For years, Akram Allahabadi’s detective novels that were once a rage, had become rarer to find.
Finally, there is good news, as his family has decided to print his novels once again and bring them in public domain.
The website AkramAllahabadi.com has also been put up for the fans of the late author who wrote spy fiction for well over three decades.
Many today may not be aware about the magical world of Urdu detective fiction that was weaved by him.
It was in the post-independence era (starting from 1952-53), when detective fiction in the sub-continent reached dizzy heights.
Akram Allahabadi, who was born in Allahabad, and who had later settled in Mumbai, was among the most popular writers of the era.
In those days, his novels sold like hot cakes. Today, it is unimaginable the kind of following Akram Sahab or Ibn-e-Safi, had among masses.
Akram Sahab created many famous characters. Among them were Inspector Khaan and his assistant Baalay, Madhulkar and Raazi were most popular.
The novels were published in Urdu and Hindi, and were awaited every month by fans in India and Pakistan. But by 1990s, the novels were hard to found, except in libraries or personal collections.
In my childhood, I have seen almirahs full of Jasoosi Panja and Mahnama, in towns in UP. While Ibn-e-Safi novels were republished, Akram Allahabadi’s (or Ilahabadi) works became rare to find.
Sometime back I spoke to a Delhi-based publisher who prints digests that has 2-3 old [Ibn-e-Safi’s] detective novels every month [of course, without caring about royalty].
The publisher said that he tried hard but couldn’t get Akram Sahab’s novels. He asked me if I had any and said that he would love to purchase them and re-publish them.
Till recently, Akram sahab’s famous novels like ‘Sputnik’, ‘Junction Bilara’, ‘Salazar Series’ and ‘Operation Venus’ were remembered. His forte was science fiction.
The website brings back the memories of the era. As an ardent fan, I expect at least of his famous novels to be made available [entire text, for free] for visitors to the website.
This would be a ‘tabarruk’ for his fans. Also, those who haven’t read him before, will get to read at least one of his complete work.
The photographs of the master writer and his family, apart from covers of his novels, are treat to his fans. As a fan of the late writer, I am thankful to all those who helped create the website. Hope, they will keep updating and adding more novels to it. It’s very important to keep his legacy alive.
Oxford University Press launched ‘Poetry of Belonging – Muslim Imaginings of India 1850-1950’ by Ali Khan Mahmudabad. The book engages with the question of Muslim rootedness in India
Oxford University Press, the world’s largest university press, launched ‘Poetry of Belonging – Muslim Imaginings of India 1850-1950’ by Ali Khan Mahmudabad on Wednesday. The book engages with the question of Muslim rootedness in India.
The book launch took place in the presence of the author Ali Khan Mahmudabad, Ali Khan Mahmudabad is an academic, columnist, and public speaker. This was followed by a panel discussion and remarks on the books with eminent panellists.
The Poetry of Belonging is an exploration of north-Indian Muslim identity through poetry at a time when the Indian nation-state did not exist. Between 1850 and 1950, when pre-colonial forms of cultural traditions, such as the mushairas, were undergoing massive transformations to remain relevant, certain Muslim ‘voices’ configured, negotiated, and articulated their imaginings of what it meant to be Muslim. Using poetry as an archive, the book traces the history of the mushairas, the site of poetic performance, as a way of understanding public spaces through the changing economic, social, political, and technological contexts of the time.
The book seeks to locate the changing ideas of ‘watan’ (homeland) and hubb-e watanī (patriotism) in order to offer new perspectives on how Muslim intellectuals, poets, political leaders, and journalists conceived of and expressed their relationship to India and to the transnational Muslim community.
The volume aims to spark a renegotiation of identity and belonging, especially at a time when Muslim loyalty to India has yet again emerged as a politically polarizing question.
The Author is currently an assistant professor of history and political science at Ashoka University, Sonipat.
source: http://www.nationalherald.com / National Herald / Home> Reviews & Recommendations / by NH Web Desk / February 27th, 2020
In the anxiety to label Indian architecture as Hindu, Buddhist, British imperial and Islamic, the buildings lost some of their power to evoke wonder and surprise.
Qutub Minar in New Delhi | Commons
In the 1950s and ’60s, visitors to Delhi’s Qutub Minar often saw a crowd of schoolchildren following an unlikely Pied Piper, a frail man in a white kurta and pyjama, wearing a Gandhi cap, and giving them their first lesson in art history. Mohammad Mujeeb was one of those iconic professors who communicated just as easily with schoolchildren as he did with college students and his colleagues. He instilled in them a love for historic cities, made them see the places as works of art.
In those years, the Delhi skyline and groundline were dominated by monuments. For many families, these landscapes were synonymous with Sunday picnics. For art historians, these spaces became popular hunting grounds, and a number of case studies on architecture took shape in the 1970s.
But the lay reader was more familiar with surveys of Indian architecture. Of these, Percy Brown’s books were the most sought after. His volumes, Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu), and Indian Architecture (The Islamic Period), published in 1942, contain amine of information. However, because he divided the theme in a binary, he missed out on capturing the special quality of the 14th-17th centuries — the cosmopolitanism in architecture — when rich and powerful rulers, irrespective of religion, engaged skilled artisans and engineers from across south and west Asia to design beautiful public spaces.
Architectural crossover
In that era of increasing globalisation, artisans met and exchanged recipes for architectural design, and travelled great distances, confident of their patronage. Guilds from the Middle East were employed to design the great pillars of Yorkminster, and Indian stone-masons learned structural engineering from Uzbek architects. Chinese porcelain gave its name to the funerary monument Chini Ka Rauza (China Tomb) in Agra. British tourists to Italy brought back fragments of Roman sculpture to display proudly in their country estates, while Feroz Shah Tughlaq had two Ashoka pillars (only no one knew what they were) ferried to Delhi from Meerut and Topra (Haryana), to embellish his mosque and his estate on the Ridge.
James Fergusson, in the mid-19th century, had sought to make sense of the myriad buildings in India. He found it simplest to classify them by ‘style’. Function, it was assumed, shaped the form, and buildings were labelled ‘Buddhist’, ‘Hindu’ or ‘Islamic’. The term ‘Indo-Saracenic’ was coined to describe styles with elements of both, as well as for the British imperial style, which deliberately included decorative Indian elements. In this anxiety over labels, the buildings lost some of their power to evoke wonder and surprise, to speak to the hearts and minds of the people.
Indian-Muslim architecture
Both mosques and tombs adopted from and adapted to the local environment, which is why Mujeeb insists that they be described not as ‘Muslim’ but as ‘Indian Muslim’. They, and other public areas — streets and walled gardens — made for beautiful cities, with a quality of repose and of camaraderie. Soaring arches and minars (towers) connected the earth to the sky, to heaven. (Mujeeb was too much of a rationalist to fall for the belief that djinns lived in historic buildings and could fulfil people’s prayers.)
Communal practices do shape houses of worship — and there is a fundamental difference of form between a congregational masjid (‘beauty without mystery’) and a mandir, where there is mystic communion between deity and worshipper. As for the tomb: “[It] was a symbol of unifying life, death and eternity; primitive beliefs associated with kingship gave the royal tomb a mysterious significance…The tomb of a ruler was the expression of personality, of a force which the community needed to maintain its self-confidence in a world of conflicts,” Mujeeb wrote in The Indian Muslims (1967). He was not averse to sounding tongue-in-cheek while describing Humayun’s mausoleum: “There is nothing we know of Humayun that would justify our regarding him as an outstanding personality; his tomb is much greater than he.”
The urban architecture of early modern India has some of the features of Persian or Turkish cities, but is most similar to those of Rajput kingdoms, contemporary with those of the Mughals. Both were shaped by the climate, conditioned by topography, the fact that they were built by skilled stone-masons rather than brickworkers, and by the deliberate choice of Indian ornamental motifs.
The Indian-Muslim architect rejoiced in being “free from the beginning, free from fear and hatred, from law and custom, from the conflicts of ideals and interests. There were no limits fixed except those of his own aptitude and means, and the nature and availability of structural material.” They created an architecture that was not just frozen music, but also frozen poetry. It was both the architecture of Urdu poetry and the poetry of our architecture that made cities in India the grandest in the early modern age.
This article is the seventh of an eight-part series on ‘Reading A City’ with Saha Sutra on www.sahapedia.org, an open online resource on the arts, cultures and heritage of India.
Dr Narayani Gupta writes on urban history, particularly that of Delhi. Views are personal.
Srinagar, JAMMU & KASHMIR / London, UNITED KINGDOM :
The Hindu Prize for Fiction and Non-fiction for 2019 have just been announced. Mirza Waheed for Tell Me Everything (Context) and Santanu Das for India, Empire, and First World War Culture: Writings, Images and Songs (Cambridge University Press) have been awarded the literary prize, in the fiction and non-fiction categories, respectively, by the jury.
The citation for Waheed’s award read: “An extraordinary work of fictionwhose complexity, depth and narrative mastery would be hard to match in contemporary world literature.” According a report in The Hindu, the panel described the book as “a compelling novel, both a narrative tour de force and an exploration of a profound existential and moral conundrum.” The fiction jury panel had Navtej Sarna, Nilanjana Roy, Pradeep Sebastian, J Devika and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan.
The citation for Das’ award read “a sensitive exploration of the human dimensions of a major modern war that reshaped global politics and culture in fundamental ways,” and “helps to re-examine the scholarly and popular imaginations of the First World War which have tended to ignore the involvement of close to over a million Indians in it, and in particular, the tens of thousands among them who lost their lives.” The non-fiction jury panel included Kamini Mahadevan, Chandan Gowda, Harsh Sethi, Rustom Bharucha and Shiv Visvanathan.
The shortlist for the awards announced earlier included (apart from the winning books):
Fiction: The Assassination of Indira Gandhi by Upamanyu Chatterjee, The Queen of Jasmine Country by Sharanya Manivannan, Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangu Swarup and Heat by Poomani, tr. Kalyan Raman.
Non-fiction: Early Indians by Tony Joseph, Polio by Thomas Abraham, The Transformative Constitution by Gautam Bhatia and The Anatomy of Hate by Revati Laul.
The Hindu, in its report on the award , has also said that “The prize is usually awarded at a ceremony during The Hindu’s annual literature festival Lit For Life. However the 2020 edition had to be cancelled due to a challenging environment. An award ceremony to be held on March 28 was also cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hindu Lit For Life will be back in January 2021″.
source: http://www.silverscreen.in / SilverScreen India / Home> News / by Silver Screen India Staff / March 26th, 2020
Today, we remember these 5 powerful Indian Muslim feminist writers, who wrote boldly of issues that were considered taboo, shattering gender roles and stereotypes in their fierce writing and the politics they advocated for.
Watch this video detailing the life and times of luminaries like Ismat Chughtai, Rashid Jahan, Begum Rokeya, Wajida Tabassum and Qurratulain Hyder. #IndianWomenInHistory
source: http://www.youtube.com /
source: http://www.feminisminindia.com / Feminism In India (FII) / Home> History / by FII Team / November 09th, 2017
In a new book, Sonal Chaturvedi traces the life of late Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani, the first Kashmiri Ashok Chakra awardee.
File photo of Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani |PTI
Killings in the valley were still a routine. Security forces were on their toes to combat these. Two months after these statements were made, thirty-five Hindus were killed in two separate incidents in Kashmir in May 2006. The killings were believed to be the handiwork of Islamist militants, just days before a scheduled meeting between Prime Minister Singh and the Kashmiri separatists.
In one incident, shooters stormed a village in the Doda district, dragged Hindu villagers from their homes and shot twenty-two of them dead. In another, in the neighbouring Udhampur district, suspected militants kidnapped thirteen villagers from a remote mountain spot. Four of their bodies were found lying in the woods late on a Sunday, while the rest were discovered on Monday, the police said. Even though the stories of bloodshed in Kashmir were never-ending, these gruesome incidents were the deadliest instances of violence since peace talks had been initiated between both the countries more than two years ago.
These attacks were a concern for the Indian Armed Forces as well. Apart from being heinous crimes that needed to be punished, these attacks were worrisome because they could hamper Hindu-Muslim peace. This issue was a point of discussion as it could disrupt the peace talks between separatists and the prime minister.
Every household spoke about this. ‘How can these terrorists take the lives of innocents in the name of Allah? Had they read the Quran, they would have known the truth,’ Nazir sighed.
One soldier said, ‘These attacks are to fuel the fire burning in Kashmir. These people do not believe in any God, they believe in bloodshed.’
One day when they were going for patrol, Nazir took a packet of chocolate and placed it in his bag.
‘Is it for Shahid and Athar?’ Hanif asked, tying his shoes.
‘It is for the kids we ’ll meet on our patrol. The people here don’t have a very high opinion of the armed forces. I carry chocolates whenever I go for routine patrols and give it to the kids on the way. I think it’ll help in erasing fear from their minds. When the family sees that the kids are happy, it will have a positive impact.’
‘Kitna sochta hai tu, yaar (You think about these things so much, my friend),’ Hanif smiled. Nazir handed over a packet to him and said, ‘Tu bhi soch (You start thinking too).’ Major Jamwal knew about Nazir’s actions and eventually whenever they went out for patrol, they inevitably started keeping packets of chocolate in the vehicle.
While Nazir was busy with his increasing responsibilities at work, at home, Mahajabeena was busy with the kids and her studies. She was pursuing a BA through correspondence. Athar was almost of age to be enrolled in school and Shahid was getting naughtier with every passing day. There were weeks when Nazir was not able to come home and during those times, Mahajabeena prayed for his wellbeing as she managed their home herself. When Nazir was home, however, it would be a complete riot for the kids. They would binge-watch Motu Patlu, Tom and Jerry and other cartoon shows together.
You are a grown-up, why do you behave like Athar and Shahid?’ Mahajabeena used to get irritated at times. Nazir would say, ‘What does watching cartoons have to do with age? I love watching them. And now with kids, it’s more fun.’ They were having this light argument when their neighbour from Cheki arrived. ‘Arey Hassan, please come inside, sab khairiyat(everything okay)? You didn’t inform me you would be coming,’ Nazir wondered what might have broughthim there. Hassan sounded worried; he said he needed Nazir’s help.
‘But what happened, bhaijaan? Everything well at home?’ Mahajabeena asked. Hassan was struggling to choose his words and at last, he said, ‘Bhaijaan you have seen Abdul since birth.’
‘Your youngest brother, right,’ Nazir confirmed.
‘Yes, bhaijaan…he was outstanding in studies. As you know, I left my education and worked so that he could study and become someone. But he was acting strange a few weeks ago. He was not talking to us. It looked like he was trying to avoid us. And above everything, he had started missing classes.’ Mahajabeena and Nazir were listening patiently.
‘I tried to follow him at times and talked to his friends. Bhaijaan, they say that he wants to join the terrorists, he wants to fight,’ Hassan broke out in sobs. Nazir tried to console Hassan. He promised to come and speak to his brother.
Hassan held Nazir’s hands in his, ‘But promise me that you will not discuss this with anyone else.’
‘I won’t, you have my word,’ Nazir assured him, ‘Let’s leave right away.’ He told Mahajabeena that he would be back by evening and they left.
When they reached Cheki, Hassan took him directly to his home. They met Hassan’s father, who knew the reason for Nazir’s arrival. ‘Abdul is in the backyard,’ he said, gravely.
In the backyard, they saw Abdul busy on his phone. On hearing footsteps, he turned around and was shocked to find Nazir accompanying his brother. The two men greeted each other.
‘I’ll ask Ammi to prepare tea, it has been so long since you last came,’ Hassan left them alone and went inside the house.
Nazir continued, ‘So how are studies going, Abdul? Hassan tells me that you are very good at studies.’
Abdul waited for a moment to reply and then said in a stern voice, ‘I am thinking of not pursuing education any further, bhaijaan. Now I wish to learn about Allah and follow the path which will lead to peace in our homes.’
It was not difficult for Nazir to understand what Abdul meant. But he decided to put across his point without using the word ‘terrorist’. ‘That is good thinking. But why do you need to leave studies for it? You can serve our land better when you study and become something.’
Abdul had not expected Nazir to confront him in such a way. He was taken aback a little. Nazir continued, ‘The root word of Islam is salema which stands for peace, purity, submission and obedience.
So, the spirit of Islam is the spirit of peace. The first verse of the Quran breathes the spirit of peace; it reads: “In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate”. It describes reconciliation as the best policy and states that God abhors any disturbance of peace.’ Abdul didn’t say anything. He just listened.
‘So, I don’t think any path that asks for bloodshed or hurts your family is ever worth following. Even Allah will not approve of that.’
Abdul, being a little at ease with the discussion now, asked, ‘Bhaijaan, what you are saying is right, but don’t you think sometimes we need to take matters into our hands?’
Nazir nodded, ‘Yes we do, but we should always keep an eye on what is right. The path which focuses on the safety of others rather than instilling terror is the one that should always be chosen.’ Both remained silent for a moment. Abdul was scratching the wall as if thinking over what Nazir had just said.
Nazir looked at him and continued, ‘Education opens up a new world to you. So, my advice is don’t give up on something which will benefit you, your family and society in the long run just because you are disturbed now. Your brother has given up his dreams so that yours can flourish. Your Ammi and Abbu have their hopes attached to you. Don’t break their heart.
And when the time comes, Allah will show you the right path, as he guided me. Trust Him more than yourself and everything will fall in place.’ Abdul nodded in agreement. For Nazir, this assurance was enough to feel that his efforts were worth it.
‘Tea is waiting, Ammi wants both of you to come inside,’ Hassan called.
‘Coming, bhaijaan,’ Abdul replied, going inside.
Hassan looked at Nazir with questioning eyes and Nazir signalled to him that he need not worry.
The Real Wani: Kashmir’s True hero — A Definitive Biography of Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani by Sonal Chaturvedi has been published with permission from Bloomsbury India.
source: http://www.theprint.in / The Print / Home> Page Turner> Book Excerpts / by Sonal Chaturvedi / March 08th, 2020
Nearly seven decades after her parents “lived” the love-story of their youth through an exchange of letters, their doting daughter has now published those communication in a book form.
The letters were written by legendary Maharashtra political leader and former Chief Minister and Union Minister, Abdul Rahman Antulay to his home-maker wife Nargis – during their “bethrothal” of four years when she was just 14 and he was all mature at 28 – and also later on after their marriage in May 1959.
Eldest daughter Neelam Mushtaq Antulay had to carry out some major jobs before she could finally compile and create an Urdu and a Hindi book – “Banaam Nargis (‘To Nargis’)”.
First she had to convince her mother to part with them and later painstakingly sift through hundreds of pages of great emotional churning.
“Banaam Nargis” will be released on Saturday at a mega-event by Nationalist Congress President Sharad Pawar and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, while Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray will rename the prestigious Anjuman-I-Islam law college in south Mumbai as “Barrister A. R. Antulay College of Law”.
“‘Banaam Nargis’, a collection of entirely personal letters written from a loving boy to his beloved fiance during the conservative era, were more than merely love-letters,” said Neelam.
“I remember from my childhood, how my mother, who treasured a majority of these handwritten letters, (with a fountain pen) — would quietly take them out, read, again and again with a myriad emotions lighting or clouding her face, even after he passed away in December 2014,” Neelam told IANS in a free-wheeling chat on Friday.
She remembers a well known Urdu book, “Zer-e-Lab” – a collection of letters written to renowned Urdu poet Jan Nisar Akhtar — father of equally distinguished son, Javed Akhtar – by his teacher wife, Safiya.
“This got me thinking… Why not highlight my Abbu’s letters to my Ammi? But it took me mountainous efforts to convince my mother before she finally relented over two years ago.
“Today, I consider it my humble tribute to my parents…” Neelam said.
After Nargis parted with her “treasure”, Neelam got down to reading them — around 300 — and many more which she kept aside without even reading, as they were ‘intimately personal’ though her Ammi now had no reservations!
“The letters are clear, concise, to the point.. he wrote prolifically, mostly daily, at times twice daily and posted them… From his bachelor home in Mumbai and Raigad to her parents’ home in Bhiwandi (then called Bhimdi, Thane), unveiling a different era of their lives…,” Neelam says with a heavy heart.
To a query, she points out that “of course, there was a lot of romance” but there was also a lot more.
“He shared with her practically everything… His joys and disappointments, achievements or failures, the highlights or downsides of his blooming legal career after he returned as barrister from Lincoln’s Inn, London, his maiden speech in public life with luminaries like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and others present… It opened up a whole new world of my father which I never knew,” said Neelam.
In his inimitable style, Antulay would recount many incidents, anecdotes with references to the then prevalent social, cultural and political events and conveyed a lot more than what he wrote of what was in his heart and mind.
“He ‘lived’ his life with his love (Nargis) through these letters… These pages provide rare glimpses into history… I now feel there was something magical about them…
“Though during their engagement, my mother was too young and many things were beyond her comprehension coming from a highly qualified barrister, but today I understand why she keeps opening the trove to read them again and again,” says Neelam with a smile.
However, Neelam said that her mother was very less “reciprocal” and barely may have replied averaging to 10 per cent – probably one for every 10 letters from her besotted husband!
“But he was never offended and both enjoyed their life, loved their children and brought us all up with dedication and care… Surprisingly, my mother revealed that one day, she destroyed all the letters she had written to him!” said Neelam.
Surprisingly, she is the first member of the family allowed by Nargis to read the letters, described by an editor as “pearls of words and wisdom”.
No other family members – Neelam’s politician husband Mushtaq, sister Shabnam and her husband Justice Amjad Sayed, television personality and upcoming politician brother Naved Antulay, and youngest sister Mubeena and her businessman husband Ejaz Sayed – were allowed access to them.
The earliest of the letters were written by Antulay on 20-10-1957 from ‘Bambai’ (Bombay, now Mumbai) to ‘Bhimdi’, and the last of it was penned by him to Nargis on 22-10-1961 to ‘Bambai’ from London where he was part of a Congress Party delegation.
“I have mostly tried to transliterate the letters in Hindi to retain the special flavour… They are best read in Urdu, followed by Hindi, but any suggestions to translate them in English would kill their very essence,” she laughed.
Neelam is confident that most people “will fall in love with my parents” and learn a lot about life after reading these letters in ‘Banaam Nargis’. (IANS)
source: http://www.indianewengland.com / India New England News / Home> Books / byQuaid Najmi / February 21st, 2020
Architect, poet, professor H Masud Taj is on an India tour to talk about Sinan, Istanbul’s foremost architect, who has arguably built more than any other architect in documented history.
H Masud Taj ( Source: Noah Taj)
H Masud Taj, Adjunct Professor at Carleton University in Canada, was mentored in architecture by Hassan Fathy and in calligraphy by David Hosbrough. His talk on “Sinan:Architect at the Centre of the World” in Delhi drizzled with anecdotes of Ottoman empire’s most celebrated builder, and how history and politics were fertile soil for some of Istanbul’s lasting monuments. Excerpts from an interview:
Where did your love for calligraphy and poetry develop?
In Bombay, at home by the sea with its tidal rhythms, where my father had a divine hand that remains without a tremor even in his 90s and because my mother tongue is Urdu, the most poetic of Indian languages (besides being a descendant of the classical Urdu poet, Ameer Meenai). With a father who was a shayar a mother who tore the last page of Urdu novels to replace it with her own version, with storytellers and musicians for sisters, it just had to happen. And when it did, I was 13 years old, far from home, and far from my mother tongue, in Ooty in a school, grounded on JD Krishnamurti with a sprinkling of Aurobindo, where clouds would descend valleys, enter classrooms and blur categories.
You taught architecture simultaneously at Sir JJ College of Architecture, Rizvi College and Pillai college in Mumbai
Yes, while running an architectural practice in Bombay and consultancy in Delhi besides being a fortnightly op-ed architectural columnist. Now I teach in Canada, practice in India and research in-between in Europe and Turkey. For instance this year the University’s Faculty of Public Affairs, showcased the research and photography I did while reading medieval buildings and Don Quixote, in Toledo, Spain.
In your next book on the Seven Muslim Wonders & the Making of the Modern World, which are the sites you will be exploring?
Those that I have visited in Agra, Cairo, Cordoba, Granada, Isfahan, Istanbul and Mecca. If you add Jerusalem that is eight but one of them is latent in all others just as the sound of alif is latent in all letters of Arabic.
Louis Kahn’s IIM-A building and the poem that Taj wrote, inspired by the building
And where do you see the intersections?
Seven mnemonic monuments embody civilizational ideas. Buildings are books that someone forgot to burn; they await a reading and then paradigms begin to shift and you see the world anew and hopefully the reader will too. For instance, satellite images show that the original Taj Mahal complex extended much further at both ends: across the Yamuna to the royal Mughal garden with a reflecting pool that reveals why the Mughals called it Rouza-e-Munnawara: The Illuminated Tomb (Taj Mahal is a misnomer). However, the real action of the complex was at the other end: the quadrant bazaar as a node of the global Muslim network of an ‘ethically driven commerce’, of poet merchants and Sufi merchant brotherhoods.
What prompted this book?
Many things but the final straw was Jerry Pinto saying I was offering “forever the promise of beauty”. He inscribed that in my copy of his incredible Em and the Big Hoom. He was right.
And when will it be launched?
Ship building is easy; it is the ocean that takes a while.
You were inspired by Louis Kahn’s Indian Institute of Management building in Ahmedabad. You even wrote a poem in calligraphy about it.
As a student, I was at CEPT in Ahmedabad for a month, participating in a workshop designing shells upside down. In the evenings, I’d sprawl on the IIM lawns. Once at dusk, above several storeys of brick arches, right on axis, was the upturned crescent. That’s when the Brick Poemoccurred. Decades later when I began to study Sinan in Turkey, I understood what that poem really meant; poets can lag behind the curve of their poems. I’ll be giving a talk at CEPT and that’s when after more than three decades the Brick Poemwill return to its site.
You have known and been with the legendary Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy and wrote a book on the elusive Indian architect Nari Gandi, apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright. What were your learnings from and with them that you bring to your work, as a teacher and an architect?
Buildings are prophecies if they are mainstream; or conversations. Gandhi was trapped in his quest for absolute freedom. He excelled as a conversationalist; but did not influence mainstream. Fathy’s prophecies were at mainstream’s edge, yet conversed with the surroundings. Choose between an escapee and an escape-artist.
What does your long poem, which was written while staying in all those houses of Gandhi, say? Could quote a few lines. Courtyard is silence To talk of the courtyard Is to break the spell.
You co-authored a book of poems, Alphabestiary, in which each letter of the alphabet is associated with an animal, such as Ant, Bull, Cat, Dragon, etc. What were you influenced by?
The animal fables of Panchatantra, Aesop Fables; Ibn Arabi arguing for animal rights in the 12th century; the 7th-century father-of-kitten Abu Hurairah. Mostly when we decided to call our son Nuh in Urdu, Nuhh in Arabic, Noah in English, Noé in French. Soon after, Dragonflyfluttered in (its now on YouTube) with a host of animals in its wake turning the oral poet into a one-man travelling zoo. Alphabestiaryis a thin slice, yet featured at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.
Who, from the past, do you think looks over your shoulder when you write?
Ameer Meenai, and hopefully he can detect Urdu’s fragrance in my English.
Taj has lectured at Nashik, Pune and Delhi and Goa. His talks in Ahmedabad and Mumbai are on July 22 and 24 respectively.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Lifestyle / by Shiny Varghese / September 28th, 2015
In ‘Understanding Mughal India’, Meena Bhargava writes about how Aurangzeb patronised several Hindu institutions & was supported in the war of succession by Rajputs.
A portrait of Mughal ruler Aurangzeb | Photo: collections.vam.ac.uk/
That Aurangzeb’s orthodoxy and his dedication to his beliefs was personal rather than a matter for political interference is evident in his reactions and responses during the war of succession of 1658, a quadrangular conflict between Dara, Shuja, Aurangzeb, and Murad. Throughout the struggle, Aurangzeb was concerned about Dara’s political manoeuvres. Their individual feelings and religious outlook—which stood in sharp contrast—remained confined to the personal level. Aurangzeb referred to Dara as mushrik (heretic) while Dara called Aurangzeb kotah pyjama (narrow pants), a symbolic attribute of orthodoxy. Both attempted to rally public opinion, but never on religious grounds. In fact, the support that largely came for Aurangzeb was from the Rajputs, notably Rana Raj Singh of Mewar, Raja Jai Singh Kachwaha of Amber, and later, Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar. In this context may be related an interesting nishan that Aurangzeb sent to Rana Raj Singh of Mewar, condemning such kings who practised intolerance that could become the cause of dispute, conflict, and harm to the people, and could ‘devastate the prosperous creations of God and destroy the foundations of the God-created fabric’. Such attitudes of kings, Aurangzeb ordained, deserve ‘to be rejected and cast off’. This document from the Udaipur records is a clear revelation of what Aurangzeb intended as his public policy. It further confirmed that Aurangzeb, in the struggle for succession, did not raise the cry of jihad or Islam in danger, nor did he promulgate a new religious policy contrary to that of his predecessors; neither did Dara claim to be the champion of liberal forces. The issue was not religious or ideological, or whether orthodoxy would triumph or liberalism. It was a question of personal vested interest, political in nature but free from religious connotations, that is: Who would be the emperor of India, Dara or Aurangzeb? It is in such a context that Aurangzeb deserves to be assessed.
Debating Aurangzeb’s leanings—religious orthodoxy or political pragmatism—one needs to ask: Did Aurangzeb really intend, as Jadunath Sarkar suggested, the establishment of dar-ul-Islam or a truly Islamic State in India, the conversion of the entire population to Islam, and the annihilation of dissenters? Or, as Ishtiyaq Husain Qureshi argued, was it rigid adherence to the shari’a and undoing the damage caused by Akbar; or the triumph of Muslim theology, as Shri Ram Sharma asserted? If this was really the case, then the emperor’s personal valour, military skills, and single-minded commitment to achieving territorial expansion and consolidation would stand negated. The biased ideological portrayal of the emperor, regardless of historical accuracy, makes it difficult to explain the increase in the number of Rajput mansabdars in Aurangzeb’s administration as compared to Akbar’s period, and their rise from 24 per cent under Shahjahan to 33 per cent in 1689. Nor can Raghunath Ray Kayastha’s dominance as diwan-i kul be understood rationally. Raghunath Ray not only supported Aurangzeb but also participated in several expeditions of the period. Aurangzeb honoured him with the title of Raja and when Raghunath Ray died in 1664, the emperor, in his obituary written in Ruqa’at-i Alamgiri, remembered him as the greatest administrator he had ever known.
There are well-documented evidences of Aurangzeb’s patronage of various Hindu religious institutions, namely temples, maths, grants to Brahmins and pujaris:
Land grants were renewed to the temples at Mathura, Banaras, Gaya, Gauhati, and others, while the emperor is known to have donated ghee for the navadeep in a few temples, including the Mahabateshwar temple at Agra;
Gifts were offered to the Sikh gurudwara at Dehradun;
Madad-i ma’ash grants, as listed in the Rajasthan documents, were continued to a math of Nathpanthi yogis in pargana Didwana, sarkar Nagor;
Grants were also made to Ganesh Bharti faqir and his successors in pargana Siwana with the instructions that the faqir should not be disturbed so he could ‘pray for this sultanat’.
The Vrindavan document of 1704 referred to a parwana which sanctioned the rights of Chaitanya gosains who had founded Vrindavan and established pilgrimages in Braj Bhumi, and recognised the right of Brajanand Gosain to receive a fee from the followers of the sect on account of kharj sadir o warid, that is, expenses on guests and travellers from each village. In effect, it was a government levy for the benefit of Brajanand Gosain and his Vaishnavite followers.
From the above description, Aurangzeb’s patronage to temples appears without doubt. And yet some temples were attacked, while others were spared. This aberration in the emperor’s attitude can be explained by only one rationale: it was not iconoclasm, but reprisal for rebellion or political misconduct or disloyalty to the emperor. This exposition can be applied to understand the attack on the Vishwanath temple at Kashi, the Keshav Dev temple at Mathura, and several prominent temples in Rajasthan. In 1669, during a zamindar revolt in Banaras, it was suspected that some of them had assisted Shivaji in his escape from imperial detention. It was also believed that Shivaji’s escape was initially facilitated by Jai Singh, the great-grandson of Raja Man Singh, who had built the Vishwanath temple. It was against this background that Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of that temple in September 1669.
Around the same time, in a Jat rebellion that had erupted in the neighbouring regions of Mathura, a patron of the local congregational mosque was killed, leading to Aurangzeb’s order in 1670 to attack the Keshav Dev temple at Mathura. Temples in Marwar and Mewar were also attacked following the death of Maharaja Jaswant Singh to reprimand and crush the Rathor rebellion and the development of a Sisodia– Rathor alliance. These included temples in Khandela patronised by rebel chieftains; temples in Jodhpur maintained by a former supporter of Dara Shukoh; and the royal temples in Udaipur and Chittor patronised by Rana Raj Singh after the Rana entered into an alliance with the Rathors that signalled the withdrawal of loyalty to the Mughal State. It may be observed that the Rathor rebellion was not a reaction or a protest against the re-imposition of jizya. Instead, this re-imposition, as Abu’l Fazl Ma’muri observed in the context of the suppression of the Satnami revolt and prior to the emperor’s expedition to Ajmer, was meant for ‘the affliction of the rebellious unbelievers’.
This excerpt from Understanding Mughal India: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries by Meena Bhargava has been published with permission from Orient BlackSwan.
source: http://www.theprint.in / The Print / Home> Page Turner> Book Excerpts / by Meena Bhargava / February 19th, 2020
Nizamabad Town (Azamgarh District) UTTAR PRADESH / Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :
A committed communist, Majrooh Sultanpuri wrote about matters of love and freedom with equal conviction
Main akela hi chala tha janib-e-manzil magar
Log saath aate gaye aur karvan banta gaya
( I set out towards my destination all alone but people began to come along and a caravan was formed.)
With the exception of master poets like Mir Taqi ‘Mir’ or Mirza Ghalib, it seldom happens that an Urdu couplet becomes so popular and is quoted so often that it becomes part of everyday speech and people do not even remember the name of its creator. This is what happened to the above quoted couplet of Majrooh Sultanpuri whose enormous contribution to the Hindi film industry was acknowledged when he became the first lyricist to be decorated with the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1993. In 2013, a commemorative postal stamp was also issued on him.
Hindi literary journal Yugtevar has come out with a special number (January-March, 2020) on him to celebrate his life and work. It offers detailed information about the poet and contains critical appraisals and reminiscences written by, among others, top Urdu critics such as Prof. Shamim Hanfi, Urdu poets like Ali Sardar Jafri and Javed Akhtar, Hindi poets like Subhash Rai, and singers such as Lata Mangeshkar. A selection from his poetry has also been given in the concluding section of the journal.
Majrooh was born on the eve of Id as Asrar ul Hasan Khan in town Nizamabad that fell under police station Sarai Mir in Azamgarh district where his father Sirajul Haq Khan was posted as a police constable although his family belonged to village Ganjehdi near Sultanpur. There seems to be some confusion about the year of birth while the date is unanimously given as October 1. In his article, Akhtar Farooqui mentions 1918 as the year of Majrooh’s birth but Utkarsh Singh settles for 1919 while Rekhta website takes it back to 1915.
Asrar ul Hasan began writing poetry at an early age using the pen name ‘Naseh’ (religious preacher). As a young lad, he fell in love with a girl but failed to receive her affections. Soon, on the advice of his close friends, he became Majrooh (wounded) to the world and remained so until the end. Little wonder that his song “Jab dil hi toot gaya” in film Shahjehan remains hugely popular even now after more than 70 years. Initially, he wrote songs and lyrical song-like nazms but soon turned towards ghazal. As Prof. Shamim Hanfi recalls, in a creative life spanning nearly 60 years, he wrote only fifty odd ghazals and two notable nazms, besides penning more than two thousand film lyrics.
Traditional physician
Young Asrar ul Hasan studied Unani medicine to train as a traditional physician but he practised for only a few years as a Hakim appointed by Sultanpur District Board. He studied Arabic and Persian in Sultanpur and Tanda. While training to become a Unani hakim in Lucknow, he took admission in a music college to learn classical Hindustani music. However, his destiny was not to sing but to write songs for others to sing.
Top Urdu poet Jigar Muradabadi had noticed Majrooh’s talent and Majrooh too treated him as his ustad. He wrote that although Jigar never advised him on his ghazals, but he did shape his poetic temperament. Jigar Muradabadi was the uncrowned king of mushairas (poetic soirées) and he took Majrooh to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1945 to take part in a mushaira where Majrooh proved to be a big hit. A R Kardar wanted Jigar to write songs for his film Shahjehan but Jigar recommended Majrooh’s name. Thus, the film lyricist was born. Perhaps, it it not common knowledge that Majrooh, whose mother tongue was Awadhi, wrote lyrics for a number of Bhojpuri films too and was a great success.
Impressive persona
It was during the Emergency when Majrooh Sultanpuri and Jaan Nisar Akhtar came to Jawaharlal Nehru University. Majrooh’s was a very impressive persona and he recited his ghazals in a tuneful but robust voice. And, fearlessly, he recited a ghazal that had shades of Kabir in it as it challenged the injustice and oppression. This couplet continues to resonate with me even today.
Sutoon-e-daar par rakhte chalo saron ke chiragh
Jahan talak ye sitam ki siyaah raat chale
(March ahead while placing the lamps of our heads on the opening of wounds till the dark night of oppression lasts.)
This was a poet who had spent two years in jail for reciting a poem at a mill union workers’ meeting in 1949 that harshly criticised the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. A committed communist and member of the All India Progressive Writers’ Association (AIPWA), he followed the communist party’s line that held “Yeh aazadi jhoothi hai” (This freedom is false). The Maharashtra government slapped a case on him and asked him to seek forgiveness if he wanted to avoid jail.
Instead, Majrooh went underground and appeared in public in 1951 to attend a meeting organised to protest the arrests of Faiz Ahmed ‘Faiz’, Sajjad Zahir and others in Pakistan in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. He was arrested after the meeting was over.
Majrooh breathed his last on May 24, 2000.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books> Authors / by Kuldeep Kumar / February 20th, 2020
