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Waqf power at work

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NEW DELHI / INDIA :

New battle-lines are being drawn in Parliament, and out of it, with waqf and its management at the centre of a major political slugfest.

New battle-lines are being drawn in Parliament, and out of it, with waqf and its management at the centre of a major political slugfest.

At this juncture, it is appropriate to recall the achievements of Hakeem Abdul Hameed, the founder of Jamia Hamdard, whose birth centenary was celebrated in December 2008, and the waqf he founded ~ the Hamdard (Waqf) Laboratories ~ is well into its ninth decade. Speaking during Hakeem saheb’s centenary celebrations at Jamia Hamdard, then Vice-President of India Hamid Ansari observed, “in our recent history Hakeem Abdul Hameed is probably the first, and the most successful, to resurrect the waqf concept in innovative ways so that a modern company was registered as a wakf institution whose income was to be used for public good in the areas of education, medical relief and the advancement of knowledge.

It was an important signal in the immediate aftermath of the painful Partition of India to thread together the religious element with socio-economic progress and alleviation of poverty.” The Vice-President added, “Since the 1930s and 1940s, over 25 educational research institutions were established, culminating in the Jamia Hamdard. The range is astounding ~ ranging from primary education to post-doctoral research, from Unani Medicine to Information Technology, from Islamic Studies to Business Management. Besides the university, the colleges and hospitals established for service to society, there are a set of institutions that bear testimony to his scholarly interests.

I refer to the Institute of History of Medicine, the Institute of Islamic Studies, the Ghalib Academy and the Institute of Federal Studies. Each of these has rendered significant service to scholarship.” Undoubtedly the list of achievements is long but as Hamid Ansari commented, “these achievements hold a mirror to the potential of what public-minded personalities can achieve through the institution of waqf for the socio-economic, educational and cultural betterment of the community. Future generations would behold Jamia Hamdard and Talimabad and wonder at the capacity, vision and dedication of an individual.” Truly so, for in ‘100 Great Muslim Leaders of the 20th century’, a publication of the New Delhi based Institute of Objective Studies (IOS), Dr Mohd Manzoor Alam provided a larger global context to understanding the achievements of Hakeem Abdul Hameed as an outstanding educationist and social reformer, along with his equally illustrious younger brother Hakeem Mohammad Said.

“In the face of formidable challenges which marked the lives of a selected 100 great Muslim men and women of the 20th century,” wrote Dr Alam in the preface, “their lives, struggles and contributions reflect the response of Muslims to the multiple challenges over the century…the ‘100 Great’ belonged to five continents and they came from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, they were inspired by the eternal values and principles of Islam and the precepts of their illustrious forebears in the annals of Islamic history.” Through the tumultuous decades of the 20th century, Dr Alam observed that the ‘100 great Muslim leaders’ were unwavering in their “faith in the Holy Quran describing Muslims as ‘good people’, whose mission on earth is to help others live a meaningful life.

Even in the darkest hour the world of Islam was not plaued by a dearth of men and women who had the stature, mettle and competence to rise to the occasion. The two revered Hakim brothers ~ Hakeem Abdul Hameed and Hakeem Mohammad Said ~ who revived the Unani or Greco-Arab system of medicine and created two institutions, the Hamdard in India and its twin in Pakistan, are inspiring examples of leadership. They did not really belong to any one place. This is aggravated by Western colonial redrawing of the Muslim world map: Hakeem Abdul Hameed in India and Hakeem Mohammad Said in Pakistan were, in fact, two sides of a single sub-continental picture of Islamic excellence.”

The lifetime achievements of Hakeem Abdul Hameed were myth-busters: it had been an enduring myth of the 20th century that the Muslim world had been in deep slumber, their state of somnolence stretching back to centuries. Said Dr Manzoor Alam, “the 20th century instead turns out to be a period of extraordinary intellectual, moral and social awakening and struggle across the Muslim world with societies from Malaysia to Morocco trying hard to reform, promote and practice Islam as a living reality that could guide them through difficult times.” The Hamdard story began over a century ago when Abdul Hameed’s father, Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed, established the Hamdard Dawakhana in 1906.

The vision was implicit in the name. Hamdard means ‘the sharing of pain’ and willingness to mitigate it was to be the motto of future generations as well. The vision was also to break the exclusivity of medicinal preparation of each Unani Hakim and make it available to the masses through modern laboratories along scientific lines. A traditional system of medicine was thus modernised with a nationalist inspiration and an indigenous base. “For this reason, Hakeem saheb can rightly be called a Mujaddid (or reformer) of Unani medicine,” said Ansari in the centenary speech.

Writing in ‘Muslim Mirror’, Abdul Rashid Agwan detailed the story. After Independence in 1947, Hamdard University or Jamia Hamdard has been the first institution that was established and managed on the basis of waqf income. In 1948, the manufacturing and selling unit of Hamdard Daw – akhana, Hamdard (Waqf) Laboratories, was converted into an endowment. Its deed dated 28 August 1948 provided for “Qaumi Income” (Public income) and “Khandani Income (Family income). However, the concept of family income was abolished by a declaration of the Settler/ Founder-Wakif Mutawalli in 1985, with retrospective effect from 1 January 1973. From the profits of the company, Hamdard Tibbi College was set up in 1963 in Old Delhi which later shifted to its present 90-acre campus in Tughlaqabad. In order to effectively manage and utilize the income accrued from Hamdard Waqf Laboratories for the promotion of its objective, Hamdard National Foundation was created on 12 May 1964 to disburse company profits to promote interests of society.

All profits of the company were obligated to go to the Foundation. Both Hamdard and the Foundation were registered under Section 12A of the Income Tax Act. Coinciding with the establishment of the Hamdard National Foundation in India, Hamdard Waqf Laboratories Pakistan also formed Hamdard Foundation Pakistan the same year. Its founder, Hakeem Muhammad Said, expressed the mission in these words, “Hamdard … has chosen to serve through activities for the promotion of good health and education ~ the twin pillars of progress.” Through the 1950s and 60s, when educational institutions namely, Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, AIIMS and Jawaharlal Nehru University ~ were being established with Government resources and with the focus of providing a new nation the benefit of modern science and education, Hakeem Abdul Hameed was single-handedly building schools, colleges and the university under the Jamia Hamdard banner, relying on internal resources of Hamdard Waqf Laboratories, and focused on rejuvenating the millennia-old Greco-Arab medicine which came to be simplistically known as Unani medicine. In this long process of reviving ancient knowledge, Hakeem saheb’s original contribution was the use of modern scientific methods and technology for the standardisation and manufacture of Unani medicine. “Quite early in life, when he was studying medicine at the Tibbia College, he was deeply impressed by the systematic and methodical approach of Hakeem Ajmal Khan towards the classification and standardisation of Unani medicines,” the IOS publication narrated. The Hakeem brothers travelled across Asia and Europe in the 1950s closely observing modern methods and techniques of drug making. They were convinced of the relevance and necessity of using modern technology for medical experimentation and manufacture of Unani medicines. At Hamdard Laboratories, Hamdard University, Hamdard Nursing Home and Majidia Hospital, these modern methods and technology were put into good use, ensuring the regimen of Unani system of medicine could co-exist with modern science and technology.

“This integrated, holistic approach to diagnosis and therapy is one of the most original and outstanding contributions of Hakeem Abdul Hameed,” the IOS publication stated. Eleven books on Unani medicine: Arab medicine and its relevance to modern medicine; Earth, elements and man: Search for a solid foundation of the theory and practice of medicine; and the magnum opus Qarabadin-e-Hamdard or Hamdard Pharmacopoeia are testimony to Hakeem Abdul Hameed’s medical observations, experiences and researches. In the 1980s, he initiated path breaking research on Ibn Sina’s Al-Qanun fit-Tibb or The Canon of Medicine. The 3-volume study was made available in multiple languages, including English.

Several national and global awards were bestowed on Hakeem Abdul Hameed who lived an austere life on campus till the age of 91, with a Gandhian determination to build the new nation through promotion of medicine, modern education and public charity. Like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Hakeem Ajmal Khan, Hakeem Abdul Hameed remains a towering personality whose contribution to modern education and medicine is second to none. It is in the domain of waqf management that Hakeem saheb gave modern India a new path for sustainable, equitable development.

(The writer is a researcher writer on history and heritage issues and a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya)

source: http://www.thestatesman.com / The Statesman / Home> Opinion / by Raju Mansukhani, New Delhi / October 07th, 2024

Of healing and healers

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NEW DELHI :

Hakim Nabina has passed into legend.

Three years older than Hakim Ajmal Khan, one was reminded of him when Ajmal Khan’s great-granddaughter came for admission to Hamdard University last week, accompanied by her father.

While Ajmal Khan’s name lives on beyond his ancestral haveli, Sharif Manzil in Ballimaran, Hakim Nabina had no fixed abode and believed to have been born in the Walled City too, got most of his fame in South Delhi where he was brought by some dealers in Unani medicine.

Born in the same year as Rabindranath Tagore, he was 105 when Dr. S. A. Ali of Hamdard met him in 1965 to seek medication for a digestive problem. The hakim, who had probably been born blind or had lost his vision in childhood, felt the patient’s pulse and diagnosed that his heart and liver were in good trim but not his digestive system. “Did you by any chance eat arbi (yams)?” he enquired. Dr Ali confessed that he had in fact had a piece of the vegetable though he was not fond of it. The hakim told him to have light food in future and prescribed some medicine which cured his ailment.’

Syed Ausaf Ali, himself an octogenarian now, says Nabina lived at Hazrat Pattey Shah’s dargah, behind Humayun’s Tomb. What he prescribed was dispensed by dealers in Unani drugs. When someone complained that the charges were very high, he advised them not to go to the dispensers but take medicine from him directly.

Pattey Shah or the saint amid tree leaves was actually named Shamsuddin Ataullah and died in AD 1300 during the reign of Alauddin Khilji. He got the nickname because whenever Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya visited his khanqah or hospice, he would hide behind bushes and tree leaves, saying he was not worthy of coming face-to-face with the Auliya. This is what has been affirmed in Sadia Dehlvi’s book on the Dargahs of Delhi. It is said that the Shah belonged to the Chishti silsila or order of saints. “During the day he would light a fire and cover himself with its ashes, while at night he slept in a grave-like hollow (something emulated by the eccentric Spanish painter Salvador Dali, who spent his nights in a coffin). When he died Hazrat Nizamuddin led the funeral prayers as per the Shah’s last wish. Hakim Nabina seems to have developed a spiritual rapport with Pattey Shah and lived most of his long life at the latter’s shrine. When he died is not known but it was probably during Indira Gandhi’s first prime ministership, which would mean that he was nearly 110 years old at that time.

The hakim is not to be confused with Hafiz Nabina Doliwale, the blind mendicant who lived under a tree near the southern gate of the Jama Masjid. Nobody knew his real name also, except that he was one who could recite the Quran by heart (Hafiz), was blind (Nabina), wore no clothes and loved to travel free in a doli or palanquin. He and Hakim Nabina were both born in the same year (1860), when Bahadur Shah Zafar was passing his last days in Rangoon. But Hafiz Nabina died at the age of 87 much before the hakim sahib. Everybody in the city knew him and he also finds mention in Ahmed Ali’s “Twilight in Delhi” as he often visited the hero of the book, Mir Nihal. He was regarded as a majzoob (a man possessed), lost in himself and supposed to be in contact with the jinns, without much care for hygiene.

However Hakim Nabina, despite his mystical leanings, never gave the impression that he was a majzoob. His direct communion was with Pattey Shah and he passed his life in the service of those who came to him to be healed. That he could tell a patient what his illness was merely by touching him and pointing out, “Thou ailest here and here,” was a sign of his deep knowledge of human nature and anatomy and the Unani system of medication. Like Hafiz Nabina, he was a recluse but of a different sort who did not discard the ways of the world in matters of dress, behaviour and etiquette. Old-timers remember him as a worthy contemporary of Hakim Ajmal Khan, who had acquired the halo of Massiha (messiah) of the ailing populace!

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> /Down Memory Lane / June 22nd, 2014