Renowned Urdu author Shama Akhtar Kazmi launched her latest works, “Aitraf Nama” and “Naqosh Pindar”, during the Dr. Manzar Kazmi National Award Function. The event was jointly organized by the Urdu Qabeela Foundation and the Department of Urdu at Chaudhary Charan Singh University.
The books were released by Dr. Vinod Kumar Tripathi (IRS), who served as the chief guest. The ceremony was presided over by Maulana Abu Zafar Hassan Nadvi Azhari and attended by distinguished literary figures including Prof. Aslam Jamshedpuri, Rafi Jafar, Darraj Kamankar, Mohammad Wajihuddin, Fayyaz Ahmed Faizi, Shakeel Rashid, Akhtar Kazmi, and Irfan Arif.
The event celebrated Shama Akhtar Kazmi’s enduring contributions to Urdu literature, highlighting her ability to blend personal reflection with literary insight. Both books were described as a reflection of Kazmi’s literary depth and engagement with Urdu heritage, showcasing her skill in addressing contemporary themes while maintaining classical literary elegance.
Speakers emphasized the importance of initiatives that preserve and promote Urdu literary traditions, noting that events like these strengthen cultural continuity and encourage younger generations to engage with Urdu literature. The launch also served as a platform for scholars and enthusiasts to discuss the evolving role of Urdu writing in modern India.
Through her work, Kazmi has reinforced the relevance of Urdu as a medium for both intellectual discourse and creative expression. The successful launch of “Aitraf Nama” and “Naqosh Pindar” demonstrates the continued vitality of Urdu literary culture and the role of dedicated authors in sustaining its prominence.
source: http://www.radiancenews.com / Radiance News / Home> Latest News / by Radiance News Bureau / October 11th, 2025
Lover of wildlife, celebrated hunter, sharp-shooter, tranquillising expert and more…
Dwindling forest covers, rampaging rogue elephants, man-eating tigers and man-animal conflict are all very frightening realities in today’s world, especially in our country. The Forest Departments across the country are faced with these huge challenges. In spite of their best efforts, the problems persist.
However, the solutions by a few who have grown up understanding wildlife like the back of their hand are hardly taken.
One such Wildlife Conservationist is Nawab Shafath Ali Khan from Hyderabad, who had been invited by the Jharkhand government last month to put down a rogue elephant that had killed 15 people. He is the most celebrated hunter and the only tranquillising and culling expert in the country.
He also runs a chain of resorts in Masinagudi, Tamil Nadu.
Star of Mysore Features Editor N. Niranjan Nikam travelled all the way to meet the Sharp-Shooter at his den in the midst of the jungle at the Safari Land Resorts in Masinagudi.
The Nawab opened his heart out for nearly two hours in this exclusive interview and spoke about royalty, how to manage forests, man-animal conflict, radio-collaring, culling, animal right activists and his anguish about the villagers and forest-dwellers. Excerpts…
Star of Mysore (SOM): You are not only a Nawab at heart but also a real Nawab from Hyderabad. How much of ‘Nawabipan’ is still there in you?
Nawab Shafath Ali Khan: Well, in well-bred horses the genes carry on in the blood. So I am a Nawab. But I devoted my life to the cause of poor Indians who suffer silently, like forest-dwellers, tribals, aborigines, having lost their lives and property to wild animals.
SOM: You are the most celebrated hunter in the country. Where did it all begin?
Shafath Ali Khan: Hunting was a family ritual. And my grandfather Nawab Sultan Ali Khan Bahadur was Advisor to the British Government on man-animal conflict. I grew up at a time when the Wildlife Protection Act came into being and from controlled hunting the transition to a total ban on hunting was introduced in the country. With the royalty and nobility hanging up their hunting rifles there was a vacuum of traditional knowledge of tracking animals that had generated over generations. I tried to fill this vacuum and worked for saving India’s wildlife as a Conservationist. Hunting is a tool of conservation and all advanced countries across the world are practicing and encouraging controlled hunting and their wildlife is growing.
SOM: You are the only authorised tranquillising expert and culling officer in the country. When there is a Forest Department, which has a rich history, what are the Officers doing?
Shafath Ali Khan: As I said, traditional knowledge acquired over generations cannot be found in textbooks. The art of reading pug marks, identifying it as a tiger or tigress just by seeing it or coming to conclusions about the height of an elephant by measuring the circumference of pad mark of the forefoot is traditional knowledge. Rulers had Shikaris who managed their forests with a vested interest of hunting. The rulers’ passion for hunting not only saved trees and grasslands but also kept a check on excess animal population. Unfortunately, after Independence forest management came into the hands of Officers who were bereft of ground realities. Large scale deforestation started and wildlife mismanagement reached its apex. Certain species grew in numbers beyond controllable figures like wild boar and blue bull. Across the country, tiger population reduced due to habitat destruction and revenge killings.
Large scale destruction is caused by elephant herds that have strayed considerable distances away from protected areas into agriculture fields. Neglected National Parks are overridden with noxious weeds like lantana and parthenium forcing our precious wildlife outside protected areas.
This is the crux of man-animal conflict that has frustrated farmers and forest-dwellers; giving them no option but to poison or electrocute elephants. According to project elephant figures, there were 15,700 elephants in the country in 1980 and today we have over 32,000. The forest cover on the other hand has reduced. The think-tanks who manage wildlife in the country did not plan this explosion in elephant population resulting in excessive man-animal conflict that we face today.
SOM: As a boy of 19 years you were in Mysore Race Club (MRC) as Assistant Secretary. How did this happen?
Shafath Ali Khan: My grandfather was India’s senior-most Handicapper (a person appointed to fix or assess a competitor’s handicap, especially in golf or horse-racing) and my father was Senior Stipendiary Steward and Secretary of Bangalore Turf Club (BTC).
High taxation on horse-racing was killing the industry and both BTC and MRC were finding it difficult to even pay salaries to their staff. My father Nawab Arshad Ali Khan started off-course betting between BTC and RWITC (Royal Western India Turf Club) in 1977 and this gave a new lease of life to the racing industry across the country.
Jawa motorcycle factory Founder Farookh Irani whom I always called Uncle Irani, Chairman of MRC, in consultation with my dad, started off-course betting between BTC and MRC and soon the fortunes of MRC blossomed. MRC was setting up photo-petrol cameras to record the races and I was sent, raw out of school, to Mysore to identify where the twin towers of the cameras had to be installed. I was already a National Champion in Equestrian sports and a top rider in the country. When I finished identifying the setting up of photo-petrol camera towers, having worked under Uncle Irani for a week, he decided to absorb me under MRC and I had the good fortune of learning from him. I was there for three years.
The crux of the man-animal conflict today is that old, weak and handicapped species are pushed out of the forest by the younger and stronger animals. These animals before they could create havoc were eliminated. The village folks were happy, revenge killing was never heard of and we didn’t have elephants straying into private lands like Hassan and Coorg like we are facing today.
Star of Mysore (SOM): The fight between humans and elephants, in other words man-animal conflict is resulting in shocking number of deaths. Planters in Kodagu are facing the heat with their crops being destroyed because of huge elephant menace there. What do you think can be done about this?
Nawab Shafath Ali Khan: The problem is not only in pockets of Karnataka but across the country. Any wild animal requires space. We cannot comprehend compressing them into smaller forest areas. With the number of elephants increasing in the country, the land to animal ratio has gone haywire. National Parks are not being de-weeded and cleared of noxious weeds; to provide enough fodder to the elephants and to restrain them within the parks. Hungry elephants are forced to stray out into agricultural lands for their survival.
Elephant is wise to the fact that nutritional value is found more in sugarcane, bananas, paddy and jackfruit compared to what it gets in barren government-controlled forests. So the Department is putting animals under tremendous pressure. This pressure is changing the metabolism of elephants making them aggressive, attacking people and raiding crops with impunity.
This man-made pressure on elephants and tigers have changed their psychological persona and they are also attacking humans. We have left the problems drift so much that it’s hard to find a win-win situation at this point of time. Anyway my thinking after spending 40 years in the field is that 70 per cent of our wild elephants are outside the forests. This is a very alarming figure. There is no shortage of fund as far as Forest Department is concerned. We are sitting on Rs. 35,000 crore of CAMPA (Compensation Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) Funds. The States can utilise this money and have an elephant-proof trench all around government protected forests. All stray elephants outside this trench will be herded in or translocated.
The carcass of the man-eating leopard stretched out on the lawns of Thunag Rest House in Himachal Pradesh.
Wildlife management and human habitations have to be compartmentalised. Solar powered borewells have to be erected every 5-km radius within the National Parks. Clean and sufficient drinking water should be provided to the animals. However, the hard decision that we need to take but from which we have drifted for decades is, how many animals can survive in the relatively small National Parks and buffer areas.
Excess animals sadly will have to be culled not only for their own survival but also to maintain a healthy forest. Overgrazing and over-browsing is casting tremendous pressure on our precious forests.
SOM: There is a story that late Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar fell in love with the Land Rover you were driving and bought it. Is this true?
Shafath Ali Khan: Yes, it is true. We were all fond of cars and I had a Land Rover that I had maintained in immaculate condition. The Prince (as Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar was called by many who were close to him) fell in love with it and wanted to buy it. But, I was reluctant to sell it. Soon, the Prince and the Princess (Pramoda Devi Wadiyar) came to attend my wedding and the Prince brought a Convertible Red Triumph Sports Car which he gifted to me at the wedding. Now, I had no option but give my Land Rover to him. He enjoyed the Land Rover and I and my wife, newly-married, thoroughly enjoyed the Convertible Sports Car. Prince was very close to me and I was one of the few who had access to the gun rack that was just beside his bedroom. I had the pleasure and honour of cleaning and repairing those beautiful rifles which belonged to the late Highness Jayachamaraja Wadiyar.
The young bridegroom Nawab Shafath Ali Khan (third from left) seen with (from left) late Sirdar K.B. Ramachandra Raj Urs, late Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar, bride Begum Shaheen Khan, Pramoda Devi Wadiyar and the Nawab’s mother Begum Arshad Ali Khan at his wedding reception in Bangalore Turf Club (BTC) in 1976. Picture right shows Jawa Factory Founder F.K. Irani greeting Nawab Shafath Ali Khan at the wedding.
SOM: Isn’t there a contradiction when you say nobility indulged in hunting but they also protected forests?
Shafath Ali Khan: It was a paradox that controlled hunting that had a code and a strict set of rules where only males of deer were shot subsequent to the breeding season. Old rogue elephants and dying tigers beyond breeding age were painlessly shot using high-powered rifles in the hands of our expert shooters. Survival of the fittest is the law in the jungle.
The crux of the man-animal conflict today is that old, weak and handicapped species are pushed out of the forest by the younger and stronger animals. These animals before they could create havoc were eliminated. The village folks were happy, revenge killing was never heard of and we didn’t have elephants straying into private lands like Hassan and Coorg like we are facing today.
Wildlife management was much better balanced compared to what it is today. Across the world animal population have reduced or gone haywire wherever government imposed total ban on hunting.
Meet Nawab Shafath Ali Khan- 3 (September 08th, 2017)
When Star of Mysore Features Editor N. Niranjan Nikam travelled all the way to meet the Sharp-Shooter at his den in the midst of the jungle at the Safari Land Resorts in Masinagudi, Tamil Nadu, Nawab Shafath Ali Khan and his son Asghar Ali Khan, drove this writer in the jungle in their American Jeep M-38 A1, a 1952 model four-wheeler late in the evening and it was a hair-raising experience as the young driver at the wheel negotiated the tough, lovely, Blue Nilgiri Hills range.
Both of them are attuned to every sight and sound in the forest even as the Nawab spotted two elephants and a calf at quite a distance instinctively. Later, the Nawab sat in his unique restaurant and for nearly two hours spoke freely in this exclusive interview about royalty, how to manage forests, the officials in the department, man-animal conflict, his views on radio collaring, culling, animal right activists and his anguish about the forest-dwellers and the villagers living in the fringes of the forest.
Star of Mysore (SOM): How much of preparation goes when you shoot man-eating tigers and rogue elephants?
Nawab Shafath Ali Khan: Bascially physical fitness and mental alertness are the major factors. A hunter is a complete man. He knows how to repair his vehicle, stitch his shoes in the forest, carry out minor repair to his weapons and who could read the forest, pick up the slightest sound and check the direction of the wind. Patience has to be in abundance. I don’t remember how many nights I have spent on a tiny machan on a tree in freezing cold and rainy night.
Tracking rogue elephants one has to walk 10-20 kms a day and this can be quite taxing. Preparing for these operations has become a way of life for me. I live on the most wildlife rich area of the sub-continent where I see wild elephants, tiger, leopard and sloth bear in my morning and evening walk. This keeps my mind alert and greatly helps in dangerous and close encounters with dangerous beasts that I have to tranquillise or eliminate as per government orders.
When Star of Mysore Features Editor N. Niranjan Nikam travelled all the way to meet the Sharp-Shooter at his den in the midst of the jungle at the Safari Land Resorts in Masinagudi, Tamil Nadu, Nawab Shafath Ali Khan and his son Asghar Ali Khan, drove this writer in the jungle in their American Jeep M-38 A1, a 1952 model four-wheeler late in the evening and it was a hair-raising experience as the young driver at the wheel negotiated the tough, lovely, Blue Nilgiri Hills range. Both of them are attuned to every sight and sound in the forest even as the Nawab spotted two elephants and a calf at quite a distance instinctively. Later, the Nawab sat in his unique restaurant and for nearly two hours spoke freely in this exclusive interview about royalty, how to manage forests, the officials in the department, man-animal conflict, his views on radio collaring, culling, animal right activists and his anguish about the forest-dwellers and the villagers living in the fringes of the forest.
SOM: There is no scientific basis in culling and it is not very successful in Africa as you claim, criticise a few. How do you react to this?
Shafath Ali Khan: There is no place for sentiment and religious connotation in wildlife management. I have been asked this question in several national workshops that I have attended. But when I ask them for an alternate solution no doable common sense approach has come forth.
I basically don’t like culling or shooting. I am now an authorised tranquilliser and resource person for six States and run an NGO ‘Wild Life Tranquil Force.’
SOM: What do you do here in the NGO?
Shafath Ali Khan: We are training front-line forest staff and veterinarians of six States in the country. I don’t see any alternative to scientific culling as far as our country is concerned. As an advisor and culling officer to Forest Department of Bihar, I have conducted several experiments to arrest the exploding population of blue bulls. Bihar is a fertile State with Ganges and several rivers flowing. The Gangetic plains are rich in crops. Overpopulation of the blue bulls from the forest, which consist of only 5 percent has found its way into agricultural fields causing as much as 35 percent damage to the farmers.
If at all there is a substitute to culling, it would have been adopted long ago and population controlled. Today UP, Jharkhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttarakhand are reeling under the problem of overpopulation of wild boar and blue bulls and no solution is in sight.
Animal right activists might have a vested interest. These organisations get funds from abroad and with politicians and muscle power they arm-twist the senior forest officers to do what they want them to do rather than what is in the interest of the country. They are often bulldozed to falling in line and let matters drift.
Don’t be surprised if the price of Dal becomes Rs. 600 a kg as blue bulls, antelopes deliver two calves annually and wild boar sow delivers anywhere up to 19 piglets in a span of three months. There are virtually no carnivores to control this population explosion outside the forest. So, what are we heading for is anyone’s guess.
Shafath Ali Khan with his son Asghar Ali Khan.
SOM: As a wildlife conservationist, what is your view on radio collaring of tigers and other animals?
Shafath Ali Khan: In my opinion it is an utter failure. The reason why I say this is, it affects the breeding of tigers. Because when the tiger mounts a tigress, he starts biting on the top of her neck and it is a natural instinct. When the radio collar is there, the tiger bites into the radio collar and finds something hard and abnormal and it withdraws. I have seen this phenomenon physically.
In Siriska Tiger Reserve, when they introduced tigers with radio collar there was no breeding at all and I had predicted this 30 years ago.
Each radio collar weighs almost 1.5 Kgs and when a wild tiger is all of a sudden burdened with it then his entire movement and body language changes. This famous tiger Jay, which was tranquillised and radio collared, his home range, which was 38 sq. metres before the radio collaring, increased to 58 sq.mtrs.
SOM: Why is that?
Shafath Ali Khan: When you have something implanted in an animal, then its entire movement changes and it may come closer to human habitation also.
Also, the battery life which is supposed to last one year, never lasts that long. For instance, in this tiger Jay in Umed Sanctuary in Maharashtra, the battery ran out in two months and it disappeared. It was a pretty tiger and later it even died.
Then each radio collar costs about Rs. 3.5 lakh to Rs. 5 lakh and the cost involved in catching a wild tiger is another Rs. 5 lakh. With all this operation, it does not come cheap.
There is my own experience of a leopard that I tranquillised in Gundlupet in Muntipara village. This leopard had a radio collar, which had gone dead long time back. This animal entered a house and but for my early intervention, the girl living in that house would have been dead. It was a problematic leopard which was caught, radio collared and released and it again entered human habitation. The biggest problem of radio collaring is it gives the Forest Department a false sense of temerity to release the animal that should not be released. As a result the lives of villagers and poor forest dwellers are shackled.
SOM: Have you had any near-death-like experiences as a sharp-shooter in all these years?
Shafath Ali Khan: The most memorable day in my life was on Dec.17, 1976, when I was called by Van Ingen and Van Ingen (the famous taxidermists in the country) to shoot a rogue elephant that had killed 12 people. Since, late Uncle Joubert Van Ingen (who, at the age of 100, had written a foreword to the book ‘Man-Eaters And Wildlife Challenges’ by the Nawab. He dictated the foreword at one breath without a single mistake!) thought he was too old to trace the rogue elephant, he requested the Forest Department to invite me to shoot it at H.D. Kote. I traced the elephant and shot it and this incidence is rich in my memory.
The other near-death-like experience I can recall was just last month, on Aug. 11, 2017, when I was invited by the Jharkand Government to put down a rogue elephant that had killed 15 people and we tracked it for three days in most difficult terrain and thick impenetrable jungle, the rogue tusker turned around and came for us.
My two trackers fled leaving the Veterinarian Dr. Ajay Kumar and me. I saw the 10-foot tall tusker from hardly 10 metres coming for us like a railway engine with a loud trumpet. He raised his head to grab me with his trunk covering the forehead which is the only vital spot to shoot at that close range. A wrongly placed shot would have ended me in a fraction of a second. I took him at 9 metres and shot him in the mouth. The heavy bullet from .458 Magnum brought him to his knees. But he tried to get up in a fraction of a second. Working the bolt fast I fired the second shot in between the eyes and brought him down painlessly and death was instantaneous.
I often strive hard to see that the animal is put out with least pain and agony. Shooting, for me is the last option, when all other remedies have exhausted.
SOM: What about the experience of shooting a man-eating tiger?
Shafath Ali Khan: In July 2017, I was invited by the Maharashtra Government to tranquillise a man-eating tigress that had claimed four human lives. I darted from a distance of 15 metres when she was galloping away. But the most hair-raising incidence was shooting a man-eating tigress in 2009 in UP, where I tracked her for 35 days and nights and shot her when she charged from a distance of six metres.
SOM: Asghar Ali Khan, your son is also an authorised shooter. So, the family tradition continues?
Shafath Ali Khan: Asghar, is an authorised shooter and a crack shot. He has a .470 double rifle on his licence and helps me in dangerous tranquillising operation. But he along with my wife Shaheen keep the fire burning and looks after our chain of resorts in the Nilgiris. Often when a long drawn operation is coming to a conclusion, I summon him to join me as a backup.
SOM: Running Safari Land Resort must be a great experience for you and your family?
Shafath Ali Khan: Definitely yes. The very thought of living in a deep jungle arouses a sense of bliss within me. Forests and wildlife are very close to my heart. Riding in the jungle every morning is a thrill that I have no words to explain. Safari Land has given what no other luxurious Palace in the world can give us.
SOM: But are you related to the Nizam family of Hyderabad?
Shafath Ali Khan: Yes, yes. We are from the royal family of Hyderabad. We were equal to the Nizams, like you had the Maharajas and Ursus in Mysuru. The Nizam married into our family, our daughters were given in the Nizams family. So we were equals.
SOM: How long do you think you can carry this crusade of yours as a hunter and sharp- shooter?
Shafath Ali Khan: My priorities are no longer shooting. Having worked for several assignments for the past four decades, I have been involved in 24 dangerous operations and have culled thousands of animals. No one in the country has shot as many animals as I have done. My priority is not shooting or culling any more. My focus is to help those five crore people who are living in 1,87,000 villages and the forests across the country in most adverse conditions. Since I have worked, stayed and eaten with them, I know what it means by hunger.
Several interior villagers are living in a state of anarchy, in constant fear of wild elephants that raid the villages, break their huts, and eat away their rations. Women with infants in their arms run in the middle of the night to the next village 3 kms away. There is no one to wipe their tears. This is fresh in my mind from Jharkhand. I sometimes wonder whether the Constitutional rights, the right to life and liberty is guaranteed only for the elite and not my brothers and sisters who suffer in silence.
My passion now is to work for them, get them the due compensation, get the government to erect solar fencing to protect them. I don’t charge the government for service and time that I give. Tears of gratitude from underprivileged forest-dwellers when I shoot down a rogue elephant or a man-eating tiger, give me energy to work for them for another 100 years.
[Concluded]
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / by N Niranjan Nikam (3 part feature articles) / September 18th, 2017
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy releasing a book titled “Loyalty & Legacy: 45 Years with Congress Party” chronicling the political journey of Congress veteran Mohammed Ali Shabbir, in Hyderabad on Sunday.
Hyderabad :
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, on Sunday, released a book titled “Loyalty & Legacy: 45 Years with Congress Party” on the enduring political journey of senior Congress leader and Telangana Government Adviser Mohammed Ali Shabbir.
The book is a detailed chronicle of Mr. Shabbir’s life in politics, spanning more than four decades in which he remained loyal to the Congress party. It narrates how he began his journey as a Youth Congress leader and NSUI activist inspired by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Mr. Shabbir served at various levels from municipal councillor to APCC vice-president and convener of the Political Affairs Committee (PAC), to Minister, legislator, Opposition leader, and finally as a government Adviser.
His career has been closely linked with the leadership of the Gandhi family. He served as a Minister twice, under three Chief Ministers. The book records how, in just 58 days after returning to power in 2004, the Congress government issued an order granting 5% reservation for Muslims, and later readjusted to 4% after judicial scrutiny.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> India> Telangana / by The Hindu Bureau / August 24th, 2025
Bomb Blast Acquit Turned Advocate Abdul Wahid Shaikh Awarded PhD at MGM University, Aurangabad
Advocate Abdul Wahid Shaikh, noted lawyer, prison rights activist, and the first person person acquitted in the 2006 Mumbai train blast case, was conferred with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at MGM University, Aurangabad. The degree was presented by Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Vilas Sakpal during a formal convocation ceremony.
Dr. Shaikh’s doctoral research, titled “Prison Literature: Post-Independence”, brings focus to the writings emerging from Indian prisons, highlighting voices of resistance, resilience, and injustice. His work underscores how incarcerated individuals have shaped Urdu literature and contributed to broader narratives of social justice in post-independence India.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Shaikh said:“This PhD is not just an academic milestone, but a continuation of my struggle for prison justice. Prison literature is the voice of the silenced, the testimony of those behind bars, and a mirror to our society’s conscience.”
As General Secretary of the Innocence Network, Dr. Shaikh has long campaigned for the release of wrongfully imprisoned individuals and advocated for humane prison reforms. His latest academic achievement strengthens his commitment to legal activism and adds a scholarly dimension to his work.
Faculty members, scholars, students, and well-wishers attended the convocation, applauding Dr. Shaikh’s perseverance and his contribution at the crossroads of academia, activism, and law.
His achievement is a landmark—demonstrating how an exoneree can turn personal suffering into intellectual strength and contribute meaningfully to the pursuit of justice and the rights of the incarcerated.
source: http://www.muslimmirror.com / Muslim Mirror / Home> Positive Story / by Muslim Mirror Special Correspondent / September 29th, 2025
Women’s education in nineteenth-century India was no easy task. In the case of Muslim women, the task was even more difficult due to their triply marginal identity: as colonial subjects, as women, and as Muslims. Not only did the custom of purdah added to their seclusion from the social and cultural changes, their men hated everything about the western cultural influence (being displaced as rulers by the British). As a result, the middle class (the initiators of reform) was to develop late among the Indian Muslims than their Hindu counterparts. Nevertheless, by the late nineteenth century, a middle-class among the Indian Muslims was fledging. For this, no institution of the nineteenth-century can be given more commendation than Aligarh Muslim University.
Formed in 1920, the Aligarh Muslim University just completed its hundred years as a modern residential university. There has been a perception that the Aligarh Movement, for whatever reasons, neglected the issue of modern education to Muslim women. But there is more to this argument, some things to be explored, some to be re-interpreted.
This article, therefore, attempts to trace the genesis and trajectory of women’s educational reform in Aligarh through the profile of a woman reformer – Waheed Jahan (1886-1939), wife of Shaikh Abdullah (1874-1965), and the co-founder of Aligarh’s first girls’ school. Waheed Jahan was a pioneer of Muslim women’s education at Aligarh in the early twentieth century. Her role in ending the relative isolation of Indian Muslim women, while at the same time preserving the Muslim identity of the community, is worthwhile to recall. Her biography was published in Urdu by her husband in 1954. [1]
The educational reforms among Indian women were mostly started by men. Such men started with writings advocating women’s education. In this regard, among Muslims, Nazir Ahmad (1833-1912) published his novel, Mirat-ul-Arus, in 1869; Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914) published Majlis-un-Nissa, in 1874. Soon, magazines and journals followed, like the Tahzib un-Niswan by Sayyid Mumtaz Ali (1860-1935), the Khatoon by Shaikh Abdullah and Waheed Jahan, and the Ismat by Rashid-ul- Khairi (1868-1936). Gail Minault regards these as ’The Big Three.’ [2] Apart from literary activism, others tried more practical measures, like opening schools for Muslim girls.
As the movement intensified, so did the opposition against it. In such an atmosphere, even the talk of women’s education by a woman herself was quite a chivalry.
Yet, unexpectedly, there were women who defied the odds and broke the ground. Rashid-un-Nissa of Patna, became the first Muslim woman to write an Urdu novel, Islah-un-Nissa in 1881 (published in 1894), when writing was a distant dream for Muslim women. Rokeya Sakhawat Husain (1880-1932), a widow herself, pioneered Muslim women’s education in Bengal. Muhammadi Begam (1878-1908) edited one of the leading ladies’ home journals, Tahzib-un-Niswan. One such icon of women’s education at Aligarh was Waheed Jahan.
Waheed was born in 1874 in a landholding family in Delhi. Her father Mirza Ibrahim Beg was of Mughal ancestry, serving as a minor municipal official in Delhi. Her only brother, Bashir Mirza went to the Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO Colege), Aligarh, where he befriended Shaikh Abdulla (a Kashmiri convert to Islam, named Thakur Das before conversion).
As was the custom, Waheed received no formal schooling. She learnt Urdu and Persian from her father and arithmetic and elementary English from a visiting English tutoress.
Ismat Chughtai, in her autobiography, Kagazi hai Pairahan, records, how Waheed Jahan, before her marriage, had dreamt of establishing a school for the girls. She would gather the servants’ children and teach them, and soon the rudimentary school became popular among her neighbours. It is noteworthy that, at a time when others (mostly men) were still imagining a school for girls (that too only in their writings), Waheed, in her own limited capacity, was practically making a difference.
In 1902, Waheed married Shaikh Abdullah – a lawyer at Aligarh, and an ardent supporter of women’s education since his school days. Following the marriage to a woman with some education, he began to consider concrete ways to promote Muslim women’s education. The Mohammadan Education Conference (MEC, founded at Aligarh by Sir Syed Ahmad in 1886) had established a Women’s Education Section (WES) in 1896 to start a Normal School for girls and to train female (zenana) teachers. In 1902, Shaikh became the secretary of WES, which by then had merely achieved anything beyond discussions and debates around women’s education.
Luckily, Waheed’s marriage to a reformist like Abdullah helped her materialize her dream. To champion women’s education, they started an Urdu monthly, the Khatoon, in 1904 with Waheed Jahan as editor. Begum Sultan Jahan (1858-1930) of Bhopal, Binnat Nazir-al-Baqir, Suharwardiya Begum, and Binnat Nasiruddin Haider were some important female contributors to the journal.
The paucity of funds made it impossible to start a Normal School. Waheed Jahan advised her husband to start a primary school for the elite (Sharif) girls. In 1904, the Mohammadan Educational Conference passed a resolution to start a girls’ school in Aligarh. Waheed proved to be an efficient manager and fund-raiser for the cause.
Her capacities as a fund-raiser and organizer were displayed in 1905, when she organized a meeting of Muslim women in Aligarh, with participants from far corners of Lahore and Bombay. Judging from the context of the time when purdah among Muslims was so harsh, even the idea of organizing such an event was quite revolutionary.
Aware of women education in Turkey and Egypt and its benefits to society, she tried to convince other women; she said:
When women meet among themselves, there will be more solidarity. . . Now there is a division between educated and uneducated women. Uneducated women, who do not go out, think that respectability is confined to the four walls of their houses. They think that people who live beyond those walls are not respectable and not worthy of meeting. But God has ordained education for both men and women, so that such useless ideas can be dispensed with. . . [3]
The meeting was a success, the exhibition of women’s craft secured good funds; finally, the women passed a resolution favouring a girls’ school in Aligarh. In October 1906, Aligarh Zenana Madrasa (girls’ school) opened its doors, and seventeen students were enrolled. Urdu, arithmetic, needlework, and the Quran formed the curriculum. Leaving her own children in servants’ care, Waheed took the responsibility of supervising the school. Within six months, the number of students increased to fifty-six. Waheed’s efforts secured the school a cumulative grant of Rs. 15,000 and a monthly grant of Rs. 250. By 1909, the school taught 100 students and shifted to a larger building.
The opposition to girls’ school took new forms. One amusing story is recorded in Shaikh Abdullah’s Urdu memoir (1969), Mushahedaat o Taaassuraat. [4] Maintaining purdah, the girls were carried in daulis (curtained carriages) to school, and some street urchins started harassing the school going girls by lifting the curtains of their daulis. The mischief only stopped when Shaikh gave one of the miscreants a good thrashing. In another incident, Shaikh confronted a tehsildar who had accused the school of making the girls insolent.
When the Abdullahs proposed a girls’ boarding school, it invited opposition from elite corners. The European principal of MAO College, W.A.J Archbold; Ziauddun Ahmad (1873-1947); and Viqar-ul-Mulk (1841-1917) opposed vehemently.
The couple, however, succeeded in 1914, witnessing the transformation of the school into a boarding school. The same year saw the culmination of Muslim women’s activism by the foundation of Anjuman-i-Khavatin-i-Islam (AKI) at the same venue. Begum Sultan Jahan (1858-1930) of Bhopal graced the foundational ceremony of the boarding school, felicitating Waheed; she urged other women to follow her example. Fyzee sisters, Abru Begum, Begum Shafi, and Begum Shah Nawaz were the other dignitaries.
The Begum was already active in various social and educational reform projects. She served as the first chancellor of AMU from 1920 until her death in 1930. Having a woman as the first chancellor was indeed a historic feat.
Only nine girls became the residents, most of them from Waheed’s own family. By the end of the year, the enrollment rose up to twenty-five. This was the result of what the historian Gail Minault calls as Abdullahs’ portrayal of girls’ school as an extension of girls’ families and also of their own. To make the school successful, Waheed used to invite the parents of girls to Aligarh, for a few days stay in the hostel, to convince them that the conditions there were safe enough to let their daughters stay, records Sheikh Abdullah, in his Mushahedaat o Taaassuraat. She supervised everything – housekeeping, laundry, shopping, and even tasted each dish cooked for the girls.
It could be said that Waheed Jahan acted as a foster mother to these girls, counselling, nursing, and treating them as a part of her own extended family. They called each other as Apa (sister), Shaikh Abdullah as Papa Mian, and Waheed Jahan as Ala Bi. This created a sense of sisterhood among the girls.
This familial system of ethos still remains unique to the Aligarh Women’s College.
The boarding school project contained other complex problems, such as maintaining proper purdah. Both Shaikh and Waheed agreed that the purdah practiced in the Sharif society was more restrictive than purdah sanctioned by the Shari’a (Islamic Law). But to secure social acceptance for their school, they chose to go with strict purdah, building fortress-like walls to fend off the male gaze, students’ mails were scrutinized, and only close relatives were allowed inside.
This accommodation of purdah within the gamut of their reformist agenda, to gain social acceptance, was indeed very astute of the Abdullahs. Thus, Waheed Jahan succeeded in preserving both the elite and the “Muslim” identity of herself and her community while simultaneously breaking the relative isolation of Indian Muslim women. The girls’ school became an intermediate college in 1925 and started degree classes in 1937 (with 250 students). Waheed passed away in 1939, only after seeing her school becoming a degree college.
The relation between education and social change is complex, varying from culture to culture and among different classes in the same culture.
True, that Aligarh movement was late to include women’s education in its fold. Even the school founded by the Abdullahs did not fulfil all its expectations – their choosing an exclusively elite (Sharif) clientele limited the impact of their reforms.
But their efforts indeed bore fruits; the educational reforms for Muslim women at Aligarh contributed to many social developments. After the formation of AKI in 1914, the number of meetings and associations (for women-only) increased rapidly in the 1930’s. The growth in the number of educated women created a market for new publications for and by women.
The Aligarh Women’s College produced many women of substance, who made sure to shine above and beyond purdah, some figuratively and others literally. These ladies excelled in various fields, from teaching to medicine to writing.
Rashid Jahan, Waheed Jahan’s daughter, became a successful physician, a radical writer, and a staunch communist. Her short stories in Angare (1932) became the opening salvo of the Urdu Progressive Writers Movement (1936). Rakhshanda Jalil, in her biographical work on Rashid, A Rebel and her Cause: The Life and Work of Rashid Jahan, writes that Angare was a “document of disquiet”; a self-conscious attempt “to shock people out of their inertia, to show how hypocrisy and sexual oppression had so crept in everyday life”. Rashid became an inspiration for a generation of women writers such as Ismat Chughtai, Attia Hosain, Sadia Begum Sohravi, and Razia Sajjad Zaheer, among others.
Like all other reform movements of that time period, the Aligarh movement had its limitations too. For a start, it did prioritize men’s education over women’s, for various reasons (a story that needs to be told elsewhere), but by the early twentieth century, things were changing. The Aligarh movement not only took up the cause of women’s education actively, but it also let women (Like Wahid Jahan) be a part of the process.
Notes
[1] Shaikh Abdullah, Savanih-i- Umri-i- Abdullah Begum, Aligarh, 1954
[2] Gail Minault, Gender, Language, and Learning: Essays in Indo-Muslim Cultural History, Permanent Black Publications, Ranikhet, 2009, p. 87
(Ishrat Mushtaq is PhD Candidate, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University and Sajad Hassan Khan is PhD. Candidate, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University. Article courtesy: Mainstream Weekly.)
Janata Weekly does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished by it. Our goal is to share a variety of democratic socialist perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.
source: http://www.janataweekly.org / Janata Weekly / Home / by Ishrat Mushtaq and Saad Hassan Khan / January 24th, 2021
By Nasreen Ahmed / First Edition Pub. October 2012, x+190 pages, 8.5 x 5.5 in. / ISBNs: 978-81-88789-82-5
This is a broad study of the efforts at modern education for Muslim women, especially with reference to the Aligarh Movement and the initiatives inspired by it in other parts of UP, namely Lucknow, Allahabad, Rampur and Agra. The role of Muslim leaders, both male and female, the nature of the problems they encountered and the manner in which they countered them is the major thrust of this study. In the process we are introduced to the major debates on women and education during the course of late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.
The author breaks many stereotypes as we learn that it was the more traditional among the Muslim leadership, rather than the ‘modernisers’, who pioneered women’s education and that Muslim women themselves played a major role in nurturing the first institutions under their personal care.
Based on an extensive range of primary sources and contemporary writings in English, Urdu, Hindi and Persian, this is a definitive work in many ways, gives food for thought on developments other than its main theme and will be useful to those concerned with women’s studies, social reform, education and modernity in colonial India, particularly with reference to Muslims.
CONTENTS
Muslim Women’s Education in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of the Traditionalist Attitudes
Efforts for the Education of Muslim Women, 1857-1885
Aligarh Movement and Muslim Women’s Education, 1875-1902
Female Education Section: Early Discussions, 1896-1904
A School for Muslim Girls at Aligarh
From Female Normal School to Muhammadan Girls’ School, 1906-1910
A Degree College Managed by the University
Establishment of Schools by Other Indigenous Efforts: Lucknow, Allahabad, Rampur and Agra.
Cover photo: Papa Mian (Sheikh Abdullah, 1864-1965) and Waheed Jahan Begum (1884-1939), founders of the first school for Muslim girls in Aligarh. Back cover: Carriage used to bring girls to school, accompanied by a female escort. (1923)
Nasreen Ahmed
Nasreen Ahmed (1954-2009) studied at the Aligarh Muslim University and later taught at the Karamat Husain College, Lucknow.
She is a pioneer among historians on concerns of Muslim women’s education, as her early essays on the theme published in the late 1970s show. Thereafter she presented her work at various national conferences and seminars. Her studies are rich in sociological data: she records a great deal that feminist scholars writing on Muslim women today have missed. She is author of many research articles published in the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, a journal of frontier scholarship in history.
source: http://www.threeessays.com / Three Essays Collective
Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul was one of the 28 Muslim League members to join the Constituent Assembly of undivided India, and she was the only Muslim woman to be a part of the assembly.
Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul was born to the royal family of Malerkotla (situated in erstwhile united Punjab) on 4th April, 1908. Her father was Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Khan. Qudsia had a progressive upbringing and was encouraged from a very early age to lead a modern life, as opposed to several stringent restrictions imposed upon other contemporary Muslim women, such as that of the purdah.
She got married at quite an early age to Nawaab Aizaz Rasul from the erstwhile province of Awadh. Her husband held the position of a taluqdar, or a landowner. Qudsia had political exposure both before and after marriage, and her formal political participation took place after she got married.
Qudsia, along with her husband, joined the Muslim League in mid-1930s, soon after the passing of theGovernment of India Act in 1935. This was also her official entry into electoral politics, as she contested in the elections of 1937 from the U.P. legislative assembly, where she successfully held her seat till 1952. Aizaz was one of the very few female candidates to have contested and won from a non-reserved constituency during the pre-independent times.
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She was the first Indian woman to achieve such feats, and this was truly commendable and noteworthy at a time when most formal political positions were almost implicitly reserved for men.
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As an MLA, she also held several important posts, such as the Leader of Opposition (1950 to 1952) and the Deputy President of the Council (1937 to 1940). She was the first Indian woman to achieve such feats, and this was truly commendable and noteworthy at a time when most formal political positions were almost implicitly reserved for men. Moreover, to rise to prominence at a politically significant province such as the U.P. indeed made Qudsia Aizaz Rasul a trailblazer.
She is well known for her progressive, anti-feudal stances, such as the abolition of the zamindari system. Qudsia was a strong advocate for the abolition of communal electorates as well, as she believed it divided the society more than it united – which was counterproductive for the Indian electoral candidates at a time when there was an urgent need of a united Indian front to oppose the colonial rulers. She went on to create a strong and convincing case for the abolition of electoral reservations for religious minorities during her tenure as a member of the Constituent Assembly.
Qudsia was one of the 28 Muslim League members to join the Constituent Assembly of undivided India, and she was the only Muslim woman to be a part of the assembly. Her contributions in the assembly debates remain monumental till date and have been recorded in many official sources.
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Her contributions in the assembly debates remain monumental till date, and have been recorded in many official sources.
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After the dissolution of the League, she joined the Indian National Congress, and served as a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1952 to 1958. Later, she became a member of the legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh from 1969 to 1989.
Other Achievements
Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul is also well known for her autobiography, titled From Purdah to Parliament: A Muslim Woman in Indian Politics. It provides excellent insights into the intersectional aspects of organised politics as it functions in our country. Other than this, she also wrote a travelogue titled Three Weeks in Japan.
Besides her literary prowess, Qudsia had also served as the President of the Indian Women Hockey Federation for over fifteen years, and went on to become the President of the Asian Women’s Hockey Federation.
Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2000 for immense, invaluable contributions to the field of social work.
A Mughal painting of Akbar with Jesuits. The Great Mughals are well known in history, but few people are aware of the story of Gujarat’s Sultan Bahadur Shah. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
This fictionalised narration of the life of the 16th-century monarch of Gujarat is enjoyable but does not provide a coherent narrative.
The year 1526 was a watershed in the history of India. It was the year of the First Battle of Panipat, when Zahiruddin Babur defeated the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, Ibrahim Lodhi, and founded the Mughal dynasty. The Mughals went on to form a part of India’s most colourful, extravagant period in history: an era of cultural efflorescence and impressive art and architecture. A larger-than-life dynasty that drew the attention of faraway lands.
Bahadur Shah of Gujarat: A King in Search of a Kingdom
By Kalpish Ratna / Simon & Schuster India, 2023 / Pages: 395 pages / Price: Rs.809
What few people know is that 1526 also marked the ascension to the throne of another historical figure, Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat. Caught between the Portuguese—then tightening their hold on western India—and the Mughals, Bahadur Shah is an enigmatic figure, a man of whom too little is known, far less remembered. As Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed, writing as Kalpish Ratna, mention in the introduction to their novel Bahadur Shah of Gujarat: A King in Search of a Kingdom, most people coming across Bahadur Shah’s name confuse him with Bahadur Shah II “Zafar”, the last of the Mughals.
This fictionalised retelling of Bahadur Shah’s story sets out to explore his life and times. The book, divided into five parts, does not go the usual way of biographies: in fact, Bahadur Shah does not put in an appearance until the fifth chapter, “14 February 1537”. The first four chapters are all quite different from each other in style, setting, and narrative structure. The first chapter, for instance, centres round a village in North Konkan, its inhabitants trying as best as they can to deal with the firangi. The second chapter, narrated as a fast-paced, larger-than-life performance by a professional storyteller, a daastaango perhaps, is about Babur, “The Shining Sword of Samarqand” that came sweeping down on Hindustan. Chapter 3, “Hokka”, takes the form of a poem about (and narrated by) the two-headed doum palm of Diu, known locally as hokka:
“I’m prized here by only one man,
I’ve known him for years, and not a year goes by without his coming to see me.
Like me, he’s two-headed.
I’m the only two-headed palm in this part of the world, and he’s the only two-headed man I know.
Like a hokka, he’s hired for impossibilities.”
Just when the reader begins to wonder which way this novel is going, there comes Chapter 4, “Diu”, a somewhat dry essay on the history of this much-coveted, intensely fought-over port.
Too many threads in narrative
Is Bahadur Shah of Gujarat poetry? Is it a story? Is it factual essay? Is it adventure, ribaldry, bloodshed, politics?
It is a combination of all these and then some more. The canvas is enormous, stretching from Delhi to Chittorgarh, Diu to Shashti Pranth (now on the fringes of Mumbai), even going as far as Lisbon. The cast of characters is proportionately vast, reading like a who’s who of Indian politics in the early 16th century: Ibrahim Lodhi, Rana Sanga, Babur, Humayun, Afonso de Albuquerque, Malik Ayaaz. There are other famous names (Bhakti poet Meera Bai among them) and an array of people not so well-known: diplomats, warriors, cooks, librarians, interpreters. Plus, of course, there are fictitious characters.
There is war, revenge, lust, some farcical humour, and there are conspiracies galore. Most of it is based on fact, on events that actually happened, but narrated with a hefty dose of imagination thrown in. For instance, the attempted poisoning of Babur by Ibrahim Lodhi’s mother, Dilawar Begum, is narrated with a long prelude. It is heavily embellished with concocted details and some fairly juvenile humour: the cooks use unconventional (if that!) ingredients, the “poison” is not quite toxic after all; and the results are bizarre.
The scope of this book is so huge that it is hardly surprising that it ends up being confusing. Part of this confusion stems from the fact that the authors seem to have tried to include just about every aspect of Bahadur Shah’s struggle to get to and retain his throne. The conspiracies, plots, dialogues, and events are multifarious, and they are not tackled in a chronological or even logical fashion. Random chapters wander off here and there, telling an anecdote from the point of view of, say, Ibrahim Lodhi or Sikandar Shah (Bahadur Shah’s elder brother). Other chapters are devoted to a jewelled kamarband, to the Kohinoor, Meera Bai, the hokka. People reminisce, pontificate, and have conversations that are often obscure, leaving the reader baffled.
There are footnotes scattered through the pages and copious endnotes for almost each chapter, but these are often carelessly dealt with. The footnotes, which mostly explain a Hindustani/Persian word, are somewhat arbitrary, often explaining one fairly common word but omitting another. Some are repetitive, others are mirrored in the endnotes.
If the objective was to convey a sense of the turmoil and chaos of the era, Bahadur Shah of Gujarat achieves it. The best way to enjoy this book is to savour its language, to appreciate the somewhat quirky humour of it, and to take it one chapter at a time. To understand the many threads criss-crossing the life of its protagonist and get a firm grasp on what really happened may be a bit too much to ask of it.
Madhulika Liddle is a novelist and short story writer.
source: http://www.frontline.thehindu.com / Frontline / Home> Books> Book Review / by Madhulika Liddle / December 14th, 2023
Architectural exploration in the sultanate of Ahmednagar can provide deep insights into the political history of the Deccan.
B Y the late 15th century, the Bahmani kingdom that had ruled much of the Deccan since its establishment in 1347 was imploding because of internecine differences among its nobility. Westerners, or the “Afaqis”—immigrants from Persia and Central Asia—had differences with the natives, or the “Deccanis”, an eclectic group of nobles that consisted of descendants of the early Delhi sultanate migrants, local converts to Islam, Habshis (Africans) and Marathas. The weakening of the kingdom was accompanied by ambitious provincial governors declaring independence one after the other, leading to the emergence of five separate principalities, or sultanates.
The earliest to break away and proclaim himself sultan was Ahmed Nizam Shah I, who was the governor of the north-west province of the Deccan, later to be known as Ahmednagar, after the name of the city he would build and designate as capital of the sultanate. Of the four other sultanates that would cleave away chunks of the Bahmani kingdom, Bijapur and Golconda were the large and important ones to emerge.
Ahmednagar survived as a robust Shiite polity for more than a century, until 1600, and then in a feebler form until 1636 before the Mughals, with their unceasing imperial ambitions, completely swamped the city. It took 50 more years for the Mughals to subjugate all the kingdoms of the Deccan when Aurangzeb finally defeated the sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda in 1686 and 1687 respectively. Even though it was the first sultanate to fall to the Mughals because of its location, Ahmednagar survived as an independent state for more than 100 years.
During this time, it carved out a distinct identity in statecraft apart from leaving behind a fairly rich architectural legacy, which is the subject of study of the book under review. With this clearly defined ambition, Pushkar Sohoni, who is an architectural historian, has turned the spotlight on the sultanate of Ahmednagar and presented a method by which architectural exploration can provide deep insights into the political history of a geographical region.
The art and architecture of the Deccan sultanates was the focus of many scholars in the past. In pre-independent India, the region’s architecture was studied as an addendum to the Islamic architecture of northern India (for example, the second volume of Percy Brown’s seminal work on Indian architecture, 1942). More recently, the study of the Deccan as an independent area has come into its own, with scholars such as George Michell and Mark Zebrowski ( Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates , 1999) publishing detailed studies.
Among exhaustively edited volumes on the same theme, a few stand out in recent times, including Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th–19th Centuries edited by Helen Philon (2010) and Sultans of the South: Art of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323-1687 edited by Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar (2011).
Richard Eaton and Phillip B. Wagoner have published a book titled Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600 (2014) that looks in detail at secondary urban centres of the Bahmani and Deccan Sultanate era such as Kalyana, Raichur and Warangal.
Coming to the scholarship on individual sultanates: Pramod B. Gadre has studied Ahmednagar in some detail ( The Cultural Archaeology of Ahmadnagar during Nizam Shahi Period, 1494-1632 , 1986); Deborah Hutton has looked carefully at the art of Bijapur ( Art at the Court of Bijapur , 2006); Marika Sardar has extensively studied the fortifications of Golconda (“Golconda Through Time: A Mirror of the Evolving Deccan”, unpublished PhD thesis, 2007). The book under review adds to this burgeoning bibliography on the art and architecture of the Deccan sultanates.
In his prefatory chapter, Sohoni makes a forceful case for the independent study of the Deccan, which had a distinct identity from “Hindustan”, or northern India, for most of the past. He writes: “The deep connections of the Deccan with West Asia, completely independent of Northern India, along with the autonomous cultural and historical developments in the south have shaped the Deccan very uniquely. Detailed studies of the polities of the Deccan, therefore, of architecture and statecraft, need to be undertaken in order to explain how, in moments of disengagement with the north, unique formations were created independent of developments in North India.”
This disconnectedness from north India led to the emergence of a distinctive architecture as the Nizam Shahis developed their own style. Sohoni’s argument is that the “…architecture of the Nizam Shahs does not follow a linear development from its Persian origins to the creation of a regional style. The buildings are variously of broadly Persianate and Indic characteristics, at times both, but to call them derivative is unfair, as the kingdom of the Nizam Shahs was trying to create a new architectural language as a regional claim.”
This study of architecture and the politics of Ahmednagar also leads Sohoni to argue ingeniously that the Deccani kingdoms saw themselves as “regionalists” who were resisting the “Hindustani” expansion led by the Mughals. This is an interesting perspective of medieval India.
Thus, the Deccan kingdoms were resisting the cultural expressions of the north by forging links with Persianate lands, which led to autonomous architectural representations. Chaul, Dabhol, Bhatkal and Goa were the principal ports through which connections with the wider Persianate world were forged independently, bypassing north India. In their architecture and in other aspects such as coinage, literature and painting, the Deccan sultans intended to bolster their independent claims as Deccan potentates. At the time, the Deccan was a multi-ethnic society with strong and independent connections to Persia.
There was also a great deal of cultural interaction and churning in the region involving ethnicities as diverse as African, Arab, Central Asian and South Asian. Thus, Sohoni provides ample evidence to back his argument that the Deccan has to be studied independently from “Hindustan”.
Sohoni’s intervention is valuable for the much-needed nuance it provides to the story of medieval India. In the reductive nationalist and colonialist versions of the time, Muslim rulers are seen as invaders “…upsetting indigenous practices until the ‘Hindu revival’ under the Marathas in the seventeenth century which is a simplistic and naive model of regional history”. Through Sohoni’s work, we see that the Nizam Shahi’s forbears were Brahmins who converted to Islam. Sohoni goes on to demonstrate, through his close reading of visual architecture, that the Nizam Shahi state “…formed the basis of the nascent Maratha state that emerged in the mid-seventeenth century under Shivaji Bhonsale”.
Sohoni delineates his method of studying architecture: “In this book, art-historical methods of visual inspection and formal analysis, along with documentation of architecture and construction, expand on earlier attempts to overcome the limited interpretations of previous text-based histories.” His book has a detailed historiographical note on the Nizam Shahis combined with the study of other aspects, such as the role of guilds and the material used in buildings of the time, providing a fulsome interpretation of architecture.
Sohoni also looks briefly at the literature, visual culture and coins of the Nizam Shahs. It is interesting to note that Ahmednagar started minting its own coins only in the second half of the 16th century, and this was done only when it realised the implications of Mughal expansion and had to symbolically demonstrate its independent status.
Commencing his detailed look at the architecture of Ahmednagar, Sohoni dedicates a chapter to urban patterns in six settlements of Ahmednagar: Junnar (the first capital of the Nizam Shahis), Daulatabad (the older capital of the northern Deccan), Ahmednagar (the capital built from scratch by the Nizam Shahis), Chaul (a major seaport), Parenda (a fortified military centre built by the Bahmanis) and Sindkhed Raja (the hereditary fief of the Jadhavs, Maratha nobles at the court of the Nizam Shahs). He also looks at the water technology and the fortifications in these settlements.
In the next chapter, Sohoni looks at the palaces and mansions of Ahmednagar such as Farah Baksh Bagh, a large building originally set on a raised platform in a pool of water. Sohoni spends some time on this monument before moving on to detailed discussions of other monuments such as the Hasht Bihisht Bagh, Manzarsumbah and Kalawantinicha Mahal.
In a subsequent chapter, Sohoni discusses the architecture of 12 mosques spread across various settlements in erstwhile Ahmednagar. Interestingly, Sohoni points out that there was no main congregational mosque in Ahmednagar where proclamations of sovereignty could be made on Friday, which is something unique and can be attributed to the Shiite orientation of its rulers. In the next chapter, Sohoni looks at tombs. One would imagine that like their royal forbears and peers among the Deccan sultanates the Nizam Shahis would also have grand tombs, but barring the first king of the dynasty, none of the other kings are buried here as their bodies were embalmed and sent off to Karbala (Iraq) in homage to their Shiite belief.
Thus, the 14 tombs that have been discussed are of the higher nobles who were buried in the region and memorials that are attributed to Maratha nobles, such as the ancestors of Shivaji in Verul and that of Lakhuji Jadhav in Sindkhed Raja. Another chapter is dedicated to the discussion of miscellaneous buildings, including royal hamam s.
Sohoni does not claim to have catalogued all the extant buildings from the Ahmednagar era, but his list is fairly thorough and includes all the prominent monuments in the region.
Through his work, the author sounds an urgent note of caution as many of these buildings are in a poor state of preservation with a few even slated for demolition. Several noteworthy monuments are not even protected by archaeological authorities. Sohoni has provided accompanying photographs and architectural plans for many of the monuments in his work. His detailed appendix is also useful as it provides an annotated listing of inscriptions on several monuments.
Sohoni concludes by providing an overview of what the Nizam Shahis represented. They were the last medieval state that the early modern Mughal state encountered as it swept across the Deccan.
He writes: “This study locates the Nizam Shahs as a critical component of the architectural and political history of the sixteenth-century Deccan, and hopefully can restore to them some of the status that they once commanded in their own time.” Drawing a direct link from the Nizam Shahis to the incipient Marathi state that emerged, Sohoni contradicts reductive scholarship that sees the Marathas as breaking from an Islamicate past. He writes that “…it is possible to conclude that there was no nationhood or polity based on an ethnic identity, and that their ethnic identity was a marker of social rise through military service. The cultural forms of the greater Islamicate world, as expressed in the Deccan by the Bahmanis, the Vijayanagar kings, and the later sultanates, were also adopted by the Maratha courts. In conception, execution, and ornament, the architecture of the early Marathas was exactly the same as that of their sultanate overlords and peers. The structural forms, decorative details, and planning logic conform to the Islamicate architecture of the Deccan sultanates.”
This book is valuable to architectural historians and historians of medieval India. A logical expectation would be for similar research to be done on the other Deccan sultanates, each of which represented robust regional resistance to the imperial policy of the Mughals.
source: http://www.frontline.thehindu.com / Frontline / Home>Books / by Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed / July 17th, 2019
A reading of three books throws light on the culture and politics of the Persianate world of the medieval Deccan.
Through fierce forays into southern India, rulers of the Delhi Sultanate like Alauddin Khilji (reign 1296-1316) extended the boundaries of their empire to its furthest extent at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries by dismantling the existing Yadava, Kakatiya, Hoysala and Pandya kingdoms. Khilji’s forces even reached Madurai in the deep south, where they established a base. Mohammed bin Tughlaq (reign 1325-1351), the eccentric genius of the Tughlaq dynasty that followed the Khiljis, moved the capital of his vast empire from Delhi to Devagiri or Daulatabad, located in what is now the central part of Maharashtra, in order to have his court more centrally located. The Delhi Sultans’ rule in these far-flung domains of their realm was always tenuous, and when Tughlaq’s rule, beset by internal crises and external challenges, withdrew to north India, many provincial governors rebelled, forming independent kingdoms or sultanates.
In the Deccan, an amorphous geographical region extending from the south of the Vindhya Range to the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers, the Bahmani Sultanate was established by rebel Tughlaq nobles in 1347 with its initial base in Daulatabad. Across the Krishna, the vacuum that had set in after the Tughlaq withdrawal had led to the founding of the Vijayanagara kingdom sometime between 1336 and 1346.
The Bahmanis would shift their capital to Gulbarga (now Kalaburagi) in 1350 and in the early 15th century, to Bidar. At its height during the reign of Muhammad III (reign 1463 to 1482), when Mahmud Gavan was the prime minister, the Bahmani Empire extended from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, helmed in by the Khandesh Sultanate in the north and the Vijayanagara empire in the south. While the Bahmani empire was a powerful state, ethnic affiliations overlaid with sectarian differences among the ruling nobility led to its implosion at the end of the 15th century. The provincial governors of Bijapur, Ahmednagar, Golconda, Bidar and Berar established their own Sultanates, snuffing out the Bahmani dynasty. Collectively referred to as the Deccan Sultanates, the 16th century would see these legatee states frequently fight with one another. The mighty Vijayanagara to their south usually sided with one or the other sultan in these conflicts.
Recognising the threat that the powerful Vijayanagarans perennially posed to them, the Deccan Sultanates came together in a temporary alliance in 1565 to defeat Vijayanagara, leaving it to totter to its eventual demise over the next century (See “Beyond the Hindu-Muslim Binary” in Frontline , January 18, 2019). This brief friendship was soon forgotten, and the Deccan Sultanates continued to fight with one another. Berar and Bidar were gobbled up by Ahmednagar and Bijapur respectively, leaving these two states, along with Golconda, as the unchallenged rulers of the Deccan for some time until their wealth attracted the attention of the Mughals. The expansionist policy of the Mughals led to the weakening and eventual subjugation of these regional powers as first Ahmednagar (1636) and then Bijapur (1686) and Golconda (1687) succumbed to Mughal might, ending the glorious epoch of the Deccan Sultans.
In popular understanding, medieval India is usually equated with the Mughal empire, but this is not to say that the Deccan was deprived of serious explorations of its medieval history. H.K. Sherwani and P.M. Joshi were early modern historians who looked at the Bahmanis and their descendants closely ( History of the Medieval Deccan: 1295-1724 , 1973). One of the books being reviewed in this essay, T.S. Devare’s A Short History of Persian Literature: At the Bahmani, the Adilshahi and the Qutbshahi Courts—Deccan (1961) is also from an earlier era. The work of these scholars has been followed by other prominent historians such as Richard Eaton and Phillip. B. Wagoner, who have closely looked at various facets of medieval Deccan. Manu Pillai ( Rebel Sultans , 2018) has attempted to tell the political history of the Deccan (for a review of this book, see “The Deccan Chronicles”, in Frontline , May 10, 2019). The architecture of the Deccan Sultanates has also been closely studied by architectural historians like George Michell and Helen Philon (the two scholars’ new book is being reviewed here). A new generation of scholars like Deborah Hutton, Marika Sardar, Pushkar Sohoni (for a review of Sohoni’s book, see “Deccan Architecture” in Frontline , August 2, 2019) and Emma J. Flatt (whose book is being reviewed in this essay) have begun to use innovative methods to explore other dimensions of the Deccan states, moving beyond political history.
Magnificent architecture
George Michell and Helen Philon are recognised scholars of the architecture of medieval Deccan. Early in his career, Michell co-founded the Vijayanagara Research Project, which continues to have a vast scope and consists of leading researchers on the history of this grand empire. Since the 1990s, Michell has moved on to study the architecture of Vijayanagara’s traditional rivals, the Bahmanis and their legatee sultanates. That makes him the only architectural historian whose expertise spans peninsular India. His many publications attest to his reputation as the foremost authority on medieval Indian architecture south of the Vindhyas. Helen Philon has published on Sultanate architecture in the past and her guidebook on Gulbarga, Bijapur and Bidar has become classic reference material for travellers to these Sultanate-era towns.
These two historical and architectural experts have combined forces with the photographer Antonio Martinelli, leading to the publication of the gorgeous coffee-table book under review. There are 290 photographs in the book capturing various monuments and their details in a fantastic display of exquisite photography. A significant number of architectural drawings adds to the value of this book.
While it excels as a coffee-table book, Islamic Architecture of Deccan India is also a handy academic work that collates existing literature on the theme in its introductory essay. This essay is a thorough summary of the medieval history of the Deccan, displays impressive historical and architectural awareness and serves as a perfect prologue to the book whose pages are otherwise filled with photographs of monuments. There are nine chapters that follow, each focussing on a Sultanate-era town. Towns gained prominence in a linear fashion in medieval Deccan and the chapters follow that development, with the photographs and captions highlighting the evolution of architecture.
Daulatabad and its neighbour, Khuldabad, attained early importance as the peninsular headquarters of the Delhi Sultanate and later as the first capital of the Bahmanis. After this, the capital of the Bahmanis was moved to Gulbarga and briefly Ferozabad (which is a necropolis now) before being shifted permanently to Bidar. The Bahmani empire eventually broke up into five separate sultanates. Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Golconda were the headquarters of these provincial kingdoms and boasted majestic architecture that saw a boost after the 1565 “Battle of Talikota” with Vijayanagara. These extensive chapter-long surveys end with Aurangabad, which was the Mughal bridgehead for conquering the Deccan. Interestingly, Michell and Helen Philon choose to include Burhanpur, the capital of the Khandesh Sultanate which separated the Deccan from “Hindustan”, in their examination of the Deccan. This is unusual, provoking the question as to what truly constitutes the Deccan.
Seeing the photographs in the book, each of which has immortalised a monument, one cannot help but recall Susan Sontag’s thoughts from her must-read book On Photography . She writes: “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” Martinelli’s alluring and breathtaking photographs, accompanied by Michell’s and Helen Philon’s notes, not only make the reader aware of the magnificence of these monuments but also the relentless passage of time.
Persian in the Deccan
The second book under review is a reprint of a classic on Persian literature in medieval Deccan by T.N. Devare. A Short History of Persian Literature: At the Bahmani, the Adilshahi and the Qutbshahi Courts—Deccan was first published in 1961 and was the PhD thesis of the author, who died in 1957 when he was only 43 years old. It continues to remain relevant because it is the only book in English that exhaustively studies the vast corpus of Persian literature produced in the courts of the Bahmanis and the Deccan Sultanates. Devare’s contemporaries had made substantial progress in the study of medieval Indian Persian literature but their main focus was on the works produced under the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. Thus, Devare’s intention was to correct this academic anomaly and to show that great Persian literature was also produced in the Deccan.
Considering the demand in academic circles for a reprint, the author’s family took the initiative in reprinting this valuable book last year. Methods of historical and language research have changed substantially in the six decades since Devare did his research. Thus, the book’s conceptual approach and style may seem outdated if seen from the perspective of current scholarship, but its value lies in its wide scope and its ambitious attempt at collating texts and then critically discussing them. Merely locating all of these texts in the 1950s, when they were spread across several libraries and personal collections, must have been a tedious task.
By discussing the major works produced in the Deccan, Devare has also put together what could be read as an extended annotated bibliography of the literature produced at these courts, making the book both a useful primary and secondary source for historical research on Persian literature in India and the history of the Deccan Sultanates. Devare also reads all the Persian texts directly and interprets them for his readers. His work is foundational as he does not rely or build on the work of other scholars. It is rare, or almost impossible nowadays, to find a scholar with such advanced competence in medieval Persian. Devare also frequently translates passages of Persian poetry and prose, enriching the book.
Devare’s book is divided into seven chapters, not including an introductory chapter that looks at the historical connections between Persia (now Iran) and India. Reading these chapters, one becomes aware of the easy mobility of a vast number of Persian speakers who migrated to the Deccan. Five of the seven chapters have a clear focus on different kinds of personages and their contributions to Persian literature in the Deccan. In each chapter, Devare chronologically lists the writers, thematically linking them before discussing their work, devoting several pages to noteworthy contributors.
For example, in the chapter on saints of Islam and their contribution to the development of Persian literature, the longest discussion is on the literary contributions of Khwaja Bandenawaz, the Sufi saint buried in Kalaburagi, whose enduring spiritual legacy has established him as the most prominent Sufi of the Deccan. Bandenawaz wrote a number of treatises and pamphlets on religion and Sufism apart from the poetry that has been discussed by Devare.
Discussing the Persian literature produced by the rulers of the Deccan Sultanates, Devare devotes several pages to Ibrahim Adil Shah II (reign 1580-1627) of the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur. Like the Mughal emperor Akbar (reign 1556-1605), his elder contemporary in northern India, Ibrahim Adil Shah II also had an eclectic spiritual curiosity that defined his world view. He was addressed as “jagat guru” because of his love for music and veneration of the goddess Saraswati. Devare’s exhaustive survey goes on to include discussions of the works of the prominent litterateurs, architects, calligraphists and other prominent nobles in the Bahmani, the Adilshahi and the Qutbshahi courts.
In the chapter on poets, the prominent poets discussed by Devare include Isami, the composer of the Futuh-us-Salatin , a masnawi (poem in rhyming couplets) on Muslim rule in India, who was at the Bahmani court, and Zuhuri, the master of ghazal writing who was employed by the Ahmednagar and Bijapur Sultanates.
In a chapter on historians, Devare discusses the craft of history writing as practised by Muslim historians before moving on to discuss the works of individual historians. He makes a rare accusation of plagiarism against Ferishta, the historian whose works provide the maximum primary material for writing the histories of those times. The last chapter of the book looks at the influence of Persian on Marathi and Dakhni languages.
A flaw, or rather, a handicap of the book is that most of the dates are mentioned in the Islamic or Hijri calendar, which makes it tedious for the reader to correlate them with the dates of the common Gregorian calendar.
Emma J. Flatt’s fabulous book adds tremendous new knowledge to the history of the medieval Deccan. Borrowing methodological tools from anthropology and seeped in a robust reading of original Persian texts, Emma Flatt’s book is a rigorously researched work that opens up the courts of the Deccan Sultanates in exquisite detail. Emma Flatt’s main intention is to investigate the “idea of courtliness in the political, social and cultural worlds of the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Deccan Sultanates”. The book studies a wide set of practices among the elite of the Deccan courts and will certainly become a landmark of historical research as Emma Flatt has demonstrated how a finite set of primary sources can be interrogated to wring out new kinds of knowledge and add to our understanding of a historical period. This work is also academically exciting as there are hardly any historical works that analyse South Asian “courts” as a category apart from Daud Ali’s pioneering work on courts in early medieval India ( Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India , 2011).
Through the book, Emma Flatt reiterates the point made by the historians Richard Eaton and Phillip Wagoner in the past that it is erroneous to view the various Deccan Sultanates and the Vijayanagara Empire as having fixed geographical boundaries and that, as the movement of the courtiers showed, there was a fluidity in these boundaries. Emma Flatt writes: “During this period, individuals of different backgrounds and cultures moved from across the Persian-speaking world to take up service at the courts of the Deccan Sultanates, and between the Deccani courts with a felicity that belies modern assumptions about the fixity of political and geographical boundaries on the one hand, and the incompatibility of Indic and Islamicate religio-cultural systems on the other.”
Emma Flatt relies on three key theoretical terms—the court, ethics and the Persian Cosmopolis—to take her argument forward. By virtue of the easy movement between a variety of courts, the courtiers acquired a certain courtly disposition that was widely shared across the “Persian Cosmopolis”, a phrase that has recently acquired tremendous heft in its expression of the shared set of cosmopolitan training in Persian texts that informed the subsequent world view of the elite across a vast swathe of land from Persia to Bengal. Emma Flatt’s book looks at facets of these courtly societies and examines certain courtly skills that were necessary for courtiers in order to become part of this courtly culture.
The book is broadly divided into two parts containing three chapters each, “Courtly Society” and “Courtly Skills”. Emma Flatt argues that there was a shared cosmopolitanism that the courtiers acquired through a shared foundational education of key Persian texts whose aim was not merely the acquisition of knowledge but the development of a “specific type of disposition within each individual”. This helped them move easily across the Persianate Cosmopolis, allowing them to find employment in various Deccani courts, as evinced in the careers of two individuals discussed in the next chapter.
By examining the careers of two elite noblemen, Muhammad Nimdihi and Hajji Abarquhi, Emma Flatt demonstrates how individuals used familial, scholarly, mercantile, religious and friendly networks in order to move across the Persian Cosmopolis.
The court society of the Sultanates was heavily influenced by “…the practices, the commodities and the vocabulary of long-distance trade”. She looks at the biographies of three powerful individuals, Khalaf Hasan, Mahmud Gavan and Asad Khan Lahri, in some detail to argue this point.
In the second half of her book, Emma Flatt looks at the courtly skills that were required for “worldly success and ethical refinement”. She writes: “By disciplined repetitive practice, the participant honed his ability at a particular skill, and simultaneously refined his soul, rendering the pursuit of skills an ethical endeavour.” Emma Flatt looks at scribal, esoteric and martial skills as part of the training for worldly success and the development of a courtly disposition.
The importance of scribal skills in the development of a refined courtier is examined through the epistolatory skills of Mahmud Gavan (1411-1481), the dynamic merchant-scholar who rose to become a vizier of the Bahmani rulers.
In a fantastic chapter that looks at the esoteric skills that courtiers could acquire to rise in the eyes of the rulers, Emma Flatt does a meticulous reading of the “Nujum al-Ulum”, the esoteric text composed in the Bijapuri court of Ali Adil Shah I (reign 1558-1580). In its divergent sourcing from both Islamicate and Indic cosmologies, she sees “conceptual commensurabilities” for a courtly society made up of a people belonging to a plurality of religious and cultural beliefs.
In the last chapter, Emma Flatt looks at “…how the acquisition of martial skills was associated with an ethical ideal known as javanmardi or young-manliness, an ideal structuring the daily lives of courtly and urban men in the medieval Persianate world”.
This brief review hardly does justice to the wide scope of Emma Flatt’s work which will be valuable for anyone interested in the history of the medieval Deccan. As this review essay shows, there is a substantial amount of ongoing research in the history of the medieval Deccan, but compared with the large body of work on the Mughals, much remains to be done for historical research of the medieval Deccan.
source: http://www.frontline.thehindu.com / Frontline / Home>Books / by Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed / December 04th, 2019
