Zafar Iqbal, former India hockey captain, shares his memories of what may have been his first ‘vehicle’ and what actually was
Like most people at that time, I also learnt to use a cycle. The first vehicle I ‘owned’ was a bicycle that was presented to us (the Indian hockey team) in 1980 for winning the Olympic gold at Moscow. I was so happy. But when I went to claim my prize, I discovered the cycle had no accessories. I was asked to pay for the accessories, which I politely declined. I returned home without my prize, but the same year I bought a scooter.
The acquisition of the scooter is an interesting story. It was a Bajaj which I grabbed without having gone through the process of bookings. The waiting period was more than a year. It so happened that we were playing a tournament (Scindia Gold Cup) in Gwalior and one gentleman from the organising committee wanted to sell his scooter. The demand was huge and one had to shell out double the original price. I haggled and struck a decent deal. It was a greenish colour and the scooter was driven home to Delhi from Gwalior, by a mechanic. I remember the registration number to this day: GPW 737. I was employed with Indian Airlines (now Air India) and this scooter was my Boeing (737).
My best memory of the scooter was, by the grace of God, the fact that I never suffered a fall or an accident. For ₹20, I could fill up the tank. It would last me for ages really. I drove the scooter for five years, using it to travel for practice at the National Stadium, or taking my wife to the Karim’s near Jama Masjid. Shanti Path was a great place to drive around. I have also driven to Aligarh on it.
In 1985, I purchased a Maruti Suzuki. The car was a luxury. It served me well before I shifted to an Innova Crysta (automatic) recently. I also drive a Mahindra Thar now, exclusively for my golfing trips to the Noida Golf Club every morning.
Driving is no more a pleasure in Delhi. But I can’t take public transport either, because they are too crowded. At some point, it was fun travelling by bus from my home in Vasant Vihar to the Indian Airlines office at Parliament Street. I remember the route number (640) too. Sometimes people, hockey lovers who would have seen me in action at the Shivaji Stadium, would recognise me.
I felt sad when last year I had to dismantle my dear Bajaj scooter. Maybe I could have had it painted and preserved it as a souvenir. It is a memory now, but a pleasant one of my early years of driving.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Life & Style> Motoring / by Vijay Lokapally / October 23rd, 2018
Mr. Amer Ali Khan, News Editor of Siasat Urdu Daily released the Sovenir of “Zawia Adab” society.
It is the first book of the society. In his speech, Mr. Amer Ali Khan told that the incident of Karbala is the eradication of evil forces and support of the values of Islam.
On this occasion, he made a references to various literary books published in English, Hindi and Urdu right from Meer Taqi Meer to the present day.
At the beginning of the function, Mr. Mazharul Haq, President of the society highlighted its aims and objectives.
Present on the occasion were Mr. Ali Anjum Sadiq, Mr. Ali Inayat, Mr. Baquer Mehdi Abedi, Mr. Akhtarul Hasan and Mr. Meer Haider Ali.
Mr. Faraz Rizvi thanked Mr. Amer Ali Khan and the audience.
source: http://www.siasat.com / The Siasat Daily / Home> Hyderabad / by Sameer / October 23rd, 2018
Birth anniversary of noted Hakeem Padma Bhushan Hakeem Abdul Hameed was celebrated on September 14, 2018. Former Rajya Sabha MP and noted journalist Shahid Siddiqui delivered the lecture on ‘Hakeem Abdul Hamed, a great thinker, philosopher and his role in the construction of the nation’ as Chief Guest. The programme was presided over by Prof Syed Ihtesham Hasnain Vice Chancellor Jamia Hamdard. Prof Ihtesham Hasnain said late Hakeem Abdul Hameed was ‘Hamdard’ in the real sense.
Pro Vice-Chancellor Prof Ahmed Kamal, registrar Saud Akhtar, relatives of Hakeem Abdul Hameed from India and Pakistan, a large number of teachers, officers and students were present on the occasion.
Late Hakeem Abdul Hameed, a renowned physician, was the Founder-Chancellor of Jamia Hamdard, which he established with his own resources. A great philanthropist, thinker and visionary, he set up several institutions with the funds of Hamdard Wakf Laboratories. Some of the esteemed institutions established by him include Hamdard National Foundation, Hamdard Education Society, Hamdard Study Circle, Hamdard Public School, Hamdard Institute of Historical Research, Ghalib Academy, Centre for South Asian Studies and Business & Employment Bureau.
Hakeem Abdul Hameed was honoured by several national and international awards including the Avicenna Award presented by the erstwhile USSR in 1983. He was conferred with Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan by the Government of India. He was also an honorary member of the Academy of Medical Science of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. In October 2000, the Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) Istanbul, Turkey, presented IRCICA Award for Patronage in Preservation of Cultural Heritage & Promotion of Scholarship to Hakeem Saheb posthumously.
source: http://www.siasat.com / The Siasat Daily / Home> India> News / by Rasia / September 15th, 2018
How Muslim soldiers helped save the allies from defeat in the First World War
A grave of a Muslim soldier who died during the First World War in the French war cemetery La Ferme de Suippes, Champagne. David Crossland / The National
Engraved with Islamic inscriptions, the headstones of 576 Muslim soldiers stand in ranks facing Mecca at Notre Dame de Lorette, the biggest of France’s many war cemeteries.
Each one is also inscribed with the words “Mort Pour La France” – died for France – like the massed crosses of their Christian comrades in this 62-acre memorial containing the remains of over 40,000 soldiers. Today it is a lonely place of birdsong and rustling trees overlooking the slag heaps of the Artois mining region but it was once one of the bloodiest battlefields of the First World War.
The Muslim graves have lain mostly forgotten for almost a century, save on three occasions in the last decades when their graves were desecrated with anti-Muslim graffiti. The sacrifices made by these soldiers and their 2.5 million fellow Muslims who fought for France, the British empire and Russia has been largely ignored, especially in comparison with the exhaustive accounts of Western troops in poems, diaries and histories.
Muslim headstones from the First World War in Notre Dame de Lorette French national cemetery. In the background are Christian headstones. David Crossland / The National
Luc Ferrier, the Belgian founder and chairman of the Forgotten Heroes 14-19 Foundation, is battling to change that.
He is convinced that without Muslim troops and labourers, the Allies would have lost the war. Raising public awareness of their contribution could help counter anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe, and give immigrant communities a stronger sense of belonging, he told The National.
“This project is contradicting the myth that Muslims have not played a positive role in Europe or in modern history,” he said.
“By adding a wealth of authentic documented evidence portraying Muslims positively, we can counter Islamophobia, as well as the divisive ‘clash of civilisations’ narrative which both the far-right and ‘religious’ extremists rely on to further their narrow aims.”
The last four years have seen intense commemoration of the war’s centenary, which will culminate in ceremonies marking the armistice on November 11.
Paradoxically, the remembrance has coincided with a rise in the kind of nationalism that spawned the “war to end all wars.” Right-wing populists across Europe are targeting immigrants but also the European Union, set up in the wake of the Second World War to bring lasting peace to the ravaged continent.
Mr Ferrier, a 55-year-old former executive in the aeronautical industry who is not Muslim, set up the foundation in 2012 after discovering the diaries of his great-grandfather, a soldier in the First World War. “I was impressed by the enormous respect he had for his Muslim brothers in arms from all these continents, while he himself was a very devout Christian,” he said.
When he tried to learn more, he found there was a dearth of literature on Muslim troops. The foundation has encouraged broader research into the topic. He has addressed conferences and secured the support of researchers worldwide who helped unearth and translate historical documents. His book, The Unknown Fallen, contains stories and photos that convey the global Muslim contribution in the war.
The memorial to the French-Moroccan division at Vimy Ridge, northern France. David Crossland / The National
Researchers have unearthed accounts of comradeship that saw priests, imams and rabbis learn each other’s burial ceremonies and prayers so that they could lay the dead of all faiths to rest on the battlefield. Stories have surfaced of North African Muslims saving the lives of European soldiers using herbal medicines when field medical supplies ran out.
After German troops marched into France in August 1914 and got close enough to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower, the French hastily summoned soldiers from French North Africa — Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia — while the British called troops from across its empire including India.
They cut dashing figures arriving in Marseille in their fezzes, turbans and brightly coloured uniforms, and crowds welcomed them as saviours. They were quickly dispatched to the front.
Troops from the British Indian Army, consisting of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus with Muslims making up around a third, were in the thick of the fighting almost from the start. Arriving before troops from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, they reinforced exhausted British troops just in time to stop the German army breaking through to ports on the English channel in the First Battle of Ypres in 1914.
They were volunteers, trained and experienced soldiers, but like Western troops they were unprepared for the inferno of shells, machine guns, poison gas and rat-infested trenches they were thrown into.
“Just like a turnip is cut to pieces, so a man is blown to bits by the explosion of a shell,” wrote a Pathan soldier from northern India. “All those who came with me have ceased to exist … In taking a hundred yards of trench it is like the destruction of the world.”
But they didn’t buckle in the face of gas, freezing weather and the best-equipped army in the world, and quickly gained the admiration of European officers and men.
“It was known that Muslims troops attacked fiercely,” said Mr Ferrier. “Western troops had an ambiguous feeling when they showed up; they were happy to have them on their side but it was also a sign that an attack was on the way.”
Indian troops serving with the British Army pray outside the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, Surrey, during the Muslim festival of Baqrid, or Eid al-Adha, (Festival of Sacrifice), circa 1916. (Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
In this merciless war, they saw their comrades gassed and bayoneted to death. Yet the British and French were struck by how humanely Muslim troops treated prisoners of war. Asked why, they referred to Islamic teaching that prisoners must be fed in a dignified manner.
They won medals for their courage, and the British, masters of propaganda, ensured that photos of King George V, Emperor of India, pinning medals on their chests were circulated around India to encourage more men to volunteer.
Recipients included Sepoy Khudadad Khan of the 129th Baluchis, who won Britain’s highest military award, the Victoria Cross, at the Belgian village of Hollebeke near Ypres on October 31, 1914 for preventing a German breakthrough by continuing to fire his machine gun after all his comrades had been killed and he had been wounded.
He was the first South Asian to win the VC, and Indian forces won around a dozen more during more the war. Some 1.5 million men from what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar fought on the Western front, in Africa, the Middle East and Gallipoli.
Officers made efforts to provide troops with halal food and there was a high death rate among Indian cooks who advanced dangerously close to German shells to serve the men chapatis and hot curry.
The cold was as bitter an enemy as the Germans and the incessant, freezing rain in the autumn of 1914 brought wistful memories of the monsoon that gave relief from the summer heat back home, so far away. There was no home leave. Going back all the way to India was too expensive, the troops were told.
“They suffered from frostbite and exposure, causing them to lose fingers,” said Mr Ferrier. “The trenches did little to provide shelter or warmth from the extreme low temperatures, especially at night, when even clothes and blankets froze solid.”
His foundation approached Britain’s Anglia Tours, which has experience in running guided visits to First World War sites, to help organise bespoke visits to the battlefields and memorial sites where Muslims fought.
The company started off with a promotional tour last November with about 50 people, including Muslim community representatives, journalists and historians.
“We’ve done a lot of work with Forgotten Heroes to make sure it’s their tour and that we get it exactly right from their point of view and make sure it’s historically accurate,” said Alison Biegel, the company’s operations director.
“As yet we don’t have a lot of people travelling because it’s still very much in its infancy. We would expect it to attract inter-faith groups and school groups as it’s a fascinating area that is of general interest. But it’s taking time. The community are not used to touring in this way so there’s quite a lot of confidence-building.”
Anglia Tours is talking to a mosque in London about a tour in September which may be the next one.
The lack of awareness of the Muslim contribution can’t be blamed solely on Western indifference. “It was more the global lack of interest from the grassroots Muslim community that caused it,” said Mr Ferrier.
In India, which lost over 70,000 troops in the war, that indifference is easily explained. The returning troops got no heroes’ welcome because they had fought for the British cause at a time when India was pushing for greater autonomy. Hopes that the sacrifice of so many Indian soldiers would persuade Britain to give in to demands from nationalists were brutally shattered by the massacre of Amritsar in 1919, when British troops murdered hundreds of people during a protest in Punjab.
“The soldiers and the war were already in the past,” wrote London-based historian Shrabani Basu in her 2015 book For King and Another Country. Nationalists were the new heroes, so the names etched on war memorials and headstones erected by grateful colonial rulers were forgotten.
For Mr Ferrier, the time has come to remember them.
source: http://www.thenational.ae / The National / Home> World> Europe / by David Crosland / June 07th, 2018
The 72-year-old retired official managed to collect Rs1.5 million (about Dh75,000) with some friends and set off for Kerala.
Shocked by the devastation caused by the Kerala floods in August, a retired Dubai Police official is now actively involved in rebuilding efforts in the Indian state.
First Warrant Officer Mushtaq Ahmed, an Indian who served as head of the photography section of the General Department of Community Happiness at Dubai Police, could not rest when he saw the visuals from the floods that killed more than 400 people and left 800,000 homeless.
“I was shocked to see people suffering after the waters destroyed their houses. I decided that I needed to make a move,” said Ahmed, a UAE resident since 1977.
The 72-year-old retired official managed to collect Rs1.5 million (about Dh75,000) with some friends and set off for Kerala. He has since helped rebuild three houses and is also funding repairs to others.
“The poor were the ones who were the worst affected. Some lost their lives while others lost their already ramshackle dwellings.”
Ahmed also contributed to an orphanage and a school with over 1,000 children. He said mere donations are impersonal. “Sometimes you need to go personally and see what people are going through and get involved,” said Ahmed. After spending 41 years documenting the history of Dubai Police through his photographs, he said he has found a sense of purpose.
sherouk@khaleejtimes.com
source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com / Khaleej Times / Home> Nation> Dubai / by Sherouk Zakaria, Dubai / October 19th, 2018
British Indian World War II spy Noor Inayat Khan may be the next face of British currency. A campaign for the same is gaining momentum wherein people are demanding the spy to be featured on a redesigned 50-pound currency note.
The Bank of England had recently announced plans for a new polymer version of the large denomination note to go into print from 2020 and indicated that it would invite public nominations for potential characters to appear on the new note.
An online petition in favour of the campaign has already garnered over 1,200 signatures by Wednesday, calling for Khan, a descendant of Tipu Sultan and daughter of Indian Sufi saint Hazrat Inayat Khan, to be considered as the first ethnic minority British woman to be honoured on the currency.
“I am absolutely delighted that the story of Noor Inayat Khan has inspired so many people and that she has become an icon. Noor was an extraordinary war heroine,” said Shrabani Basu, the author of Khan’s biography ‘Spy Princess’ and founder-chair of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust.
The trust was set up in 2010 to campaign for a memorial in honour of the war-time spy, who had been recruited by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and infiltrated beyond enemy lines before being captured and killed by the Nazis in 1944, aged only 30.
Khan’s memorial bust now has a permanent home at Gordon Square in central London, with the trust also lobbying for a commemorative blue plaque to mark the house nearby where she spent time with her family.
“I am very happy to support the campaign for Noor Inayat Khan on the 50-pound note. It is a way of keeping her memory alive and taking this story to the next generation. It will certainly make a big statement internationally because Noor was someone who believed in breaking down barriers,” Basu said.
The campaign has found the backing of prominent political leaders, historians and academics in the UK, with many taking to social media to voice their support.
“The new 50-pound note could have anyone on it. I’m backing Noor Inayat Khan. She volunteered for SOE, served bravely as an agent in occupied Europe, was eventually captured and murdered. A Muslim, a woman, a hero of WWII. This would celebrate her courage and all SOE,” said Conservative Party MP Tom Tugendhat, who is currently leading the UK Parliament’s Global Britain and India Inquiry.
“Just returned from both East Africa and the Western Front and am more than ever aware of the shared service and sacrifice of men and women of many backgrounds. I would love to see Noor Inayat Khan on the new 50-pound note,” said Melvyn Roffe, Principal at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh.
Noor Inayat Khan, born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother, was raised in Paris and Britain. As a Sufi, she believed in non-violence and also supported the Indian independence struggle.
But she felt compelled to join the British war effort against fascism and went on to become the first female radio operator to be infiltrated into Nazi-occupied France before she was captured, tortured and killed at the Dachau concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
“In this age, when we see a rise in anti-semitism, anti-Muslim hatred and intolerance, it is important that we continue to build bridges and show positive contributions from Britain’s ethnic and religious minorities, not least one of World War II’s almost forgotten heroes, a British Muslim woman,” said social activist Zehra Zaidi in the online petition she started to campaign for Khan as the face of the new banknote.
The 50-pound currency will be the final redesigned note to go into circulation after notes in the denomination of 5 and 10 have already been reissued in polymer. The new 20-pound polymer note will go into circulation from 2020 when the 50-pound is set to go into print to be circulated later.
“The bank will announce a character selection process for the new 50-pound note in due course, which will seek nominations from the public for potential characters to appear on the new note,” the Bank of England said.
With Inputs From PTI
source: http://www.indiatimes.com / India Times / Home> News> India / October 18th, 2018
In an interview with Indianexpress.com, Lal spoke about the incredible achievements of Nur Jahan. Remnants of imperial orders issued by her, coins minted in her name, paintings that paid ode to her sovereignty and bravery are all evidence of the enormously powerful figure she was.
Left- Cover of the book ‘Empress: The astonishing reign of Nur Jahan’ (wwnorton.com) Right- Historian Ruby Lal (personal website of Ruby Lal)
For four centuries, from when she was at the centre of one of the largest empires of the world, Nur Jahan, the twentieth and supposedly the most loved wife of Mughal emperor Jahangir, has been a household name in the Subcontinent. Though she was not officially the ruler of Mughal India, Nur Jahan has been noted by historians to be the real power behind the throne. A politically astute and charismatic figure, she ruled Mughal India as a co-sovereign of Jahangir and is known to have been more decisive and influential than he ever was. Historian Ruby Lal in her latest book, ‘Empress: The astonishing reign of Nur Jahan’, dives deep into the intriguing world of the only woman to have helmed the Mughal empire. Tracing her life in great detail, Lal attempts to rip apart narratives of romance and exoticism that surround the image of Nur Jahan and focus upon what made a Muslim woman living in seventeenth-century India, one of the most authoritarian figures in Indian history.
In an interview with Indianexpress.com, Lal spoke about the incredible achievements of Nur Jahan. “People say she always sat right next to Jehangir in the court and that if some cases or decisions came up and if she agreed with him, she would pat him on the back and he would say yes to that decision,” says Lal who is Professor of South Asian Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Remnants of imperial orders issued by her, coins minted in her name, paintings that paid ode to her sovereignty and bravery are all evidence of the enormously powerful figure she was. Charting the life history of Nur Jahan, and placing her in the background of the pluralistic cultural space that Mughal India was, Lal puts together an evocative biographical account of the queen.
Here are excerpts from the interview with Lal.
Popular perception of Nur Jahan is somehow constricted to the romantic relationship she shared with Jahangir. Why is that the case?
There is a very long history of the erasure of Nur Jahan’s power that I chart in the book. As she traveled through the length and breadth of the country with Jahangir – issuing imperial orders, hunting a killer tiger near Mathura, discussing the expansion of the empire- she rose to being the co-sovereign. This does not mean that in her own time people did not raise eyebrows. In 1622, her stepson and Jahangir’s son Shah Jahan had risen in revolt. The catalyst for his revolt was the moment when Nur Jahan arranged a match for her daughter from her first marriage, Ladli; she chose the youngest prince, Shahriyar for her. About that time, Shah Jahan went into rebellion against Jahangir. And its is very clear that he felt threatened; he knew about the power of Nur Jahan. In fact, Shah Jahan and Nur Jahan had been closely aligned. The year 1622 is when certain chroniclers begin to write about the chaos that Nur Jahan Begum had raked up between the father and son.
“There is a very long history of the erasure of Nur Jahan’s power that I chart in the book,” says Ruby Lal. (Wikimedia Commons)
So the early criticism appears to begin around this time. The other major moment of critique of Nur’s power was when they were on their way to Kashmir and Mahabat Khan (who went on to capture Jahangir later in 1626) goes on the journey with them to a certain distance and according to one of the chroniclers he says to Jahangir that a man who was governed by a woman is likely to suffer from unforseen results. In 1626, she, completely visible, goes to save Jahangir (sitting upon an elephant on a roaring river), commanding all men including her brother Asaf Khan. She stratergises and eventually saves the emperor. After this, we begin to come across a word called Fitna, in the records.
Fitna is a very loaded term in Islamic history. It is used for the first time during the Shia-Sunni split for civil strife. It was also used against Ayesha, Prophet Muhammad’s favourite wife, when she went on a battle against Ali who was eventually the leader of the Shias. Over time, the word came to be used against women’s visibility, their sexuality and so on. Following 1626, this is one word that is used repeatedly against nur – that is to say that her power produced chaos.
Later, in the Shahjahanama, we find that at one point that the chronicler lists her power as a “problem”: the Shahjahanama reverts to the male inheritance of power and completely undoes her co-sovereignty with Jahangir.
Then there were also visitors to India like Thomas Roe, the ambassador of James I of England who follows Nur and Jahangir through the camps in Gujarat and Malwa. He calls her the Goddess of heathen impiety.
In the 19th century orientalist renditions of the romance of Nur and Jahangir become very important in the histories of the time; later, the colonial renditions highlight and forward such stories. Nur Jahan becomes classic oriental queen. Thus, a long-standing history of the erasure of the power of an astonishing emperess. It is certain that the erasure of Nur’s power travels into modern times and we only hear about her romance with Jahangir, not about her work as co-sovereign of the empire.
Jahangir is often compared with Akbar and criticised for being an uncompetitive, flamboyant king, who spent much of his time in drinking and merrymaking. But the fact that it was during the reign of Jahangir that a woman became so powerful, what does it say about his attitude towards women?
You are right, this is how Jahangir has come to be imagined. There are a range of scholars who for sometime now have been rethinking Jahangir’s reign, his philosophical and artistic engagements. My book foregrounds the ways in which Jahangir seeks to go differently from how Akbar articulated his sovereignty. If you look at the reigns of Babur and Humayun, there was no stone harem: the kings were nomadic and forever on the move. During Akbar the Great, for the first time in Mughal history, the imperial harem is built in stone in Fatehpur Sikhri. For the first time in the Ain-e-Akbari, women are declared as ‘pardeh-giyan’ which means “the veiled ones.”
“My book foregrounds the ways in which Jahangir seeks to go differently from how Akbar articulated his sovereignty,” says Ruby Lal. (Wikimedia Commons)
But what Jahangir does is that he goes back to the ethics of Babur. He was constantly wandering, he was constantly moving. The ethics of a peripatetic life and movement, which contributed to the co-sovereignty of Nur Jahan. Nur Jahan is the biggest example of Jahangir’s attitude towards women. An 18th-century chronicler that advances the Jahangirnama to the end of Jahangir’s death had suggested that the emperor had once claimed that he had given the sovereignty to Nur Jahan Begum and that he was quite content with his wine and meat. It’s an allegorical statement: and one indicates his admiration of Nur, something that he chronicles in his own memoir
Would Nur Jahan be this powerful had she not been married to Jahangir or had she not been part of the Mughal empire?
I think, Nur Jahan, looking at her whole life history and context, would have expressed her power differently in other circumstances. Her life history shows her dynamism and boldness. Of course, as I have been saying, and detail in the book that the plural landscape of Hindustan was very important- in that that it fostered experimentation and all sorts of ways of being (alongside war other challenges of co-existence of multi-confessional identities). We should also remember that she comes from an important Persian family background, deeply invested in poetry, arts, calligraphy. Then her own initiative must be highlighted: there were other women in the harem – and indeed Nur walks in the tracks of these women’s power – but no one becomes a co-sovereign. That speaks something about her boldness, her endeavours and of course her ambition.
Islamic societies are often noted to be more regressive compared to others in their treatment of women. In your book do you try to subvert this notion?
I Am trying to suggest that Nur Jahan is the history of India. She was a Shia married to a Sunni Muslim who was also half Hindu Rajput. Further, Nur Jahan is the only woman ruler among the great Mughals of India (there are technical signs of being a sovereign and informal signs, both of which I detail in the book). That is the history of India. As far as Islam is concerned, people should know that there were incredible and powerful women in Islamic history all the way through. We have Ayesha, Raziya, we have Nur Jahan Begum, we have any number of powerful women. It is also the multicultural world. In the modern world, we tend to think in terms of fixed identities. People in early modern times were much more open. Jahangir was engaging with Siddichandra, a Jain monk. Nur Jahan used to tease him about the pleasures of the flesh. What does this tell you? It tells you about an open engagement. It tells you about how experimental Islam is, how mixed Islam is, how vibrant Muslim women are and how Islam is so deeply attached to India.
‘Empress: The astonishing reign of Nur Jahan’ has been published by W.W.Norton in the United States earlier this month and will be published by Penguin Books in India soon.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Research / by Anrija Roychowdhury, New Delhi / July 11th, 2018
Entrepreneur, under-the-radar philanthropist and an over-the-top personality — the relevance of Shahnaz Husain 40 years after her first formulation
Shahnaz Husain’s press kit weighs 12.3 kilos, and contains press clippings from around the world. But then everything about her is over the top, and it’s not just her red hair threaded through with gold ribbons. Of her 58 homes, one is in Delhi’s tony Greater Kailash. There is a Rolls-Royce and a Jaguar parked up front, while inside is a sort of Midas-touch shocker. There are swans, a Ganesha, cushions, high-backed chairs, window valances, all in gold. There is an MF Husain on the wall that the artist did especially for her, large urns in the corners taller than people, horses sprinting across the carpet. Curios clutter, and I imagine a dusting nightmare.
She is not short on staff though. There are at least 15 people I have counted, and I am there just for a couple of hours. They appear, to offer food, tea, more food, juice; and to take instruction each time Shahnaz rings her bell to show me something — her first husband’s photograph, a letter from romance novelist Barbara Cartland’s friend’s son whose eyesight she cured, a picture of a man she picked up off the street because he was lame. They are dismissed soon after, with a wave of Madam’s hand.
She is wearing a blue-and-leopard print cassock-like garment, and holds forth for the next couple of hours. While she knows just what to say to the media, often telling the same stories, there is a certain warmth I feel, even as she holds my hand, her 70+ years, showing only in her hands.
Cosmetic shift
She begins with the first of many stories (these are her forte, not the dates or the details): when on a course with cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein, she had a friend whose mother would come and sit outside the class because she was blind and had no one to take care of her at home. “She’d been a sought-after model who had worked for an eye make-up company,” says Shahnaz. She had modelled a new line, complaining to the manufacturers that her eyes would feel blurred after use. “They told her to wash them and put Optrix.” The blurring continued, until she simply could not see any more.
Shahnaz was learning what she calls “chemical beauty” at the time — Arnould Taylor, London; Christine Valmy, New York; Lancome, Paris; Swarzkopf, Germany; Lean of Copenhagen, Denmark. “There was no school I hadn’t been to, until Rubenstein started to say ‘we have nothing to teach you’.” She had funded herself through her writing work. Married at 15 to Nasir Husain, who was director foreign trade in the State Trading Corporation, she was determined to study. She did, for eight years.
Back in India when she was about 24, she set up a small factory in Delhi’s Okhla (that she still has) and “employed ayurvaids . I gave them the chemical formulations and asked them to convert them”. She also recruited chemists to make products for “treatment and cures” — falling hair, acne, pigmentation, dark circles, stretch marks. She asked people who came to her home salon to test them and give her feedback, tweaking each product as she went along. They retailed out of Sahib Singh Chemists in Connaught Place, in little white bottles with green caps and handwritten labels. That is the thing, she says. It has never been about beauty, but always about Ayurveda, in the days before it became a marketing tool.
Thinking beyond business
There is no marketing, in fact. At an address at Harvard Business School in 2015, she spoke about how she created a successful business sans advertising. Two years ago she told the same school in an interview how she entered Selfridges and broke a 40-year record, selling products worth £2,700 (approximately Rs. 2,63,500) in the first two hours, even as she displaced half of the space allocated to Pierre Cardin.
Her way of entering a foreign market is often through the Indian government (as in Selfridges, where Ingrid Bergman bought 12 of her cactus cleansing creams at the Festival of India), and by liaising with the press. She says wherever in the world she goes, ambassadors are happy to organise a press conference. She will talk Ayurveda, distribute samples, and get enormous press coverage. She is clear that the future is Ayurveda, not chemicals.
In fact, even as a young girl travelling the world studying, her father, Nasirullah Beg, a chief justice of the Allahabad High Court, would write to the ambassadors in various countries so his daughter could stay with them through the duration of the course.
But it is not just running a business; she is happy to dole out products made for cancer patients free of cost, especially those with patches of alopecia, and will pick people off the street, offering them jobs, connecting them to medical specialists.
Today, the company invests in R&D, with customers from salons testing them out, though it is not clear whether they know they are part of the research. She also talks in terms of “prescriptions” and “fairness creams”, a throwback to an era where protocols, both medical and social, were not as strict.
The label life
Earlier this year, the Shahnaz Husain brand was relaunched, with a new store at Delhi’s Select Citywalk, with new branding that seems rather mixed, with large pictures of flowers all over the frontage. Her face is still on some of the packaging, not retro-styled, but much like how it would have been done in the ’90s. She is not about to sell out or have anyone invest in the company. The brand is present in 40 countries today, including Iceland and Vietnam.
I dare not ask, ‘What after you?’ For Shahnaz is the brand.
As we conclude, she declares, “I think you have enough for a book now,” in her alto. Then she asks for her matching blue-and-leopard print bag, as we sit in her foyer, surrounded by a garden of plastic flowers, taking photos, with a couple of photographers jumping into the fray, seemingly from nowhere (waiting in the wings for this moment, perhaps). “Now we are best friends,” she declares, after we cut a cake, the done thing when a guest comes to her house for the first time.
She says wherever in the world she goes, ambassadors are happy to organise a press conference. She will talk Ayurveda, distribute samples, and get enormous press coverage. She is clear that the future is Ayurveda, not chemicals.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Weekend / by Sunalini Mathew / October 13th, 2018
Faith healing is a scientifically accepted way-out. In Srinagar outskirts lives Abdul Qadir who treats more than 15000 patients a month and is considered a key healer for jaundice, reportsIrtiza Rafiq
Abdul Qadir
The plasma screen at Srinagar International airport shows the arrival of the Delhi- Srinagar flight and the lounge gets instantly active. Among the curious mixture of excited and bored arrivals, Ruqaya, a 33-year-old woman with her pale yellow face, sunken cheeks, and a feeble body stands out. Accompanied by her husband Javaid, 37, as she makes her way out of the airport, her anxious relatives waste no time in elaborate greetings. Flying straight from the USA, the couple is literally bundled into the car and their journey started towards Syedpora (Dhara) in city outskirts.
After a drive of around 29 km, the couple gets off, pass a small bridge across a shallow, crooked, clear, stream, walk down some narrow alleys and enter a house. In the time Ruqaya waits with dozens of other women, most of them mothers with children nestled up in their arms in a compound brimful of multifarious people, Javaid proceeds towards a chaotic, almost endless queue at a congested staircase where scores of people are nudging each other to pass their Rs 10 note for the exchange of a stamped paper piece from a 40-year-old man upstanding at the middle of the stairs. There is another man at the foot of the staircase for crowd control.
The scene resembles the representation of a shrine where followers with raised hands propel each other to get a touch of some higher deity or a sacred thing. The chit for which they are struggling for is their ticket to cross the stairway. This stairway crossing is heavenly for most of them because it leads to the Bab, the ‘spiritual healer’.
For the last five decades, the septuagenarian Bab has been treating all kinds of ailments, at his residence, a quiet and picturesque place, almost 2.5 km from Harwan.
The influx of patients can be gauged by the fact that the Reshi abode comprises three houses: one where the family lives, second where the patients wait for their turn and the third where Abdul Qadir Reshi, the Bab examines and treats his patients.
The room of the treatment-building is jammed by people, among yellow faces, crying neonates, ailing individuals, on the left corner, Bab sits on a bed at a slight elevation with his youngest son Abdul Ghani Reshi. In between them is a large copper bowl of water, on their either side various bottled up solutions, some powders, and in the front, lies a knife and a leather belt.
Khadija, 65, a woman from Rajbagh approaches him with her eight-day-old granddaughter having 7.68 mg/dL bilirubin level, Bab takes hold of baby’s clothes, lays her in front of him, squeezes her nipples, sprinkles handful of water from the copper bowl on her and then slowly rubs her forehead, eyelids all the while muttering something under his breath. He then hands the baby over to Khadija and asks her to make sure that her mother doesn’t eat oily or non-vegetable food. Interestingly, Khadija reveals that the mother of the kid is herself a doctor but has a firm belief in the healing powers of Bab. The medico mom didn’t comply to the paediatrician’s suggestion of exchange transfusion (blood change).
The certitude of this kind doesn’t come as a surprise, for Bab has treated thousands of people. Some of them approached him after they keenly heard their treating doctors telling them: “There is nothing more we can do”. But somehow after following Bab’s prescription, some of these people managed to do the unexpected − they lived, fully treated.
For 55 years and counting, sort of miracles have been happening around this solemn looking spiritual healer who credits it all to the Almighty. “I have been bestowed upon by the knowledge and ability by God that I can say by looking at a person what he is suffering from, particularly jaundice patients, one look at them and I can tell if they will make it or not,” Bab said after managing his patients. “It is a vision by God; the verses I read have a healing effect in them so the healing comes from God.”
This peculiar wisdom runs in the Reshi family and has been transferring from generation to generation. The story of this bequeathed enlightenment started when a spiritual healer from Kabul had a dream, so goes the family legend, wherein he was commanded to visit Mulfak, a neighbouring area of Syedpora, which is known to be home of peers. Once there, he spent a night and went touring adjoining areas escorted by a peer from Mulfak. When he saw ancestors of Abdul Qadir Reshi working in paddy fields, he told his escort, according to Bab’s son Abdul Gani Reshi, “Go back I have got what I was looking for. From that day, he resided with my great-grandfather and passed him his saintly knowledge,” said Reshi Jr.
“But we were warned by our spiritual teacher against being greedy,” Gami said. “So we do not take any money except on Sundays when we take Rs 10 from people and that too for Darsgah and charity. On the contrary, we provide tea and refreshments to visitors.”
Every day, up to 600 patients visit the place, and on Sundays, the number crosses 1000 people, all of whom are treated free of cost by Bab who does it as a social service. He and his family make their living out of their orchards and are financially well off.
“Except for gallbladder stones, everything is treated here,” claims Gani, and he then goes to name the ailments they take care of : Sorphtoph (snake bite), Gunstoph (cobra bite), Arkhor, Hounchop (dog bite), Malder (Herpes), Diabetes, Kambal (jaundice), psoriasis. “We deal with everything but a lot of cautiousness must be exhibited on our parts and we should abide by guidelines of our forefathers. Once my uncle made some mistake and as a consequence, he had a brush with death. This is like a sword hanging on our heads we have to be vigilant at every step.”
This guarded approach is quite evident from the way Bab instructs his son while he prepares herbal remedies and writes prescriptions for patients, even whilst himself dealing with a Malder (Herpes Zoster) patient, Fatima, 55, from Shalimar by dragging and flipping the knife over her lesions. He is doing the shoving and thrusting amid the surging crowd. Angry, he finally uses the leather belt and whips it over the unruly assemblage.
Family’s makeshift shop selling the prescriptions is run by his younger son, Ghulam Masood Reshi and grandson Rayees Ahmad Reshi. Even though it’s not mandatory for people to buy their stock from this shop, still they prefer it, because patients are patiently helped to understand how to follow their prescription. Bab’s prescriptions usually comprise of 80 per cent of herbs and 20 per cent of Hamdard products. Rishis say they take great care that herbs are genuine and hire peasants to handpick them.
People waiting outside Abdul Qadir ‘s abode.
“These unadulterated herbs when used in treatment do wonders,” Masood Reshi said. “There is a specific herb Wagan which heals the bite of rabies dog, without any need of injections, another herb, Sumbloo and Kawidarh Moul, helps to treat blood cancer, diabetes, cholesterol, and thyroid. Yet another herb, Jogi Patsah, found in dog free area of Ladakh aids in treating kidney and ovarian cysts. For jaundice patients, we use a rare herb called Michre Komal. The market value of these herbs is in thousands but we sell them at Rs 600 at the maximum.”
More diverse than the herbs here are the people who flock around Bub. People from all parts of Kashmir, urban as well as rural, from all socio-economic backgrounds, pin the hope of their healing on Bab, but what is more captivating is that people from different religions have belief in him as well.
Jaswant Singh, 60, brings his son, Gurpal Singh, 24, with some throat allergies and Bab after prescribing the medicines holds his turban and reads verses from Quran. This presents a quite peculiar sight.
= A month later, Bab informed this reporter that a non-resident Kashmiri couple from the USA have also come to him for a treatment. In the USA, she was diagnosed with severe jaundice. Her bilirubin count was 65 mg/dL, a level that has the least chances of recovery as per medical sciences. She and her husband then decided to return home, maybe they were preparing for the worst.
But back home, Ruqaya’s family wanted to try for the last time for which they travelled straightaway from Airport for Bab’s consultation.
After twenty days of Bab’s treatment, Ruqaya recovered and then left for the US along with her husband happily.
(Names of patients mentioned in this story have been changed to protect their identities.)
source: http://www.kashmirlife.net / Kashmir Life / Home / by Irtiza Rafiq / October 03rd, 2018
No rainy day can be better spent than roaming around Mandu’s Jahaz Mahal, with Jahangir’s words as guide
“What words of mine can describe the beauty of the grass and green flowers? They clothe each hill and dale, each slope and plain. I know of no place so pleasant in climate and so pretty in scenery as Mandu in the rainy season,” wrote Jahangir in his memoirs.
On a misty morning in July, we entered the hilly kingdom of Mandu with these words echoing in my mind.
In 1401, Dilawar Khan, the governor of Malwa who was appointed by the Delhi Sultans, took advantage of the chaos resulting from Mongol attacks and declared his independence. He shifted the capital from Dhar to Mandu (Mandav) and renamed it Shadiabad, or City of Joy. When Ghiyasuddin Shah (1469-1500 AD) came to the throne, he decided that his father, Mahmud Shah I, had expanded the kingdom enough. All he wanted to do was enjoy life. Handing over the affairs of the kingdom to his son and heir, Nasir Shah, Ghiyasuddin Shah gave himself up to a life of delights. He was a connoisseur of food, and his recipes are sealed in an illustrated book, Nimatnama, that is with the British Library and has been translated into English by Norah M. Tiley as The Sultan’s Book of Delights.
A life of pleasure
Ghiyasuddin Shah wasn’t joking when he declared that he wanted to devote himself to a life of pleasure. He filled his harem with women who were trained in various disciplines for which they had an aptitude. While some were singers, dancers, painters and chefs, others were trained to be his guards and personal soldiers. He established a madarsa and educated the women to be proficient in religious as well as secular subjects. There were Qazis, schoolmistresses, hunters, scholars, embroiderers, and accountants among them.
We drove straight to Jahaz Mahal, a stunning building, named as such because its shape, when it fell on the water tanks surrounding it, looked like a ship.
All the guides and stories will tell you that Ghiyasuddin Shah built it to house his harem. A probably exaggerated figure of his harem was given by Jahangir, who wrote it as 15,000. That figure is gleefully quoted by local guides, with perhaps a hint of envy on their faces.
After Dilawar Khan established the Malwa dynasty he got architects and craftsmen from Delhi. The early buildings bear a stamp of the Tughlaq and Khilji architecture of Delhi.
The Jahaz Mahal, however, is a flight of imagination and takes yours along with it. I could see girls dancing and singing in the rain on the rooftop and in the courtyards, their shadows reflecting on the Munj Talao and Kaphur Taloo surrounding it.
The strains of Megh Malhar were flooding my senses, and in my mind’s eye I could see the arcades being lit up by the lanterns and lamps that were floating on the water, glimmering and dipping along with the wind, glowing like fireflies.
I could smell the heavily laden kadhais (woks), with samosas and baras being fried. As the illustrations of the Nimatnama show, the Sultan took a keen interest in, and was perhaps supervising, the correct temperature of the oil, the salt in the filling. How golden was the result?
Who knows? All I know is that I was transported back to the 15th century as soon as I entered the long, double-storied Jahaz Mahal through its main arched, marble entrance. At the back, every arch of the continuous arcaded 360-feet building opens on to Munj Talao. I don’t know how close it was originally to Kaphur (Camphor), now called Kapoor Talao, but now this is quite a distance from it. There are manicured lawns between it.
Initially it was decorated with glazed tiles and colourful friezes. Now we have the unfortunate graffiti that people are wont to inscribe on monuments. The cool corridors and pillared compartments were made for dancing and singing.
Nur Jahan accompanied Jahangir to Mandu in 1617 and the palace complex of Mandu enchanted the royal couple.
A magical bubble
Jahangir sent Abdul Karim in an advance party to repair the buildings. He was so pleased with the result that he rewarded him with the title of Ma’mur Khan (architect Khan). Mandu is a treasure house of water harvesting. There are also bathing tanks. There are two in this palace, on both the floors, shaped like a tortoise with steps going in. Now devoid of water, one can imagine women going to the toilet there, with roses and lotus flowers floating in the perfumed waters.
The roof has a few open pavilions and kiosks on its four corners. While I was there on the wet, open terrace, the mist came and blotted out everything around. We were trapped in our very own magical bubble.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion – Where Stones Speak / by Rana Safvi / September 03rd, 2017
