Kitne Pakistan...

I was told by an elated department that Jamia Millia Islamia has at last achieved the status of a minority institution. I never understood the true implications of such an occurrence and I decided to leave it just there, although it somewhere certainly felt slightly sick. But if everyone can be so happy about it, it cannot be something that bad after all.

I tried to put forward certain arguments which did not seem very competent at all. Are we too comfortable with this 'minority' word? Is it actually some sort of solace? An excuse where we find refuge in for all our shortcomings? A security blanket is it, that we brand ourselves so proudly as 'minority'? Is trying to gain government sympathy always the right way? I was patiently explained that educationally, Muslims are even more backward than the SC/ST and OBC's. There are villages where people do not even have enough to eat, let alone receive proper education. Should they not have the opportunity to study in a university? Moreover, most people in support also seem to be believing that Jamia was ultimately established for the education of the Muslims and hence granting it the minority status was the right thing to do. And I completely agree with all that.

But lets face it, is the community only backward because Jamia was not a minority institution? And now that it is, will the community suddenly be how we want to see it? Firstly, I really don't think Muslims in general understand their religion very well and most clerics seem to be worried about very mundane things to actually sit up and do something as far as education is concerned. The Jamaats also are too hung up on their own ideologies to do much for society. The Muslims can still produce intelligent men and I am not going to cite big names from antiquity but even now they have the potential to produce the most intelligent and sensitive of men. The point is, even now with the large number of Muslims that do study in Jamia, how many are actually into studying? They all get degrees and know nothing. What will happen with all the reservation? We will hand out more degrees to people who know nothing. Why is it that we always concentrate on the quantity and never on the quality? Just because out of the hundreds, one will turn out to be a man of substance? I just think that if improvement of the community is what our main goal is for all this reservation, then we must look elsewhere. Things need to change at a grass root level. Getting a university degree does not change mind sets and that is what needs alteration. I do understand that there are not many schools in villages but then we need to ask for minority institutions there. Primary education - that is what we need. Basic literacy - that is what the constitution guarantees. Why not claim that? If education provided at a basic level is of a standard, then people will automatically be competent enough for university. We would not even require reservations then. Like I said, Muslims can produce the most intelligent of men, but their foundations have to be laid much before. And anyway what has potential or intelligence or poverty got to do with religion? And it is in school, that character building takes place, where children formulate their value system, where they learn to think. Why not improve the basic education in the community instead of wasting energy on whether there is reservation for higher education?

As far as the argument that Jamia was built for the education of Muslims is concerned, well, Jamia was also built in a national spirit, in a spirit of unity. It withstood the Partition of 1947 but unfortunately could not withstand the division of 2011 - 50% yours and 50% mine.

Jinhe naaz hai Hind parr woh kahan hain...

I taught you love. You taught me responsibility.

I taught you passion. You taught me patience.

I taught you desire. You taught me abstinence.

I taught you melody. You filled in the words.

I taught you to dream. You taught me realisation.

I was chaos. You taught harmony.

I taught the rise...You taught the fall...

I taught the holding on...you taught the letting go...

I taught you doubt. You taught me faith.

I chose supremacy. You taught submission.

I taught ego. You taught the absence of it.

I taught you Self. You taught me the Supreme.

In a Flicker

I do not know how that house looks now or that room that remains lit by that single bulb, in my mind’s eye, fluctuating every now and then, just like it used to. Often the lights would go off and then the oil lamps would burn with their blackened faces. A big wooden table stood in the middle of the room…unpolished and yet smoothened by the years of use. It always felt moist to the skin, moist and soft and so did the benches around it. This table would witness the chopping of raw mangoes in summer and would often be their restig place when at the end of the day, when they would be brought back inside from the sun, a little more dried than before, just a little more shrivelled, just a little more close to the pickle they were destined to make. In the rains they would bear the heat from the steaming cups of tea and plates of pyaanjii. By then the wooden almirah with glass doors would be full of big jars of the most delicious pickles in the world. In winters, it was always red berries that were spread on this very table to be smeared in oil, salt and all the spices. Fresh vegetables from the garden outside would concoct the most seductive fragrances from the kitchen. And by spring the kitchen window would witness the mango trees outside blooming with tiny little mangoes...the little plants would be bending with fat, red tomatoes...bright purple egg plants would hang to touch the ground... When the maroon banana flowers turned into green yellow sweet bananas, they would be distributed to everyone known. It was like a child's first picture book...fruits, flowers and vegetables...know their names, their colours, their taste...their feel...

And with that fluctuating bulb, my memory flickers too...like a candle in a storm...turbulence of an ever changing world...now here and then gone. The candle melts into nothingness and revisiting is like visiting a grave...veiled by modernity, lies years, days, hours, minutes and seconds that flew by and I know not the grave....I only hold dear what was buried and what is lost in the dusts of eternity.