Resplendent: ‘Babur receives a courtier’ (1589) by Farrukh Baig. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons
Babur was a sensitive memoirist with the rare ability to distance himself from his writing
Babur’s memoir did not have a name but is referred to as Baburnama or Tuzuk-e-Baburi. It is the first autobiography from the subcontinent and one of the first in the world. Babur came from two different cultures, of which one was literate and aspired to high culture. This was his father’s ancestral family, which was Timurid. His mother came from the nomadic Mongols, who weren’t literate. Babur describes his maternal uncles in his memoir.
The Timurids had a tradition of poetry, hawking, music, and, of course, war. Babur was from a family of minor nobles who had inherited the governorship of Ferghana. His autobiography begins with a description of the geography and tells us that his father, Umar Shaikh Mirza, died in an accident when he was 39 and Babur 12. The young Babur struggled to hold on to his inheritance, losing several battles, including one in Ferghana, which he had to give up to the victor.
Babur describes these decades of his life in an unemotional and direct way: he hardly valorises his own achievements. Like the great Caesar, whose books on his wars in Gaul and against Pompey may as well have been written by a non-partisan observer, Babur has the ability to distance himself from his life.
Keen naturalist
Babur’s life turns when he is found to be the only living heir to the throne of Kabul. He takes it and turns his eyes to India. For 20 years, he campaigns against India, being held back at the borders each time.
Then, as we know, he defeated the Lodi dynasty (introducing firearms to the subcontinent for the first time) and captured north India in 1526 after a decisive battle at Panipat. Babur died four years later, spending much of this time travelling across India and writing his memoir in the afternoons.
These paragraphs show how much of a keen naturalist he was. “The elephant, which the Hindustanis call hathi, is one of the wild animals peculiar to Hindustan. It inhabits the western borders of the Kalpi country… the elephant is an immense animal and very sagacious. If people speak to it, it understands. If they command anything from it, it does it. Its value is according to its size — the larger it is, the higher the price. On some islands an elephant is rumoured to be as tall as 20 or 30 feet, but here it is not more than 10 feet. It eats and drinks entirely with its trunk. If it loses the trunk, it cannot live. It has two great teeth (tusks) in its upper jaw, one on each side of the trunk. By setting these against trees and walls, it is able to bring them down; with these it fights and does whatever hard tasks fall to it. These teeth are called ivory and are highly valued by Hindustanis.’
‘Like a goat, the elephant has no skin hair. It is relied on to accompany every troop of their armies. It crosses rivers with great ease, carrying a mass of baggage, and three or four can drag without trouble a special piece of artillery that takes four or five hundred men to haul. But its stomach is large. One elephant eats as much as a dozen camels.
Elegant and clean
Babur’s book was not freely available till a British amateur linguist named Annette Susannah Beveridge translated it. She taught herself the particular version of Turkish that Babur wrote in (later Mughals wrote in Farsi) and published it in four volumes from 1912 to 1922.
At the time of the first British census a century and a quarter ago, India was 4% literate. Most Indians even today don’t have four generations of literacy: in fact, the proportion of those of us who can claim to have had great-grandparents who could write is tiny. Babur came from a tradition that already had centuries of literacy.
His is elegant and clean writing of the sort that one would expect from a very literate and sensitive person. Babur’s daughter, Gulbadan Begum, sister of Humayun and aunt of Akbar, also wrote a lovely memoir in which she describes her father’s attention to detail which he passed on to his family.
These two works, along with Jahangir’s autobiography, are some of the best material available on the Mughals. It’s a shame that these books are not taught in India’s schools today.
Aakar Patel is a columnist and translator of Urdu and Gujarati non-fiction works.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books – Leather Bound / by Aakar Patel / January 16th, 2020
Khurja (Bulandshahr District) UTTAR PRADESH / NEW DELHI :
New Delhi:
Islamic scholar, prolific writer and senior ideologue of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), Dr Muhammad Rafat, who recently retired as a professor from Jamia Millia Islamia has passed away on Friday evening at the Al-Shifa Hospital, New Delhi.
He was 65 years of old and is survived by three sons, two daughters and his widow. His widow-Nusrat-is the daughter of former President of the JIH and a well-known Islamic scholar, Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari.
In the presence of hundreds of mourners, he was laid to rest today at the graveyard in Shaheen Bagh area. His funeral prayer was be held on Saturday evening here at the JIH Markaz mosque (Masjid Ishat-e-Islam).
Expressing condolences over his death, JIH President Syed Sadatullah Husaini said: “The demise of Dr Rafat is a great loss for the Muslim Ummah, the Islamic Movement and the entire country. He was a leading intellectual, tremendous leader, firm ideologue and a benevolent mentor. He was an erudite scholar of Islam and a prolific writer. He was blessed among many qualities with a razor sharp memory and an unmatched ability to give speeches on a myriad of topics without any notes in such a coherent manner that it would appear as if he is reading a written essay. He led an extremely simple life and had a very pleasant disposition. He was a teacher of theoretical physics. This subject of science has a deep connection with philosophy, so he made a direct study of philosophy and important ideas of science from its original sources. As one of the foremost ideologues of Jamaat, he always upheld and acted on the basic and core principles of Islam. May Allah forgive his sins and grant him the highest Paradise.”
A native of Khurja in Bulandshahr district of the Western UP, Dr. Rafat did his MSc in Physics from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1976 and PhD from IIT-Kanpur. He joined Jamia Millia Islamia in 1985, one year after receiving his PhD degree. He retired as Professor- Department of Applied Sciences and Humanities from the Jamia Millia on July 31, 2020.
Dr. Rafat, who was associated with the Islamic movement ever since his student days, was a member of the Central Advisory Council, the highest decision-making body of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind from 1999 till his death. He wrote more than 15 books on various subjects in Urdu and English languages.
Besides being director of the Centre for Study and Research (CSR) of JIH, for the last two years, he had also previously worked as chairman of the JIH’s Tasneefi Academy (Authors Academy) and all India secretary of the Jamaat’s Tarbiyah Department (Training Dept.). He also served as the JIH President of Delhi and Haryana from 1995 to 2011. He had also worked as honorary editor of Urdu monthly, Zindagi-e-Nau, an Islamic research magazine, from 2009 to 2019. Besides, he headed several important committees of the JIH for policy-formulation and the creation of new institutions and allied organizations.
source: http://www.muslimmirror.com / Muslim Mirror / Home> Indian Muslim / by Special Correspondent / January 09th, 2021
“Barakhmba And The Journey Ahead, Autobiography” authored by senior lawyer Nazrul Islam was released at an austere but dignified function in Guwahati on Tuesday. The release coincided with the centenary celebration of Modern School, Barakhmba, New Delhi, the alma mater of the author.
The autobiography chronicles the author’s memories of childhood in Assam, schooling in Delhi, two decades of community service mainly through the Rotary International, and three decades and more as a lawyer. Many incidents, many adventures, interactions with clients and interesting cases dealt by Islam form an exhilarating part of the book.
Following a minute of silent invocation at the beginning of the function, the welcome address was delivered by Nazia Islam, executive at Invest India, New Delhi. Delivering his address as the chief guest on the occasion, BP Todi, former Advocate General of Meghalaya, said, “I’m an admirer of Nazrul Islam since the time I got to know him as a lawyer. There is something to learn from everybody, but when it comes too Nazrul Islam, there’s always a lot to learn from him.” He expressed the hope that the book will quest the thirst for knowledge to a great extent. Among others who spoke on the occasion were PK Kedia, former District Governor of Rotary International; BM Choudhury, former Principal, JB Law College Guwahati; and Gitanjali Kalita, advocate, Gauhati High Court.
Following the release of the book, Nazrul Islam, shared his experiences about writing the book. He completed the entire book within a very short time, making the best use of the pandemic situation. He said, “Today there are many lawyers who practise on the TV channels, so I decided let me do it by writing a book!”
The book has been brought out by the North Eastern Justice Baharul Islam Foundation for Law, Justice & Social Welfare (NEJBIF), founded in memory of the author’s late father who was a Member of the Parliament and a Justice at the Supreme Court of India.
The function ended with a vote of thanks offered by Rosida Begum.
source: http://www.muslimmirror.com /Muslim Mirror / Home> Indian Muslim / by Nurul Islam Laskar / Guwahati – October 22nd, 2020
Among the multitudes of tombs in the City of the Dead in Cairo, there lies buried a lone Indian — an eminent scholar, writer, debonair statesman and a leader of the Indian freedom movement. Who is he? How did he get there? For a man who used both the lectern and the pen to devastating effect in the cause of the Indian Independence movement led by the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru, very little is known of Syud Hossain.
Born to an aristocratic family in Calcutta, he started a career in journalism early in life and became the editor of Motilal Nehru’s nationalist newspaper, “The Independent”. After a brief elopement with Nehru’s sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Hossain, under immense pressure from Motilal Nehru and Gandhi, annulled the marriage and was asked to stay away from the country for a few years. Thus began several years of exile.
Eventually, he landed in the US where he imparted Gandhi’s message far and wide across the country. Gathering a group of Indian freedom fighters around him, he fought for India’s freedom from afar, decrying British oppression and garnering support in the US for his cause. Flitting from one place to another, making homes of hotel rooms, Syud Hossain inspired and irked in equal measure. With every speech he delivered and every editorial he penned, he sent a shiver down the spine of the colonial rulers.
Adding to his formidable list of causes, Hossain also took on the fight for Indian immigrant rights in the US, one that successfully culminated in President Harry Truman signing the Luce-Celler Bill into an Act in 1946. He returned to India to witness the triumph of her Independence, as well as the tragedy of Gandhi’s assassination. He was appointed the first ever Indian ambassador to Egypt, where he died while in service and was laid to rest in Cairo.
“A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo” (Simon & Schuster) offers an illuminating narrative of Hossain’s life interspersed with historical details that landscapes a vivid political picture of that era. Through primary sources that include Hossain’s private papers, the British Intelligence files, letters of his friends and contemporary newspapers, N.S. Vinodh brilliantly brings to life a man who has been relegated far too long to the shadows of time. Vinodh, is a civil engineering graduate from IIT, Madras, and a M.B.A. from IIM, Lucknow. In a corporate career spanning 25 years, he has held senior positions in corporate real estate with leading multi-national financial services companies such as ANZ Grindlays Bank, HSBC, and Fidelity Investments. He opted for early retirement to start his own boutique real estate company, as well as pursue his passion of travelling and history. He is married to Sheela and they have two sons, both based in the United States. He is based in Bangalore.
IANS
source: http://www.thehawk.in / The Hawk / Home>Lifestyle / by IANS / December 30th, 2020
He moved away from politics in 1962 and resumed his academic career at Aligarh Muslim University.
Aligarh (UP):
Noted scholar Jamal Khwaja, one of the last surviving members of the 2nd Lok Sabha, passed away at the age of 92 after a prolonged illness, according to his family.
Khwaja died on Thursday and his last rites were performed the same night.
He was elected to Lok Sabha from Aligarh in 1957.
He led the Indian cultural delegation to Afghanistan in 1960.
He moved away from politics in 1962 and resumed his academic career at Aligarh Muslim University.
Khwaja joined the department of philosophy at AMU in 1953. He was the Dean of Faculty of Arts at AMU in 1980.
He authored more than a dozen books, including Five Approaches to Philosophy, Quest For Islam and Living the Quran in Our Times.
Khwaja is survived by three sons and a daughter.
source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home / by PTI / December 25th, 2020
The legendary Urdu critic and Padma Shri awardee has contributed immensely to modern literary discourse
New Delhi :
Legendary Urdu writer and critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi died in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, on Friday. His death came after a month of recovering from Covid-19. Faruqi, 85, was discharged from a hospital in Delhi on November 23.
“He had been insisting to go back to his home in Allahabad. We reached here only this morning and within half an hour he passed away at around 11,” Faruqi’s nephew and writer Mahmood Farooqui told PTI.
He used to live in Delhi after retiring as a chief postmaster-general and member of the Postal Services Board in 1994.
Faruqi was born on 30 September 1935 in Uttar Pradesh.
Author of several books, Faruqi has contributed to modern literary discourse with a profundity rarely seen in contemporary Urdu critics. His books of fiction, The Mirror of Beauty (translated into English from the Urdu Kai Chaand The Sar-e-Aasmaan in 2006), and The Sun That Rose From The Earth (Penguin India, 2014), have been highly critically acclaimed.
He used to edit a literary magazine Shabkhoon which he himself had launched. He is also credited with reviving “Dastangoi”, a 16th century Urdu oral storytelling art form.
Faruqi was the recipient of numerous honours including Padma Shri, Sahitya Akademi award and Saraswati Samman award.
His burial will take place at Ashok Nagar cemetery in Allahabad at 6 pm on Friday.
Writer William Dalrymple took to Twitter to mourn the demise of Faruqi.
“RIP, Janab Shamsur Rahman Faruqi saheb, one of the last great Padshahs of the Urdu literary world. This is such sad news,” Dalrymple said.
Sanjiv Saraf, the founder of the famous Rekhta portal, also condoled the death of “the century’s most iconic figure in the realm of Urdu literature”.
“His demise has left us bereaved as an entire generation of literature lovers mourn this loss. I extend heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones,” Saraf said.
source: http://www.clarionindia.net / Clarion India / Home> India / by Team Clarion / December 25th, 2020
Syed Jamaluddin Quadri who was known among his friends and family members as Khusro passed away last year in Hyderabad, his hometown.
He wasn’t keeping well for quite some time. I had been told that he has developed difficulty in walking owing to serious knee problem.
I remember Jamal as Jamaluddin and not as Jamalullah that he is referred to by many of his friends.
When his close friend and companion Sheikh Ibrahim said his organization is bringing out a special issue on him and wanted me to pen my own thoughts, I agreed immediately.
His demise had triggered a stream of memories ranging from his childhood to the time he spent in Jeddah. I had attended his funeral prayers that were held at Abdullah Shah Saheb mosque in Hussaini Alam.
I first came to know of him when I was admitted to Modern Kinder Garten, a new English medium school in Hussaini Alam, the area in which I too lived. I was not alone in not knowing the meaning of Kinder Garten. We always thought it was Kinder Garden. And no one took pains to explain to the students the meaning of the school’s name. It was much later in life that I came to that Kinder means children and garten means garden.
Khusro was two years senior to me in the school. Traditionally, the juniors do not get the attention of the seniors. But circumstances at the school were such that I came to know of him and his family in the first few weeks of entering the MKG. His father Janaab Imaduddin sahib, a salt and pepper bearded gentleman was committed to the cause of education. He was looked at with tremendous respect by his peers, teachers and students. Khusro was his only male child. He had sisters, older and junior to him. Some of them taught at the school. We the students called them Bajis. One such sister, Rafia Baji, later became the Principal of the school. That of course was much later than I left the school. Interestingly, the school is still working.
I distinctly remember two incidents from the MKG days. The first was a Kabbadi tournament where we the fourth or fifth class students were pitted against the eighth class boys in the finals. Khusro was in that team which won the tournament. We had no regrets in losing to the big boys because we had given them a tough competition. In fact, we won more appreciation as we were the underdogs.
The second incident belonged to the annual day function that was organized in the mid-sixties. The war with China was still fresh in the minds, therefore, the management decided to present a play on that subject. The play showed the dedication of the people to sacrifice their lives for the country. The story revolved around a family that had just celebrated the wedding of its son who was on vacation from his army duty. Khusro played the bridegroom wearing an impressive army uniform. Since the girls were not allowed to take part in the play on stage, especially with the boys, the management was looking for boys who could play the female characters. My friend and classmate Abdul Wahab Abid played the role of Khusro’s mother and I was cast as his newly wed bride. As I was being prepared in a red bridal dress and jewelry for the stage a senior student, Nayeem, suddenly entered the room, stared at me intently for a few moments and suddenly kissed on my cheek and ran away. He left me red-faced and bewildered. I believe he was punished for the ‘mischief’ later.
It was a great show where the beautiful bride asks her handsome husband to attend to the call of the nation and fight against the enemy. But she does it with lots of weeping. That patriotic play was a hit.
A few years after I left the MKG I was invited by Khusro and his group of dedicated friends to teach younger students at a mosque during early morning hours every day. I accepted the offer and joined the group. That was a great social initiative led by Khusro. I saw in him at that age the leadership qualities that blossomed further during his long stint in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to which he had migrated in the middle seventies. Incidentally, many of those who had worked in that mosque also left for the Kingdom. These young men and their families lived in a neighbourhood located on way to King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah. It was perhaps called Kilo Six or Seven.
After joining Saudi Gazette, one of the two English language newspapers published from Jeddah, in early 1982 I started meeting some of the members of that group. I found that in his own way Khusro had kept his tradition of social activism alive. He was helping the newly arrived Indians to find jobs and settle down. He was holding weekly classes on social and religious norms of the Kingdom and explained to them matters pertaining to religion.
He began working for the preservation and promotion of Urdu by helping students. He also started the tradition of celebrating The Education Day in commemoration of the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, every year on November 11. To coincide with the occasion he was regularly bringing out a souvenir on Maulana Azad. While I was working with Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad as its Consultant/Advisor he used to phone me asking for my articles for the souvenir. I contributed a couple of write-ups on Maulana Azad for the souvenir.
His another area of interest was Jamia Nizamia, the 135 years old Islamic institution in Hyderabad. He invited Aalims and scholars to Jeddah to be part of the celebrations he would organise to sustain the interest in religious education among Indians, especially students, who were missing a lot by being away from their homeland.
A Sufi by the belief he never hesitated in working with different groups. I remember his regular meetings with Janaab Maslehuddin Saadi with friends to gain more knowledge about Sufi philosophy and practices.
I also remember the deep sorrow in his eyes when one of his sons drowned in the sea near Visakhapatnam. That boy was spending his vacation there. But Khusro managed to control it and did not allow the tragedy to deter him from his regular work.
I truly believe that people like Khusro come from are a rare breed. They do not forget that they have to play their role, however small or insignificant it may sound. I hope his friends in Hyderabad as well as those who are still in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or in other parts of the world would carry forward his positive work.
Mir Ayoob Ali Khan is a Senior Journalist who has worked with Saudi Gazette, Deccan Chronicle and Times of India. He is currently associated with Siasat.com, an English language news portal.
source: http://www.siasat.com / The Siasat Daily / Home> Featured News / by News Desk / December 28th, 2020
Karnataka is mourning the demise of KM Shareef, the former National President of Popular Front of India. With his demise, the community has expressed grief and a great sense of loss for he was a voice that spoke in favour of the oppressed.
Since the year 2000, KM Shareef – known in the public sphere as a writer, critic, translator, author, orator, and journalist – has been working tirelessly on the social front.
After graduating with a BSc degree, he spent four years in Dubai as a career person.He was a student of Mittabailu Jabbar Ustad, the general secretary of the Samasta Kerala Jamiatul Ulema, from whom he secured religious education.His father, the late Abdullah Haji, served as a Mudarris for 30 consecutive years in the Mittabailu Jamath.
KM Shareef, who advocated towards creating a united struggle for the empowerment of Dalits, Muslims, and other marginalized communities, sought to unite these communities and struggled towards realizing this objective throughout his lifetime in the organizational setup.He emphasized the need to politically empower these communities and stressed the importance of alternative politics in this regard.
In 2003, he served as the convener of Coastal People’s Union, an organization that was established as a coalition of various Muslim social organizations across Coastal Karnataka.
He played a prominent role in establishing ‘Prastutha’, a fortnightly news magazine in 2007, and also served as the editor-in-chief of the publication.Through this media publication, he constantly wrote on behalf of exploited communities.
His writings delved into issues affecting the country, through which he warned that the country was endangered by communal fascism, capitalism, and imperialism.
He has been instrumental in bringing new press campaigns through the Prastutha publication and introducing newfacets of journalism to the press.He was constantly encouraging and inspiring budding young talents to read and write.
Opposing the exploitation of women in society, he has consistently asserted that dowry is a social evil and one of the main causes contributing to women’s atrocities and exploitation in the country.
His Kannada research work, ‘ಶಾಂತಿಗಾಗಿವಿವಾಹ'(Marriage for Peace), is by far the most prominent among his written works. In this book, he objectively outlines how dowry is in effect across the country and in what manner it is weaponized to commit atrocities against women.
When he was the President of the Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD), he organized a series of state-wide, anti-dowry campaigns and encouraged young people to organize simple weddings and dowry-free marriages.
In 2006, KM Shareef spearheaded theKFD campaign ‘ಕೋಮುವಾದಿಫ್ಯಾಶಿಸ್ಟರಿಂದಕರ್ನಾಟಕವನ್ನುರಕ್ಷಿಸಿ'(Protect Karnataka from Communal Fascists), across Karnataka. When the ‘VidhanaSoudhaChalo’ convention was held in Bangalore on the occasion ofconcluding the campaign, a delegation headed by KM Shareef had met with the then Chief Minister Kumaraswamy and filed an appeal.This historic campaign, which occurred amid a series of sustained attacks against minorities in coastal Karnataka, resulted in the KFD organization becoming a household name in Karnataka.
KM Shareef, who sought no limelight or fame in the public sphere, was known for his straightforward, simple personality and disciplined disposition.
He was in constant contact with other leaders who were activelyfightingtowards social justice in the activism circle.He continued to hold close associationswith Dalit leaders, progressive figures, human rights activists, thinkers, and writers.
He was a man who had already possessed farsighted vision and ideas towards Muslim empowerment, when he presented his paper titled, ‘Education and Empowerment of Muslims’ during the Second Beary Literature Conference.
KM Shareef is survived by his wife, three sons, three daughters, and a multitude of relatives, friends, and well-wishers.
source: http://www.prasthutha.com /Prasthutha.com / Home / December 22nd, 2020
The Rehnuma centre in Mumbra, a suburb of Mumbai, offers young Muslim women – many from migrant families – a space to chat, relax with a book, learn English or dream about their village homes
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” says 19-year-old Faiza Ansari in a low voice, almost a whisper. We are sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor of the only library for women in Mumbra – the Rehnuma Library Centre.
More young women come and go from the two-room apartment turned library on the first floor in a decrepit building near the Darul Falah mosque. They hang their burkhas on idle plastic chairs and sprawl on the cool floor. It’s 36 degrees outside in this northeastern suburb roughly 35 kilometres from central Mumbai.
As Faiza recalls Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, I insist on hearing more. All eyes turn towards her, including her sister Razia’s. Faiza paraphrases a line from Romeo and Juliet, “A beautiful heart is better than a beautiful face.” Razia looks at her sister coyly. The other girls hoot, nudge each other, and bashfully giggle. The joke is anybody’s guess.
Razia Ansari, 18, is not as shy. She presents to me an intriguing summary of the only Shakespeare story she has read. “Twelfth Night is like a Hindi film. Viola has a double role,” she says of Viola’s disguise as Cesario. Razia is trying to improve her English and has joined the spoken English class at the library. Classes are conducted here five days a week in numerous one-hour batches from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Faiza and Razia Ansari, from Asansol in Jharkhand, are regulars at the libraryLibrarian Faiza Khan also doubles up as an English teacher
Faiza and Razia’s family moved to Mumbra from Asansol village in Dumka district of Jharkhand around 18 months ago. The sisters dislike Mumbra. “There’s garbage everywhere,” Razia says. Faiza agrees: “There are more eateries than bookshops.” The sisters were not expected to wear a burkha in their village. “We had a lot of freedom back home,” Razia says. “But here,” Faiza continues, “our mother says that the mahol [environment] is not good.”
Their father owned a wholesale groceries shop in Asansol and decided to come to Mumbai, where their grandmother and other family members already lived, “to make more money and for better education for the children,” Razia says. He has since set up a groceries shop near their house.
The sisters spend a majority of their day at the nearby A.E. Kalsekar Degree College, where they are studying in the first and second year BA, respectively. But it’s in the Rehnuma library, a short walk from their home, that they are reminded, Razia says, “of the home they left behind [in the village].”
For Bashira Shah, from Babhnan village in Harraiya tehsil of Uttar Pradesh, the library is where she can stop thinking about home. Bashira got married when she was around 14 years old and moved to her husband’s house in Ashokpur village near Gonda city. Her husband was a construction labourer in Saudi Arabia. Now 36, she has been widowed for two years and lives with her mother, her four children, and two younger sisters in Mumbra.
Her parents moved here in the 2000s but in October 2017, her father passed away. He had a dry fruits shop in Masjid Bunder which is now leased out. Two of Bashira’s sons, 16 and 15 years old, have dropped out of school. But Bashira, who received a religious education and studied Urdu till Class 3, has decided to study more. “My dream, she says, “is to be able to talk to Shamshir and Shifa in English.” Shamshir, 12, her youngest son and her daughter Shifa, 9, study at the Mumbra Public School in English.
Since the Rehnuma Library – rehnuma means a ‘guide’ in Urdu and Hindi – was started in 2003, women come here throughout the day to converse, laugh, relax, or curl up with a book. The library was set up with donations and a crowd-funding campaign by Awaaz-e-Niswaan, a non-governmental organisation. The space is also the NGO’s Mumbra centre, where they focus on literacy for women and legal aid – many women come here with issues related to divorce, polygamy and domestic violence, among others.
The locality was chosen because of its predominantly Muslim population and, as Yasmeen Aga, Awaaz-e-Niswaan’s coordinator for Mumbra says, “the lack of spaces for women to take off their burkha, interact with each other and relax.” The library initially acquired members by telling schoolgirls and their mothers about it, but as college girls found out, they too wanted to join.
The library’s 350 patrons – all women, many of them from families that have migrated to Mumbai from various villages – renew their Rs. 100 membership every year to return home with books or magazines and occasionally participate in book club meetings and workshops.
At the library, Bashira Shah, from UP’s Babhnan village, can stop thinking of home. Faiza, the librarian, also helps visitors become members
In the last book club meeting in mid-January, 12 young women discussed the poems of Mirza Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Librarian Faiza Khan says, “The readers were divided into two camps – each wanting the other to concede and admit that the poet they admired was the best.” Faiza, was in the Ghalib camp, but chose to remain sternly neutral.
Faiza, now 28, started coming to Rehnuma when she was 19. She was born and brought up in Mumbra, has a degree in Management Studies, and was offered the librarian’s job in 2014. “The public spaces are dominated by men,” she says. “And women are locked inside their houses”. But at the library, she says, “women can be unabashed and sit and talk like men do.”
She not only holds the key to the library, but also helps wandering visitors become members, and nurtures their reading tastes. “Urdu books,” she says, “are the most sought after.” These make the majority of the 6,000 books stocked in the library’s five wood cabinets.
Some of the most popular books are by Pakistani authors that have been on long journeys. The pages of Ibn-e-Safi’s Imran series and Jasoosi Duniya, highly popular spy novels, have turned yellow. The library has a collection of 72 Ibn-e-Safi novels.
The plaque at the entrance of the building that houses the Rehnuma centre
And the pages of the novels of Umera Ahmad (the library’s most-read author), to Faiza’s utter dismay, are dog-eared with plenty of margin notes. There are also books by Razia Butt, Ismat Chughtai, Munshi Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, along with the Urdu translations of Shakespeare. And there is Harry Potter, and of course, Chetan Bhagat too.
Zardab Shah, 20, who came to Mumbra from Khizirpur Ali Nagar village in Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh, has been reading Ujaale ki Talaash, a thriller in Hindi by Sharad Pagare, but wistfully looks at the World Book Encyclopaedia placed at the top of a cabinet. “We are not allowed to take these home,” she says, regretfully. “I like to look at the maps and imagine going on an adventure to Switzerland.”
The closest Shah has got to a sense of adventure was when she secured admission at Banaras Hindu University for an MA in English last year. But her parents didn’t let her go. Her father is a truck driver, her mother a homemaker. “They didn’t want me to live in a hostel,” she says. Instead, they moved Zardab from her uncle’s home in the village – where she was staying while studying – to be with them in Mumbra. She is now trying to get admission in a Mumbai college. When someone in her building told her about Rehnuma, she immediately joined.
“I was wasting my time in the village… here, at least, I am reading and learning,” she says. It took her some time to get used to Mumbra, but Zardab doesn’t miss her village. “There are no opportunities,” she says. “It’s a place you can love as a child but not as a grown-up.” And now she has forged an attachment so strong with the Rehnuma Library, that, she confides, “this might be all the adventure I need”.
Shafiya Shaikh, one of the library’s most voracious readers, often reads aloud to her daughterThe novels of Nemrah Ahmed are a hot favourite
A large number of Muslim families moved to Mumbra after the 1992 riots in Bombay. Shafiya Shaikh’s family too shifted at that time, distraught but physically unharmed, from Worli in south Mumbai. The first time she came to Rehnuma was when she was seeking help to get a divorce from her husband. He had abandoned a pregnant Shafiya after eight months of marriage. But when she saw the stacked books, she was confused, “I thought that like everything else for women in our society, even books were out of reach.”
Soon, Shafiya and her mother Haseena Bano became members. Shafiya, now 27, also reads some of the books out to her four-year-old daughter Misbaah Fatima. The Shaikhs are now among the most voracious readers the library has seen – they check out 2-3 books and 2-3 magazines per week while others read and return one book in a couple of months.
Shafiya is currently reading Jannat Ke Pattay by Nemrah Ahmed, an acclaimed Pakistani novelist. It’s about sexual violence against a girl, and the story’s male lead doesn’t save her. “It’s not like a hero will come to save everyone,” she says.
Apart from the lure of the books, the library brings women together to enjoy the company of others. Here, Zardab says, “We can sit however we like, laugh, play, or chat. There’s freedom here that we don’t find at home.” A current hot topic is the popular Zee TV show about triple talaq – Ishq Subhan Allah.
Librarian Faiza has also become a role model for the young women – a job she has reluctantly accepted. She now takes it upon herself to gather them and discuss books they may not read themselves. The last book she discussed was Rana Ayyub’s Gujarat Files – on the investigations in the 2002 riots in the state – and unlike the Ghalib-Faiz session, this discussion remained utterly sombre.
source: http://www.ruralindiaonline.com / PARI – People’s Archive of Rural India / Home> Things We Do> The Rural in the Urban> Women / by Apekshita Varshney / July 04th, 2018
Deora Village (Dharbanga District) , BIHAR / Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :
Sadiya Shaikh is an undergraduate student getting her bachelor’s in Sociology-Literature in English from Rizvi College in Bandra.
It was the startling lack of discernment of the privileged and the problem of illiteracy in India, especially in Bihar, that prompted her to come to the aid of the community in any which way she could.
Eighteen-year-old Sadiya Shaikh was born in Darbhanga district of Bihar. Sadiya’s parents had decided to move their family to Mumbai, Maharashtra when she was only a toddler, to ensure that the children got the life and education they deserved.
She was visiting her hometown during the lockdown when she managed to establish the accessible, well-stocked, and only library her village has.
The Maulana Azad Library in Deora village of Darbhanga District is an initiative taken up by young Sadiya with help from her family and friends to sow the seeds for inclusive education for all the students in the community who cannot afford the luxury of getting appropriate and established means of instruction.
Deora stands at a total population of 3,446 persons and 631 houses. While the village literacy rate stands at 40.9%, the female literacy rate is a staggering 18.6%.
The close linked relationship between illiteracy and poverty has challenged the development of the people of Deora for a long time therefore, the library is of service to the students of all grades along with school textbooks, there is accessible material for aspirants of competitive examinations, along with a couple of trained professionals who help to tutor the children, who, even though, are enrolled in schools, cannot afford to go and own the required textbooks and other study materials.
“Few sections of our society have benefitted the most from the library, the youth who used to wander during the evening, now sit in the library and study, along with them, the elderly also use the library as a space to sit and read the daily newspaper,” Nawaz, a resident of Deora and a daily visitor of the library said to Maktoob.
The library has books pertaining to the school boards in the state and NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) books from standard one to 12.
Nawaz said his village doesn’t even have a well-established government school.
“Even though there is a private school just out of the village, most families cannot afford to send their children there, and even when they somehow arrange to pay the high-end fee they still cannot afford to buy the books and other school material, so the public library has ensured the well-being of such children by providing them these books at zero-cost along with the facility of issuing the required textbooks and taking them home to read,” he added.
The library has books pertaining to the school boards in the state and NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) books from standard one to 12.
Akbar Ali, a second year BCom student told Maktoob that with the establishment of Maulana Azad Library, an atmosphere to study has been created in his village.
Sadiya Shaikh is an undergraduate student getting her bachelor’s in Sociology-Literature in English from Rizvi College in Bandra. She aspires to get her Postgraduate Degree from the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Delhi.
She considers her education to be the informant that made her acquainted with the social and political predicament that threatens the minorities and women in India. Sadiya was an active participant in the anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests and has been applauded for the various speeches she delivered disputing the law at various public-speaking events, one of which was in company with activists Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar.
Sadiya was an active participant in the anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests and has been applauded for the various speeches she delivered disputing the law at various public-speaking events, one of which was in company with activists Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar.
Moving forward, Sadiya has her sights set on helping the women in her community and creating employment for the ones who are bound to the four walls of their household.
Sadiya believes that for any social change to be brought about, it’s the privileged and the educated members of the community who need to step up and stand in allyship with the marginalised, and only through education, can they stand a fair shot with the favoured class.
“Development of one person in a society consisting of under-privileged is no development at all. It is when the fortunate ones uplift the disadvantaged and curb inequality, does real development take place,” Sadiya told Maktoob.
“During the lockdown, many children didn’t have access to any regular means of instruction so the books from the library proved to be very beneficial, they also provided newspapers for older students and adults at Maulana Azad Library”- Rahela who lives near the library says.
source: http://www.maktoobmedia.com / Maktoob / Home> Features / by Sania Javed / December 04th, 2020
