Slokas After A Noon Namaaz
Muslim children study Sanskrit and Hindu ones read Quran in these UP madrassas
NAMRATA JOSHI
We arrive at Madrassa Anwarul-Islam Salfia at 12.45 pm, a little before namaaz. As the students gather around the row of taps to wash their hands and feet and line up for prayers, this modest building in the dusty, narrow bylanes of Chauri in Jalalpur, in eastern UP’s Jaunpur district, looks exactly how we expect a madrassa to be: a place for rigorous study of Islam, Urdu, Arabic.
What we encounter instead is a complete contradiction. The bare, red brick walls of the Standard 7 classroom are yet to be plastered, the window frames still to be fitted. Here, 12-year-old Nadima Bano and Hishamuddin are reciting, their pronunciation perfect and elocution chaste, this ode to India, “Yasyottarasyamdishibhati bhumao Himalayah parvatraj eshah…” It’s a sloka in Sanskrit that translated means ‘the land shielded by the Himalayas in the north’.
“Sanskrit padhne se zubaan saaf ho jaati hai (the diction becomes clear by learning Sanskrit),” Hishamuddin tells us. “Sanskrit is considered the mother of all languages,” says their teacher Rabindra Kumar Mishra. “It’s ironical that institutions like this madrassa should be nursing it while it’s vanishing elsewhere.”
That it’s no exception we have stumbled upon becomes clear to us as we proceed north to Ambedkarnagar district, to Madrassa Azizia Islamia in Kamharia village. The hands of the wall clock might be stuck at 6.45 in this primary school or maktab, but the school itself has progressed in other ways. Space is obviously at a premium—Classes 2-5 are being held simultaneously in separate, little rows in a large hall. Sirajuddin is teaching Sanskrit grammar to Class 3. “It was my favourite subject when I was a child,” he says with a smile. “Balakah pathati; Sah pathati; Balakau pathatah (A child studies, he studies, they study)…,” his student Muhammad Shahid recites for us.
They soon move on to another lesson. “Asmakam deshasya asti ateev shobhanah (our country is very beautiful)…”.
However, this story is not only about Hishamuddins learning Sanskrit. It’s also about 13-year-old Ravi Prakash Pandey, a Brahmin and the son of a
Sanskrit professor, opting to learn Quran in Class 1. A former student of Azizia Islamia, he can now recite the holy text from memory and has a copy at home that he peruses religiously. “Quran teaches that we must help others and do good deeds and stay away from evil,” he says, without batting an eyelid, and then rushes to wash himself and wear a cap before reading it aloud for us.
We hear this echo back in Salfia where two Hindu girls—14-year-old Arti Kumari and Anita Kumari—are writing about Prophet Mohammed in Urdu on the blackboard—“Jab hamare Hazrat ki umr paintees baras ki thi (when our prophet was 35 years old)…”. “They face absolutely no problem in writing, reading or understanding Urdu,” their teacher Kaiser Jahan informs us.
At Madrassa Arbiya Zia-ul-uloom in Mandey in Azamgarh district, sisters Manju and Ranju Kumari have been learning Urdu from Class 1. They mean it when they recite: “Urdu hai jiska naam hamari zubaan hai, duniya ki har zubaan se pyaari zubaan hai (Urdu is the sweetest of the languages in the world).” Passing by Class 1, you can hear Prashant Kumar explaining Urdu numerals to his classmates.
The teachers on either side of the linguistic divide find much in common between Sanskrit and Urdu—both languages, they say, have an evolved, complex grammar. “Their grammar must be the toughest,” says Muhammad Tariq of Madrassa Arbiya. They see this coexistence of Sanskrit and Urdu as normal and not deliberately symbolic in these troubled, divisive times. “How can you associate a language with any religion?” asks Brijesh Kumar Yaduvanshi, a long-time resident of Jaunpur and president, All India University Students’ Union.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?sid=1&fodname=20081222&fname=Madarsas+(F)
i think we should have more of these.
a positive step forward.:k: