Dr Naser A Anjum, a DBT-RLF researcher (Scientist-D) in the Department of Botany, Aligarh Muslim University edited “The Brassicaceae – Agri-Horticultural and Environmental Perspectives” in collaboration with Prof Om Parkash Dhankher (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA), Prof Juan F Jimenez (Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, San Luis Potosí, Mexico), Dr Sarvajeet S Gill (MD University, Rohtak) and Dr Narendra Tuteja (ICGEB, New Delhi). The Frontiers Media, Lausanne, Switzerland has published the book.
The book covers Agri-Horticultural and Environmental role of members of Brassicaceae, an angiosperm family that includes model plants such as Arabidopsis, Alyssum, and Brassica, developing model generic systems like Boechera, Brassica, and Cardamine and several cultivated plant species including radish, rocket, watercress, wasabi, horseradish, vegetable and oil crops.
According to Dr Anjum, the book is available at https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/3959 for free consultation and download.
source: http://www.amu.ac.in / Aligarh Muslim University / Home> AMU News / Public Relations Office, Aligarh Muslim University / December 26th, 2018
The British unleashed ruthless violence over Mappilas to quell the rebellion in south Malabar taluks
A mass grave in Adhikarathodi, Melmuri, where 11 bodies had been buried after the massacre. (Photo courtesy: Sameel)
Ninety-seven years ago on this day, the British army massacred 246 people in a small village in the Malappuram district of Kerala as part of a crackdown against the Mappila rebels.
The Mappila Rebellion was part of the non-violent Khilafat Movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Ali Brothers in 1921-22. The Mappila Muslims, who reside in the south Malabar region, had taken the movement seriously and engaged in combat with the well-equipped British army.
Ali Musliyar (Courtesy: Wikimedia)
The Mappila warriors, under the leadership of cleric Ali Musliyar and Variyam Kunnath Kunjahammed Haji (V K Haji), captured the taluks of Eranadu and Valluvanadu from the British and established their own rule.
After a short period, the British suppressed the rebellion savagely by letting loose the Gurkha Regiment, Dorset Regiment etc. According to official data, more than 2,300 people were killed and over 45,000 rebels were imprisoned in different jails across the country (the numbers are five-fold higher in unofficial records).
The rebellion had a huge impact on the region as well as the country. Mahatma Gandhi distanced himself from the rebels stating that the rebellion was just “an outburst of fanatics”. Several works, both critical and in support of the rebellion, have been published, but most of them are silent about the British crackdown on the rebels.
Two bodies were buried in this grave. (Courtesy: Sameel)
Unmarked graves
This bloodbath, which was largely forgotten, came to light after a three-year-long research by a journalist. Illikkal Sameel, who is with a Malayalam media organisation, spent four years documenting the history behind unmarked graves in a village located 3 km from the Malappuram district headquarters. In a detailed report published in Madhyamam Weekly, a Malayalam magazine, Sameel has illustrated the brutality of the British towards the Mappila, mostly innocents, including the old and the sick, to terrorise the rebels who had driven the mighty English force away from the region for months.
Cover page of Madhyamam Weekly.
In an ironic twist, Sameel, who resides in a nearby village, got to know about this forgotten historical episode four years ago from a friend, K Ashraf, who is pursuing his PhD from Johannesburg University, South Africa. Ashraf informed Sameel about the undocumented graves dating back to 1921 present in the area.
Initially, Sameel could find only five graves at Adhikarathodi in Melmuri village but nobody had any details about those buried there. After tracing the descendants of those buried, Sameel obtained information of 40 people from nine graves. All the graves had more than one body buried and among them one had upto 11 bodies.
“Malabar struggle is a well-researched topic from Kerala’s freedom movement and several scholars are still trying to explore more aspects. But I could find no trace of this particular massacre in any of those works,” Sameel said.
“In a casual conversation, a researcher in Malabar history mentioned Dorset Regiment and their involvement in suppressing the rebellion. I dug further to get details of the regiment and their expeditions, that was also futile,” Sameel explains.
From an octogenarian physician Dr Thorappa Muhammed, Sameel got to know that the number of people killed in the massacre was more than he could count. Muhammed told him that the number would go above 200 and challenged him to look at official British documents for more information.
Connecting the dots
“Most of the documents are not publicly available now, so I started flipping through the contemporary chronicles of officials. Among them, I went through a book of the Personal Assistant of Kozhikode Collector Mr Gopalan Nair’s ‘The Moplah Rebellion 1921’, which was published in 1924. In that book, he has just mentioned that the Dorset Regiment met some rebels near Melmuri and it led to the killing of 246 people on October 25, 1921,” said Sameel.
A book by the then police inspector of Malappuram, R H Hitchcock, describes every moment of his life as a British officer in Malappuram.
“The book is no more in print, hence, I got a photocopy of the book from one of my friends and a professor at Malappuram Government College, Dr Jameel Ahmed,” said Sameel.
Another historian, Dr M Gangadharan, has cited British officials G R F Tottenham and C T Atkinson in his work on the Malabar struggle. Sameel found Tottenham’s book to be the most valuable as the author had added all the official communications, notes, commission reports etc., that were available during the rebellion.
“I stitched all these details together with the verbal accounts of various residents and stories of survivors to write this report. It was a painful effort,” said Sameel.
Earlier efforts
In the early 2000s, an article published in ‘Souvenir’ as part of the Pookkottur War anniversary had made some efforts to cover the massacre.
Some young enthusiasts and writers had also made videos regarding this massacre and related artefacts still available in the area. The information for these efforts led Sameel to more graves.
Two feet deep grave. (Courtesy: Sameel)
‘Girls were murdered’
“Dr Thorappa Muhammed had mentioned graves dug by Muslim women as men were unavailable to conduct the funerals,” elaborates Sameel. “I found two such graves in the latest expedition. Unlike the usual six-feet deep Muslim graves, these were only two feet in depth,” he said.
“As per some official documents and the accounts of descendants of the dead, a significant amount of the people killed in the massacre were innocent. Family members told me about men, including aged and sick, being forcefully dragged out of their home and shot. Two girls who were trying to protect their fathers were also shot by the army,” Sameel added.
Punished for links?
Apart from a telegram communication of the officials mentioning the short-engagement between Dorset and rebels in Melmuri after the Mappilas were attacked, there is no other evidence to lead us to the motive behind the massacre.
“A large gang reported last night four miles north-west of Malappuram. Operations are undertaken against them by Dorsets, Artillery and armoured cars. Enemy met in jungle west of Melmuri opposing our troops there and in the houses, refusing to come out when ordered to surrender and offering continued opposition resulting in 246 rebel casualties,” reads the telegram.
Sameel assumes the British unleashed violence in that particular place due to the presence of a big chunk of Ali Musliyar’s students and giving shelter to V K Haji when he was in underground.
He rules out any connections to the alleged Mappila brutality, including forceful conversion of non-Muslims. “In my research, I could not find any credible information about the forceful conversion. Rather, there are mentions of participation of lower caste people in the rebellion,” Sameel claims.
“If such forceful conversions had happened, where are the later generations of those people. But till now nobody came forward claiming as the descendants of ‘those people’,” says Sameel.
“The story of forceful conversion was to demonise Mappila warriors and justify the British brutality. Even the leaders in the freedom movement believed this story and ignored the ruthless suppression of the rebellion,” he added.
In his article, Sameel gives an account of assistance from Thiyya family, lower caste Hindus, to extinguish the fire set on homes of Muslim neighbours by the army.
The course of rebellion changes
The entire course of the rebellion changed after the massacre as more rebels surrendered. Also, the popular support to the rebellion had also diminished. The British created an impression among the people that none, despite being active or inactive in the rebellion, would be spared.
“This was the British strategy to terrorise the rebels as well as sympathisers of rebels to give a strong message: ‘either support British or die’,” Sameel added.
The British officials themselves accepted that all they killed were not rebels, but they cheered the increase in the number of submissions as a result of the army act.
“In the interval before they (Dorset Regiment) came into action, there had been several encounters with the rebels and on October 25th the Dorsets had killed 246 Mapillas in the Melmuri area. Not all of these probably were active rebels, and the encounter seems to have had a considerable moral effect, for shortly afterwards petitions began to be received from ‘amsams’ in the neighbourhood of Malappuram offering submission,” Under Secretary reported to superiors. (Tottenham, 39).
In the correspondence of F B Evans, I US, Special Civil Officer, he wrote that Malappuram Kazi with thousands of men and women pleaded for amnesty after the massacre. In continuation, he regrets about the bloodbath, saying, “I think this may be put down as the effect of the Melmuri show on the 25th when no doubt a certain number of comparatively innocent people were unavoidably killed.”
Complete cover-up
British and upper caste historians deliberately neglected this episode for their benefits, alleges Sameel.
British officials tried to cover up this brutality to suppress the rebellion as part of maintaining themselves from further reactions from Muslims from other parts of India and to avert the global scrutiny of the war crime.
Sameel demands an open apology and reparation from the British government for their brutality on innocent people.
“The massacres the British army unleashed as part of a crackdown on the rebellion in Malabar, including the one in Melmuri, was one of the deadliest violence in India when one looks at its intensity. There were families without men, as all men were killed or taken to prisons. Those families need both an apology as well as compensation. The Indian government should pressurise the UK for this,” Sameel said.
For generations to come
After publication of the article, Sameel received several calls from different corners detailing other similar massacres. He is planning to write a book with more descriptions and related events.
There is also a plan to produce a documentary on this. Malayalam filmmaker and director of hit movie ‘Sudani from Nigeria’, Zakaria Muhammed, has agreed to produce the documentary under the banner of his production house – Cross Border Camera.
Sameel hopes the history books will feature this episode in the coming days. “The episode of the massacre was known among the victims’ families, till the last generation. The present generation is not aware of this. I hope my work will instil curiosity among them,” Sameel added.
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> Specials / by Ajmal V / DH News Service, Bengaluru / October 25th, 2018
The 13th Kodagu district Kannada literary meet will be organised at government PU College premises in Napoklu on December 22 and 23, said Kannada Sahitya Parishat district president B S Lokesh Sagar.
He told reporters here on Thursday that Madikeri tahsildar Kusuma will hoist the National flag at 8 am on December 22. Napoklu gram panchayat president K M Ismail will hoist the Kannada flag.
Exhibition stalls will be inaugurated by CMC president Kaveramma Somanna at 11 am.
The formal inaugural programme will be held at Jagadatmanada G Maharaj Sabhangana at 11.30 am. Zilla panchayat vice president Lokeshwari Gopal will inaugurate the programme.
The main stage, ‘Mahabaleshwara Bhat Pradhana Vedike’ will be inaugurated by zilla panchayat president B A Harish. Kannada Sahitya Parishat state president Dr Manu Baligar will inaugurate the literary convention.
Bharadwaj K Anand Theertha will preside over the literary convention. MLA K G Bopaiah, MLC Sunil Subramani and MLC Veena Acchaiah will take part. Cultural programmes will be inaugurated by social worker Sanket Poovaiah.
ZP member Latif will inaugurate Janapadotsava at 9.30 am on December 23.
An open forum will be held at 2.30 pm. The valedictory programme will be held at 4 pm, said B S Lokesh Sagar and added that various literary events will be held on both the days.
Kannada Sahitya Parishat district honourary secretary K S Ramesh, taluk president Kudekal Santhosh and office bearer Kodi Chandrashekhar were present in the press meet.
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> State> Districts / by Adithya KA / DH News Service / Madikeri – December 20th, 2018
Nellikkunattu Desam (Evanad Taluk – Malabar District) KERALA :
The Malabar rebellion (also known as the “Moplah War”, Mappila Lahala in Malayalam) was an armed uprising in 1921 against British authority and landlords in the Malabar region of Southern India by Mappila Muslims and the culmination of a series of Mappila revolts that recurred throughout the 19th century and early 20th century. The 1921 rebellion began as a reaction against a heavy-handed crackdown on the Khilafat Movement by the British authorities in the Eranad and Valluvanad taluks of Malabar. In the initial stages, a number of minor clashes took place between Khilafat volunteers and the police, but the violence soon spread across the region.
An estimated 10,000 people lost their lives, although official figures put the numbers at 2337 rebels killed, 1652 injured and 45,404 imprisoned. Unofficial estimates put the number imprisoned at almost 50,000 of whom 20,000 were deported, mainly to the penal colony in the Andaman Islands, while around 10,000 went missing.
Contemporary British administrators and modern historians differ markedly in their assessment of the incident, debating whether the revolts were triggered off by religious fanaticism or agrarian grievances. At the time, the Indian National Congress repudiated the movement and it remained isolated from the wider nationalist movement. However, contemporary Indian evaluations now view the rebellion as a national upheaval against British authority and the most important event concerning the political movement in Malabar during the period.
Early life and career in Mecca
Ali Musliyar was born in Nellikkunattu desom, Eranad taluk, Malabar district to Kunhimoitin Molla and Kotakkal Amina. Kotakkal Amina was a member of the famous Maqdoom family of Ponnani, known for their religions scholarship. Musliyar’s grandfather, Musa, was one of several “Malappuram Martyrs”. Ali Musliyar began his education studying the Qur’an, tajwid and the Malayalam language with Kakkadammal Kunnukammu Molla. He was sent to Ponnani Darse for further studies in religion and philosophy, under the tutelage of Sheikh Zainuddin Maqdum I (Akhir), which he successfully completed after 10 years.
He then went to Haram, Makkah (Mecca) for further education. After spending seven years in Mecca, he went on to serve as the Chief Qasi in Kavaratti, Laccadive Islands.
Musliyar in Malabar
In 1894, after learning of the slaying of his brother and several other family members, Musliyar returned to Malabar. He discovered that many of his relations and fellow students were lost during an 1896 riot. In 1907 he was appointed as the Chief Musliyar of the mosque at Tirurangadi, Eranad taluk.
The revolt of 1921–22 began following the police arrest of a number of Tenancy Association – Caliphate Movement – Indian National Congress leaders in August, 1921. Rumours that the British troops had destroyed the Mampuram Mosque led to large scale rioting throughout South Malabar against both wealthy Hindu landlords and the British.
Although the British army troops were quick to take the upper hand in many towns, a number of rebels initiated guerilla operations, forcing the British to deploy additional military units and introduce “aggressive” patrolling. The revolt came to an end in February 1922. Ali Musliyar was among a dozen leaders who were tried and sentenced to death. He was subsequently hanged at the Coimbatore Prison on 17 February 1922.
Ansari Abdullah, the boy from Malegaon who is not only an engineer but also hafiz- e- Quran had mentioned in his converstaion with TwoCircles in the year 2016 spoke about his challenges, dreams and doing research in Japan.
Abdullah skipped campus placement from IIT Kanpur as he was more interested in research and development. And his focus was so immense that his thesis was awarded the Gold Medal for ‘Best M.Tech Thesis at IIT Kanpur’. And now after his MTech, he appeared for the admission test to pursue his doctorate. And he was seleted by the top three IITs including IIT Roorkee, IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi for PhD in Civil Engineering.
But Ansari Abdulah chose IIT Delhi, because IIT Delhi received “Institute of Eminence Award”, this year.
Abdullah is thankful to his parents, his sprirtual and religious guides, his guides in college who helped during his college days in graduation and post graduation to research write and submit his thesis Dr. Prashant B Daigavane and Dr. Javed Mallik. And Dr. Kenji Satake who guided him during his internship at the University of Tokyo.
With inputs from S N Ansari, asst editor, Urdu City, Malegaon
source: http://www.twocircles.net / TwoCircles. net / Home> Education> Indian Muslim> Lead Story> Youth / by TCN News / December 26th, 2018
Becoming a Muslim gave the musician a new name, a fresh identity and a renewed sense of purpose.
Wikimedia Commons
When AS Dileep Kumar decided to shed the faith he was born into and adopt a new one, the reasons were several. His father’s untimely death had put several financial pressures on the family, which included four children. His spiritual-minded mother had met, and gained immense succour, from a Sufi saint, peer Karimullah Shah Qadri. And he had been grappling with minor and major identity issues: he didn’t like the name he was born with, he was looking for direction and purpose, and he wanted to get a handle on his professional future. That man is today known as Allahrakha Rahman, one of India’s foremost composers. He discusses his decision to convert and the impact it had on him in these edited excerpts from AR Rahman The Spirit of Music by Nasreen Munni Kabir.
How has Sufism affected your attitude to life? It has taught me that just as the rain and the sun do not differentiate between people, neither should we. Only when you experience friendship across cultures, you understand there are many good people in all communities…
Did your belief in spirituality help when you and your family were facing hard times? Yes, absolutely. My mother was a practising Hindu… My mother had always been spiritually inclined. We had Hindu religious images on the walls of the Habibullah Road house where we grew up. there was also an image of Mother Mary holding Jesus in Her arms and a photograph of the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina.
In 1986, ten year after my father died, we happened to meet Qadri Saaheb again. The peer was unwell and my mother looked after him. He regarded her as a daughter. There was a strong connection between us. I was nineteen at the time and working on a session musician and composing jingles.
Did the peer ask you to embrace Islam? No, he didn’t. Nobody is forced to convert to the path of Sufism. You only follow if it comes from your heart. A year after we met Qadri Saaheb, in 1987, we moved to from Habibullah Road to Kodambakkam, to the house where we still live. When we moved, I was reminded of what Jesus Christ, Peace be upon Him, once said: “I wish that you were cold and hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”
What I understood by His words was that it is better to choose one path. The Sufi path spiritually lifted both my mother and me, and we felt it was the best path for us, so we embraced Sufi Islam.
Were you conscious of the fact that changing your faith might affect your relations with people? My family had started working by then and we weren’t dependant on anyone. No one around us really cared – we were musicians and that allowed us greater social freedom…
The important thing for me is that I learned about equality and the oneness of God. Whether you are a winner or loser, king or slave, short or tall, rich or poor, sinner or saint, ugly or beautiful – regardless of what colour you are, God showers unlimited love and mercy on us if we choose to receive it. It is because of our inability, our blindness in seeing the unknown that we lose faith.
On the net there are many versions of how you came to be called AR Rahman. What is the real story? The truth is I never liked my name…. No disrespect to the great actor Dilip Kumar! But somehow my name didn’t match the image I had of myself.
Sometime before we started on our journey on the path of Sufism, we went to an astrologer to show him my younger sister’s horoscope because my mother wanted to get her married. This was around the same time when I was keen to change my name and have a new identity. The astrologer looked at me and said, ‘This chap is very interesting.”
He suggested the names: “Abdul Rahman” and “Abdul Rahim” and said that either name would be good for me. I instantly loved the name “Rahman.” It was a Hindu astrologer who gave me my Muslim name.
Then my mother had this intuition that I should add “Allahrakha” [Protected by God], and I became AR Rahman.
Excerpted from AR Rahman The Spirit of Music, Om Books International.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Matters of Faith / by Nasreen Munni kabir / January 16th, 2015
The Punjabi festival of Lohri commemorates Dullah Bhatti for his act of defiance against the Mughal emperor.
Wikimedia Commons
Lohri in Delhi has bonfires, popcorn, peanuts, pine nuts, gur or jaggery and til and sundry sesame sweets. Around the bonfire, people gather to sing a popular Punjabi folk song , Sundar munderiye, about a certain Dullah Bhatti who helped to rescue poor Punjabi women from the rather cruel zamindar, landlord.
In the big city, cut off from folk legends, most of the people who sing that song are unaware of who Dullah Bhatti was. Bhatti, though, is a historical figure, a contemporary of Mughal emperor Akbar who lived in Pind Bhattian, a town about 50 kilometres west of Lahore.
Rai Abdullah Khan Bhatti – to use Dullah’s full name and title – lived in tumultuous times. Akbar was just beginning to consolidate the Mughal state, setting in process a new order that would ensure that his dynasty would rule Delhi for the next three centuries to come. The Mughal state proceeded to implement a system of land revenue devised by Akbar’s brilliant Rajput finance minister, Todar Mal, called the Zabt system. The Zabt revenue system made Mughal officers responsible for both the assessment and collection of revenue.
Punjab in chaos
What was victory from Delhi, though, often meant chaos and destruction on the ground, as old ways of life were overturned. The Zabt system underpinned the Mughal state but proved to be the end of the road for local power centres in the Punjab, as all authority was concentrated in the Mughal administration. One of those local power centres was Dullah Bhatti’s family, a Rajput landowning clan made powerless by the financial scheme of Mughal finance minister, Todar Mal. As a result, the Bhattis rebelled against Akbar – and lost. Both Dullah’s father and grandfather were executed – at the time, Dullah’s mother was pregnant with him.
Legend now has it that Akbar’s son Jahangir and Dullah were born on the same day. To make Jahangir brave, Akbar was advised to have his son breastfed by a Rajput wet nurse who – in an incredibly filmy twist – happened to be Dullah Bhatti’s mother, in one version of the legend. A more prosaic explanation for this myth is that the Mughals initiated a policy of reconciliation with the Bhattis. By providing Dullah and his mother with royal patronage, the Mughal state hoped to assuage their hurt, win them over and – most importantly – prevent future rebellions.
Things, however, didn’t go according to plan. Bhatti grew up to swear revenge on the Chughtais, Mughals who had executed his father and grandfather. So fierce was this local resistance that, says historian Ishwar Dayal Gaur, Akbar had to shift his capital to Lahore from Delhi for two decades to try and get things under control. Gaur also adds that Akbar exempted the Bari Doab or Majha (the region between the rivers Beas and Ravi) from taxes and also made peace with the Sikh guru, Arjan Dev by visiting him in Goindwal – Bhatti’s revolt was so effective that the Mughals couldn’t afford to make any new enemies.
Dullah Bhatti becomes legend
Ultimately, though, Akbar prevailed, the Mughals capturing and beheading Dullah publicly in the main bazar area of Lahore. Till the last, though, Bhatti remained defiant and his final words as recorded by sufi poet Shah Hussain were, “No honourable son of Punjab will ever sell the soil of Punjab”. His grave still exists in Lahore, although interestingly, there is no official recognition of the spot. Pakistan – a country which is dominated by Punjabis – still takes much of its national mythos from the Mughal state, making its recognition of Dullah Bhatti’s revolt against Akbar a rather delicate matter.
Nevertheless, Dullah’s revolt passed into popular Punjabi legend and his feats as a Robin Hood are still celebrated today in the popular song Sundar munderiye, which talks of how he protected Punjabi girls from being abducted by the Mughal zamindar. The custom of giving money and sweets to children, who go from door to door singing the song, is said to honour Bhatti’s acts of generosity, of looting the tributes and taxes sent to the emperor and redistributing them among the poor.
In 2015, Bhatti’s tale was even made into a Punjabi pop number, although the video of the song, interestingly, portrayed him as a Sikh battling the Mughals, rather than the Muslim Rajput Bhatti historically was. Given that our histories rarely talk of the complex nature of Mughal India, and reduce most situations to a mirror of the communal conflicts of the modern age, this, perhaps, is an expected error.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Festival Celebrations / by Shoaib Daniyal / January 13th, 2016
Of Wajid Ali Shah, and how a popular ‘thumri’ from another century reached us.
The Lucknow gharana of Kathak is famous for its repository of thumris. In fact, the very genre of thumri found immense patronage in the nawabs of Awadh. The last ruler, nawab Wajid Ali Shah, was a great lover of the arts. He wrote his first play, Radha Kanhaiya Ka Qissa, in 1843, when he was barely 21 years old. The British saw him as a debauched ruler wasting his wealth on entertainment.
Nineteenth-century India remembers the nawab as a romantic poet, a benefactor of the arts and a great lover of classical music and dance. By the time he ascended the throne in 1847, he had written two long romantic narrative poems (or masnavis) titled Bahr-E-Ishq (The Ocean Of Affection) and Darya-Yi-Ta’Ashshuq (The River Of Love). He adopted the pen name Akhtarpiya. An admirer of the Hindu god Krishna, he wanted to adapt these poems into a play in raas/rahas format.
Shah’s idea of staging these plays was beyond grandiose. According to the account of one Iqtidar-ud-daula who witnessed the play in February and March 1851: “The play was staged in 14 sessions (with intervals of one-two days between each session. The whole play took a month and 10 days to finish). Not every scene was staged in Qaisarbagh (a large complex housing gardens, manicured lawns and palatial buildings). Consecutive scenes were played out in different parts of the garden. In fact, some scenes were played out in different parts of the city.” It goes on to vividly describe the setting where canvas tents on bamboo frames were erected across the city along with “larger-than-life frames of scenery”. The elaborate preparations for each play took a whole year and cost £12,000 (around Rs10 lakh now) to produce.
Thus, Shah entertained himself with grand sessions of rahas. Here was a Shia Muslim king who consulted priests and celebrated Hindu festivals like Saawan, Holi and Basant Panchami with great pomp. He learnt Kathak from his court dancer-musician, Pandit Thakur Prasad. He appointed to his court the dancing duo of brothers Kalka and Bindadin Maharaj. The Kathak legend, Pandit Birju Maharaj, is a descendant of this family.
The nawab invested state wealth on arts and culture for the benefit and entertainment of his people. If the mounting expenses didn’t bother the British, Shah’s secular love for the arts and excessive indulgence did. They annexed his throne in 1854 and sent him into exile.
The book Asrar-I-Wajidi (1856) by Zahiruddin Bilgrami describes scenes of sorrowful locals who lined up on streets and wailed as the nawab left Lucknow. A caravan of a thousand people started from Lucknow on 13 March 1854 towards Calcutta (now Kolkata). For Wajid Ali Shah, there was nothing more painful than being separated from a place he loved so much and its people. His sorrow took the form of a song that spoke of displacement and loss. The song reflected an allegory to a human being’s last journey on this earth, when the body is carried on the shoulders of four pall-bearers.
Babul mora naihar chhooto jaaye
chaar kahaar mil, mori doliya sajaave
mora apna begaana chhooto jaaye
angnaa toh parbat bhayo, dehri bhayi bides
le ghar babul apno, main chali piya ki des
A large part of Shah’s writings have, unfortunately, been lost. Those that have remained, have luckily been preserved through music and dance by the descendants of his court musicians and dancers. This particular thumri reached us in its pristine condition from Kathak doyen Pandit Shambhu Maharaj. According to his first student, the late Maya Rao (in her autobiography Maya Rao—A Lifetime in Choreography, 2013), K.L. Saigal, who learnt the song from Pandit Shambhu Maharaj, spending months with him, seeing him perform it countless times and finally learning it, decided that he would sing it in the film Street Singer (1938).
In 1947, when Saigal died, All India Radio broadcast the song as a tribute. Thumri got a new lease of life on the classical music concert stage. The late Akhtaribai Faizabadi aka Begum Akhtar, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Kishori Amonkar, among others, immortalized the song. In the 1974 film Aavishkar, starring Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore, this song, sung by the late ghazal singer Jagjit Singh and wife Chitra Singh, weaves many scenes together. While Wajid Ali Shah might have been a political eccentric, he is credited with being a revivalist in the world of Hindustani classical music, dance and Urdu drama.
source: http://www.livemint.com / LiveMint / Home / by Veejay Sai / December 01st, 2017
One of the prominent cities in Maharshtra, Malegaon knwon for its textile industry, has regularly sent players to state and national level competitions
Malegaon:
Abdullah Khaleel Ahmed, a 12th standard student of Malegaon High School and Junior College, has been selected for the National Basketball Team Delhi.
According to a report published by UrduCity, a total of 05 students from each district of Maharashtra were selected for a trial game. Out of them 16 players, (12 + 04 reserved), were selected for the final game. 17-year-old Abdullah was the only player from the team of 16 selected for the National Basketball Team.
Abdullah is likely to play in an upcoming match in New Delhi.
Abdullah had in May 2018 played for Nashik district team representing Maharashtra at the YMCA National Invitational Basketball tournament held in Goa. He was accompanied by 03 other players – Ansari Urooj Ahmed, Ansari Fahad and Abdur Rahman, all from the textile city.
Earlier, Abdullah’s team had defeated Dhule district’s basketball team at district level tournament to qualify for the state level competition. At the state level tournament, Abdullah’s team could not win. But, because of his personal performance, Abdullah was able to get the selectors’ nod to play in the trial game held for selection to the National Basketball Team.
One of the prominent cities in Maharshtra, Malegaon knwon for its textile industry, has regularly sent players to state and national level competitions. In 2009, Zubair Ansari, Zahid Akhter and Ziya Nisar of the city had participated in the National Level Shooting Ball Championship. The three players were representing Maharashtra in the finals and won the under-19 National School Games Shooting Ball Championship against Karnataka.
Again in 2009, Azhar Ahmed, a young cricketer from Malegaon was selected for the State Ranji Test Cricket Team. before that Azhar Ahmed had represented the Maharashtra Cricket Association’s (MCA) under-19 cricket team visiting Sri Lanka in 2008 for the Challenger Trophy.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> India> Sports / by ummid.com Staff Reporter / November 27th, 2018
Workers put finishing touches to violins at Zamiruddin’s workshop in Rampur, UP. / Credits: Rohit Ghosh/Qrius
Zamiruddin’s old house in Purana Gunj, Rampur, a town 175 km east of New Delhi, is as nondescript as they come. But enter it and you might just find yourself transported, musically, to ancient Egypt.
Stacked on the shelves and lofts in rooms around the house’s rectangular courtyard are ouds, a musical instrument dating back thousands of years to the time of the Pharaohs.
This is the only place in India where you can buy an oud, a short-necked, pear-shaped stringed instrument that produces a sound similar to that of the sarod. The oud is oft used in Middle Eastern and North African music.
“My father [Haseenuddin] was the first and only person in India to make ouds,” said Zamiruddin, owner of New Slovakia Musicals. “Now, I am the only one…”
How the oud came to India
The oud dates back to ancient Egpyt. When it came to be used in Persia, some 3000 years ago, it was called the barbat, while it was called the al Oud (wood, or specifically thin wood) by the Arabs.
The oud came to India with the spread of Islam. In his book Two Nations and Kashmir (1956), Lord Birdwood notes that it was during the rule of Zain-ul-Abuldin in Kashmir that musicians from the West Asian region came, and brought the lute and the oud with them.
Discovering the instrument: Haseenuddin’s story
Zamiruddin inherited the business from his father Haseenuddin in 1996 and named it New Slovakia Musicals. / Credits: Rohit Ghosh/Qrius
Once a cabinet-maker in Rampur, the lyrical story of how Haseenuddin started making ouds goes back 70-odd years.
“My father and his younger brother Ameeruddin lived together. In 1942, my uncle visited Bombay and bought a violin. He became so engrossed in playing it day in and day out that he completely detached from his surroundings,” recalled Zamiruddin.
One day, Ameeruddin accidentally dropped the violin and it shattered to pieces. Heartbroken, he continued to become more and more miserable as the weeks passed. Unable to see his brother in that state, Haseenuddin then studied the violin that had become a tangled lump of wood and strings, Zamiruddin told me.
“My father was a genius. Using his skills and things available at hand, he made a new violin for my uncle.”
Seeing the joy on Ameeruddin’s face made Haseenuddin realise his latent potential in making the instrument. “Along with chairs, tables, beds, and wardrobes, he started making violins on a large scale. The year was 1947.”
Gradually, the demand for violins soared so high that Haseenuddin gave up making furniture and concentrated only on the instrument, becoming an established violin-maker in India. His violins had a big market in Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, where music was a big part of the school curriculum.
Zamiruddin started assisting his father soon after finishing his graduation.
Then came the oud
Zamiruddin shows an oud crafted at his workshop. / Credits: Rohit Ghosh/Qrius
“Some people visited us with an oud in 1984 and introduced themselves as dealers and exporters of musical instruments. They showed the stringed instrument to my father and asked if he could make it and said that every other craftsman in India had refused to,” said Zamiruddin.
Haseenuddin, who had already made a name for himself by making quality violins, was up to the challenge.
“I advised my father against it, owing to the oud’s complicated design. He, however, chided me and said I should never doubt the skills of a master craftsman. His first oud was a success, after which we started producing them on a large scale—120-odd ouds a month,” reminisced Zamiruddin.
During that time, the ouds were exported to Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries. “Ouds are made in the Middle East, but my product is better. India has a variety and better quality of wood compared to the Gulf, which is a desert. Also, my ouds are cheaper. An oud made in Syria may cost Rs 80,000, but mine are Rs 18,000 a piece,” said Zamiruddin, who inherited the business in 1996 after his father passed away.
Yet, despite the many pluses his ouds have, he has no immediate plans to export them to foreign markets, given the low returns.
According to him, no two ouds are the same, neither in dimensions nor the sound they produce. “Ouds are handmade. So, something that has been cut and carved by hand won’t have the precision of machines. Hence, every oud is unique, even if made by the same craftsman.”
Spreading the music
Zamiruddin uses the backyard of his house as his workshop, where 30-odd workmen sit cross-legged on the floor, designing violins and ouds. At any point, he has about 40 ouds ready.
Although the ouds do not sell as much as the other musical instruments, Zamiruddin has found many buyers online. “Connoisseurs of music contact me online. Two months back, I even sold one to a person from Mumbai,” he said.
So, although not as well known as its more famous stringed siblings, the oud may yet find a wider market and fanbase.
Rohit Ghosh is an independent journalist based in Kanpur.
source: http://www.qrius.com / Qrius / Home> Music / by Rohit Ghosh / February 19th, 2002
