| April 24, 2002 | Wednesday | Safar 10, 1423 |
Literature & traditional madressahs
PAKISTAN played the entire Sharjah Cup tournament with an unchanged team and carried on with the same team against New Zealand at Karachi. This is exactly the sort of consistency that Pakistan needs. If it’s working, don’t change it or tinker with it, it is a perfectly balanced team.
There is depth in the batting so much so that even the nine, ten, jack, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq and Shoaib Akhtar are not bunnies and can add some useful runs in their own way.
The bowling attack, when firing on all cylinders, is probably the most lethal in the world and in Shahid Afridi, there is an option and though he has not been asked to bowl too much, he is there to break-up a partnership.
The fielding, unfortunately, is nowhere near the standard needed but the good news is that the search is on for a trainer and we should start to see improvements. Admittedly, the team has not been tested on wickets that have some juice in them nor against top quality bowling but Pakistan is looking like a settled team.
The best news of all is the fitness (touch wood) of Shoaib Akhtar. In Karachi, with the roar of the crowed behind him, under lights, he was ferocious and could have linked arms with Malcolm Marshall, Jeff Thomson, Dennis Lillee, Andy Roberts and not be dwarfed.
Shoaib owes much to the PCB, to its Chairman, who fought his battles against bloody-minded umpires, supported him, nursed him through injuries. But more than that, Shoaib seemed to be his own worst enemy, given to tantrums and this was overlooked.
Fast bowlers, in any case, tend to be like race-horses. They need handling. As I wrote last week, Shoaib will be one of the star attractions of the World Cup 2003. He must ensure that his feet remain on the ground and the PCB must ensure that he does not get carried away by his stardom.
He is no longer a loner. He has fitted in well in the team and his team-mates are giving him a lot of support. Waqar bowled him nine overs on a trot because he wanted Shoaib to take six wickets, which he did.
Yousuf Youhana has cemented his position at number three in the batting order and I trust this is now a settled issue and no more experiments. Youhana worked his way out of a lean patch and he has done so with back-to-back centuries, both superb knocks played with that lazy, languid elegance that is his trademark.
I cannot imagine Youhana ever raising his voice in anger. Nothing seems to faze him. At the same time, there is an impertinent streak in him and this is evident when he hit a six off the back foot. That’s the shot one associates with Viv Richards and there was about Viv’s batting a princely arrogance. Not so Youhana. Having it that six, it would not have surprised me had he apologised to the bowler. But the best innings was played by Abdul Razzaq, a little cameo that was the icing on the cake. Razzaq will soon be off to play for Middlesex. A season of English county cricket will do him a world of good.
I see Razzaq as a future Pakistan captain. He has the ideal temperament for the job. He is a quiet, shy young man but a season with Middlesex will make him more of an extrovert and polish up his communication skills.
Inzamam-ul-Haq played an atrocious shot but I do not despair for him. I have a feeling he’s trying too hard to get out of a run of poor form. Sooner than later, the runs will start flowing from his bat.
Every batsman, even a Don Bradman needs just a lucky break. The shot he played at Karachi could easily have gone for six. But when your luck is down, the best shot will find the solitary fielder. I don’t think we should be unduly worried about him.
Play was suspended for some 25 minutes because of crowd disturbance. Thousands of happy cricket fans had gone to the National Stadium to enjoy their cricket. But there will always be some hoodlums who will want to ruin the outing for these thousands. I am not sure if our major cricket grounds are equipped with closed circuit television but they should be. It would then be possible to identify the miscreants and apart from hauling them up, their entry into the cricket ground should be banned.
In the end, it took Rashid Latif to quell the disturbance. It was a brave thing for him to have gone to the disturbed area. Someone could have hurled a stone at him. In future, one hopes, that the organisers will not involve the players in crowd-control.
Are the elite panel of ICC umpires on some kind of a contract and have a fixed tenure / Or can they be fired? The umpiring in the India-West Indies series has been grossly incompetent and it is the West Indies who seem to be on the receiving end of some shocking decisions. At Georgetown, Brian Lara was given out caught behind when he was clearly not out. At Port-of-Spain Sachin Tendulkar was clearly caught behind fairly early in his innings and even Sunil Gavaskar said that he was out. Tendulkar also survived a leg-before appeal when he seemed to be out dead-centre.
But the most shocking decision was against Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the ball clearly pitched several inches from the leg-stump and going further down. I got the impression that the umpire, Daryl Harper was having a quiet snooze and his repose was disturbed by the appeal, he work up, startled and gave the batsman out. By way of a penance, he should be made to see that replay a hundred times. It was an atrocious decision.
The ICC should do some fast re-thinking about its elite panel of umpires and Tendulkar should send a box of sweets to Asoka de Silva, the other umpire whose benevolence allowed him to make his first Test hundred in the West Indies.
HAVING learnt on good authority from distinguished teachers of Dars-i-Nizami and having come across Allama Shibli’s 100-year-old complaint against the then madressahs of this kind that they have made a departure from the ‘liberal curriculum’ of the Dars-i-Nizami, I believe it is quite revealing to note that what was a 180 degrees departure for Shibli has by now changed a lot more.
For the students of literature this is something to be taken quite seriously. Dars-i-Nizami of Shibli’s days included music as well in the curriculum, besides some 60 books on literature, philosophy, logic, mathematics and Ilm-ul-Kalam . Only three or four books pertained to the area of the holy Quran and Hadees, eg Jalalin, Hidaya, Baizavi and Al- Kafi. Compared to these three or four books the entire curriculum was based on worldly knowledge. The main seat of learning of this Nisab was Farangi Mahal, Lucknow, founded by Mulla Nizamuddin Ansari.
Emperor Aurangzeb had gifted two big houses, one of them being Farangi Mahal, to Mulla Nizamuddin’s father, Mulla Qutbuddin, to serve students who sought religious and temporal knowledge in a measure which tilted towards the temporal in order to serve the latter-day Mughals and their governors’ administration. Dars-i-Nizami was, in a way, the Mughal administration’s idea of having a curriculum which could serve the interests of the government of those days. The last class of this Dars was called Fazl and its successful student was known as Fazil.
Before going further it is necessary to know why this Dars produced numerous religious scholars who were equally well versed in literature. Mirza Ghalib was privileged to have the team of Mulla Sadruddin, Maulana Fazl-i-Haq Khairabadi and Maulana Imam Bakhsh Sehbai who edited his Diwan so thoroughly that the part of Ghalib’s Kalam which they expunged was well deserving of the treatment.
Scholars and aristocracy of those days — well up to the middle of 19th century — used to master three-fourths of the curriculum of this important Dars even without attending any madressah. The books were studied with the help of Fazils and they issued certificate that Mr so and so has studied this or that book from them.
As the Dars-i-Nizami went on changing from its temporal basis to the religious — and the religious basis was heavily tilted towards polemical and controversial directions, this Dars changed a great deal of its contours, and Maulana Manazir Ahsan Gilani’s book Musalmanon Ka Nizam-i-Talim-o- Tarbiat, Prof Saeed Ahmed Rafiq’s Musalmanon Ka Nizam-i-Taleem and Maulana Abul Hasanat Nadvi’s Qadeem Darsgahain actually deal with the changes which Dars-i-Nizami underwent.
Besides, one could find for oneself how refreshing and illuminating that Dars was — in so far as literature and philosophy were concerned — that graduates of this Dars were fully aware of the achievement levels of all the big names of Persian and Arabic literatures and they were quite enlightened. They could defend some heretics among poets and advise us to study them between the lines.
There was definitely a concept of giving liberties to poets because they have to dabble in poetic ravings — a process which involves a great deal of transmission of the Unconscious into the Conscious. Scholars such as Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi defended Hafiz Shirazi and Mansur bin Hallaj on the assumption that the students of poetry should try to penetrate the inner recesses of their minds. They were thought capable of being Ilhami and Wahbi. In fact, these were the reasons for being a little more generous towards interpretation of poetry.
Ever since the Dars-i-Nizami changed its principal character, scholars Shibli, Manazir Ahsan Gilani, Prof Saeed Ahmed Rafiq will like to inform us that things have altogether changed and the graduates of Dars-i-Nizami are no more required to be as well versed in poetry, criticism, philosophy and logic as the graduates of the days when the young Shibli was a student.
He had learnt music also as a student of Dars-i-Nizami and anyone who wants to know all that he said about liberalism and enlightenment of the Dars may consult his Maqalat’s Third Volume where he is almost in tears over the depletion of humanities and some of the social sciences which were deemed necessary by Mulla Nizamuddin, who died in 1755. Even Shah Waliullah’s Academy followed this Dars to a large extent, and one of the reasons that he appears more liberal than most orthodox theologians is due to the fact that he regarded literature and philosophy as ornaments for good speech, conduct and living.
Without involving myself in any controversy over madressah education I would want that all those who are working on making madressah education more compatible than it is at present to study this question not from the standpoints of those who do not like the very idea of madressah education but from the angles and experiences of those who could be regarded as its best products, starting from Shibli, especially his illuminating discourse, and Prof Saeed Ahmed Rafiq who has provided the actual changes which were made from time to time with the books which were added or excluded. This could minimize bickerings, if any.
Allama Shibli and Manazir Ahsan Gilani are our foremost scholars who could speak — from their books — as to what we lost in terms of enlightenment and magnanimity of mind by opting for a curriculum which could only produce what it was intended for. Shibli and Gilani have advocated that madressahs should not concern themselves with sectarian differences, rather they should limit themselves to the role of religion and how it helps or an outlook which repudiates pessimism, intolerance and mutually exclusive attitudes.
I hope Shibli’s criticism of the changes which he didn’t like in the Dars-i-Nizami even though his criticism is at least 100 year old, is still valid and not knowing what changes have been made over the years it could be said that the quantum of literature and humanities should be enhanced — rather than decreased — so that the religious scholars of today should be enabled to have a continuous dialogue with men of letters, and literature is not considered a profane hobbyhorse as it is being thought today.
I see a happy future because it is not possible to degenerate any further. From our discussion
on Dars-i-Nizami it is about time we talked about a change in curriculum.