By: Dr Mohammad Aleem, Editor-ICN Group
NEW DELHI: In the heart of the capital city, Delhi, just adjacent to the walls of another place of great cultural importance, India International Centre, sits another iconic building which is popularly known as the India Islamic Cultural Centre.
This building has become synonymous to the vibrant culture of Indian Muslims. It is a well accepted fact that India, even after its debilitating pain of partition and bloodshed in 1947 and another division of Muslims in the form of Bangladesh, still houses the second largest population of Muslims on the earth after Indonesia.
In such condition and situation, the Indian Muslims truly command an important position worldwide. This community has the power to change any kind of discourse, either, politically, socially and culturally.
But when we look towards the community, we find that this community has lost it self esteem completely. It has just become spineless and ready to be used and manipulated by any political and cultural organisations and parties as they wished. The simple reason behind it is the lack of quality education and requisite intellectual growth.
However, it is not the case of the whole community through out India. Our southern counterpart is much better than the Northern Muslims. They are far ahead in terms of education and cultural upbringing. The possible reason might be that they mainly work and express themselves in English and in their own languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam which have their own very rich cultural tradition and mass readership. They sell more books annually than English which is considered the commercial language of India. Another thing which goes in favour of the Southerner Muslims is that they follow, practice and express in the same language as their fellow brethren from the majority community do. It makes them aligned with the culture and economic vibrancy of the general masses and don’t get them left behind from others.
But as far as the Northern Muslims are concerned, they embraced Urdu as their mother tongue and language of expression, which has faced blatant discrimination at the hand of the majority community people because this language is the national language of Pakistan. Majority community also do their work in English and Hindi mainly. And, unfortunately, a great number of Northerner Muslims are not versed well in both English and Hindi, which made the community a laggard.
My intention, in no way, is to demean Urdu here, which is a beautiful language. But Muslims, who are the prime practitioners of this language have also not nurtured it well as it should have been nurtured and groomed. It has just become the language of poetry and fiction. Very limited intellectual and educational activities take place through it and participation of the other communities is almost nil.
I urge the IICC’s newly elected officials to formulate a comprehensive policy towards inculcating the reading habits among Muslims and help in bringing out the community from the intellectual and educational morass and incompetency.
Of late, the India Islamic Centre has chosen its new democratically elected team. Mr Sirajuddin Qureshi took the charge of the centre straight fourth times quite successfully.
I have come in contact with the centre, lately. Since the last two years I started visiting it due to the courtesy of some of my close friends, especially, Ms Nilopher Shama, a popular filmmaker, mainly associated with Doordarshan.
I have also found time and opportunity to attend some functions of the centre, both in the pre and post time of the election. A hot debate and discussions went on during these vibrant days and it helped me in knowing about its multifaceted activities.
This centre is the outcome of some great Muslim souls like late Abdul Hakim, founder of Jamia Hamdard, Begum Abida, Badruddin Tayyab Ji and others. The immense contribution of late Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi can’t be ever forgotten. On her behest, all required supports poured in to the centre in form of the land allotment and initial grant from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
But its success and glory was mainly brought on the surface by the visionary and very hardworking, Mr Sirajuddin Qureshi as its President, who nurtured this centre as a sapling, watered and manured it with full love and devotion and finally made it as a fruit giver huge tree. Still it is growing day by day. It will see many new innovative structural changes soon. And, I hope that it will not fall into the dirty swamp of politics and inefficiency as we often find with the Muslim organizations. With a clear-cut vision, it will move ahead.
Mohammad Aleem is a Sanskriti award winning novelist, playwright, script writer and journalist.
