Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist ethos, on April 14, marked the birthday of B R Ambedkar which is a national holiday popular as Bhim Jayanti in India.
On the occasion of Bhim Jayanti, IAMC also welcomed the first ever congressional resolution introduced by Representative Ro Khanna, who is the Congressman representing 17th District of California. In his resolution, Khanna has honored Dr B R Ambedkar by highlighting that in this Dalit history month, even in a dark time of Covid, it is inspirational to know that we can find the light of hope in our history as the chief architect of our Constitution had envisioned: labor reforms, codification of gender equality, and the successful inclusion of Article 17 in the Constitution of India to abolish untouchability and its practice in any form.
IAMC endorsed the resolution urging all Indian Americans to join in to celebrate the towering historical figure that Ambedkar was – a fearless feminist and caste abolitionist – whose contributions to the fields of economics, philosophy, religious, jurisprudence, and democracy remain unparalleled, even today. The resolution is also endorsed by Equality Labs and South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT),
“We are forever grateful to Babasaheb Ambedkar for his fearless struggle against systemic oppression, and for his phenomenal contributions in ensuring India’s Constitution celebrates the diverse nature of India,” said Ahsan Khan, President of IAMC.
Speaking about the recent arrest of Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, Khan stated that both the leaders have been indicted based on “fabricated evidence.” The case originated from the annual celebratory gathering at Bhima Koregaon to mark the 200th year of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon victory. Khan added that both Teltumbde and Navlakha were not even present in the event and this is “a clear case of a brazen ‘witch-hunt’ that is reflective of a fascist model of governance.”
Khan opined that in order for us to continue with the legacy of Ambedkar’s lifelong battle to protect basic civil liberties and secular principles, we must “recommit ourselves to the founding vision of the Indian Constitution through liberty, equality and justice for all.”
source: http://www.twocircles.net / TwoCircles.net / Home> Dalit> India News> Indian Muslim> Lead Story / by TCN News / April 15th, 2020
MLA U T Khader with the family of Shree Madhu Bhat at her house in Kulai in Mangaluru. (DH Photo)
Mangaluru MLA U T Khader has helped a PhD scholar, who had arrived in India from Italy, to reach her home at Kulai in Mangaluru from Bengaluru on Sunday.
Shree Madhu Bhat, a PhD student at the University of Turin in Italy, had arrived in Delhi in a special flight arranged by the Government of India.
“After completing the quarantine period in Delhi, she was brought to Bengaluru in a special bus arranged by the central government on April 11. However, she could not reach Mangaluru owing to non-availability of any mode of transportation. Her parents had contacted district administration seeking help and also me through a common friend. When I received the information, I was in Bengaluru and brought her in my car,” Khader said.
She is the daughter of Shivaram Bhat and Shailaja Bhat.
After completing the quarantine period, she along with others were sent in a special bus to their respective states on April 8.
The bus had travelled via Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and reached Bengaluru on April 11.
The MLA had shared a photograph of the family of Shree Madhu Bhat on his Facebook page.
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> State> Mangaluru / by Naina J A / DHNS, Mangaluru / April 13th, 2020
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
Mahum Siddiqi, a 17-year-old Indian-American teenager has won the inaugural “Digital Transformation Hackathon” at Cornell University for designing a device that detects the actual pain level of a patient during a diagnosis.
A Class 12 student at Vestal High School in New York, Mahum was the only non-undergraduate student competing at the hackathon held at the prestigious Ivy League college earlier in December.
Mahum’s aim was to cure the problem of the “pain diagnosis process’ subjectivity”. Together with her team, Mahum designed a pain detecting device that will use the neurological activity occurring in one’s brain to help doctors more efficiently determine someone pain levels.
Elaborating more on her idea, Mahum said, “It’s incredibly upsetting and problematic how hypothetical the concept of pain diagnostics is. Doctors have no way of knowing how little or how much pain someone is truly experiencing when they go in to be diagnosed”.
Mahum and her team are now working with representatives from companies such as Microsoft to produce prototypes of their pain detecting device.
“We need to design a system where patients are looked at as a whole, and doctors are able to know for sure, using our device/pure science, how much pain a patient is experiencing instead of just their personal description/perception of their own pain”.
source: http://www.thecognate.com / The Cognate.com / Home> Inspiring Muslims / by Shaik Zakeer Hussain / December 30th, 2018
Nida Allam has become the first Muslim woman to be win elected office in the state of North Carolina.
According to local reports , history was written on Tuesday night when voters in Durham County went to the ballots to elect Allam as their next county commissioner.
Allam said in a statement provided to The Hill that, growing up as a Muslim in the U.S., she “never thought running for office let alone winning and making history would ever be a possibility.”
“I was driven to politics in 2015 after my best friend Yusor, her husband Deah and younger sister Razan were brutally murdered in their home in Chapel Hill in a hate crime committed by their neighbor,” she said. “This was a heinous act of hate that caused ripples across the world.”
Allam was referring to the murders of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19. The three college students had been living in a condo in Chapel Hill, N.C. when a man, Craig Stephen Hicks, entered their home and killed them.
Local authorities initially claimed the shooting incident was over a parking dispute, but the chief of the Chapel Hill police department, Chris Blue, apologized years later, saying “the man who committed these murders undoubtedly did so with a hateful heart.”
Hicks was ordered to serve three life sentences without possibility of parole after pleading guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in 2019.
Allam said in her statement that her “community suffered deeply” after the deaths of her friends.
“How can I be content with all the blessings I have been given in this world when there is so much to do to fight injustice, uplift one another and to make our communities healthier. I’m fighting for a better nation so that others don’t have to suffer the pain my community did,” she said.
During her campaign, Allam pushed for police reform, better quality education and wage increases for county workers, among other issues.
Prior to her run for local office, she worked as a political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign. She also served as third vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party and chair of Durham Mayor Steve Schewel’s (D) Council for Women.
The historic first in North Carolina comes years after voters saw a record number of Muslim candidates run for statewide or national office in 2018, the highest in nearly 20 years at the time. That was also the year Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) became the first Muslim women elected to serve in Congress.
source: http://www.thehill.com / The Hill / Home / by Aris Folley / March 05th, 2020
Mysore , KARNATAKA / Moscow, RUSSIA /Paris, FRANCE / London , United KINGDOM :
A LIFE of a British spy princess who was the first woman radio operator to be sent into Nazi-occupied France has been commemorated to mark International Women’s Day.
Noor Inayat Khan (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Noor Inayat Khan is the most highly decorated Muslim woman in British Military history and was only aged 30 when she was executed in Dachau Concentration Camp in September 1944 after being captured by the Gestapo in Paris the previous year. Like 20,000 others who have no known grave she is remembered at the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial. Now her life and legacy has been brought to a new audience in a digital exhibition Noor Inayat-Khan: A Woman of Conspicuous Courage created by Commonwealth War Graves Foundation and the girl guides.
It tells how the unlikely spy came to die for her country and the courage she showed under torture while visitors will be able to put their code breaking skills to the test and discover the technical skills a wireless operator needed behind enemy lines.
Jasmine Theti, 15, of Girlguiding Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, said: “We must never forget her and the sacrifice she made.
“I loved learning the Morse Code it was good fun.
“Although I wouldn’t have liked sending messages in a cold Parisian park whilst looking over my shoulder all the time. Noor was an inspiration.”
Noor was born on New Year’s Day 1914 in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother and was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore.
The family moved to London then Paris where she was educated and worked as a children’s author.
After the fall of France, she and her brother escaped to England and in November 1940 she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force becoming a radio operator at RAF Abingdon.
But the fluent French speaker soon came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and in late 1942 was recruited.
Noor Inayat Khan, left, with her mother (Image: Shrabani Basu/ PA Wire)
However they were unsure whether she would make a good agent, worried she was too honest and kind-hearted and couldn’t blend into a crowd.
She proved them wrong when she joined the Paris resistance in July 1943 just as the Gestapo were closing in.
While members were rounded up she evaded capture and ended up as the only SOE radio operator for the whole Paris region.
But two days before she was due to be replaced in October she was betrayed and arrested.
Remarkably she twice managed to escape from the Parisian prison before being sent to Germany the following month where she was kept in chains and in solitary confinement for 10 months.
Resisting repeated torture she and three other women SOE agents were finally taken to Dachau and shot on September 13, 1944.
For her courage she was posthumously awarded Britain’s highest civilian bravery medal The George’s Cross in 1949.
Julian Evans of the CWGC which looks after the Runnymede memorial added: “Noor’s story is an inspirational one and we believed it important, as the custodians of the memorial on which her name is inscribed, to help give it greater prominence.
“We hope that the exhibition will encourage more people to visit the Air Forces Memorial to explore the story of Noor and the 20,000 other members of the Commonwealth Air Forces who are commemorated here.”
source: http://www.express.co.uk / Express / Home> News> UK / by Tony Whitefield / March 08th, 2020
Yusuff Ali M.A: “This is obviously a very proud and humbling moment in my life,”
Jeddah :
Abu Dhabi-based retail tycoon Yusuff Ali M.A. on Monday became the first Indian citizen to obtain Saudi Arabia’s coveted Premium Residency, widely known as the Saudi “green card.”
“This is obviously a very proud and humbling moment in my life,” the chairman and managing director of the group that owns the LuLu chain of hypermarkets told Arab News.
“It is a great honor, not only for me but also for the entire Indian expat community, and I sincerely thank King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the government of Saudi Arabia.
“I am sure this new permanent residency initiative will further boost Saudi Arabia’s image as one of the key investment and business hubs in the region in addition to attracting and retaining new investors here.”
Premium Residency is a special residence permit that gives expatriates who meet its conditions the right to live, work, and own business and property in the Kingdom without a sponsor. It is a key part of the crown prince’s Vision 2030 reform plan to diversify the Saudi economy.
The Kingdom had become an attractive investment destination because of the remarkable growth of its economy, Yusuff Ali said. “Investors can now come here and invest freely; they can buy property and feel at home, secure and safe.
“What does an investor need? He needs security such as premium residency. The economy of this great country is booming so this is the best time for international investors to come, invest and take advantage of Saudi Vision 2030.”
The tycoon said international investors and businessmen were looking to Saudi Arabia because of how the country had been transformed. “We want to export agricultural products from Saudi Arabia and use the innovations and transformations in the business sector,” he said.
source: http://www.arabnews.com / Arab News / Home> News> Business & Economy / March 04th, 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
Nazia Aibani, a New York-based Indian-American entrepreneur, has launched a special type of clarified butter called ‘Holi Ghee’ to add more taste to the Holi delicacies like ‘matthis’ and ‘gujiyas’, a media report said.
Aibani, who originally belongs to Mumbai, owns Gourmet Ghee Company who she founded in 2017, Indica news said in the report on Wednesday.
Asked about why she chose to come up with ‘Holi Ghee’, she said: “Holi Ghee is a specialty flavoured clarified butter we made to pay homage to my Indian roots. Also with the turmoil going on, I felt it was important to show the one thing Indians have in common which is a love for food.”
On the unique flavour and what does it taste like, the entrepreneur told Indica news: “This flavour was inspired by Holi, the festival of colours. We used rainbow-coloured crunchy sprinkles. This ghee is on the sweeter side with a rich spreadable taste and texture.
“I wanted this ghee to appeal to kids especially, to get into the spirit of the holiday, and to use all year around not just for one particular day. The taste is very smooth with a soft crunch, it can be used as a spread or also in baking.”
Gourmet Ghee offers clarified butter in other different flavours including roasted garlic, Celtic sea salt and toasted almond.
It sells for $14 to $18 for a 9-ounce jar.
source: http://www.indianewengland.com / India New England News / Home> Business / by India New England News / February 20th, 2020
