Mirza Salma Baig is India’s first woman to man the Railway crossing. She is stationed at Malhore Railway Crossing, one of the busiest intersections of railway and road traffic, located a few kilometers from Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.
Salma Baig, 29, a mother of a toddler, has been working at this crossing for the past 10 years.
Seeing a hijab-clad woman turn a heavy wheel to shut the gate when the train is about to arrive at that point and then open it for pedestrians and other road traffic, the onlookers often stop to take selfies with her.
People show respect to Salma Baig for her job. Seeing her for the first time, many people stop to just look at how she works.
Mirza Salma Baig was appointed as the country’s first Gate Woman in 2013 at the age of 19. She hails from Lucknow, Uttar pradesh.
Malhore crossing is a busy intersection between railway track and the city road and it’s challenging to control and direct the traffic. She has to frequently close the gate for the vehicular traffic as many trains cross this point all through the day. Salma turns a heavy wheel with a lever to close the gate and then unwinds it to open it.
The gates open as soon as the train passes. Salma says that while closing and opening the gate, she has to take care not to hurt anyone. She stands with a red and green flag in hand until the train has crossed the gate.
Interestingly, many people had questioned Salma’s appointment in 2013 as the newspaper reports of 2013 suggest.
Mirza Salma Baig opening the railway gate
The railway authorities had to clarify that this job was always open to women but not many serious contenders for this job had ever applied.
Salma’s father Mirza Salim Baig was also a gateman at the Railway crossing. Due to hearing impairment and other ailments, he had to take voluntary retirement much earlier than it was due. Salma’s mother had suffered a stroke and after father’s retirement, there was no bread winner in the family.
At this stage the Indian Railways offered Salma a job. Salma quit her studies and accepted it. Her relatives were angry but she chose what was best for her and the family under the given circumstances.
She credits her parents for her success.
Salma is proud of her 10-year career and smiles when asked about the snide comments made by many when she first joined.
When she started working at the crossing, the staff told her that being a girl she would not be able to open the crossing gate. They told her that a train passes this crossing every one minute and many predicted she would leave the job in four days. Salma worked hard and never gave up.
She has been standing here for the last 10 years. Salma says, everyone in the staff has become her supporter.”
She performs her 12-hour long duty with full responsibility and competence. Salma says that girls should have the same freedom as housewives.
source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Women / by M Mishra, Lucknow / November 07th, 2022
Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) President Syed Sadatullah Husaini has mourned the passing away of renowned economist Dr. Nejatullah Siddiqui
In a media statement, the JIH President said that Dr. Nejatullah Siddiqui’s contribution to the field of Islamic economics was unparalleled and he pioneered the concept of Islamic banking and laid the foundations of what is currently a thriving multi-billion-dollar industry.
Mr.Husaini held that Dr. Nejatullah was a very versatile personality dedicated to learning and development and, despite living abroad, he contributed intellectually to many forums and institutions in India. Calling his demise, a great loss to the Muslim world and the Islamic Movement, Mr.Husaini said, “his passing away leaves a great vacuum in the field of Islamic economics and finance.”
Offering his heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family members, the JIH leader said, “May Allah forgive him, grant him the highest position in Paradise and bestow patience upon his family members.”
Dr. Mohammad Nejatullah Siddiqui, an Indian economist, was awarded the King Faisal International Prize (Saudi Arabia) for Islamic Studies in 1982. Born in India in 1931, he was educated at Aligarh Muslim University as well as Rampur and Azamgarh.
He served as Associate Professor of economics and Professor of Islamic studies at the Aligarh Muslim University and as Professor of economics at the King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in its Center for Research in Islamic Economics.
He later became a Fellow at the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (USA), and after that a visiting scholar at the Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.
He was a prolific writer in Urdu and English with 63 works in 177 publications and 1301 library holdings to his credit. Several of his works have been translated into Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Thai languages. He was also the recipient of the Shah Waliullah Award in New Delhi for contributions to Islamic Economics.
Some of his notable books are Recent Theories of Profit: A Critical Examination, Economic Enterprise in Islam, Muslim Economic Thinking, Banking Without Interest, Partnership and profit-sharing in Islamic law, Insurance in an Islamic Economy, Teaching Economics from in Islamic Perspective, Role of the State in Islamic Economy, Dialogue in Islamic Economics, and Islam’s View on Property.
source: http://www.indiatomorrow.net / India Tomorrow / Home> National Interest / November 12th, 2022
At the 2022 International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Shotgun World Championship, which was held on Monday in Osijek, Croatia, Indian shooter Areeba Khan took home the silver medal in the individual women’s junior skeet event.
Areeba Khan hit 29 of her 40 shots in the final, missing her final attempt, while Sophie Herrmann of Great Britain scored 30 shots to win the gold.
Raveca-Maria Islai of Romania took home the bronze medal after striking 20 shots, while Muffaddal Zahra Deesawala of India placed fourth after hitting 12 targets.
After Shapath Bharadwaj, Shardul Vihan, and Arya Tyagi won gold in the junior trap men’s team competition, this is India’s second medal in the shotgun competition.
After a shoot-off, Areeba Khan came in third place in the qualifying round. She then won her ranking match to advance to the final.
The 19-year-old Indian shooter competed for India’s junior women’s skeet squad in 2021, which won a gold medal.
No Indian shooter qualified for the ranking matches in the junior men’s individual skeet later in the day.
In qualifying, Bhavtegh Singh Gill, Abhay Singh Sekhon, and Ritu Raj Bundela came in at positions 32, 33, and 36, respectively. The ranking matches are limited to the top eight competitors.
The Kerala Governor is in the midst of a controversy after he launched an attack on the State government in a press conference
What’s unfolding now in Kerala is merely the latest episode in Arif Mohammed Khan’s lifelong story of being his own man, whatever the stakes, whichever the stage. Often loathed, sometimes loved but hard to ignore, Mr. Khan was that way when he entered student politics in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in the early 1970s and rose to be the president of the students union. It wasn’t any different when he became an MLA in 1977, aged 26. Or a Minister of State during the Rajiv Gandhi Government. It is scarcely any different now when he is into his 70s and occupies the august, if increasingly controversial, office of the Governor of Kerala. He is his own man.
Another matter not everyone shares his view of what’s right. Least of all Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. There is little, if any, love lost between the two. There is a reason: Mr. Khan has been publicly critical of the appointment of Mr. Vijayan’s private secretary’s wife as an Associate professor in Kannur University, where Mr. Khan is the Chancellor. So upset was Mr. Khan that casting custom aside, he called a press conference at Raj Bhawan where he fumed against the elected LDF government.
Unsurprisingly, the LDF government can barely stand him today. It is unlikely to worry Mr. Khan a bit. He is known to express himself even at the risk of social opprobrium. His old friends in AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia, where the Bulandshahr-born young man sought education, remember him as a frank and fearless person who was reasonable and open to debate. He is said to have been a good host who loved his Mughlai food and served it with relish to his guests. Today, they are both surprised and a shade speechless at the ideological and political vicissitudes in Mr. Khan’s life.
Indeed, what is happening today in Kerala is not without precedence in Mr. Khan’s multi-layered career which has seen him making pit stops over the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (the predecessor of Rashtriya Lok Dal), the Congress, the Janata Dal, the Bahujan Samaj Party before finally finding a bit of an echo to his views in the BJP. His stint in Kerala, his vehement opposition to noted Marxist historian Irfan Habib and constant run-ins with the Kerala Chief Minister are all attributed to his saffron leaning. Never mind the fact that he has won elections, notably from Kanpur and Bahraich on the tickets of non-BJP parties and has lost elections, as in Kaiserganj, on the BJP ticket in 2004.
Clash with clerics
Back in the mid-1980s, a section of Muslim clerics had no love lost for him at the height of the Shah Bano controversy when he risked it all in opposing Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s move to virtually overturn the Supreme Court verdict on maintenance to divorced Muslim women.
Faced with calls for social boycott and possibility of political oblivion, Mr. Khan did not equivocate then. He is not likely do that now too.
Mr. Khan is a redoubtable scholar of Islam with a uniquely his own interpretation of religion. One could question his interpretation of scripture, not his facts. Equally, unlike many clerics, he is open to being corrected. Faizur Rehman, an independent Chennai-based Islamic scholar himself, at one time agreed with him on the Shah Bano case, but later made his disapproval known when Mr. Khan supported the criminalisation of triple talaq following the Shayara Bano verdict. “Our friendship was not affected by my criticism of his views on criminalisation of talaq,” Mr. Rehman recalls.
One may disagree with Mr. Khan but there is merit in listening to him, even if he himself could do with being a better listener. In the Shah Bano case, the Muslim clerics had agreed for the husbands to pay a substantial one time alimony to a divorced wife. They later retracted. If the maulanas had listened to him then, India’s political trajectory would have been very different.
As for Mr. Khan, he would do well to remember the letter of the rule book he quotes against the Kerala government expects a certain spirit, a certain decorum from the Governor too. It’s time to listen to Mr. Khan as much as for him to listen to voices of constitutional propriety.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> India / by Ziya Us Salam / September 25th, 2022
Zahra Hashmi, a Class XII-Arts student of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Girls’ School was declared the ‘Best Debater’ of the debate contest on ‘Online Education is better than Offline’ held at the AMU Girls’ School.
She has also received a cash prize of Rs 5, 000, informed Amina Malik (School Principal).
source: http://www.amu.ac.in /Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) / Home> AMU News / by Public Relations Office, AMU / September 17th, 2022
Teachers’ Day 2022: He teaches Hindi as well as Social Science and tries to help students work through their own trauma at Sunrise Public School, Ghaziabad.
Teacher’s Day 2022: The school began with the number but has now grown to 350, most from the areas hit by the riot. (Express photo by Sukrita Baruah)
Teachers’ Day 2022:
For 24-year-old Islamuddin, a resident of Shiv Vihar, one of the worst-hit areas during the 2020 communal riots in Delhi, images of the incidents in February two years ago – his grandfather’s house being gutted by fire and his family’s motorbike being destroyed – would keep reappearing in front of him each time he heard a sudden sound or saw a group of people huddled together.
Today, he is teaching Hindi and Social Science to children affected by the riot and is trying to work through their trauma.
Islamuddin is one of 14 teachers at Sunrise Public School Loni, Ghaziabad which was started in August 2020 for children who were victims of the riot. It was started by the Miles2smile foundation, a non-profit run by Aasif Mujtaba who was then pursuing his Ph.D. at IIT-Delhi.
“In August 2020, after the violence and the national lockdown – I met some families who said they were not able to afford the education of their children because of the ‘double trouble’. Initially we thought that we could make a list of 10-15 troubled families and sponsor the children’s education. But when our volunteers went out to meet people about this, they came back with a list of 80 children,” said Mujtaba.
So the school started with 80 children, and over the last two years, the number of students has grown to 350, most of whom are from riot-affected areas, but there are also children from the school’s vicinity. According to Mujtaba, 22 students had lost their fathers during the riots.
The teachers, too, are from riot-affected areas, and seven teachers are from Shiv Vihar, including Islamuddin, who is currently doing an M.A. in Hindi Literature from IGNOU.
“I had never seen such things in front of my eyes before: petrol bombs being thrown, people shouting slogans from afar, threatening to kill. That was all a flash, but when it was over, and we tried to return to normalcy a week or two later, those scenes would not leave my eyes,” he said.
While teaching the children, he says, addressing their trauma is the most challenging part.
(Express photo)
“There are children who lost their homes and witnessed the violence, and then there are children who lost their fathers. It is still easier to explain what happened to the former. But for the latter, it was difficult to even call them to study and talk to them. In the early days, even if you mentioned the word ‘papa’ their eyes would start tearing up. We started with the older children, explaining to them that coming to school and studying is the best way to move on. We took them to a picnic, conducted competitions, told them to express themselves through writing, and gradually tried to create a sense of normalcy. We try to talk to them more about the future and what they want to do,” he said.
The school teaches children from nursery to Class 8, after which the foundation either helps to get the children enrolled in a government school or sponsors their education in a private school.
“We teach all subjects in the school but starting this session, since we are able to do physical classes fully again, we have decided to reduce the syllabus and spend more time on extra-curricular activities,” said Mujtaba.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Education / by Sukrita Baruah, News Delhi / September 04th, 2022
Mairaj Ahmad Khan wins a spectacular gold from nowhere in the Digvijay Singh shotgun championship in Delhi on Sunday. | Photo Credit: Kamesh Srinivasan
New Delhi:
Darshna Rathore had a chance to fight for gold but missed the last two birds and thus had to settle for the bronze.
Olympian and World Cup gold medallist Mairaj Ahmad Khan asserted his class yet again as he accelerated to a smart finish in grabbing the skeet gold in the Digvijay Singh shotgun championship at the Dr. Karni Singh Range, Tughlakabad, on Sunday.
The 46-year-old Mairaj beat Arjun Thakur 35-30 for the gold, as he missed only one bird in the medal round. He had qualified on top in the semifinal with 27 hits, after having made the final with a modest score of 115, six point behind qualification topper Gurjoat Khangura.
‘’Final and semifinal are great. I am going to work only on qualification for the next three months’’, said Mairaj, understandably happy about the way he had competed despite not being at his best.
It was a similar case during the last World Cup in Changwon, when Mairaj had to win a shoot off with four others after being tied on 119 for the last two berths, before racing to the gold.
Anantjeet Singh Naruka who had shot 120 in qualification lost the shoot off against Amrinder Singh Cheema for a berth in the medal round.
Raiza Dhillon won both the women’s and junior skeet gold medals. | Photo Credit: Kamesh Srinivasan
It was Raiza Dhillon all the way as she won both the women’s and junior gold. Raiza beat qualification topper Ganemat Sekhon 36-35 for the women’s gold, and beat Parinaaz Dhaliwal 33-32 for the junior gold.
Darshna Rathore had a chance to fight for gold but missed the last two birds and thus had to settle for the bronze.
Tarana Husain Khan doesn’t write women only as damsels in distress, she writes them as women who challenge.
Tarana Husain Khan.
I don’t remember when my mother first told me, “Boys will be boys.” as an explanation. But I trusted it. The 20-year-old I am now knows it’s an eraser. A cleaning towel that wipes away the grim men produce. Over our words. Over our careers. Over our bodies. It’s an explanation that deletes a lived history with a swift and casual swipe. Tarana Husain Khan’s The Begum and the Dastan resists this erasure.
Khan’s character, Ameera’s grandmother, whom she calls Dadi, tells her the dastan about Feroza Begum, Ameera’s great-grandmother. Feroza Begum attended sawani celebrations at Nawab Shams Ali Khan’s Benazir Palace, defying her family, only to be kidnapped by the Nawab. Although the premise sounds simple, Khan crafts the dastan carefully, preserving the dynamics in Sherpur, a princely state, like one would sour pickle in a jar. Her writing serves as a citation for the overused “Show, don’t tell” technique, arranging the elements of time, location and character through a nuanced understanding of history.
She weaves together the stories of three women, Lalarukh, Feroza and Ameera, with the help of three dastangos, about Kallan Mirza, Ameera’s Dadi, and herself. Each story, within another story, surrenders as a cautionary tale. Sometimes, as a spoiler, that hands you the reins to ride through the rest of the story.
Blame slithers across each story, hissing at every woman who defies and exercises her need for independence. During the forced marriage to the Nawab, women around the bride were “tut-tutting over Feroza’s heartlessness”, believing she aborted her pregnancy from her previous marriage. The blame congeals on Feroza, a victim of forced abortion by the Nawab. In the rumours, the Nawab is a man she loves, not her abuser. The cruelty of these women steps outside the realm of gossip, nipping at Feroza’s right to refuse consent to her nikah.
“‘Feroza Begum, daughter of Altaf Khan urf Miya Jan Khan, your wedding has been arranged to Nawab Shams Ali Khan Bahadur, son of Nawab Murad Ali Khan Bahadur for a sum of two lakh rupees as meher. Do you agree?’
What if she just didn’t say anything?
‘She says “yes”!’ A middle-aged woman dressed in her bridal dress, suddenly shouted towards the curtains. Feroza turned towards the woman. The old lady in charge of her elbowed her ribs.
‘Uh?’ she turned sharply towards the offending lady.
‘I heard it too. She said “yes”!’ said the old lady, then another woman joined in bearing witness to her acquiesce and then another.”
“Why wouldn’t a divorced woman who aborted her child marry the Nawab?” is the rhetoric that these women echo. It’s a form of enabling, but Khan exerts dialogue, channelling prose to amplify Feroza’s reaction, forgotten amidst placeholder approval. She choreographs the myth “she asked for it” by excluding the chorus of the maulvi asking for consent thrice, as is tradition, to exacerbate the rumours that enable, and more terrifyingly, erase. Another dialogue chimes in to note this eager “consent” by Feroza. In these instances, Khan’s narrator, Dadi, is not just a storyteller; but an advocate for forgotten history.
But Khan doesn’t write women only as damsels in distress; she writes them as women who challenge. Feroza wears what she wants, despite the word that the patriarchy will impose on her: nautch. Khan examines how the question of her attire serves as a justification for the harassment. When Bibi, Feroza’s maid, asks her to “let it be”, as she was “wearing that dress”, Feroza doesn’t surrender to the blame. Instead, Feroza asks these questions: what if she was one of the common women? What if she was a nautch?
Khan tackles clothing not only as a form of rebellion but as an identifier of communion and the dismissal of “the other”. When Feroza sights a British woman wearing a “strange gown”, she argues that she should’ve worn “our dress” because she’s in “our country”. Other times, this divide is a form of empowerment.
“Strangely, guys don’t pester scarf-wearing girls with ‘I want to be your friend’ proposals. So us scarfed girls choose to talk to guys we like and make boyfriends on our own. It’s pretty cool that way, though I long to throw away the scarf and open up my hair like I used to at St Mary’s.”
Ameera’s perception of the scarf rewrites the reputation of the vilified veil, untying the folds that make it an oppressive tool while recognising how being “the other” means a kind of protection. A woman’s scarf, her dress, and her jewellery make an argument in this novel. But the expectations that pin a scarf around Ameera’s head, and a nath on Feroza’s nose, encourage a misplaced trust in the men in their lives.
Across the three stories in the novel, protagonists expect men to protect, not because they victimise themselves, but because that’s what’s taught to women: dependence is a desired trait. Khan acknowledges how patriarchy dribbles on the men, drawing out how Lalarukh, Feroza and Ameera feel betrayed by the men in their lives for not protecting them. The cadence of this betrayal morphs across the stories as Khan manipulates language like a glassblower does glass.
“I do believe that in this day and age nobody should bully you into selling your property – these are not the Nawab’s times; but if it was Jugnu’s fees and his exams, Abba would sell off the shops and chuck the case in a heartbeat. We females always depend on our fathers or males to rescue us – our default response to a crisis. Imagine, poor Feroza Begum’s father dumped her in the harem and ran away!”
Khan wields the tone of each story, carefully grafting the premise of a woman wronged in different periods and spaces. She uses the first-person perspective to narrate Ameera’s life, crumbling with her family’s negligence towards her, using a voice akin to a teenager simmering with anger. But for Lalarukh and Feroza, Khan, or rather Dadi and Kallan Mirza, uses the third-person perspective, a voice that is omniscient and viscous, dripping of superiority.
They narrate the violence of Nawab and Tareef Khan, Lalarukh’s kidnapper, without embellishments. The abusers are not kings or sorcerers in the chapters that harrow. They are written as, to no surprise, violators. Khan’s treatment of the dynamic between the Nawab and Feroza contradicts this claim sporadically. But when Feroza reciprocates the Nawab’s ‘love’ for her, he continues to dredge her in the limitations of his harem, remaining free himself, further testifying the degree of his abuse. Feroza is a flawed character, but she is not a flawed victim, and Khan asserts that.
Like Khan, both Dadi and Kallan Mirza are biased narrators, intervening to train their listener(s) to root for the protagonist. They collectively fuel a question: How does tradition, along with law, permit the violation of women? Unfortunately, the stories, or rather the lived experiences that ask this question, are muzzled. But the dastangos, both the real and the fictitious, bite through the labour that accompanies such storytelling. The story prompts the question: How can one write history without condoning it? In The Begum and the Dastan, history is an inspiration, a tool, and an anchor, but it is not a justification.
pix: amazon.in
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Book Review / by Isa Ayidh / (book cover image edited in, amazon.in) /June 27th, 2021
He is truly a forgotten warrior of the freedom movement. Few know about him and fewer are familiar with his name but delve into the pages of history and you realise that he deserves a better place.
He participated in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 in the Battle of Shamli between the British and the anti-colonialist ulema. The scholars were ultimately defeated at that battle.
He was Mohammad Qasim Nanautawi.
Nanautawi was born in 1832 into the Siddiqui family of Nanauta, a town near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
He was schooled at Nanauta, where he memorised the Quran and learned calligraphy.
At the age of nine, Nanautawi moved to Deoband where he studied at the madrasa of Karamat Hussain. The teacher at this madrasa was Mehtab Ali, the uncle of Mahmud Hasan Deobandi.
On the instruction of Mehtab Ali, Nanautawi completed the primary books of Arabic grammar and syntax.
Thereafter, his mother sent him to Saharanpur, where his maternal grandfather Wajihuddin Wakil, who was a poet of Urdu and Persian, lived.
Wakil enrolled his grandson in the Persian class of Muhammad Nawaz Saharanpuri, under whom, Nanautawi, then aged twelve, completed Persian studies.
In 1844, Nanautawi joined the Delhi College. Although was enrolled in the college, he would take private classes at his teachers’ home, instead of the college.
Nanautawi stayed in Delhi for around five or six years and graduated, at the age of 17.
After the completion of his education, Nanautawi became the editor of the press at Matbah-e-Ahmadi.
During this period, he wrote a scholium on the last few portions of Sahihul Bukhari.
Before the establishment of Darul Uloom Deoband, he taught for some time at the Chhatta Masjid. His lectures were delivered at the printing press. His teaching produced a group of accomplished Ulama, the example of which had not been seen since Shah Abdul Ghani’s time.
In 1860, he performed Haj and, on his return, he accepted a profession of collating books at Matbah-e-Mujtaba in Meerut. Nanautavi remained attached to this press until 1868.
In May 1876, a Fair for God-Consciousness was held at Chandapur village, near Shahjahanpur.
Christians, Hindus, and Muslims were invited through posters to attend and prove the truthfulness of their respective religions.
All prominent Ulama delivered speeches at the fair. Nanautawi repudiated the Doctrine of the Trinity, speaking in support of the Islamic conception of God.
Christians did not reply to the objections raised by the followers of Islam, while the Muslims replied to the Christians word by word and won.
Mohammad Qasim Nanautawi established the Darul Uloom Deoband in 1866 with the financial help and funding of the Muslim states within India and the rich individuals of the Muslim Indian community.
He conformed to the Sharia and worked to motivate other people to do so. It was through his work that a prominent madrasa was established in Deoband and a mosque was built in 1868. Through his efforts, Islamic schools were established at various other locations as well.
His greatest achievement was the revival of an educational movement for the renaissance of religious sciences in India and the creation of guiding principles for the madaris (schools).
Under his attention and supervision, madaris were established in several areas.
Under Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi’s guidance, these religious schools, at least in the beginning, remained distant from politics and devoted their services to providing only religious education to Muslim children.
Nanautawi died on 15 April 1880 at the age of 47. His grave is to the north of the Darul-Uloom.
Since Qasim Nanautawi is buried there, the place is known as Qabrastan-e-Qasimi, where countless Deobandi scholars, students, and others are buried.
Significantly, the elders of Deoband took more and more part in the struggle for the independence of the country.
After the establishment of Darul-Uloom, the period of participation in national politics began.
Darul-Uloom, Deoband, was a centre of revolution and political, training. It nurtured such a body of such a body of self-sacrificing soldiers of Islam and sympathisers of the community who themselves wept in the grief of the community and also made others weep; who themselves tossed about restlessly for the restitution of the Muslims’ dignity and caused others also to toss about.
They shattered the Muslims’ intellectual stagnation, they broke up the spell of the British imperialism, and, grappling with the contemporary tyrannical powers, dispelled fear and anxiety from the minds of the country.
They also kindled the candle of freedom in the political wilderness.
It is a historical fact that the political awakening in the beginning of the twentieth century was indebted to Deoband and some other revolutionary movements in the country, and the revolutionary freedom-lovers who rose up there were the products of the grace from the spring of thought of Deoband.
Then, after the establishment of Pakistan, the Indian leaders of Deoband guided the Indian Muslims in utterly adverse circumstances and helped keep up their spirits high. — IANS
source: http://www.muslimmirror.com / Muslim Mirror / Home / by Amita Verma / July 31st, 2022
On the occasion of 74th Independence Day, let us remember these Muslim women who proved their strength, enthusiasm and determinism in the fight for freedom.
These women broke the stereotype of Muslim women in the society, who are merely perceived to be clad in Burqha and were never let out of the house. They participated in the India’s struggle for independence and emerged victorious.
Begum Hazrat Mahal (1830–1879)
Begum Hazrat Mahal, a prominent woman of 1857 rebellion, was born in 1830 Faizabad of Uttar Pradesh. Her actual name was Muhammadi Khanum. Her father is Gulam Hussain of Faizabad. At her tender age itself, she showed good talent in literature.
She was married to Wajid Ali Shah, the Nawab of Awadh. They were blessed with a son Mirza Birjis Khadir Bahadur. On 13 February, 1856, the British troops imprisoned Wajid Ali Shah. They sent him to Calcutta on 13 March and occupied Awadh illegitimately. This irked the people and native rulers.
They revolted against the British under the leadership of Begum Hazrat Mahal. The native rulers and people met at Chavani area of Lucknow, the capital of Awadh on 31May, 1857 and declared independence. They taught a lesson to the British troops and wiped out their power in Lucknow. Later, Begum Hazrat Mahal declared her son Birjis Khadir as the Nawab of Awadh on 7 July, 1857.
As the King’s mother, she gathered 1,80,000 troops and renovated the Lucknow fort spending huge amount of money. She established a high level committee for the good governance of the state. Hazarat Mahal ruled the state on behalf of her son for about ten months and challenged the British force by inspiring patriotism among the people and the fellow native rulers. She issued a historic statement on 31 December, 1858 challenging the proclamation issued by the Queen Victoria on November 1, 1858.
But, when Delhi, the prime center for the First War of Independence was captured, the British troops surrounded and attacked Lucknow in March 1859. There was a fierce battle between the Company troops and the Begum troops. When defeat became inevitable, Begum Hazrat Mahal retreated to the Nepal forests along with the co-revolutionary leaders like Nana Sahib Peshwa and others.
The British rulers offered her huge amount of money and luxurious facilities in order to bring her back to Lucknow. But, the Begum denied them and made it clear that nothing else was acceptable to her except Independent Awadh state. Begum Hazarath Mahal was struggling for the independence of her state till her last breath. She passed away at Khathmound of Nepal on 7 April, 1879. In 1984 Government of India released a postal stamp in her honour.
Abadi Bano Begum (1852-1924)
Abadi Bano Begum, who took active part at par with men in the Indian National Movement, was born in 1852 in Amroha village, Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh. She was married to Abdul Ali Khan of the Princely State Rampur.
Though she lost her husband at a young age, she did not remarry. She had two sons Moulana Mohammed Ali and Moulana Showkath Ali, who were famous as ‘Ali Brothers’. She nurtured her children, into becoming memorable leaders of the Indian Independence Movement. Her involvement in the freedom movement began with the Home Rule Movement, to which she rendered moral and most importantly, financial support.
When the British government detained the Ali Brothers in Chindanwad village, under the Indian Defence Regulations, she went along with them. When a police official proposed for the surrender of her sons, she bluntly refused saying, ‘If my sons agree to the proposal of the government, I will kill them by strangulation. I hope God will bestow enough energy into this old woman’s hands’. Abadi Bano met Mahatma Gandhi in 1917 for the first time.
There after Mahatma Gandhi always addressed her ‘Ammijan’, and all other freedom fighters followed Gandhi’s address. She helped Mahatma Gandhi and other Khilafath leaders financially for undertaking all India tours.
She attended the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League sessions in 1917, held at Calcutta. She spoke in those meetings emphasising that complete freedom could be achieved through unity between Hindus and Muslims.
She also played a constructive role in the Khilafat and Non[1]Cooperation Movement in 1919. She declared in several meetings that ‘it was her ambition that even the dogs and cats of her country should not be under the slavery of the British’.
The fact that the British government official records treated her as a ‘dangerous person’, which established the kind of challenge she hurled at the colonial rule.
Apart from participating in politics she also guided several women’s organisations all over India. So intensely patriotic and nationalist that Abadi Bano Begum who played an active role in national movement without caring old age, ill health and cruel atrocities of police, breathed her last on 13 November, 1924.
BIBI AMATUS SALAM (1907-1985)
Bibi Amatus Salam, who strongly believed that freedom from the slavery of British could be achieved, through the Gandhian methods only, was born in 1907 in Patiala of Punjab in Rajputhana family.
Her father was Colonel Abdul Hamid and her mother Amatur Rehaman. Amatus Salam was the younger sister of six elder brothers. Her health was very delicate since her childhood. She was inspired by her eldest brother, freedom fighter Mohammad Abdur Rashid Khan.
Following the footsteps of her brother, she decided to serve the people of the country.
Amatus Salam participated in the Khadi Movement and attended the meetings of the Indian National Movement along with her brother. She was attracted towards the Non[1]Violence theory of Mahathma Gandhi and Sevagram Ashram.
She decided to join Sevagram Ashram, and went there in 1931. She joined Ashram and followed the strict principles of the Ashram. With her selfless service she became very close to Gandhi couple.
They considered Amatus Salam as their beloved daughter. During the Indian National Movement, she went to jail along with other women in 1932 despite her illness with the permission of Gandhi.
After being released from Jail, she reached Sevagram and took over the responsibilities as Personal Assistant of Gandhi. She said that besides achieving independence, harmony between the Hindus and Muslims, Welfare of the Harijans and Women were her life ambitions. When communal riots erupted, she toured North-West Frontier, Sindh and Noukhali areas as an ambassador of Gandhi.
She held Satyagraha for 20 days to normalize the situation in those areas. After Independence, she rededicated herself to the Public Service. She published an Urdu Magazine called ‘Hindustan’ to promote national integration and communal harmony. When Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan toured in India in 1961, she travelled with him as his personal assistant. When India was at war with
China in 1962 and with Pakistan in 1965, she took all the pains in reaching the mountains or war area along with her adopted son Sunil Kumar to encourage our soldiers and to serve them. Bibi Amatus Salam, who spent all her life following the Gandhian ideology, breathed her last on 29 October, 1985.
HAJARA BEGUM (1910-2003)
Hajara Begum, who fought against the British to liberate the Nation and worked for the welfare of the toiling masses of the country, was born on 22 December, 1910 at Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. She came to know about the sacrifices of the freedom fighters who were fighting against the British from her father, who was a police officer.
After the failure of her marriage, she went to London to pursue her higher education, where she got acquainted with the anti-British forces. This led her to decide to fight against the British Imperialist forces to liberate the nation. She had to face the anger of the British Government as she was criticizing their acts in several International fora.
She returned to India and joined as a lecturer in the Karamat Hussain women’s College at Lucknow in 1935.
She also worked along with famous poet Sajjad Zahir in the formation of All India Progressive Writers’ Association.
She got married to a nationalist leader Dr. Zainul Abedeen Ahmed in 1935 and in the same year both of them took membership in the Indian National Congress. Since the police were after them for their anti-British activities, they resigned their jobs and dedicated themselves totally to the Indian National Movement.
While participating in the activities of the Indian National Congress, Hajara Begum also campaigned for the Communist Party without the knowledge of the Police. She actively took part in the election campaign in those days, and as a result of this a number of Congress leaders could get elected. She attended a secret political workshop at Kotthapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in 1937.
She spoke on different subjects in the workshop as a lecturer. Hajara Begum was against the gender bias since her younger age. She fought against all types of inequalities successfully. She left the Indian National Congress in 1940 along with her husband. Since then, she played a vital role in organizing the unorganized labour sector.
She became very popular as ‘Hajara Aapa’ in the circles of toiling people and women. The Soviet Union honoured her with ‘Supreme Soviet Jubilee Award’ in 1960 in recognition of her work for the downtrodden people on the eve of the birth centenary of Lenin. Hajara Begum, who spent her entire life in the service of the country, breathed her last on 20 January, 2003.
Syed Naseer Ahamed can be contacted at Phone: +91 94402 41727
source: http://www.siasat.com / The Siasat Daily / Home> Featured News / by Nihad Ahmed / Input by Syed Naseer Ahmed / August 15th, 2020
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