More than 6,000 specimens at the 105-year-old herbarium in the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding (IFGTB) can now be accessed by the click of a mouse, as the institute plans to digitise it.
The digitisation will help preserve the fragile specimens, prone to damage due to constant physical handling.
The Fischer Herbarium, which was started in the year 1911 on the Forest Campus in R S Puram, was created as a repository to house the many collections made by British forest officer Cecil Ernest Claude Fischer. He had an extensive collection of specimens from the Nilgiris, Palanis, Coimbatore forest divisions, Seshachalam Hills and Ganjam District of Andhra Pradesh. The herbarium also houses century old collections by forest officers,T F Bourdillon and M Rama Rao from the Travancore presidency. The herbarium was brought under IFGTB’s control in 1988.
The herbarium, considered a national repository by the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), contains 2,954 species, 254 families of plants and 1,257 genera, some of them as rare as the one by forest officer J R Drummond in 1879.
“The herbarium is visited by a lot of taxonomists and botanists. So, when they discover a unique species but have heard of similar looking species being present in a herbarium in another part of the country or world, they often have to physically visit the herbarium to cross check the facts,” said IFGTB director R S Prashanth. “But now they can cross-check with the image and data available online,” he said.
The digital herbarium, which can be accessed through the website www.frcherbarium.org, currently contains 6,231 of the total 23,000 specimens available with the IFGTB. “This digitisation was done by former librarian at the Kerala Forest and Research Institute K H Hussain,” said the head of the biodiversity division at IFGTB C Kunhikannan about the project which cost Rs 6 lakh.
“The website has uploaded the herbarium’s sheets and allows people to zoom into the image to take a closer look at the specimen and the officer’s own writings,” said Hussain. “We will be shortly applying for more funds to digitize the rest of the herbarium’s data,” said the director. The institute, however, admitted that they were yet to review all the data on the website and eliminate spelling errors that might have occurred since the data entry personnel were not taxonomists.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Coimbatore / TNN / April 13th, 2016
The ancient site of the Madan Kamdev temple was once preserved by a Muslim. The fact that this has been forgotten is a sign of a larger erasure that we should be concerned about.
Madan Kamdev in Assam. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Arup Malakar.
Over a century ago, the incisive colonial historian Edward Gait, who compiled the first compendium of history in modern Assam lamented the fact that “…there is probably no part of India regarding whose past less is generally known. In the histories of India, as a whole, Assam is barely mentioned, and only ten lines are devoted to its annals in the historical portion of Hunter’s Indian Empire.”
Despite the passage of a hundred years, Gait’s observations on the narrativisation of Assam in popular Indian historiography remain true as ever. Timothy Garton Ash writes that recorded history is a history of memories. And when memories are being deliberated upon, can forgetting be far away? The act of peeking into the silences of historical narratives that have developed over centuries in Assam, or anywhere else in the world, becomes a crucial intervention.
Some such silences are palpably becoming more visible in the culturescape of poll-oriented Assam. The state has often been termed as ‘Sankardev-Azaan Ore Dexh’ – the land of Sankardev and Azaan Fakir, two religious and cultural saints of medieval Assam responsible for altering its socio-religious landscape. Srimanta Sankardev inspired the Bhakti movement, while Azaan Fakir established Sufi Islam here. Renowned Assamese geographer and social scientist Mohammed Taher observed that the syncretic relationship between Sankardev’s Vaishnavite religious traditions and Azan Fakir’s Sufi Islam was one of the main reasons that Muslims became a part of Assamese society.
These syncretic traditions have been an intrinsic part of Assamese society, including its political and cultural milieus. They are also reflected in the case of Ismail Siddiqui, one of the main commanders of the great Ahom general Lachit Barphukan. Siddiqui defeated the Mughal Army led by Raja Ram Singh in the historic Battle of Saraighat in the 17thCentury. For his bravado, Siddiqui was given the honorific Bagh Hazarika, or the Tiger commanding a thousand soldiers.
Religious sites have also been a significant marker of this syncretism. There have been many instances where Hindu religious sites have been taken care of by Muslims for years and Muslim sites have had been under the care of Hindus. In fact, Azan Fakir who ventured into Assam around 1636 AD, was known to have married a high-status Ahom woman. His dargah was constructed by the Ahom King Swargadeo Churamfa as an act of penance, at Saraguri Chapori in Sivasagar District close to the Ahom capital.
Madan Kamdev
There are many such stories across the Brahmaputra valley in Assam, and one of them is found in the history of the ancient temple site Madan Kamdev, the mythical place where Kamdev supposedly resurrected himself after being burnt to ashes by Shiva. These magnificent ruins lie 40 kilometres outside Guwahati.
Though the site has been dated to the 11-12th century CE, new scholarship suggests that the place may have been even older. Construction may have started with the ruler Vanamalavarmadeva of the Salasthambha dynasty in the 9th century, and continued by the succeeding Pala dynasty up to the 12th century.
The site is the capital of ancient Assam, which was known as Kamrupanagara. Even today, one of the major districts in Assam which encompasses this area is known as Kamrup, and those staying in this district in Lower Assam are generally referred to as Kamrupiyas.
Though the temple is dedicated to Uma-Maheshwar, the site of Madan Kamdev has often been referred to as the Khajuraho of the east due to the numerous erotic sculptures dotting the expansive landscape. Madan Kamdev finds mention in the important 10th century Hindu text, Kalika Purana and in the 16th century Tantric text from Assam, Yogini Tantra. However, this stone temple stretching to around half a km was subsequently destroyed by various earthquakes over the centuries, starting with the earthquake of 1548 CE.
Sculpture at Madan Kamdev temple. Credit: Travelling Slacker/Flickr CC 2.0
The ruins of Madan Kamdev were first excavated in 1855 by the colonial military officer, Captain Dalton. But not much information is available on the kind of preservation or conservation efforts that were undertaken post this discovery. However, records do show that a Muslim land official of the colonial administration, Niyamat Ali Mondol, took the responsibility of preserving this ancient temple. Niyamat Ali belonged to the nearby Piyolikhata Village, around 2 kms from the temple site. He was given the title ‘Mondol’ by the British administration, which meant that he measured land in order to calculate revenue for the colonial administration, and also arbitrated land disputes.
Very little is known or written about Niyamat Ali Mondol, but what is significant is that he became the first doloi or chief administrative officer of Madan Kamdev for 10 years, starting in 1901. The upkeep of Madan Kamdev, as with a lot of similar temple sites was administered by a committee made of locals till either the Government of India or the Assam government or the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) took over the responsibilities of conservation and restoration. It was only as recently as 1977 that the directorate of archaeology in Assam officially took over the responsibility of the upkeep of this ancient site.
Mondol’s role
When the temple faced a severe scarcity of funds, Mondol paid its khazna or land tax in his individual capacity for about four years. With such a history, one would expect the temple to hold information or the villages around the temple to offer some narratives, oral or otherwise. However, as Garton-Ash writes, ‘…writing history is nothing less than an infinity of individual memories of any person or event’. One can definitely discern a new form of historiography in the making – one that is complicit in the erasure of certain persons or events or even the linear chronological history of a tangible space. The ASI museum at the site of the temple does not offer any narrative on who discovered the site, how was it maintained, and who was associated with the site in modern history.
Mondol’s descendants who still live close to Madan Kamdev feel that there is an effort to do away with this part of the history of the temple, and in the history of Assam in general. ‘In the early 1990s, the temple officials including the thendoloi came to our house and took away the only surviving portrait that we had of Mondol, as they wanted to honour his efforts and install the portrait at the temple office,’ says his grandson, 86-year-old Bhola Chowdhury. ‘But the portrait went missing after a few years. We have tried locating it as that was our only tangible memory of him, but unfortunately we have no trace of it,’ he rues.
Kamal Nayan Patowary, an assistant professor of history whose doctoral thesis was on Madan Kamdev, offers an interesting anecdote on Mondol: ‘The locals did tell me about a person called Mondol who was the first doloi of this temple. But apparently, there was some issue with the locals and he was removed from the post of doloi soon (after). Hence, in anger, he took a tamrapatra or copper inscription from the temple, and threw it into a pond. According to the locals, the history of the temple has thus been lost. I did try to excavate the inscription during my doctoral research, and even employed divers to search in the pond, but it was a futile exercise.’
This narrative is however confounded by the fact that Mondol’s son, Chand Mohammed Chowdhury Kamrupi himself was part of the temple committee for about five years after the death of his father. Chowdhury was also part of the temple committees of other ancient temples in the region such as Goreswar, Pingleswar, and the 200-year-old Patrapur mosque. He was a prominent citizen of the region, who was bestowed the title Kamrupi by the locals because of his avowedly secular nature and love of the land. Kamrupi was also a well-known political figure, as well as a published writer and poet. He authored the book Vivaah Chitra in 1936, and also had his essay Purdah published in the journal Chetana which was edited by Ambika Giri Rai Chowdhury, popularly known as Assam Kesari.
Forgetting
In the temple precinct, there is also a palpable reluctance by the current trustees to talk about the modern history of Madan Kamdev. There is no awareness of the histories or narratives associated with sites such as these among devotees, or even in the villages nearby. Historian Will Pooley exhorts us to engage with the absent narratives and corroborate the voices that are heard.
In 2016, the state is facing elections which many term as a game-changer in the political landscape of Assam. Perhaps this is also a historical moment to critically examine the larger absences that are being created. It is a narrative or an absent presence that seems to haunt the Khilonjia or local Muslim community of Assam, which has always identified itself with its ethnic rather than religious identity.
History and memory are always interlinked. Changing memories involve the process of what Garton Ash has called ‘slow fading or forgetting.’ Whether this forgetting can be contained and lost memories retrieved is a question that the Assamese community as a whole may want to ponder upon this year.
The author is a PhD research scholar at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Communities> by Shaheen Ahmed / April 10th, 2016
Iconic Bollywood actress Meena Kumari’s original publicity material and memorabilia, including paintings and portraits of her films, will be on the display at the Womanhood Festival here.
At the event, paintings of 1972 ‘Pakeezah’ and the 1953 classic ‘Daera’, co-starring Nasir Khan will be showcased. Portraits of Dilip Kumar-Meena Kumari starrer ‘Kohinoor’ and ‘Benazir’, co-starring Ashok Kumar and Shashi Kapoor, will be on the display at an event scheduled tomorrow at Osianama Liberty as part of the ongoing festival. Besides, posters of ‘Meena Kumari ki Amar Kahani’, ‘Phool Aur Pathar’ and images of ‘Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam’ will also be featured.
The actress’ films like ‘Pakeezah’, ‘Parineeta’ and ‘Daayra’ will also be screened at the event. “She is a true icon for Womanhood & Cinema, absorbing all, breaking all, in the search to be herself… Along with Nargis and Madhubala, she represents the feminine iconicity just as ‘Mother India’, ‘Mughal-E-Azam’ and ”Pakeezah’ represents a different trinity of Indian cinema,”Neville Tuli, chairman, Osian’s Group said in a statement. Meena Kumari aka Mahjabeen Bano, starred in over 90 films in her career spanning nearly 30 years.
Listen to the songs of Meena Kumari on gaana.com
http://gaana.com/album/meena-kumari-hits
WATCH: Chalte Chalte Yunhi Koi Mil Gaya Tha – Meena Kumari – Pakeezah – Ghulam Mohammed – Old Hindi Song
Did you know that the mother of prominent Bollywood actor ‘tragedy queen’ Meena Kumari had a Lucknow connection?
When her mother Ikbal Bano was a young woman, she left her hometown Kolkata and came to Lucknow with her mother in the 1920s to explore a career in the arts. Meena, though, never visited Lucknow.
Bano had come to Lucknow following her connection with Rabindranath Tagore’s family. She worked as a dancer here for some time before moving to Mumbai to try her luck in Bollywood. There she met Ali Baksh, a harmonium player, whom she married. Their daughter Meena Kumari is a name we know well.
Several such lesser known facts about the life and journey of Hindi cinema’s enduring actress Meena Kumari will be shown in a play called ‘Adhoore Khwaab’, to be staged in the city on Monday. Over 40 trained actors will portray various tangents of her life in an 80-minute show organized as part of the 27th International Literary Festival by the Hindi Urdu Sahitya Award Committee.
SN Lal, the writer of the play, said, “In this play, we have tried to bring to light a different side of her charismatic personality. For the first time, we have incorporated one of the verses of matam (mourning during Moharram) penned by her in a play,” explained Lal.
Despite being one of the most popular names in cinema, Meena faced several hardships, he added.
The last scene of the play has been kept identical to real incidents of her life. “While shooting a song for Pakeezah, she had fallen ill and after that, never returned to movies or shooting. She died following the long illness. We have tried to recreate those moments on stage,” said Middat Khan, the director of the play.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Lucknow / Vidita Chandra / TNN / April 11th, 2016
Sana began the ride in November from Goa, where she had been participating in a rally. So far she has covered 10 States and Kochi is the 50th city she has visited.
Sana Iqbal, a solo biker, is on a mission to create awareness against suicide and on depression
The wheels of life often take unchartered routes and open new vistas, just as they did for biker and life coach Sana Iqbal from Hyderabad. A personal reversal had driven the young mother to abject depression, even to a point when she hoped a bike accident on the highway would bring a quick end to her misery. But then things changed. Today, the 28-year-old is journeying solo across the length and breadth of the country conducting sessions on tackling issues related to the young. So Sana talks on matters that trouble young minds from subjects as innocuous as acne problems to complex ones on relationships, career, marriage, depression and suicide. She is simultaneously pursuing a Master’s in Psychology and does corporate training sessions on behavioural skills.
Though she began young as a biker, as early as in school, she took to hardcore riding only last September. Till then she drove not beyond 20 km of central Hyderabad. But in a desperate state, Sana undertook a long solo journey. There she found support and encouragement from unexpected quarters. Passers-by cheered her, children gathered around her in curiosity and waved her luck as she rode; little gestures that alleviated her grief. A change in mindset came about. She felt that solution to life’s problems was in perception, in looking at the other side. With it also came a desire to help society with this thinking, to propagate a positive attitude among youngsters and her peers.
“When the aspirations of a normal life fail then extraordinary things happen.” she says on her decision to undertake this ride of a lifetime, a mission. Make happiness contagious is her message to fellow beings, which is imprinted boldly on a placard fixed to her Royal Enfield.
Sana began the ride in November from Goa, where she had been participating in a rally. So far she has covered 10 States and Kochi is the 50th city she has visited. She starts her day early and ends at sunset. Local people and truck drivers are her navigators and she rides along where the road takes her to. She carries a knife with her, one that she has never needed. “Our country is the safest place for women,” she says, dispelling the prevailing idea that India is unsafe for women. As a lone female rider she has not encountered any problems that have required help. On the contrary she has found camaraderie everywhere she has been to. In Jhansi where her bike had a flat, she was not charged any fee. In fact, the gentleman commended her efforts and requested her to disseminate the message that Uttar Pradesh is safe and not a lawless state as thought to be. An accident in Rajasthan left her frightened but she changed a hostile situation by her approach. “When the man whose car had hit my bike came to see what had happened, when I least expected the gesture, I said thank you. He was so startled at my response and wondered why I was not threatening him,” she recalls pointing out that kind words can change a situation.
To control one’s anger and to be forgiving are two messages that she wishes to give youngsters. India’s burgeoning biker community is her network, friends that help her with boarding, lodging and connectivity.
In the city, Sana addressed students at Chinmaya Vidyalaya and at SCMS College. From here she moves on to Thiruvananthapuram and Kanyakumari. The North East States are next on her plan.
“Every State has a different traffic sense. Kerala has narrow roads and Rajasthan wide ones but it has a lot of animal traffic. Each place has its beauty,” says Sana preparing her onward mission. “We all want to ‘be the change’ but only a few step out to bring in that change. I hope my act will help do so,” she says, putting on her helmet.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Priyadershini S / Kochi – March 16th, 2016
It is one of the largest of known fragments of an early Qurʼān written in the māʼil script.
Image credit: Pixabay
The British Library’s oldest Qur’ān manuscript, Or.2165, dating from the eighth century, has now been fully digitised and is available on the British Library’s digitised manuscripts site. Among the most ancient copies of the Qurʼān, it comprises 121 folios containing over two-thirds of the complete text and is one of the largest of known fragments of an early Qurʼān written in the māʼil script.
The end of Sūrah 7 (Sūrat al-A‘rāf, ‘The Heights’) and the beginning of Sūrah 8 (Sūrat al-Anfāl, ‘The Spoils of War’). The heading in red ink gives the title of the Sūrah and says that it contains 77 verses (British Library Or.2165, folio 7v)
This manuscript was purchased by the British Museum in 1879 from the Reverend Greville John Chester (1830-1892) as noted on a fly leaf at the back of the manuscript. Chester was an ordained clergyman interested in archaeology, Egyptology and natural history and made numerous trips to Egypt and the Near East, where he acquired objects and manuscripts, which are now in the collections of major UK cultural and library institutions. It is very likely he acquired this Qur’ān when he was in Egypt.
Acquisition details recorded at the end of the manuscript (British Library Or.2165, endpaper)
The earliest Qur’ān manuscripts were produced in the mid-to-late seventh century, and ancient copies from this period have not survived intact and exist only in fragments. Or.2165 contains three series of consecutive leaves (Sūrah 7:40 – Sūrah 9:96; Sūrah 10:9 – Sūrah 39:48; Sūrah 40:63 – Sūrah 43:71) from the so-called mā’il Qur’ān, which is about two-thirds of the Qur’ān text and is one of the oldest Qur’āns in the world. It probably dates from the eighth century, and as far as can be ascertained, was produced in the Hijaz region of the Arabian Peninsula.
The Arabic word mā’il (by which this Qur’ān is known) means ‘sloping’ and refers to the sloping style of the script – one of a number of early Arabic scripts collectively named ‘Hijazi’ after the region in which they were developed. The main characteristic of mā’il is its pronounced slant to the right. It can also be recognised by the distinctive traits of some of its letters, for example, the letter alif does not curve at the bottom but is rigid, and the letter yā’, occurring at the end of a word, turns and extends backwards frequently underlying the preceding words.
Left: the letter alif; six small dashes mark the end of the verse. Right: the letter yā’; the Sūrah heading in red ink was added later
In early Qur’āns there are no vowel signs, and this early style of script is also notable for its lack of diacritical marks to distinguish between letters of similar shape. Verse numbering had also not yet been established; the end of each verse was indicated by six small dashes in two stacks of three. The sūrah headings were added much later in red ink in the recognisable space purposely left blank to distinguish between the end and the beginning of chapters. Red circles surrounded by red dots to mark the end of every ten verses were also added later.
The beginning of Sūrah 12 (Sūrat Yūsuf, ‘Joseph’) showing the verse markers and also the red headings and circles which were added later (British Library Or.2165, folios 23v-24r)
As with all early Qur’āns, the text is written on vellum and would have been bound into a codex or muṣḥaf – originally a collection of sheets of vellum placed between two boards. Each double sheet was folded into two leaves, which were assembled into gatherings then sewn together and bound as quires into a codex.
The importance of Or.2165, in addition to all other known early Qur’ān fragments, cannot be overestimated. They provide the only available evidence for the early development of the written recording of the Qur’ān text and help towards our understanding of how early Qur’ān codices were produced.
There is no professional ten-pin bowling centre in the country and the need of the hour is promote the sport in a more organised manner, according to Shaikh Abdul Hameed, country’s leading bowling player, who bagged Asian and Commonwealth Games medals, representing India.
Speaking to media persons while announcing a tournament to be conduced at PVR Mall on M.G. Road here on Thursday, the 43-year-old veteran admitted that bowling alleys were confined mostly to the malls in cities and it was time they spread their wing. “Ten-pin game is a costly affair. Just to lay one lane it will cost Rs. 32 lakh. Only in Chandigarh we have a 16-lane alley while a standard alley as per the rules of the World Tenpin Association should have 24,” he added.
He said efforts were made to erase the entertainment tag attached the game and make it more competitive and systematic.
“Though the game has it origins in the country from the 60s it has turned professional only in early 2000,” says the double gold medallist at the Manchester Commonwealth Games, who won the title “Bowling Ekalvya” for learning the game all by himself.
Born in Guntur, Hameed, a south paw, shifted base to Delhi and was hooked to ten-pin bowling in his twenties.
“For the past 16 years I am playing bowling with passion and took part in several international tournaments in 120 countries. I am the only Indian who won the Thailand tour tiles of Asian Bowling Federation (ABF) in 2014,” he added.
A fighter to the core
Mr. Hameed is well-known for his legal fight against Government of India protesting the manner in which the Arjuna awards were shortlisted. “After a long fight I won the case in the courts and the points system was introduced. I still remember many players who received Arjuna awards thanking me for my fight.”
Technique
He said to be a successful bowler more than the strength and fitness it was technique that was needed to flatten the ten pins played in a cage.
“I want the Andhra Pradesh government to establish a quality bowling complex in the Amravati region and I wish to express make a request to Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, who is well known for promoting sports and games.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by Special Correspondent / Vijayawada – April 08th, 2016
Hindi-urdu Sahitya Award Committee, Uttar Pradesh is organising an International Literary Seminar on the poetic contribution of the former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam to literature.
The seminar is part of the annual celebrations of the committee which will be held on April 9 at Rai Umanath Bali Auditorium in Qaiserbagh.
Getting together people from both Hindi and Urdu backgrounds, the seminar will have writer and poet Ganga Prasad Vimal, Irtiza Karim, chairperson National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language, Yogendra Narayan and Qazi OR Hashmi, Jamia Millia Islamia among other academicians and poets.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Lucknow / TNN / April 08th, 2016
Imam-e-Haram of Holy Place of Mecca addresses thousands of Muslim brethren in city.
Mysuru :
Imam-e-Haram of Holy Place of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Saleh Bin Mohamed bin Ibrahim Al Talib, arrived by a special chartered flight from Bengaluru and landed at Mandakalli Air Port in city at 11.45 am yesterday.
Hazrath Moulana Syed Arshid Madni, President, Jamiath-e-Ulema, Ameer-e-Shariath Karnataka Hazrath Moulana Mufthi Mohamed Ashraf Ali Baqvi, former Mayor and Corporator Ayub Khan and Javeed Ahmed, Joint Secretary, Siddiqia Arabic College, accompanied the visiting Imam-e-Haram from Bengaluru to Mysuru.
Tanveer Sait, former Minister and MLA N.R. Constituency, Vasu, MLA, Chamraja Constituency, Hazrath Moulana Shabbir Ahmed Saheb Rishadi, President, Jamiath-e-Ulema, Mysuru Unit, Moulana Hafiz Arshad Ahmed, General Secretary, Jamiath-e-Ulema, Mysuru Unit, Abdul Azeez Chand, Secretary, Siddiqia Arabic College, Corporators K.C Shoukath Pasha, Suhail Baig, Ayaz Pasha alias Pandu and Feroz Khan, Janab Ariff Ahmed Mehkri, Chairman, Mysuru District Wakf Advisory Committee, Md Mumtaz Ahmed, Secretary, Mysuru District Relief Committee and others welcomed and garlanded the visiting dignitary.
Later, he was taken to Rajiv Nagar Eidgah Maidan in a convey of more than 50 cars and same number of motor bikes followed the convey. And other Muslim Brethren welcomed him standing both the side of the Road from Mandakalli to Rajiv Nagar Eidgah Maidan, where Muslim Brethren from Mysuru, Mandya, Hassan, Kodagu and Chamrajanagar Districts were waiting since 7 am in spite of scorching Sun.
In the history of Mysuru city, this is the first time that Imam-e-Haram from Holy place of Mecca in Saudi Arabia is visiting Mysuru to address the gathering and to lead the prayer.
Later, addressing the gathering in Arabic language, Imam-e-Haram Dr. Saleh Bin Mohamed appealed to Muslim Brethren to spread the message of peace and humanity and to help poor and needy irrespective of caste and creed. The same was translated to Urdu by Hazrath Moulana Syed Arshad Madni Saheb, President, Jamiath-ul-Ulema.
On the occasion, Imam-e-Haram also prayed for copious rains. More than 2.50 lakh members were attended the prayer at Eidgah Maidan.
Hazrath Moulana Mahmood Ul Hassan Saheb, Moulana Salman Ahmed Saheb Nadvi, Hazrath Moulana Mohamed Naseem Saheb, former President, All India Mili Council, Mysuru District and other eminent personalities were present on the occasion.
Superintendent of Police Abhinav Khare supervised the Police bundobast. Traffic Police diverted the traffic for smooth movement of the vehicles.
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / Saturday, April 09th, 2015
The media may not remember Yamin Hazarika, but for many she is still an Assamese icon.
Guwahati, ASSAM :
Since last week, there has been a flurry of news items in social and mainstream media about Sanjukta Parashar, the superintendent of police in Assam’s Sonitpur district. They gave instances of her bravado, heaped richly-deserved praises on her, and many of them described her as the “first female IPS officer from Assam”.
Sadly for me, the articles were a reminder that popular history, both in Assam and the rest of India, has forgotten all about Yamin Hazarika. That petite lady wore a heavy mantle at a time when women were still defining their roles in India. She was selected in 1979 for the state police services DANIPS (Delhi Andaman Nicobar Islands Police Services) and made it to Indira Gandhi’s security team. While it’s unclear whether she was later promoted to the Indian Police Services, most people in Assam saw Hazarika as no less than an IPS officer and a trailblazer in every way.
To those growing up in Guwahati in the ’90s, Hazarika was one of the few modern female Assamese icons. I met her only twice in my school years but she left a lasting impression on my young mind. She belonged to the Assamese Muslim community, from which few women icons had emerged until then. That impression stayed with me. So last week, when the news reports on Parashar began appearing, I decided to learn more about Hazarika. Who was she truly? To find out, I met her 80-year-old mother and her younger brother Yusuf Hazarika at their home in Guwahati.
Breaking barriers
Yamin Hazarika was born in the late 1950s in Lakhtokia, Guwahati, to Shameem Hazarika and Mohammed Serajul Hazarika. She was the second of five siblings.
Lakhtokia is one of the oldest pockets in Guwahati city that was designed by the British and houses some of the most elite and accomplished Assamese Muslims. Former Indian President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed too was from Lakhtokia, and as my conversation with Hazarika’s brother revealed, their family is related to the late president.
Her grandfather Ikram Rasul was the superintendent of excise in colonial times and was posted in Sylhet. Due to his involvement in the freedom movement, the family said, he was sacked from the job. Hazarika’s mother Shameem was one of the first female car drivers in Guwahati.
Hazarika started her schooling at St Mary’s Convent in Guwahati and passed her senior Cambridge examinations from Pine Mount Convent in Shillong. After that, she left for Delhi to read history at IP College. “She was a bright and studious girl who was always into her books and was completely no-nonsense,” recalled her brother.
After graduation, Hazarika pursued law in Guwahati and appeared for the UPSC examinations twice – first in 1977-78 and then in 1978-79 – clearing both times. She finished her police training at the Maharaj Ranjit Singh Punjab Police Academy in Phillaur, Punjab, where she met her future husband, Rajeev Sagar, who was an IPS officer from the Haryana cadre.
“The results were delayed by over a year when she appeared the first time,” said Yusuf. “Those came out in 1979. By then she had already cracked her second attempt and qualified for the DANIPS [Delhi Andaman Nicobar Islands Police Services] and was part of Indira Gandhi’s security team.”
Does DANIPS qualify as part of the IPS system? One serving IPS officer said a DANIPS official is on par with an IPS officer since DANIPS is a feeder cadre for the IPS. “Yamin was indeed the first Assamese woman to be an IPS officer,” the serving officer insisted, though Scroll could not independently verify this claim. A query to the Ministry of Home Affairs revealed that DANIPS officials get promoted to IPS after certain years’ service. Either way, Hazarika went on to serve in important positions.
Hazarika was posted as assistant commissioner of police in Chanakyapuri, Delhi, and after some time she was promoted to the position of deputy commissioner of police (crimes against women cell) in the capital. In 1998, she was sent to Bosnia as part of the UN peacekeeping force for three months. It was there that she was diagnosed with leukaemia and she had to return to India. Hazarika received treatment at the Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai and at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, but she succumbed to cancer on July 25, 1999. She was only 43.
Strong but mild-mannered
The few articles on the web on Hazarika describe how she oversaw stringent measures to cut down sexual harassment of women on the capital’s streets. Yet, despite her strong cop persona, Yamin was mild-mannered. “Innu was a very simple and soft spoken lady,” said her brother. “She would hardly raise her voice or be rude.”
Her daughter Huma Hazarika Sharma added: “She was a strong person. Though she was a strict disciplinarian, she was also a fun-loving person. Everyone in the police force who interacted with her still has incredible things to say.”
An officer at the Hauz Khas police station in Delhi, where Hazarika was posted, spoke at length of the time when he served under her. “She was a very tough lady and even today I will salute her,” he said. “I learned so much from her. I cried a lot the day she died.”
Yamin Hazarika may have faded from the media’s memory, but she is still the first female Assamese icon for many. That includes me.
Shaheen Ahmed is a research scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and a former journalist.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Women Icons / by Shaheen Ahmed / June 17th, 2015
