Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has become the only Indian to be named in an international list of 50 greatest actors of all time by a prominent British magazine.
The 57-year-old actor is included in Empire magazine’s list which also recognises Hollywood giants like Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Anthony Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and many others.
In the accompanying short profile, the magazine said Khan has a career that has now spanned four decades of “near unbroken hits, and a fanbase of pretty much billions”.
“You don’t do that without outrageous amounts of charisma and absolute mastery of your craft. Comfortable in almost every genre going, there’s pretty much nothing he can’t do,” it added.
From his extensive filmography, the publication highlighted Khan’s notable characters from four movies — Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed “Devdas”, Karan Johar’s “My Name Is Khan” and “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”, and “Swades”, directed by Ashutosh Gowarikar.
His dialogue from the 2012 movie “Jab Tak Hai Jaan” — “Zindagi toh har roz jaan leti hai… Bomb toh sirf ek baar lega” (Every day life kills us a little. A bomb will kill you only once) — has been recognised as the “iconic line” of his career.
“Jab Tak Hai Jaan” was filmmaker Yash Chopra’s swansong and featured Khan as an Indian Army Major named Samar Anand. The film also starred Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma.
The actor will be next seen in the actioner “Pathaan”, set to be released worldwide on January 25, 2023. Directed by Siddharth Anand, the movie also stars John Abraham and Deepika Padukone.
Khan will also star in two more movies — action-entertainer “Jawan” with filmmaker Atlee and the Rajkumar Hirani-directed “Dunki”.
“Jawan”, a pan-India project, is set to come out on June 2, 2023, while “Dunki”, also starring Taapsee Pannu, will release in December 2023.
source: http://www.varthabharati.in / Vartha Bharati / Home /December 20th, 2022
Majlis e Islah wa Tanzeem on Thursday held a panel discussion to mark the 74th Republic Day on the topic understanding Constitution of India and our fundamental rights.
The event was held at the Rabita Hall here in Bhatkal.
Academician and lawyer Yaseen Mohtesham, Advocate Imran Lanka, senior journalist Syed Salik Barmavar, and Prof Sahil Mujavar participated as the panelists while former Majlis e Islah wa Tanzeem General Secretary Dr. Haneef Shabab moderated the event.
Several aspects of Indian Constitution and the current scenario of the country were discussed during the panel discussion.
Prior to the event, Jamat-e-Islami Hind Karnataka Secretary, Akbar Ali addressed the event and shed lights on the values and principles of Constitution of India.
Majlis-e-Islah wa Tanzeem President Inayathullah Shabandri, General Secretary Abdul Raqeeb MJ, prominent NRI businessman Yunus Kazia, senior journalist Aftab Kola, and others were also present during the event.
The event concluded with a quiz program compiled by Aftab Kola on Constitution of India.
source: http://www.english.varhabharati.in / Vartha Bharati / Home / January 27th, 2023
The Awami Idara continues to be a welcoming, convivial space for local readers. Photo courtesy: Gautam Sharma
The Awami Idara, rooted in a working-class Muslim neighbourhood, connects the long history of Southasian Muslim labour activism to political movements and events across Mumbai, Southasia and beyond.
Upon entering the Awami Idara (People’s Institution) library in the summer of 2022, I first met the older members of the library peering over their newspapers. Having visited many other Urdu libraries dotted across India, I did not find the welcoming elderly newspaper readers surprising. More unusual, however, was a small but imposing bust of Vladimir Lenin perched above them all, and a hammer and sickle. The iconography reflected the library’s Marxist leanings, and its historical connections with the Soviet Union and transregional leftist movements. This history sharply distinguishes what is by reputation Mumbai’s largest Urdu library from many other Urdu collections in India.
Indeed, the distinctive mission and history of the Awami Idara are apparent from the moment one enters the library. Open from 6 to 10 pm, the library’s hours reflect its historically intended audience – labourers who worked at mills and factories during the day and read and gathered in the evenings. The library is located near the centre of a residential, working-class Muslim neighbourhood in Mominpura, Mumbai. Founded in 1952, it is surrounded by both homes and small-scale mills and factories, and seems designed not to impress visitors but to provide a welcoming, convivial space for local readers. While many readers visit the library to read newspapers or socialise, the walls are lined with thousands of Urdu books which, according to the library’s internal catalogue, are shelved in a strict numerical fashion and bound in uniform yellow covers.
The library for Muslim mill workers continues to survive in an era of right-wing Hindu nationalism. Photo courtesy: Amanda Lanzillo
In recent years, several newspaper and media reports have celebrated the unique and unusual nature of the Awami Idara, particularly the fact that a leftist library aimed at Muslim mill workers continues to survive and adapt in an era where right-wing Hindu nationalism flourishes. Others focus on the shifting religious ideologies evident in the surrounding neighbourhood, expressing surprise at the lack of conflict between Muslim movements claiming religious orthodoxy – most notably local proponents of the Ahl-i Hadith movement – and the left-leaning library. The fact that the largest and oldest Urdu library in Mumbai is a leftist organisation that once boasted strong ties with the USSR does sometimes seem incongruous in today’s political environment.
The Awami Idara is part of a long history of Southasian Muslim labour activism and an often-overlooked Indian Muslim left, rooted in the mills and factories of cities like Mumbai. The yellow-bound volumes lining the walls of the library hold wider histories, connecting the mill worker-readers of the Awami Idara to both local and transregional histories of the left.
Working-class readers
The Awami Idara and its collections force us to question our assumptions about how Muslim workers conceptualised their communities, neighborhoods and social and political connections. As the historian Arun Kumar argues, labourers’ efforts to avail themselves of night libraries – like the Awami Idara – and night schools in urban India from the early twentieth century more broadly belie our assumptions about labourers’ presumed illiteracy and lack of interest in education.
Many of the materials held by the Awami Idara – particularly those collected by the library in its early years, in the 1950s and 1960s – address readers as labourers, emphasising a reader’s identity as a mazdoor (worker). During my visits in May and June 2022, among the first texts to catch my eye was a volume titled Mashīn aur mazdoor (The machine and the worker). First published in 1941, and updated in 1946, it reflects regional debates about the role of the working class in the years immediately preceding independence and Partition, and its presence in the Awami Idara suggests the continued relevance of these debates in the post-Partition India of the 1950s.
” Founded in 1952, it is surrounded by both homes and small-scale mills and factories, and seems designed not to impress visitors but to provide a welcoming, convivial space for local readers.“
Published in Lahore, Mashīn aur mazdoor was authored by Abdul Bari Alig, often remembered today as an early mentor and teacher of Saadat Hasan Manto, and about whom Manto authored a notable biographical sketch. Bari was also the proprietor of several leftist newspapers in Punjab, and his writing ranged from a biography of Karl Marx and translation of his works to a history of Islamic civilisation and a treatise on the French Revolution, as well as a 450-page account of the rise of the British East India Company.
In Mashīn aur mazdoor, Bari suggests that workers might engage with “changing means of production” wrought by the industrial revolution and the rise of machines to shift the “distribution of power and ownership.” The text also highlights the contribution of Indian labour movements to the freedom struggle, and imagines new roles for Indian workers in the wake of British control. Bari maintaines that “socialism and communism are gaining ground in the political debates of India today. The working class of India is realising its political and economic importance.” For readers at the Awami Idara, the text suggests that labourers shaped the Indian past, and calls on them to exert political influence in a post-colonial, industrial and independent state.
The Awami Idara in historical context
Like many texts held in the Awami Idara, Bari’s Mashīn aur mazdoor suggested that Indian labourers sought to understand their own positionality in regional economic and political events and movements. Far from being illiterate or uneducated about their economic and social experiences, readers at the Awami Idara likely found, within the walls of the library, written polemics and debates that they used to make sense of their own experiences as both workers and political actors.
” Across the subcontinent, readers and writers from a wide range of religious communities continued to engage with Urdu.“
As a library and physical centre of workers’ intellectual culture, the Awami Idara was unique in Mumbai, and reflected the consolidating social influence of leftist organisations in the city’s working-class neighbourhoods in the 1950s. However, at the time of its founding, it was also part of a long tradition of working-class organisation in Mominpura and neighbouring areas around Byculla – such as Madanpura, Agripada and Nagapada – that stretched back to the late nineteenth century. The construction of textile mills in these neighbourhoods in the late nineteenth century drew in migrants both from elsewhere in Mumbai and across India, with Muslim workers developing extensive settlements around Byculla.
By the 1890s, textile mill workers in Byculla and surrounding neighbourhoods succeeded in organising and regularly shutting down mills to demand better wages and working conditions. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, communist and socialist organisations in the city sought to provide formal sites for the education of workers in the neighbourhood. For instance, in 1934, the leftist Young Workers’ League of Mumbai rented a room in Byculla to serve as a labour centre in the area.
A book with the seal of the library. Photo courtesy: Amanda Lanzillo
These many years of experience with labour agitation, organisation and strikes meant that readers in the neighbourhood already possessed forms of social and political connection to movements that connected them with other workers across Southasia. Key speeches, texts and arguments likely circulated within the new labour centres, the mills themselves and the workers’ neighbourhoods, long before the establishment of the Awami Idara library. In the primarily Muslim neighbourhoods that the library now serves, these leftist speeches, texts and arguments may have even circulated through some of the same networks and communities that served to sustain Islamic religious knowledge and practice.
Language and religion in the collections
Some texts held by the Awami Idara suggest readers’ interests in Islam and comparative religion. But most mid-twentieth-century Urdu texts held in the Awami Idara are more directly concerned with readers’ class and labour identities. For instance, in Mashīn aur mazdoor, Bari does not address his readers explicitly or exclusively as Muslims, although in other works he is interested in the forms of social organisation reflected in the Islamic past.
The plurality and religious diversity of Urdu writing held at the Awami Idara is not surprising. Over the course of the early twentieth century, some religious nationalist articulations had sought to distinguish the scripts of Hindustani by religious identity – associating Hindi, written in the devanagari script, with Hindus and Urdu, written in nastaliq, with Muslims. But this simplistic imagination contradicted the realities of Southasian readerships. Across the subcontinent, readers and writers from a wide range of religious communities continued to engage with Urdu. The authors of leftist Urdu texts framed their readers primarily as members of a shared class community, responsible for contributing to their fellow workers’ economic and political uplift.
That said, most of the readers at the Awami Idara were from Muslim backgrounds, though they likely differed in their degrees of religiosity (or lack thereof). The Muslim membership of the Awami Idara reflected the surrounding neighbourhood but was also indicative of an often-overlooked demographic reality of both pre and post-Partition urban India. In many of British India’s largest cities, Muslims made up a significant percentage of the industrial working class, and in several cases they formed the majority of regional migrants recruited to industrial mills in the early twentieth century.
Social solidarities in Muslim working-class neighbourhoods
This fact has often formed the basis of academic studies of “communalism” and conflict among mill labourers and other working-class communities. Scholars have sought to understand whether religious differences spurred labour solidarity and cohesion failures in industrialised Indian cities. But these debates have often overlooked how community institutions in working-class Muslim neighbourhoods contributed to labour movements, class-based identities and localised solidarities.
Popular imaginations of neighbourhoods and communities such as Mominpura have changed significantly over time. The academic Robert Rahman Raman has argued that, in Mumbai, there has been a significant shift over the course of the twentieth century in whether neighbourhoods are popularly seen as “working class” with primarily Muslim residents or “Muslim” with primarily working-class residents. Moreover, the anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen has noted that, beginning from the 1960s, mill work and other forms of industrial labour in these neighbourhoods were reorganised, contributing to the marginalisation of Muslim labourers from the organised industrial economy. In the wake of the 1992-93 riots in Mumbai, many Muslims who lived elsewhere fled to Muslim-majority neighbourhoods such as Mominpura to escape violence.
As a result, areas that were historically considered labouring neighbourhoods have come to be known as “Muslim ghettos,” even in cases where their economic and religious demographics have not changed significantly. Despite these shifting external understandings and processes of ghettoisation, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, neighbourhoods like Mominpura have continuously provided a space for Muslim labourers to build local communities and debate their engagement with the broader political world.
Bringing the world to Mominpura
The Awami Idara also provided a space for members of these communities to debate and build an understanding of how their own experiences as labourers fit into global workers’ movements beyond the borders of Mumbai and the newly created nation-state of India. Another text that immediately caught my eye as I paged through the library’s extensive catalogue was a collection of the journal Naya Parcham (New Flag). Nayā Parcham was an Urdu periodical published in Mumbai in the late 1940s and early 1950s, around the same time as the foundation of the library. The journal was associated with the Progressive Writers’ Movement, and compiled by the prominent Urdu writers Rajinder Singh Bedi, Vishwamitter Adil, Muhammad Haider Asad and Zamir Niazi. While it served partially as a space for publishing the works of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, Nayā Parcham also focused on explaining the principles of socialism and Marxism to Urdu readers and keeping them apprised of global leftist movements.
” Popular imaginations of neighbourhoods and communities such as Mominpura have changed significantly over time.“
Issues of Nayā Parcham were donated to the Awami Idara in the 1950s by the city’s Nawjavan Party, which maintained offices nearby in neighbouring Mandapura. Like the editors of Nayā Parcham, the local leaders of the Nawjawan Party sought to reach Mumbai’s working-class communities, and to provide them with information about global leftist and working-class struggles.
One 1949 issue of Nayā Parcham held by the Awami Idara, for instance, was devoted entirely to the 1949 Chinese Revolution, with articles as well as lessons that Indians might take from the Chinese educational system. Opening with a “salaam” to “the New China,” the issue celebrated that “today the People’s Liberation Army of China covers one-third of China’s territory and leads more than half of its population.” The issue featured three Urdu translations of Chinese poems in praise of the revolution. This emphasis on global revolutionary poetry reflected efforts to reach Urdu readers – and potentially listeners – through literary language highlighting shared social and emotional experiences and desires.
A poem titled Chīn kī bahār (China’s Spring), pronounced:
“China’s spring is being rejuvenated on the battlefield
And this battlefield is uniting the entire world.”
The Awami Idara. Photo courtesy: Gautam Sharma
Poems and articles celebrating the global success of leftist movements encouraged readers at the Awami Idara to understand their struggles as not bound by their neighbourhood, city or nation, but as part of a ‘battlefield uniting the entire world.’ The special issue on the Chinese Revolution reflected the global and transregional outlook of the publication and its intended readers. The experiences of the left across Southasia were of particular interest for Nayā Parcham. Published in the wake of Partition, the magazine especially focused on uniting the left across the newly created border.
It featured, for instance, regular dispatches and notes from Pakistan, addressing Indian readers as Southasian comrades, as shared participants in a class struggle that continued to unite readers across the newly established border. In June 1949, it included a letter from Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, the secretary-general of the Progressive Writers’ Movement for Pakistan, who gained renown for his literary contributions over the subsequent decades. He addressed his article to “Friends! Comrades! And companions!” across the border.
” The Awami Idara also provided a space for members of these communities to debate and build an understanding of how their own experiences as labourers fit into global workers’ movements beyond the borders of Mumbai and the newly created nation-state of India. “
The letter was aimed in part at members of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in India, seeking to ensure continued exchange between the two wings of the movement, now divided by a border. But it also reflected Qasmi’s hopes for “lovers of progress” and leftist movements across the subcontinent, including workers’ movements. He admonished his readers not to forget the shared “yoke of colonialism” that had oppressed the subcontinent. Indeed, he argued that imperial influence, in the form of European capitalism, continued to contribute to the “suffering of all of our pride, our honour, our freedom.” Even across the border, he suggested, the struggle for progress could continue to unite the residents of the two new nations.
Texts like the Nayā Parcham provided working-class Muslim readers in Mumbai – who engaged with these writings throughout the 1950s and even later – connection to larger communities and struggles. They suggested that fights for progress and the rights of workers were not divided by borders within Southasia or beyond it or limited to specific urban localities. By collecting and making these texts accessible, the Awami Idara encouraged readers in Mominpura to participate in workers’ movements that would contribute not only to their own uplift, but also to shared Southasian and global progress.
Plural interests
Not all the materials held in the Awami Idara offer an explicitly leftist point of view or focus primarily on the experiences and political aims of the working class. On the contrary, the library’s early collections suggest that mid-twentieth century Muslim mill workers possessed many interests. In addition to finding magazines, books and newspapers that situated them within global working-class struggles, mill workers also used the library to read everything from novels to travelogues, religious treatises to poetry collections. While the founders and supporters of the library aimed to educate mill workers through leftist publications, they also recognised the demand for a wide range of literature among Mumbai’s working-class Muslim readers.
Published in the wake of Partition, Nayā Parcham especially focused on uniting the left across the newly created border.
Other materials also focused on the needs and interests of labourers, but from a technological perspective rather than an economic-political perspective. Indeed, I was first drawn to the library through my efforts to trace the development of Urdu-language technical manuals and treatises, in trades ranging from papermaking to metal plating. The library boasts several such manuals, reflecting the efforts of workers to expand their knowledge of their trades and perhaps move up in factory or workshop hierarchies. Whether or not texts were aimed primarily at workers, throughout the second half of the twentieth century the library collected printed Urdu materials from across India and Pakistan. In doing so, it built an eclectic collection that also tied its Mumbai neighbourhood to trans-Southasian worlds of Urdu literature and writing.
The Awami Idara and its collections offer an important reminder that people – including working-class people – hold multiple political, social and religious identities simultaneously. The books and journals held at the library demonstrate that Muslim labourers in Mumbai were aware of Southasian and broader global political currents, and sought to understand their place within them. While rooted in a highly local space – a unique library and its walls of bound volumes in Mominpura – the Awami Idara provided a space for Mumbai’s Muslim labourers to consider their connections and commitments to political movements and events across Mumbai, Southasia and beyond.
source: http://www.himalmag.com / Himal, South Asian / Home> Culture> Essay> India / by Amanda Lanzillo / January 09th, 2023
‘All That Breathes’ a Documentary feature film based on the lives of two brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad of Delhi, who work out of their derelict basement in Delhi’s Wazirabad, to rescue and treat injured birds, especially the black kites, has made it to the Oscar nominations list.
‘All That Breathes’ made by Shaunak Sen has been nominated in the ‘Documentary Feature Film’ category against ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’, ‘Fire Of Love,’ ‘A House made of Splinters,’ and ‘Navalny’.
Besides, the most- predicted and the much-celebrated music of ‘RRR’ also made it to the Oscars race. The magnum opus film’s energy-packed track ‘Naatu Naatu’ made it to the nominations this year in the ‘Original Song’ category.
After the Oscar nominations were announced, every Indian’s heart was pumped with pride and joy as we secured three nominations this year.
This lyrical composition of ‘Naatu Naatu’ by MM Keeravani, high energy rendition by singers Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava, unique choreography by Prem Rakshith, and lyrics by Chandrabose are all the elements that make this ‘RRR’ mass anthem a perfect dance craze.
The song is competing against ‘Applause’ from the film ‘Tell It Like A Woman,’ ‘Hold My Hand’ from the movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ ‘Lift me Up’ from ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,’ and ‘This Is Life,’ from ‘Everything, Everywhere All At Once’.
Adding to the Indian list of nominations for Oscars 2023 is Kartiki Gonsalves’ ‘The Elephant Whisperers.”
‘The Elephant Whisperers’ has been nominated in the ‘Documentary Short Film Category’ against ‘Haul Out,’ ‘How Do You Measure A Year?’ ‘The Martha Mitchell Effect,’ and ‘Stranger At The Gate’.
The film’s plot revolves around a family who adopts two orphan baby elephants in Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.
The Oscars are going to be held on March 13 and while the wait is going to be quite a long one from now, the nominations have sure lifted the spirits of not just the crew and cast of the films mentioned above, but also of everyone who hopes to see an Indian movie bagging the prestigious award.
source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home / posted by Aasha Khosa, ATV / January 25th, 2023
Does it ring a bell? Yes. Film buffs couldn’t forget this line from Kalicharan. Spoken in a cool and collected manner some four decades ago, it still has a chilling effect.
How about this one: Kutta jab pagal ho jaata hai toh use goli mar dete hain. Apni umar se badkhar baatein nahi karte. Shakaal jab baazi khelta hai .. toh jitne patte uske haath mein hote hain utne hi uki aasteen mein.
The soft-spoken villain, Ajit Khan, who delivered these memorable lines, turns 101 today. To mark his birth centenary celebrations, his family is launching his biography in Urdu and Hindi languages on Friday evening. The book, authored by Iqbal Rizi, is appropriately titled – Ajit the lion.
Born Hamid Ali Khan, he took the screen name, Ajit Khan, when he ran away from his house in Hyderabad and landed in Mumbai. Though he acted in over 200 films, he came into the limelight when he turned a baddie. The polished suited booted look he sported coupled with his unique dialogue delivery, deadpan expression and mannerism made him a superstar in his own way.
Ajit did support roles in scores of films like Shah-e-Misr, Hatimtai, Sone ki Chidiya but mostly went unnoticed. However, when he chose to do an image makeover and turned baddy cine-goersoers started taking note of him. Ajit brought a rare freshness to the portrayal of negative roles with his suave looks, tuxedo white suites, polka-dotted ties and brylecreemed hair. Gone was the savage loud-mouthed villain of Bollywood. In his new avatar Ajit, as an underworld don, is seen in most of the films reclining on a chaise lounge with a buxom babe tucked into one arm. In the movie, Zanjeer, when a blood-dripping Amitabh Bachchan confronts him after getting out of prison, the don, Teja, reacts very casually sipping his drink. Unfazed he drawls “Hayllo”.
That was Ajit at his suavest best. His career skyrocketed in 70s and 80s with blockbusters like Zanjeer, Yaadon ki Barat, Kalicharan, Jugnu, Patthar aur Paayal. His typical one-liners like Mona Darling, Lilly don’t be silly, and Loin are a rage even now.
More than his dialogue the ‘Ajit jokes’ have added to the legend. Names such as Mona, Peter, Michael and Raabert (Robert) came into common parlance. Some of the famous jokes are: Robert: Boss, Tony to bhaag gaya hai Mona ke saath. Ajit smirks: Raabert, my bway, Mona kaise bhaag sakti hai. Uske kapde to mere pass haiN. Ajit: Raabert iss ko liquid oxygen mein daal do, Liquid isse jeeney nahi deygi aur oxygen isse marne nahin degi.
Interestingly, Ajit himself was unaware about these jokes. He didn’t know who invented them. But they gained currency and spread like wildfire since they have a sharp wit. From a C-grade hero to a polished villain, Ajit’s career turned a full circle when he sported a suave and westernised image. People liked this suited and booted baddie who never loses his cool even in most trying times.
The 221-page biography traces the early days of Ajit in Golconda, Hyderabad, his school life and his struggles in the film industry when he landed in Mumbai and little-known things about his real life. The book makes an interesting read, especially for the ‘lion’ fans. The book priced Rs. 230 is scheduled to be released in the Western Block of Salar Jung Museum at 4.30 pm on Friday. Siasat Managing Editor, Zaheeruddin Ali Khan, MANUU Vice-Chancellor, Syed Ainul Hasan, Nawab Ehteram Ali Khan, Board Member, Dr. A. Nagender Reddy, Director, Salar Jung Museum, and Ajit family members will grace the occasion.
source: http://www.siasat.com / The Siasat Daily / Home> Featured News / by J S Ifthekhar / January 26th, 2023
Shah Rashid Ahmed Khadri, a 67-year-old Bidri craftsperson from Bidar, is among the Padmashri Award winners this year.
He gained instant popularity when he sat working with his tools on the Karnataka Tableau at the Republic Day parade in 2011.
He has spent nearly five decades in the art that he learnt from his father Shah Mustafa Khadri, a master craftsman who was honoured by the Nizam of Hyderabad.
The Khadris were a family of limited means and Rashid could study only up to PU. His father, however, did not want him to be a Bidri craftsman as he felt they did not earn enough. He enrolled Rashid into English typewriting course. However, he began assisting his father who began losing eyesight due to old age.
He is a winner of Shilpa Guru Award, Rajyotsava Award and national award for handicrafts. He is a regular invitee to the Suraj Kund Mela, Dilli Haat and other exhibitions in India.
He has also served as a procurer for the Cauvery handicrafts museum in Bengaluru and a master trainee for various various craftsman training programmes of the Central and State governments.
His creations have been exhibited in the U.S., Europe, West Asia and Singapore.
He said that he had never expected this honour. “I miss my father today. I am sure he would have been happier than I am,” he said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> India> Karnataka / by The Hindu Bureau / January 25th, 2023
“Material culture is the history and philosophy of objects and the myriad relationships between people and things.” Bernard Herman, material culture scholar.
I have always had a fascination with old homes. I grew up in one – Abid Manzil in Aligarh, built in 1935. Well-known as the home of Aligarh Muslim University, the town in western Uttar Pradesh saw many Indian Muslims migrate there in the early 1900s from different parts of the erstwhile United Provinces. This included the Muslim zamindar elites who came from neighbouring principalities as well as working-class and middle-class families from eastern Uttar Pradesh. Many wanted to give their children the chance of a good education at the university. These people brought their cultures and histories with them, blending with the Islamic yet liberal intellectual philosophy propagated by AMU and spearheaded by its founder, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. The homes of these people, mostly built in the 1930s, are evidence of this syncretic tradition.
On my most recent visit to Aligarh I realised that these pre-Partition houses were gradually disappearing. I met with some of the remaining families, who wanted to talk about the rich history of their homes, the culture and ways of life they embodied, and the measures they were currently taking to secure a future for their homes and themselves. This photo essay tells the story of these homes and the people who live in them.
Ibne Sahab was born in 1923. He lost his mother when he was just a month old and was raised by his father. Ibne Sahab’s childhood was spent in Chattari and he moved to Aligarh to pursue his formal education when he was 15 years old. He studied Persian and Psychology at Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was Scheherazade Alim’s paternal great, great-grandfather. She spent her childhood in Aftab Manzil, named after her maternal great-grandfather Aftab Ahmed Khan, who built the house in 1904. Scheherazade Begum studied law at Oxford and became a barrister and has taught law at AMU. After two decades of living and working in Dubai, Scheherazade Begum and her husband Abdul Alim Khan returned to Aligarh and to Aftab Manzil in 1997, and have lived there since.
Aftab Manzil saw the comings and goings of influential men and women. One of them was E M Forster. Scheherazade Alim’s grandfather Sir Ross Masood was a close friend of the writer, who dedicated A Passage to India to him. Masood became the Vice Chancellor of AMU in 1929, a position he held for three years. The photograph on the right was taken in Italy in 1911. The photograph on the left shows Scheherazade Begum with Forster. It was taken in England in 1962. She herself cultivated a deep bond with the writer, calling him “Forster Chacha”.
Aftab Manzil was built using bricks manufactured by Ford and MacDonald, the company responsible for supplying red bricks for the building of AMU. Other homes such as Habibullah Manzil were also constructed using surplus material from AMU. Courtyards like this, at Habibullah Manzil, are typical features in old homes. They are public spaces that allow family members to socialise, yet at the same time are private and separated from the outside world.
Professor Tariq Gilani, who lives in Habibullah Manzil, says that it is difficult to secure an old house, especially since there is no one, single uninterrupted wall, each room having several doors. David Lelyveld, in Aligarh’s First Generation, explains that this was the case “so that different sorts of people might come and go without crossing paths.” The architecture, therefore, reflected the norms of social interaction in the early 20th century.
These norms dictated that spaces within a household be separated on the basis of gender. Purdah was adhered to, especially among the elite. To enter the ladies’ quarter, or zenanah, male servants and visitors had to announce themselves first. In the case of Rahat Manzil’s haveli, non-related males would have entered through a zigzag corridor, preventing them from directly viewing the zenanah.
Farrukh Said Khan with his wife Faizana Said Khan in their formal living room in Rahat Manzil. Faizana Said Khan is the great, great-granddaughter of the Nawab of Jaipalguri. The swing is about ninety years old. The photograph of Ahmed Said Khan on the wall is from when he received an honorary doctorate from AMU. Farrukh Sahab recounts that his grandfather, Ahmed Said, was born in 1889. He was an orphan. His parents died in Saudi Arabia in the early 1890s. After the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Mahmud Ali was unwilling to stay under British rule. But when his son (Ahmed Said’s father) and daughter-in-law died, he had to return to take care of his grandson. Ahmed Said was eight years old when his grandfather passed away. He was sent to English House (AMU’s old guest house) by the British, who had taken control of Chhatari – Ahmed Said’s ancestral zamindari. When he turned 21, Ahmed Said was made the Nawab of Chhatari. He built Rahat Manzil in 1920 as a guesthouse to accommodate his family when they travelled to Aligarh from Chhatari.
Raja Masudul Hasan, also known as the Raja of Asgharabad, supervised the building of Hasan Manzil. He was a keen collector, and according to Zafar Sahab (his son and current owner of Hasan Manzil), he bought this copper ashtray from Chinese traders who frequented Aligarh in the 1930s. He moved to Aligarh in 1925 from Asgharabad, where he was a zamindar, and died in 1954.
Over the years, the landscape of Aligarh has undergone dramatic changes. Where there were once independent bungalows and havelis surrounded by orchards, now stand three or four storey apartment buildings. Many more people have migrated to Aligarh in search of education or employment. This changed landscape, although inevitable and positive in some ways, has imposed stress upon those who live in old homes in Aligarh. Some are uncertain about what will happen to their homes after they are gone. Will their children come back and take charge of things or will their homes, like many others, be broken down and apartment buildings erected in their place?
People have coped with these challenges in different ways. Ibne Said Khan has transformed Rahat Manzil’s formal dining room into a museum dedicated to the life and career of his father, statesman Ahmed Said Khan. He says that one winter evening, after his father’s death in 1982, he saw that his servant was bringing bundles of old paper to feed the angethi (brazier). He asked the servant where he was getting these papers and discovered stacks of old documents and photographs in the storage area. He rescued these and set to work, chronologically organising documents and photographs that captured the breadth of his father’s work. With more than a hundred photographs and documents mounted in the main dining area, Ibne Sahab says that there are still many photographs and documents to be sorted and incorporated into this museum.
The Sherwanis of Muzammil Manzil have renovated a section of their house and transformed it into a school, which they run. Blossoms started in 2001 in a rented house and later shifted to Muzammil Manzil. What was once an aangan (courtyard) is now a school playground. The school has over 800 students.
The Sherwanis also maintain a library in one section of their house named after Syed Sherwani’s grandfather and the original owner of Muzammil Manzil – Nawab Muzammil Ullah Khan. The library started with 500 books but Sherwani Sahab’s father, Rahmatullah Khan Sherwani, expanded it over four decades. It now holds 16,000 books and 2400 rare manuscripts.
This door was hand painted by Rashid Sahab’s nephews. Like Zafar Sahab, Rashid Sahab says that the family has inculcated a sense of responsibility in the next generation to take care of Saman Zaar. For the future, he adds, “We should try to come back to this place and live together (as a family).”
~ Meher Ali is a freelance journalist from Aligarh. She is currently based in Ahmedabad.
source: http://www.himalmag.com / Himalmag, South Asia / Home> Culture> Photo Essay / by Meher Ali / December 19th, 2013
Most Muslims feel disturbed over the growing misconceptions about their religion in the minds of their compatriots, but only a few feel the responsibility of addressing this issue. Ali Bhojani of Mumbai is among the Indians who took charge of the situation that he felt was mostly created by the acerbic debates on television shows and is addressing the myths about Islam.
When he and some of his close friends embarked on this project, met people of other religions, and spoke to them about Islam, he was in for a bigger shock.
“I met the friend of a friend, who was a Jain,” he told Awaz-the Voice on phone from Mumbai. The Jain friend insisted that they move to the bar for the conversation.
“After gulping down a drink or two he told me that needed to loosen up with a drink so that he could muster the courage to ask a few questions about Islam. He admitted that he had fears speaking about Islam,” Ali said. “This came as a big shock.”
The Jain friend told Ali that he had fears of “forced conversion” and being labeled as a Kaffir (nonbeliever in Arabic) in case he asked candid questions about Islam. “I was shocked. Why is it so difficult to speak about Islam? Even today, I have goosebumps thinking of it.”
A poster on a hadith (Twitter)
Ali, a chartered accountant by training who has taken to social work and also runs a travel company in Mumbai, says it was with the idea of “telling the world about our real Prophet and not the one shown by television channels” that a group of 15 Muslims from all walks of life including Dr. Zeba Malik, Principal, Anjuman-e-Islam institutions, joined hands to tell others about the real Islam.
To start with, 15-days before Prophet Muhammad’s birth anniversary (Eid-i-Milad un Nabi), the group organized interactions with different people – Municipality workers, officials, diplomats from consulates, business leaders, Maulanas, MLAs, etc to “clear the toxic air and bring in positivity.” The idea was to present the common messages of Prophet Muhammad called hadith to people of other religions.
“We wanted to publicize simple hadiths like the ones on neighbours, never wasting water, not hurting anyone, paying the labourers before the work is done, the killing of one person is killing the humanity, never harm anybody, etc.” The group organized quiz competitions in schools and colleges on Prophet’s messages. It ran a social media campaign #Prophet for all to generate awareness about the founder of Islam.
The group put up hoardings with simple messages of the Prophet on roadsides and positioned volunteers with placards with Hadith messages in the busy marketplaces for the passersby.
On the day of Eid-Milad un Nabi, the group took out a procession in which people of all faiths participated. “We deliberately didn’t invite a usual Priest-Maulvi-Pastor kind of people to give a message of inclusive celebrations but common people who want to bring about a positive change,” Ali said.
A posted on Hadith on Twitter
Its social media campaign elicited a huge response globally. The 30-second reels of Hadith messages on Instagram, posters on Facebook, and Twitter under the campaign #ProphetForAll were liked and shared by netizens all over the world.
The Prophet For All page on Twitter states its purpose: “To remove the growing misunderstandings about the message of Islam and bring about communal harmony in society.”
Inviting non-Muslims inside a mosque and taking them around was also part of the campaign for peace and communal harmony in the group.
The group members all over the country sent packets of dates and mithai to non-Muslim friends on the occasion. Each box had a small printed message of a hadith “Next year we plan to scale up the movement,” Ali said.
However, buoyed by the success of the group’s Eid campaign, Ali and his friends are planning to hold an all-faith Diwali Milan for the forthcoming festivals in all 227 Municipal wards of Mumbai. “Imagine we are going to touch the lives of two crore people,” Ali quips. “imagining the impact it will have.”
Ali says the idea of this campaign occurred to him when he realized he was scared of passing through a non-Muslim neighbourhood. “I feared for my life and then I realized the other also felt the same while passing through a Muslim neighbourhood.”
He said this cannot go on like this and a dialogue between the two communities must be started.
Ali and his friends didn’t have to raise funds for the campaign. “Social media was voluntary work, snacks and little refreshments were sponsored by people, and the prize money for the competition was pooled by us,” he said.
Ali says there are similarities in all religions and we need to highlight these instead of the differences
source:http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Stories / by Aasha Kosha, New Delhi aasha@awazthevoice.in / January 23rd, 2023
An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran
by Carla Power
Henry Holt. 336 pp. Paperback, $19
Since Sept. 11, 2001, popular media has tended to represent Islam as monolithic and menacing, a faith whose adherents spend their time plotting to murder infidels, oppress women and instill sharia law in Western democracies. While the actions of groups like the Islamic State seem to confirm the worst stereotypes, the worldviews of extremists do not account for the belief systems of the majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, who are, by journalist Carla Power’s account, “people as diverse as Pathan tribals and Kansan surgeons.”
Weary of the stereotypes and “blithe generalizations about ‘the Islamic world’ and ‘the West,’ ” Power, who holds a degree in Middle East studies from Oxford and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Muslim countries, decided to strike back. “If the Oceans Were Ink” is a unique account of the Islamic faith that focuses on the perspective of Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, a scholar and imam whom Power has known for more than 20 years. It is an unusual book, simultaneously an exploration of faith and of Islam as it is lived by those who know it most intimately.
The journalist became acquainted with the imam in the 1990s, when both were conducting research on Islamic scholars and mystics at a think tank, the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Their paths crossed during the intervening years, as Akram achieved renown as a religious scholar and Power established herself as a successful journalist. After years of reporting on strongmen, politics and identity in Muslim societies, Power decided that she wanted “to explore the beliefs behind that identity and to see how closely they matched my own.” She asked Akram if he would take her on as a student. Over the years, Power had developed great respect for his scholarship, particularly his extensive biographical dictionaries on early Islam’s female scholars, whose lives have almost disappeared from the scholarly record. Through this work, Akram hopes to remind Muslims of the importance of women’s education and contributions to society.
Power turns what could have been a dry account of a series of interviews into a vibrant tale of a friendship and of her search for meaning through the contemplation of another religious tradition. Above all, her goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of the Koran, whose “limitless possibilities” are best represented in the words of the Sura that give her book its name: “If the oceans were ink, for (writing) the words of my Lord, the ocean would be exhausted, before the words of my Lord were exhausted.”
Akram and Power meet regularly at Akram’s office, at an Oxford coffee shop, and at the study groups and lectures he leads for the local community. She gets to know his family and his followers well, and is particularly impressed by a group of outspoken, educated Muslim women who debate Akram and even cause him to change his position on controversial issues. Inspired by their time together, Power writes that “studying with a man who saw everything from tea leaves to algebra as gifts from God, I was struck by a new seam of gratitude running through me. I’d emerge from a lesson not with faith, but with what I suppose a fashionable guru would call mindfulness.”
Power skillfully navigates multiple layers of cultural interpretation that make subjects such as veiling so controversial in the West. Akram explains to her that, in Islam, modest dress is not meant to make women invisible but rather allows them “to be present and visible, with the power of their bodies switched off.” However, geopolitics has added additional layers of complexity. From the time of Algerian colonialism until 21st-century Afghanistan, Western military occupation has often been linked to the unveiling of Muslim women. “In the months after the Taliban’s fall, the Western press would rush to capture women shedding their veils. It was as though this transition from burqaed lump to woman was a 21st-century Pygmalion myth: a breathing of life into Afghanistan’s people.”
In contrast to some of his students, Akram eschews politics. He urges his students to focus solely on taqwa, or God-consciousness. Throughout the book, Akram disdains the idea of Islam as a tool to reach political ends, believing that those Muslims with the goal of a state governed by sharia law have a “deep envy of the West’s power and geopolitical supremacy.” Not all of his students agree with him, especially those espousing the need to participate in the revolutions against dictatorships that have wracked the Middle East since 2011. Yet to Akram, the concerns of this world are insignificant compared with the importance of becoming close to the divine.
As Power wraps up her studies with the imam, she concludes that they share many values, including ethics, democracy, equality and human rights. She envies Akram the feeling that prayer “could feel like returning to ‘the arms of your mother, when you are a child.’ ” For Akram, she writes, “existence was a circle, with God at its end, beginning, and every point in between.” For the pious individual, life, from birth to death, is a cycle of return, with the words of God at the center. Yet although the year leaves her with an enhanced appreciation of the complexity of the Koran — even to call the Koran a book is to limit it; “it is a place to which the faithful return, again and again,” she writes — she is ultimately unable to embrace Akram’s sense of religious conviction.
“If the Oceans Were Ink” should be mandatory reading for the 52 percent of Americans who admit to not knowing enough about Muslims. Years of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the media are beginning to take a toll on Muslims in the United States. According to a 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center, 6 percent said they had been victimized by hate crimes in the preceding year. FBI statistics for reported hate crimes against Muslims are five times higher since 9/11. Most recently, the killing of three Muslim students in North Carolina, ostensibly over a parking dispute, has also been alleged to be a hate crime. A Zogby poll released by the Arab American Institute in 2014 showed that only 27 percent of Americans reported favorable opinions of Muslims, down eight points from a poll in 2010. Yet among those polled who reported knowing Muslims firsthand, favorability was 33 percent higher.
Akram, steeped in religion but also thoughtful and open to dialogue, emerges from these pages as a complex and likable man, and it is hard to imagine readers not being moved by Power’s humanistic, evenhanded portrayal of him. “If the Oceans Were Ink” is a welcome and nuanced look at Islam through the eyes of an individual who lives his faith with every breath. It goes a long way toward combating the dehumanizing stereotypes of Muslims that are all too common in the United States today.
By Rachel Newcomb / Rachel Newcomb is associate professor of anthropology at Rollins College, where she also directs the Program in Middle Eastern and North African Studies.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com / Washington Post / Home> Opinion / by Rachel Newcomb / April 30th, 2015
Jamdahan Village (Jaunpur District), UTTAR PRADESH / London, U.K. :
Mohammad Akram Nadwi is a renowned Islamic scholar, theologian, author and professor of Arabic and Islamic studies. He is known for his extensive knowledge of the Quran, Hadith, and Islamic law, as well as his ability to convey complex concepts in a clear and accessible manner.
Early Life and Education
Mohammad Akram Nadwi was born in India in 1963. He comes from a family with a long tradition of Islamic scholarship, and from a young age, he showed a strong interest in Islamic studies. He began his formal education by studying the Quran and Hadith under the guidance of local scholars and his father.
In 1975, Nadwi traveled to the city of Lucknow, India to study at the famous Nadwatul Ulama, an Islamic university and seminary. He studied under some of the most renowned scholars of his time, including Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi and Maulana Sayyid Abul Hasan Ali Hasani. He earned a degree in Islamic studies and later completed his PhD in Islamic theology from the University of Lucknow. Thereafter he was sent to England as Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi’s representative, becoming a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
Personal Life
Mohammad Akram Nadwi is married and has children. He is known for leading a simple and humble lifestyle, and is dedicated to spreading the teachings of Islam to as many people as possible.
Career
After completing his studies in India, Nadwi began teaching at various universities and Islamic institutions in the United Kingdom, including the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. He has also taught at universities in India and the United States.
In addition to his academic work, Nadwi is also a respected speaker and lecturer. He has delivered speeches and lectures at various conferences and events around the world, and is known for his ability to convey complex Islamic concepts in a clear and accessible manner.
Muhammad Akram Nadwi is also a founder of Al-Salam Institute, UK where he also serves as a principal. The Institute is dedicated to the traditional Islamic sciences and provide a platform for the authentic Islamic scholarship to be studied and transmitted.
Books
Mohammad Akram Nadwi is a prolific author, who has written several books and articles on various Islamic topics. Some of his most notable works include:
“Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam” – This is a 43-volume biographical dictionary of female scholars of Hadith, and is considered one of the most comprehensive works on the subject. It is the first book of its kind in the Muslim world, and provides valuable insight into the role of women in the study and transmission of Islamic knowledge.
Madrasah Life: A Student’s Day at Nadwat al-‘Ulamā’
Al-Fiqh Al-Islāmī According to the Hanafi Madhab Rites of Purification, Prayers and Funerals Vol 1
Abū Ḥanīfah His Life, Legal Method & Legacy
Shaykh ‘Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī Nadwī: His Life & Works
Ibn Ḥazm on the Lawfulness of Women Attending Prayers in the Mosque
Journey to Andalus – Translated and edited by Dr. Abu Zayd.
Lessons Learned: Treasures from Nadwah’s Sages
Remembering Beautiful Days In Jerusalem
Foundation To Ḥadīth Science: A Primer on Understanding & Studying Hadith – Translated and edited by Dr. Abu Zayd.
He is also the subject of the best-selling book: If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Qur’an (2015).
Overall, Mohammad Akram Nadwi is a respected and influential Islamic scholar, known for his extensive knowledge of the Quran, Hadith, and Islamic law, as well as his ability to convey complex concepts in a clear and accessible manner. His work has helped to promote understanding and harmony within the Muslim community, and his lectures and writings continue to inspire and guide people on their spiritual journey.
source: http://www.thecognate.com / The Cognate / Home> Famous Muslims / by The Cognate News Desk / January 12th, 2023
