silver in 3:07.49s.
In the men’s 35km event, 22-year-old Juned pulled away from Ram Baboo and Chandan Singh after the 20km mark to lower the national record by five minutes, clocking 2:40.16s. Eknath Sambhaji Turambekar, who held the earlier national record of 2:45.17s, was among the four who were bunched in the lead till the 20km mark but dropped out after being second with 10km to go.
The 35km race walk event was introduced in India only last year in the wake of World Athletics’ decision to do away with the 50km event after the Tokyo Olympics.
Uttarakhand’s Sachin Bohra edged out Gujarat’s Rohit Kumar Yadav by a mere second to win the men’s U-20 10km crown with a time of 43:12s. Deepika Sharma of Rajasthan won the women’s U-20 10km race with a time of 51:32s
The Results:
Men’s 35km:
1. Juned Khan (Haryana) 2:40.16;
2.Ram Baboo (Uttar Pradesh) 2:41.30;
3. Chandan Singh (Uttarakhand) 2:42.02.
Women’s 35km:
1. Ramandeep Kaur (Punjab) 3:00.04;
2. Manju (Punjab) 3:07.49;
3. Payal (Uttarakhand) 3:15.47.
Men U-20 10km:
1.Sachin Bohra (Uttarakhand) 43:12;
2. Rohit Kumar Yadav (Gujarat) 43:13;
3. Aditya Negi (Uttarakhand) 44:27.
Women’s U-20 10km:
1. Deepika Sharma (Rajasthan) 51:32;
2. Bharti Bhadana (Haryana) 52:23;
3. Indu (Haryana) 52:40.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Sports> Others / by PTI / April 18th, 2022
The unit is being run under medical supervision of Dr Shoeb Ali Khan, leading consultant nephrologist and a kidney transplant surgeon.
A patient undergoes dialysis at the unit
Hyderabad :
Probably for the first time in the world, a mosque in Hyderabad has allotted space on its premises for establishing a full-fledged haemodialysis unit. Masjid-e-Mohammadia, located in Langar Houz area now houses a state-of-the-art free dialysis centre that mainly caters to the weaker sections of the society, regardless of caste and creed.
The centre, set up by two NGOs – Helping Hand Foundation and SEED US, has five latest Fresenius brand machines and will acquire five more machines in the next three months. The swanky centre, designed like a corporate hospital, has a separate access for dialysis patients and it is equipped with high quality equipment, clinical care as well as facility to manage onsite emergencies.
The unit is being run under medical supervision of Dr Shoeb Ali Khan, leading consultant nephrologist and a kidney transplant surgeon.A medical doctor, ANMs, dialysis technicians and an ambulance will be available at the centre from 8 am to 8 pm on any given day. “We have invested about Rs 45 lakh for the initial setup of this unit. About Rs 2 lakh per month will be managed by Helping Hand Foundation,” said Mazhar Hussaini of SEED.
To register for free dialysis, one can call Ph: 9603540864.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Good News / by Express News Service / July 22nd, 2022
As soon as the construction work began at site, people started complaining about the ladder which was an obstacle for padestrians and
Considering the site conditions sameer decided to make a 14 x 12 size foldable ladder and he within ten days at the cost of only 25 thousand rupees he made the staircase.
Sameer Ishaque Bagban a 31 year old fabricator is originally from Ahmed Nagar city. Interestingly this skilled young man has no relevant qualification, diploma or certification in the field of fabrication, however he managed to complete education till 10 th std.
Sameer is running his firm “Darbar Fabrication” since 5 years.
During conversation with Muslim Mirror Sameer said that our fixed stair case was obstructing padestrians, owner of the firm requested us resolve the issue by doing some Jugad, I took it as a challenge, after four days work and discussion with my partners Eijaz Khan and Asif Pathan we decided to make this staircase foldable.
As we make and design foldable tables and other items, we thought we should try foldable staircase too, and Alhamdulillah we did it. Now it is functioning normally, Sameer added.
Sameer thanked Industrialist Anand Mahindra for his tweet and expressed happiness, he says, I am feeling myself fortune that such high profile person of the country and renowned industrialist has taken note of my work and praised the idea.
He further said after Mahindra sir’s tweet I started receiving calls continuously from friends, relatives and media persons.
source: http://www.muslimmirror.com /Muslim Mirror / Home> Indian Muslim> Positive Story / by Imran Inamdar / July 17th, 2022
This IAS officer held a career counselling camp at the recent Islampur Book Fair.
This IAS officer held a career counselling camp at the recent Islampur Book Fair.
In the few months following her first posting at Goalpokhar-I in November 2014, Shama Parveen, “BDO Mam” as she is addressed by many, has become a source of inspiration to several, especially young women belonging to the minority community.
She is the first woman IAS officer in North Dinajpur district from the minority community.
Shama, a 2013 batch officer from Kanpur, had wanted to do something for the underprivileged. At Goalpokhar-I, one of the most impoverished areas of North Dinajpur, she began to act on her dreams.
Goalpokhar is largely agriculture-based. There are no industries here and not a single college in the block. People from the minority community comprise roughly 80 per cent of the block’s population.
During her short stint — she is waiting for a transfer order — Shama has, on her own, held career counselling sessions by visiting schools in her area. She told the young girls as well as their parents that if she could make it, these girls could too.
“The main impediment for the girls from my community are members from their own families. It is a popular belief that we cannot do well in higher studies. Whenever I meet the guardians, I tell them their daughters have the capacity to do well in higher studies. Please stand beside them. I tell them, let them shine. I am a woman from a humble background and if I can achieve what I have, so can these girls,” said Shama, who hails from a middle-class family. Her father is a businessman and her mother a homemaker.
Shama said her younger sister is studying civil engineering and her brother is a schoolteacher. She said her father is proud of both his daughters.
“When I started preparing for the civil service exams, I went to a tutorial in Delhi. But I realised that it was not the proper way, it was a kind of cheating. I left the tutorial and began preparing at home. I concentrated on reading media reports and hunting up events and data on the Internet. I had done my masters in history and that remains my favourite subject. I tell young people to read books as they are the cornerstone of success,” Shama added.
Choudhury Abdul Karim, minister for library services and mass education and Islampur MLA, could not praise the young bureaucrat enough. “She is an inspiration for the women of our community,” Karim said.
Rashid Alam, resident of Lodhan in Goalpokhar, said that this year’s Madhyamik exams were being conducted smoothly mainly because of the efforts of the BDO. Examinations have often been conducted here among allegations of cheating and violent reactions.
Shama’s interactions with school students have prepared the way for peaceful examinations. “She has been keeping a watch. My daughter is sitting for her Madhyamik and all arrangements are being overseen by the BDO. We know that she will be promoted and leave the block. But she will remain an inspiration for all of us,” he said. The students of the schools that Shama has visited fondly recall her quiet manners and gentle way of persuading them to carry on their studies.
“Once she came to our school. The manner in which she spoke to us was very impressive. I do not know about the others but I am determined to pursue higher studies. I used to be convinced that higher secondary would be as far as I would be able to study. Almost all girls here do not go to college as the two colleges are far away in Islampur or Dalkhola. But BDO Mam has kindled a tremendous urge in me to study,” said Arjuna Khatun, a resident of Goagaon, a village in the block.
Shama’s formula of success is simple. “If you have nek irada (honest resolve), it can help you achieve anything,” she said.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph Online / Home> West Bengal / by Mehdi Hedaytullah / March 09th, 2015
Khatija Begum (75) over the past 40 years has written thousands of poems and has compiled hundreds of books. It was not an easy job for her to do so, being illiterate she could not pen it down by herself. Whenever some verse come to her mind she would call somebody to write it. It was through her dedication to poetry that she was able to compile her couplets into books successfully.
The narrow allies of Zaina Kadal area of Srinagar lead to her house. Every day she looks at the pile of her poetry collection placed on a desk in her room with a deep sigh hoping that her books will be published someday.
“While I was into the journey of my poetic life, It was not easy for me to memorize each verse of my poetry so I asked my son to bring a tape recorder for me”. Heemal (pen name) recalls how she used to wake up at night to offer prayers and on the same prayer mat record the verses that would come up to her mind.
When Khatija took bundles of those recorded cassettes to a writer for transcription he asked for 70 ₹ per page which was a huge amount at that time so she start doing hand embroidery to earn some money. And spend all that money to preserve her poetry.
It took her 7 years to get her first book published through J&K State Cultural Academy by the title “Ser e-Asraar” which means “The secret of Mysticism”.
Khatija says that the journey of her poetic life started when she was 35 years old. At that time she was busy with her ill mother spending all her time with her, praying for her recovery. One day when she brought her mother to visit a doctor she encountered something unusual, some verses came up to her mind but she was not able to apprehend what was happening to her. After returning home she told her niece about it who wrote those verses for her.
She believes that poetry came into her life because of the prayers she got from her ill mother during her ailment. She dedicates her poetry to a Sufi saint whom she was very close to and consider like her father.
“When I took my books to show him, he was overwhelmed and he told me to endure a lot of patience so that I can bear all the hurdles that will come to my path in this journey. Moreover, he told me that what I have achieved is priceless” with teary eyes she said.
When she recites her poetry, everything around gets blurred and one gets lost in those mystic verses. She is a poetess who needs love and support so that she will be always remembered among the great poets of Kashmir.
source: http://www.milligazette.com / The Milli Gazette / Home> Community News / by Urvat Il Wuska / The Milli Gazette Online / April 10th, 2022
Jamia Millia Islam faculty member, Dr. Shama Parveen, to receive prestigious Sayeeda Begum Women Scientist Prize 2018 to be presented by Hon’ble Vice President of India.
Dr. Shama Parveen, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Basic Sciences, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) has been selected for the prestigious “Sayeeda Begum Women Scientist Prize 2018”, instituted by Jamia Hamdard (University).
pix: @ Twitter
Dr. Parveen is actively involved in research in the area of Molecular Biology of human viruses and focuses on Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika and respiratory viruses (human metapneumovirus, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus). Her research articles published in journals of international repute are being well cited.
The award is given annually in the memory of Late Mrs. Sayeeda Begum, wife of Late Hakeem Abdul Hameed, founder of Jamia Hamdard. The award aims at recognizing the academic excellence of women scientists working at any minority institution of the country in basic and applied research in the areas of biosciences, biotechnology, biomedical, pharmaceutical and environmental sciences. Scientific contributions of the candidate during last 5 years are evaluated for the award. The award carries a citation and prize money.
The award was announced on 14th September 2018 at the Founder’s Day of the Jamia Hamdard University and it will be presented to Dr. Shama Parveen during the forthcoming Convocation of the University on 23rd October 2018 by the Chief Guest, Hon’ble Vice President of India. (PRO, JMI)
source: http://www.milligazette.com / The Milli Gazette / Home> News> Community News / The Milli Gazette Online (headline edited)/ by PRO, JMI / September 21st, 2018
