A nice tribute to the Hindko language
An evening with Peshawar-born UK-based research scholar
By Afzal Hussain Bokhari
As a light mid-March drizzle descended on dust-laden and pollution-marred Peshawar, a medley crowd of art lovers converged on Idara Farogh-i-Hindko’s office in Street No.7 of the noisy Shad Bagh Colony located between Science Superior College and Yakatoot Chowk. A sleek black car, with an “MPA” signboard displayed prominently in front, brought the well-dressed Hindko-speaking woman parliamentarian Raffat Akbar Swati to act as the chief guest of the event. Sitting cross-legged and tight-lipped on the carpet was Faqir Hussain Sahir who retired last year as station director of Peshawar radio and was reemployed as advisor on Hindko programmes. Sahir presided over the function, which was arranged to have a get-together with the Peshawar-born research scholar now based in England Dr Elahi Bakhsh Akhtar Awan and to discuss his new religious book titled “Tafseer Wal’asr,” which as the very name indicates is a detailed interpretation of Holy Quran’s shortest “Sura Asr.” In three-piece Western suit, the short-statured guest Dr Awan also sat chatting with the local guests who were mostly his old-time friends.
Journalist Iffat Siddiqi spoke excellent Hindko but surprisingly she chose to pen down her impressions in Urdu. She was by far the only participant who took the maximum number of snapshots of the chief guest as well as the audience. The way she told Raffat Akbar Swati to pose for the camera sometimes on the floor with the “Farogh-i-Hinko” banner at her back and sometimes in a neatly decorated ceremonial chair, I almost took her for some sort of a PRO of Raffat Akbar Swati’s. The paper that Iffat Siddiqi read out so gracefully in Urdu was a well-deserved tribute to the author.
Eminent writer Mushtaq Shabab, who retired as the station director of Radio Pakistan, Abbottabad, has changed his get-up in a way that makes him appear like Peshawar’s Ashfaq Ahmad with mysticism and spiritualism beaming out of his neatly-kempt beard. Every inch a wise man of the East, he tends to wear the look of good old Ernest Hemmingway. Shabab also read out a well-written script about the book but made it a point to clarify that his article was essentially based on the early impression that the very first reading had on him.
Sabir Hussain Imdad listened attentively to everything that was said about the book and its author and liberally applauded the well-narrated pieces but when his turn came, the moderator tried to announce a break for the evening prayer. Sabir Hussain pulled out the script from his pocket and said that there were seven more minutes to spare for the “Maghrib” prayers. With this he started reading his three-page article. Sabir perhaps knew that after the prayer, everyone except the hosts and the author would disappear and he would hardly be left with any appreciative listeners. His intuitive powers and experience of the past “Farogh-i-Hindko” functions worked and he succeeded in saving his script. Like every other speaker, Imdad too complained that Aurangzeb Ghaznavi, editor monthly Hindko magazine “Farogh,” had provided him with a copy of the book just hours before the function. As a matter of fact, the author Dr Awan was planning to fly back to Britain on March 13 so the organisers had to rush through the preprations. Gandhara Adabi Board too had a hurriedly arranged sitting with Dr Awan to launch his book “Hindko Sautiat” (Hindko linguistics).
Giving his impressions about the book, your diarist said that Dr Awan had the insight of a religious scholar who could spread the meaningfulness of the Holy Quran’s briefest Sura across the length and breadth of a full-fledged book. In other Suras we can find references mostly to Pre-Islam events but Sura Asr was probably the only place where there are hints about the coming times. The Almighty Allah swears by time and speaks about the people who will be the losers. At the end of the book, the author has attached an impressive list of the Urdu and English books that he used before attempting an interpretation.
Out of 363 listed books written in Arabic and Urdu and English, volumes like “Tafheem-ul-Quran” by Syed Abul A’la Maudoodi, “Bayyan-ul-Quran” by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, “Ma’arif-ul-Quran” by Mufti Mohammad Shafi and “Tafseer-ul-Quran” by Shabbir Ahmad Usmani are frequently used by research scholars not only on the subcontinent but also in other parts of the world. Similarly, from English books, books like “Companion to the Quran” by William Montgomery Watt, “Islam: A Short History” by Karen Armstrong and “Islam between East and West” by Alija Ali Izzetbegovic appear to have influenced the author’s approach. An in-depth study of the book not only clears much commonly reported confusion from the minds of the believers and helps understand the contemporary world with its interplay of religion and politics.
With his Master’s in Urdu and Persian and a Ph.D. from London, Dr Elahi Baksh Akhtar Awan is the director of Linguistic Academy of Pakistan (UK) London. He is an associate of the Institute of Linguistics (UK). On the title of his book, he has taken care to prominently mention that the American Biographical Institute, USA, picked him as the Man of the Year 2002. His “Tafseer” of Sura Asr was published into a hard-bound 123-page volume by Darul Isha’at Blackburn, Lancashire, England.
During his brief stay in his native Peshawar, Dr Awan received plenty of love from his admirers but it was during this stay that he also received the shocking news of the death of his brother-in-law (sister’s husband).
Statesman