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Volume 3, Number 1, January 2012

Aliah University Newsletter


Advisors: Professor. Syed Samsul Alam, Vice-Chancellor Professor. Sudip K. Banerjee Editor : Dr. Amzed Hossein Publication Co-ordinators : Dr. Harun Al Rasid Gazi, Mukandar Sekh

Published by :

Publication Section, Aliah University


DN 47, Sector-V, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700 091 Phone : 033 2706 2125 / 2271 / 2583 Website : www.aliah.ac.in

Volume 3, Number 1, January 2012

Contents
Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Architect of Modern Indian Education System
Professor Syed Samsul Alam

Relevance of Madrasah Education in India


Dr. Anowar Hossain

19

Carbon Nanotubes Application in Modern Science


Dr. Sk. Faruque Ahmed

22

Maulavi Bhai Girish Chandra Sen


Dr. Shabnam Begum

24 27

University News
The Honble Chief Minister Smt. Mamata Banerjee Lays the Foundation Stone of Aliah University Campus

Seminar
Aliah Faculty and Students at the 4th Science Conclave at IIIT, Allahabad Students Seminar at the Department of English

28

Achievements

30

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Architect of Modern Indian Education System


Professor Syed Samsul Alam Vice Chancellor Born on 11 November, 1888, in a divine Sufi family of Maulana Khairuddin and to his Arab wife, Aliyah, as one of their five children, who was given the chronogrammatical name of Firoz Bakht (of exalted destiny), but was commonly called Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmad, and later came to be known as Abul Kalam Azad. Maulana Azad had combined in him scholarly pursuits, sturdy independence of character, and a distinct mental bent towards unworldliness. He was one of the foremost leaders of Indian freedom struggle, an icon of secular nationalism in modern-day India, and one of the most prominent Muslim leaders to support HinduMuslim unity, opposing the partition of India on communal lines. A renowned scholar, poet, author, journalist, politician, and well-versed in many languages, he was a brilliant debater, as indicated by his name, Abul Kalam, which literally means 'lord of dialogue'. He adopted the pen name 'Azad' (free) as a mark of his mental emancipation from a narrow view of religion and life. Maulana Azad became independent India's first education minister. Ancestry Maulana Azaad's forefathers had come from Herat (a city in Afghanistan) to Mughal India during the reign of the Mughal emperor Babur (nearly 500 years ago). They first settled in Agra and then moved to Delhi. He took pride in tracing his birth from an ancestor, Sheikh Jamaluddin (or Maulana Jamaluddin), who earned a name for himself during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Maulana Jamaluddin was a profound scholar and a religious divine of great repute, having to his credit a number of books which are held in high esteem to this day and among which is the celebrated commentary on the most trustworthy text of Hadith (Islamic Traditions), and recognized as an authority by which most Muslim divines swear. Jamaluddin revolted against the innovation of Akbar's Din-i-Ilahi, thus incurring the displeasure of the Emperor. He was patronized by Akbar's foster-brother, Mirza Aziz Kokaltash, but anticipating trouble in future, he left for Makkah. This first known ancestor of Maulana Azad left the proud legacy of Satyagraha for him. Later on, in the times of Jehangir, another ancestor of Maulana Azad, Sheikh Muhammad refused to do Kornish (obeisance) to the Emperor as, in his view, it did not behove the learned to lay prostrate before wealth. He refused to bend his knees to Baal and was sentenced to be imprisoned in the fort of Gwalior for four years. I am the ninth of tenth in paternal descent from Sheikh Jamaluddin", Azad said to Mahadeo Desai, one of his earlier biographers, .... I can say that there wasn't one of my ancestors, but was noted for his learning and Sufism. It also remained a kind of family tradition not to accept any office or position of power; but Shaikh Sirajuddin, a great grandfather of Maulana Azad, accepted the position of a Chief Judge and broke the tradition. Another of his ancestors Mohammad Hadi was appointed by Shahjahan to be the Governor of Agra Fort. His father's maternal grandfather, Maulana Munawaruddin, was one of the last Rukn-ul-Mudarrasin (literally meaning pillar of the teachers/professors) of the Mughal period. This post had been first created in Shahjehan's time and was intended to supervise the activities of the State for the promotion of learning and scholarship. The officer had to administer gifts of lands, endowments and pensions to scholars and teachers and could be compared to a Director of Education in the modern world. Mughul power had by that time declined but these major posts were still retained. Maulana Azad's father, Maulana Muhammad Khairuddin (1831-1908), a scholar-sufi of Persian (Tajik) origin, was then living in Calcutta. Khairuddin's father died while he was still very young and he was brought up by his maternal grandfather, Maulana Munawaruddin (1787-1857), a famous 'alim' of Delhi. The family lived in Bengal until the First Indian War of Independence (the Sepoy Mutiny) broke out (in 1857). Two years before the Mutiny, Maulana Munawaruddin was disgusted with the state of affairs in India and decided to migrate to Makkah, the holiest city in Islam. His grandson - from daughter's side Maulana Khairuddin also accompanied him. When Munawaruddin reached Bhopal, Nawab Sikandar Jehan Begum detained him. The Mutiny started while he was still in Bhopal and for two years he could not leave the place. He then came to Bombay but he could not go to Makkah as death overtook

him there. Khairuddin was then about twenty-five. He proceeded to Makkah, built a house for himself, and settled there. In Makkah, he came into the attention of a very famous religious scholar, Shaikh Mohammad Zahir Watri, in his time Madina's best known 'Alim' whose fame had travelled outside Arabia, and married his daughter Aliyah. Maulana Azad was born in 1888 in the holy city of Makkah. Maulana Khairuddin's life and temperament were coloured by stoic simplicity and contemplation of the Sufis. He wrote numerous books both in Arabic and Persian. He gained much fame in the Muslim world for his ten-volume work on Islam in Arabic which was published in Egypt and for his central role in the restoration of the famous Zubeida Canal (Nahr-eZubeida), main source of water for the people of Makkah, constructed by Begum Zubeida, the wife of Khalifa Harun al-Rashid. In course of time, the canal had deteriorated and there was a great shortage of water in the city. This scarcity was acutest during the Haj and pilgrims had to face great difficulties. Maulana Khairuddin had this nahr repaired. He raised a fund of twenty lakhs in India, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey and improved the canal in such a way that the Bedwin did not have an opportunity of damaging it again. In recognition of his services, he was awarded the First Class Majidi Medal by the Turkish Emperor Sultan Abdul Majid. Some time back Maulana Khairuddin had fallen down in Jedda and broken his shin bone. It had been set, but not well, and he was advised that the surgeons in Calcutta could put it right. He had intended to stay only for a short time but his disciples and admirers would not let him go. A year after he came back to Calcutta with his family in 1899 his wife died and was buried there. Thus, Abul Kalam Azad's family descended from a line of eminent Ulema or scholars of Islam and he inherited from both of his parents the grand legacy of learning. He was a most worthy scion of an extraordinary family with roots deep in the duality Indian and pan-Islamic - to which South Asia's Muslims have been historically linked both psychologically and culturally. Among Indian Muslims who were still wistful over a lost empire, and reeling from the excesses of British colonization, it is hard to envision a family with better credentials than Maulana Azad's. Early life Maulana Azad belonged to highly respected Muslim family known for its scholarship, religious pursuits, and royal connections. His father had no faith in western education and never thought of

giving him an education of the modern type; he held that modern education would destroy religious faith. Because of Azad's conformist family background, his education was arranged in the old traditional manner; he did not go to any Madrasah or school, nor did he attend any modern western educational institution. There was of course the Calcutta Madrasa, but his father did not have a very high opinion of it. (Azad, 1959) He was taught at home, first by his father and later by appointed teachers who were eminent in their respective fields. Azad learned Arabic, Persian, Hanafi fiqh, and shariat first and then philosophy, mathematics, and science. The medium was Arabic. Students who followed the traditional system of education normally finished their course at the age between twenty and twenty-five. This included a period when the young scholar had to teach pupils and thus prove that he had acquired mastery over what he had learnt. Abul Kalam was able to complete the traditional course of higher Islamic education by the time he was sixteen, nine years ahead of his contemporaries, and his father got together some fifteen students, most of whom were twice his age, to whom he taught higher philosophy, mathematics, and logic in addition to Islamic Theology. Later he learnt English, world history, and politics through self-study. At ten Abul Kalam was well-versed in the Quran and at seventeen he was a trained theologian recognized in the Islamic world. His early influences were Maulana Shibli Nomani (June 3, 1857, Bindwal, Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, India - November 18, 1914, Azamgarh), a versatile scholar in Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Turkish, and Urdu and Altaf Hussain Hali (1837, Panipat, Haryana, India - 1914), a great poet, prose-writer, critic, teacher, reformer, a student of Mirza Ghalib, and a close friend of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. His Arab mother knew very little Urdu; therefore, Muhyuddin had to converse most of the time in Arabic with his parents and his brother and sisters. Abul Kalam was only eleven when his mother passed away. Two years later, when Azad was only thirteen, his father got him married to Zulaikha Begum, (d. 1943), (Gandhi, 1986) the second daughter of his father's spiritual disciple, Maulavi Aftabuddin. According to his sister Fatima Begum, Azad kept crying at the time of his marriage saying why he was being taken to the women's apartment. Zuleikha Begum also had a good schooling in Urdu and Persian and knew elementary Arabic. She was an accomplished lady, well versed in household affairs and was of a very hospitable nature. She took good care of Maulana Azad and evinced keen interest in

his books and writing. Azad and Zuleikha had a son named Husain who died at the age of four. A young man, Azad was also exposed to the modern intellectual life of Kolkata, the then capital of Britishruled India and the centre of cultural and political life. At around sixteen (in about 1904-1905), he came across the writings of Muslim educationist Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his views on science, philosophy, and literature. In fact, the need for the study of English was felt by him at that time. Maulvi Mohammed Yusuf Jafri, who was then the chief examiner of the Oriental course of studies, taught him the English alphabet and gave him Peary Charan Sarkar's First Book. Keeping it a secret from his father, he learned English through intensive personal study. Very soon, he started reading the English newspapers with the help of a dictionary. He began to read the Bible, comparing the English version with those in Persian and Urdu. The closed life in his family imbued with religion and religious traditions began to irk him so much so that he began to move out of his family and seek his own path. The inter-sect differences among the Muslims and the orthodox schools made him skeptic of religion itself. He was haunted by all sorts of doubts and questions. Azad refused to be tied to inherited beliefs and declined to succeed his father as a religious preceptor. In fact, he began to doubt the traditional ways of his father and secretly diversified his studies. He had picked up sufficient knowledge of the English language to enable him learning Western philosophy, history, and contemporary politics by reading advanced books and modern periodicals in English. Azad mastered several languages, including Pashtu, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, English, Hindko (language of the North-West Frontier Province of British India), Bengali, French, and Turkish. Referring to his early education, Maulana Azad told the Patna University graduates on 21 December 1947: I am not indebted to English college or school. I was brought up in a family where the old traditions of Indian learning and culture prevailed and there could not be the slightest trace of English education. Whatever education I received as a student was Arabic and Persian and was imparted in the old style. I came to learn English much later by self-study only. From this it will be clear to you that my educational connection with English is not of the same type as yours. (Singh and Samiuddin, 2003) (This should be an eye-opener for today's students.) Still in his teens, using the pseudonym Abul Kalam Azad, Muhiyuddin acquired a high reputation for his writings on religion and literature in the standard Urdu journals of that time; he composed poetry in Urdu as well as treatises on religion and philosophy.

An avid and determined student, Azad was running a library, a reading room, a debating society before he was twelve. He wanted to write on the life of Ghazali at twelve and was contributing learned articles to Makhzan (the best known literary magazine of the day) at fourteen. In the field of journalism, he started publishing a poetical journal Nairang-e-Aalam in 1899 and became an editor of a weekly Al-Misbah in 1900, at the age of twelve and, in 1903, brought out a monthly journal, Lissan-us-Sidq, which soon gained popularity. Azad compiled many treatises interpreting the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the principles of Fiqh and Kalam. (Islam, 2006) All these things made him so popular at a very early age that people meeting him for the first time were shocked at his tender age and had to be reassured that they were meeting the real Maulana Azad. On Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Sarojini Naidu said, He was forty at the time he was born. This was mainly due to the fact that Azad had acquired fame through his journalistic writings and had impressed people as much by his lofty and inspiring message as by his interpretation of Islam. Azad was trained and educated to become a clergyman. He wrote many works, reinterpreting the Holy Quran. His erudition led him to repudiate Taqliq or the tradition of conformity and accept the principle of Tajdid or innovation. Immersed in the closed world of learning, Azad longed for an escape from the unusually rigorous scholastic atmosphere of his strictly religious family and to become a free man. He could not get peace by just reading Islamic history and theology and preaching it to the faithful. He developed interest in the pan-Islamic doctrines of Jamaluddin Afghani and the Aligarh school thought of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. The first major turning point for Azad came after the partition of Bengal, when he rejected the mainstream of the Muslim middle class, which wanted partition and considered the colonial government as its benefactor. Repudiating it, he associated himself with the anti-British Movement. In 1908 (at the age of 20), after his father's death, imbued with the pan-Islamic spirit, he visited France and some Islamic countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey and met a number of groups, the young Turks, the Arab nationalists (including Christians), and the prominent leaders of the pan-Islamic Movement who wanted to throw away the yoke of imperialism to free the Arab countries. In Iraq, he met the exiled revolutionaries who were fighting to establish a constitutional government in Iran. In Egypt, he met Shaikh Muhammad Abduh and Saeed Pasha and other

revolutionary activists of the Arab world. He had a first hand knowledge of the ideals and spirit of the Young Turks in Constantinople. The tour proved very useful to Azad to crystallize his thoughts on the neo-colonialists who were exploiting those countries and how India could help them. All these contacts had a profound and decisive influence on Azad's political thinking and metamorphosed him into a nationalist revolutionary. Soaked in Islamic tradition and with many personal contacts with prominent Muslim leaders of Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Iran, Maulana Azad was profoundly affected by political and cultural developments in those countries. He was known in Islamic countries probably more than any other Indian Muslim. Revolutionary and Journalist The 'extra-curricular' reading and particularly that of the writings of Sir Syed Ahmed led to a mental crisis in Azad. He was trained and brought up in a strict religious family where any deviation from orthodox ways of life was unimaginable and all the conventions of traditional life were to be accepted without any question. However, his 'extra' readings made him disturbed and he began to ask himself: If religion expresses a universal truth, why should there be such differences and conflicts among different religions? Why should each religion claim to be the sole repository of truth and condemn all others as false? (Huq, 2006) Gradually, in the matter of religion, Azad, a product of traditionalism, reached the point where he wanted to combine reason (aql) and revelation (ilm). Azad grew disillusioned with Islamic teachings and was inspired by the modern views of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who had promoted rationalism and patronized the Aligarh school which was known for its pro-colonial modernism which Azad later sought to contest from a nationalist angle. Increasingly doubtful of religious dogma, Azad entered, although unnoticed by others, a period of self-described 'atheism' and 'sinfulness' that lasted for almost a decade (14 to 22 years of his age). (Gandhi, 1986; Huq, 2006) However, after wandering for about nine years (1901-1910) he found his 'destination'. After the period of his spiritual homelessness, Azad, by the end of 1909, had an emotional / mystical experience that renewed his faith in religion and galvanized his personality in a dramatic way. But as he could not describe fully the power which had pushed him into 'darkness', he also could not tell about 'the hand' which pulled him into 'light'. About the same time Azad's political ideas were also in turmoil. He wanted to see his country free from the

British rule. But he did not approve of the Congress movement on account of its slowness; also he could not join the Muslim League whose political goal he found unpredictable. Events such as the partition of Bengal effected by Lord Curzon in 1905 and the writings and activities of Aurobindo Ghosh, and his paper Karmayogin began to stir the people to their depths. On his return from abroad, Azad met the revolutionary leader of Bengal Shyam Shundar Chakravarty and, through him, Aurobindo Ghosh and joined the revolutionary movement against British rule even though in those days the revolutionary groups were recruited exclusively from the Hindu middle classes. In fact all the revolutionary groups were then actively antiMuslim. This was because the partition of Bengal by the British Government was thought to be a move directed against the Hindus. They saw that the British Government was using the Muslims against India's political struggle and the Muslims were playing the Government's game. The British Government thought that no Hindu officer could be fully trusted in dealing with these revolutionary activities, and, therefore, they brought some Muslim officers from UP. (Singh and Samiuddin, 2003) Quite naturally, Azad greatly surprised his fellow Hindu revolutionaries with his willingness to join the freedom struggle. At first his peers were skeptical of his intentions and they looked upon his entry in the revolutionary circles with suspicion and distrust. But Azad convinced them that they were wrong in imagining that Muslims as a community, were their enemies and that they could not generalize from their experience of a few Muslim officers in Bengal. Because of his West Asian background, he told the revolutionaries that in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey the Muslims were engaged in revolutionary activities for the achievement of democracy and freedom and that the Muslims of India would also join in the political struggle if we worked among them and tried to win them as our friends. Azad tried to convince his colleagues to shed their hostility towards Muslims; he argued that active hostility, or even the indifference of Muslims, would make the struggle from political liberty much more difficult. We must, therefore, make every effort to win the support and friendship of the community. [Islam, Sirajul (200607-23), Azad Biography (PHP), retrieved 30-10-2011] Azad found that the revolutionary activities were restricted to Bengal and Bihar. With his persuasion the revolutionary network crossed the confines of Bengal and Bihar and within two years, he helped setup secret revolutionary centers all over north India and Bombay.

As has been said earlier, at a very young age, Maulana rose to prominence as a journalist; by 1903, he was publishing three journals, Nairang-e-Aalam, al-Misbah, and Lissan-us-Sidq. He was extensively publishing works critical of the British Raj and advocating the cause of Indian nationalism. In 1912, when he was only 24, he started a weekly journal in Urdu called al-Hilal (The Crescent) to espouse the cause of freedom, participation of Muslims in the revolutionary movement as well as Hindu-Muslim unity. Al-Hilal played an important role in forging Hindu-Muslim unity after the bad blood created between the two communities in the aftermath of Morley-Minto reforms. It was this journal where he aired his liberal views, Rationalist in outlook and profoundly versed in Islamic lore and history. (Nehru in his Discovery of India) The Maulana interpreted scriptures from the rationalist point of view. Azad was politically and religiously radical. He believed that only by educating the Ulema, the learned in Law and in theology, there would emerge a nucleus of dedicated and idealistic elite which can act as a lever for the moral and intellectual regeneration of the Muslim community. He paid special attention to the importance of communication through newspapers. With the launching of al-Hilal, Azad shot into the National Movement. He gave fearless and powerful expression to his nationalist ideas through the journal. Al-Hilal became a revolutionary mouthpiece ventilating extremist views. The paper shocked the conservatives and created a furore; but there were many Muslims ready to follow him. In the pages of al-Hilal, Azad began to criticize the 'loyal' attitude of the Muslims to the British, and the 'hostile' attitude of the British to the Muslim world in general. Despite his earlier admiration for Sir Syed, Azad was a harsh critic of the loyalist politics of Aligarh Movement. He also launched a vigorous attack on the colonial distortions of our history. While explaining the damage done by the antiHindu attitude of some Muslim intellectuals, al-Hilal held out the message of Hindu-Muslim unity and nationalism to the Muslim elites as well as the popular classes and urged them to join other communities in the struggle for the liberation of the country. Although it was candidly anti-imperialist, like most of the patriotic journals of the time, al-Hilal clothed its liberal ideals in religious forms. It advocated merger of politics and religion and conducted its nationalist platform from the angle of Pan-Islamism and religious revivalism.

Contrary to what is stated in certain types of historiography in the subcontinent, Hindu-Muslim cooperation was not something that Azad adopted out of expediency or after his eventual meeting with Gandhi. Though al-Hilal was ambiguous about specific methods of cooperation and postindependence political arrangements, HinduMuslim unity was a sentiment he had been partial to from very early on in his life, which is evident in his poignant 1910 essay on the broad-minded Sufi saint Sarmad. However, there was a revivalist tone to alHilal which critics would later say inadvertently reinforced communal consciousness among certain Muslims, even though the rhetorical devices had been used to arouse Muslims out of political lethargy. He started a column in al-Hilal on scientific matters (muzakira-e-ilmiya) in February 1913 to make up for what he considered Muslims' current lack of knowledge in all things scientific. He complained that western-educated Muslims could not believe that learned ulema studied philosophy thoroughly, and he criticized those graduates for their lack of a true love of knowledge, saying that no Aligarh graduates write books, translate great works, or make any contribution to knowledge. Agnosticism used to be considered the result of the spread of learning. But what shall we say of agnosticism which is now linked to sheer ignorance! (Al-Hilal 2:16, p. 266-67) But though he was reluctant to admit the benefits of western education, and disdained the products of Aligarh, his columns on scientific matters focused on marvels of modern science. The article was on radium, followed by Scott's expedition to the South Pole, wherein he praised European devotion to science and the search for truth. He translated articles from Scientific American; the first was on Montessori educational methods. Azad described al-Hilal as a tuurning point in history of journalism, which became immensely popular among the Muslim intelligentsia and by 1914 its circulation had reached 26000 copies per week, a figure which was till then unheard of in Urdu journalism. (Maulana Azad as distinguished writer, Team ummid.com, November 10, 2009, 07:23:49 PM; Urdu Press Overseas - Department of Education, Government of India) When World War I broke out in Europe, the British government, viewing the journal as propagator of secessionist views, confiscated the press and banned the journal in 1914 under the Defence of India Act after two years of continuous publication. After the confiscation of Al-Hilal, Azad brought out a

new weekly called Al-Balagh from November 12, 1915, with the same mission of propagating Indian nationalism and revolutionary ideas based on Hindu-Muslim unity but the government banned this paper too on March 31, 1916 and expelled Azad from Calcutta under the Defence of India Regulations. The Governments of Punjab, Delhi, UP, and Bombay had already prohibited his entry into their provinces under the same regulations. Thus the only province he could conveniently stay in was Bihar and he went to Ranchi, where he was interned till January 1, 1920. He was released after the First World War in 1920. In 1927, he again brought out his own paper Al-Hilal, but could not continue it for long. (Samiuddin, 2007) He went on to edit or co-edit numerous periodicals: Al-Balagh (Calcutta), 1915-16; Al-Hilal (Calcutta), 1912-14, 1927; Al-Jamia (Calcutta), 1923-24; Al-Nadwa (Lucknow), 1905-6; Lisan al-Sidq (Calcutta), 1903-5; and Paigham (Calcutta), 1921. Released from jail, he resumed his educational writings. He spoke in a new language, writes Pandit Nehru. It was not only a new language in thought and approach, even its texture was different, for Azad's style was tense and virile though sometimes a little difficult because of its Persian background. He used new phrases for new ideas and was a definite influence in giving shape to Urdu language as it is today. (Khullar, 2010) The older conservative Muslims did not react favourably to all this and criticized Azad's opinion and approach. Yet not even the most learned of them could meet Azad in debate and argument, even on the basis of scriptures and tradition, for Azad's knowledge of these happened to be greater than theirs. He was a strange mixture of medieval scholasticism, 18th century rationalism, and modern outlook. There were a few among the older generation who approved of Azad's writings, among them being Maulana Shibli Nomani (the famous Indian scholar of Islam during British Raj) and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (the founder of Aligarh movement). Khilafat and Non-cooperation When he came out in January 1920, Azad met Tilak and Gandhi for the first time, in Delhi, which was the turning point of his life. Mahatma Gandhi had launched the 'Khilafat Movement' (1919-1924) under the Deoband School and Firanghi Mahal (where Gandhi and Azad were frequent visitors) and there he signed the memorandum to the Viceroy on the question of the Khilafat. With his involvement in the Khilafat Movement, he came into close contact with

Mahatma Gandhi. When Gandhiji proposed his programme of non-cooperation which included the return of all titles, boycott of law courts and educational institutions, resignation from government services, and refusal to participate in the newly constituted legislatures, Azad fully supported saying that: If people really wanted to help Turkey there was no alternative to the programme sketched by Gandhiji. Thus Maulana Azad became the first prominent Muslim in India to declare himself an ally of the Mahatma. Azad roused the Muslim community through the Khilafat Movement the aim of which was to reinstate the Khalifa as the head of British captured Turkey. The ambiguous results of the Khilafat Movement have provoked criticism from some later-day historians over Azad's attempts at fusing religion with politics. By unsystematically using Quranic arguments to support the Khilafat Movement and Hindu-Muslim cooperation, it has been suggested that Azad inadvertently cultivated identity politics among Muslims and allowed some of his ideas to be misconstrued by more communal interests. Azad came to realize that in politics he could only be guided by the general principles of his religion and his knowledge of Indian Muslim history, rather than through invoking specific textual injunctions. But when Muslim League denounced Gandhiji's Satyagraha, the nonviolent resistance or civil disobedience movement, Azad, who had enrolled himself in the League when he was a boy, left Muslim League forever. Mahatma Gandhi said, "Maulana Azad is the most forceful, truthful, and fearless satyagrahi and fighter against oppression and injustice that I have come across." It is important to recall that Maulana Azad always took an uncompromising position against communalism and supported an India that was secular. Enactment of Rowlatt Acts by the British Raj in March 1919 allowed the government to imprison anyone without a trial or a conviction. There were widespread protests to this law. On April 13, 1919, thousands of people gathered peacefully in protest against this law in Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar), Punjab, where more than a thousand people including women and children were massacred by the British troops under the command of General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer who ordered his troops to open fire on the peaceful gathering (which led to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919). Azad became an enthusiastic supporter of Gandhi's ideas of non-violent civil disobedience, and

worked actively to organize the Non-cooperation movement in protest of the 1919 Rowlatt Acts. He committed himself to Gandhi's ideals, which included promoting Swadeshi (Indigenous) products and the cause of Swaraj (Self-rule) for India. Congress Leader While extending his support to Mahatma Gandhi and non-cooperation movement, Maulana Azad joined the Indian National Congress in January 1920. He emerged as one of the top leaders of the Indian National Congress Party. He played a leading role in the Gandhi-proposed non-cooperative civil disobedience movement. His popularity was so high that at 35 he became the youngest person to be elected as the President of the Indian National Congress in September 1923. He also served as the member of Congress Working Committee (CWC) and in the offices of general secretary and president for numerous occasions. In 1928, Maulana Azad endorsed the Nehru Report, prepared by a committee of the All Parties Conference chaired by Motilal Nehru with his son Jawaharlal acting as secretary and nine other members including two Muslims. The 'Nehru Report' (1928) was a memorandum outlining a proposed new Dominion constitution for India. (A dominion refers to one of a group of autonomous polities that were nominally under British sovereignty, constituting the British Empire and British Commonwealth, beginning in the latter part of the 19th century.) Interestingly, the Motilal Nehru Report was severely criticized by number of Muslim personalities involved with the freedom movement. As opposed to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Azad also advocated for the ending of separate electorates based on religion and called for a single nation committed to secularism. It is important to note that despite being a Muslim, Azad often stood against the policies of the prominent Muslim leaders like Jinnah. Maulan Azad was one of the main organizers of the Dharasana Satyagraha, a non-violent raid of the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat as a protest against the British salt tax in colonial India in May, 1930. Maulana Azad was arrested for violation of the salt laws as part of Gandhiji's Salt Satyagraha and he was put in Meerut jail for a year and a half. Azad emerged as one of the most important national leaders of the time, prominently leading the causes of HinduMuslim unity as well as espousing secularism and socialism. Following the passing away of M. A. Ansari in 1936,

Azad became the most prominent Muslim in the Congress. In 1942, during the Quit India Movement, he was elected as the Chief spokesman of the Congress. This distinction he also had during the negotiations with the Cabinet Mission in 1946 at Simla. When the so-called cabinet mission from London came to India to discuss the modalities for the transfer of power into the Indian hands; the mission held discussions with the three top leaders of the Congress Party - Gandhi, Nehru, and Azad. Azad was elected for the second time to serve as Congress President from 1940 to 1946 and became the youngest and longest serving Congress President (in 1923 and from 1940-1946, 7 terms). In 1942, a more comprehensive Quit India movement was launched and he was imprisoned with the entire Congress leadership for three years. (No election was held during this period as almost every Congress leader was in prison on account of the Quit India movement.) He served as Gandhi's adviser in Muslim affairs. Imprisoned six times throughout his politically active life, Maulana Azad had his long ordeal in British jails where he had to spend total of ten and a half years, which means almost one seventh part of his whole life for the cause of India. He commented that a seventh part of my life I have been detained. Thus the English gave me a fine Sabbath-rest. Maulana Azad was perhaps the only one of our leaders who was jailed during both World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-45) for campaigning for Swaraj. However, the period of leisure during the imprisonment proved the proverbial silver lining in the dark clouds and he cherished his time in detention finishing four of his famous books during those years, namely, Tarjuman-ul-Quran, Tazkirah, Qaul-e-Faisal, and Ghubar-e-Khatir. During the thirties the Muslim League had been gaining steam under Jinnah, and given special impetus because of grievances against certain Congress elected provincial governments. Azad's presidential address at the Ramgarh session of the Congress in 1940 occurred just a few days before Jinnah's historic Pakistan Resolution, and, in addition to articulating the point of view of the nationalist Muslims, became a classic statement on Indian secularism and a refutation of the two-nation theory. Unfortunately, in addition to being caught in the cross-fire between Hindu and Muslim communalists, Azad by then had become subject to a trenchant campaign of criticism by influential

Muslim political opponents. Many members of the religious and modern educated classes who earlier in his career had respected him and his religious ideas eventually turned against him because of this vilifying propaganda. Though he was capable of stirring large crowds with his brilliant oratory when called upon to do so Azad's pride and good manners kept him from publicly countering his detractors, and his intellectual and aristocratic nature kept him from reaching out directly to the Muslim masses when such an intervention was needed. He stood for a unified India and never deviated from his stand. During his presidency, he tried to encourage Congress to come to terms with certain Muslim fears and to make some concessions with the League to avoid splitting the country, but both Jinnah's single-mindedness and certain Congress mistakes prevented any settlement from occurring. The Maulana reluctantly relinquished the Congress presidency in 1946, hoping that this would open an avenue between the Congress and the League; the latter party had refused to acknowledge a Muslim presence within the former one. When Nehru formed the first Indian (interim) ministry in 1946, he kept out of the coalition government, but immersed himself in the organizational activities of the party. But in 1947, at Gandhi's urging, he became Minister of Education in Nehru's ministry. Maulana Azad became the most prominent Muslim opponent of the demand for a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. He had been totally opposed to Mountbatten's plan for dividing the country, but by March of that year, partition had become an inevitability; the polarization within the interim government, formed between the Congress and the League, and the rising communal violence throughout India had become too much. Though, like Gandhiji, he was forced to accept partition, he could never reconcile himself to it and was totally heartbroken by the event and its bloody aftermath. Amidst communal turmoil following the partition of India, he worked hard for religious harmony. He writes in his famous book India Wins Freedom: It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically and culturally different. It is a fact of history that while other Congress leaders accepted the partition in 1947, Maulana stood firm. His famous statement on Hindu-Muslim unity stands out as Magna Carta of his faith: If an angel were to descend from the heavens and proclaim from the heights of Qutab Minar: Discard Hindu-Muslim unity and within 24 hours Swaraj is yours, I will refuse the preferred Swaraj but shall not budge an inch from my stand.

The refusal of Swaraj will affect only India while the end of our unity will be the loss of our entire human world. He was firmly committed to the ideas of equity and equality, endearing him to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who fondly called him Mir-i-Karawan (a leader of the mission), "a very brave and gallant gentleman, a finished product of the culture that, in these days, pertains to few". (Hasan, 2000) From Islamic Revivalism to Universal Humanism Very few religious individuals dare and show courage to criticize their own minds and to fight a battle against their own prejudices. Of the leading tolerant Muslims who have left a deep impact on the idea of pluralism in Islam, Maulana Azad stands out unique. Abul Kalam Azad was a man of constant introspection and critical self-examination. His contribution to Indian nationalism and HinduMuslim unity in India, but also to the idea of universal humanism is tremendous. Maulana Azad was proud to be a Muslim and an Indian. In his early years, he had a derogatory attitude toward science. Later, he developed his idea that science is concerned with things that can be perceived by the senses, religion with the suprasensual. He wrote: true science and true religion, although they travel on different paths, in the end arrive at the same destination. (Azad, 1967, p. 14649) He maintained that religion is the only source of moral values. Azad avoided trying to find evidence of scientific theories in the Qur'an. In his Tarjuman, he said, the aim of the Qur'an is to invite the attention of man to His power and wisdom and not to make an exposition of the creation of the universe. The Qur'an contains things which the people of that time understood according to their own conceptions of life and custom, and could not contain any discussion of the facts of science and history in it, because the people of the time had no comprehension of them. He maintained that the Qur'an is the 'word from God' (kalam min 'inda llah), rather than the 'word of God' (kalam Allah). In a collection of Azad's letters, published as Malfuzat-eAzad, he states that we should understand the 'divine word' in the sense that it is divine (khuda'i), while at the same time being in the words of the Prophet. On the problem of the existence of God, Azad based his solutions on intuition, rather than rational reasoning. Without God, there can be no

understanding of the origin of life in the universe. There is only one solution to this problem. There is one way out of the maze. There is one piece to solve the puzzle. The problem of life in the universe is like a book with the first and last page missing; we know neither the beginning nor the end. If there is an omniscient being behind the curtain, everything has meaning; if not, all is dark. Azad also argued from the position that man is so superior to animals that he must have superior inspiration. Everything around him is distraction, but he aspires to higher things. This can only be the case if there is something higher in front of him, which can only be God. The natural answer to the search is inherent in man's nature; man's quest for rising higher is a natural search, for which the answer is God. He gives an example that in learning to talk, children need living examples, and this requirement is naturally met by the mother and father. (Azad, 1931, 1958, 1959, 1967) Without denying the validity of either religion or modern knowledge, he insisted that the realm of religious knowledge must be regarded as forbidden territory for reason. He insisted that modern knowledge must not be allowed to cut away what belongs to religion. He dissociated himself from both the modernist rejection of religious knowledge, and the ulama's lack of respect for modern knowledge. I am compelled to separate myself from the religious reformers of today at this point, in spite of agreement on objectives and principles. Their position is that whatever traditions they find the least bit contrary to their self-made standards of reason, they are immediately anxious to rejectWhy should tradition be rejected merely on this basis? Religious knowledge has its own standards for testing thought and tradition You complain that the ulama pay no attention to modern affairs. But what you present to them is a pair of scissors, called by you 'mutual confirmation of the revealed and the reasoned', with which you thoughtlessly cut away. When you are ignorant of religious matters, and Arabic, they cannot respect you. Although personally, I think they are wrong in this attitude. (Al-Hilal 2:6, 85-6) Azad pursued questions of spirit and nature throughout his life. He concluded that the true relation between science and religion is not one of controversy but of harmonious coexistence and leads to the discovery of the actual existence of a Universal Religion, despite all the extant divergent rites and creeds. For this primary purpose, Azad wrote his commentary Tarjuman al-Qur'an (1931). This commentary is esteemed by Urdu readers because of the excellent Qur'an translation which it contains.

Although Maulana Azad was a great orator and a matchless writer, but he was too aloof to concern himself with persons, too intellectual to relish political small talk, too proud to think in terms of alliance, affiliation, or opposition. His religious ideas were not widely influential. He expressed himself in Urdu, and this limited himself to a particular group. The majority of the Indians did not really know what Azad was saying. Another reason was political. He was in the Congress, and was considered a partyman. Thus whatever he said about the unity of religion was taken by many Muslims, who used to read him, as the reflections of his political ideas, and, therefore, had to be discarded. Also, on the question of Muslims' traditional religious education, Maulana Azad was unorthodox. (Haq, 2006) As in earlier years, he could not project the mystical piety of, say, a Baba Farid needed to draw the Muslim and Hindu masses to him; but his belief in religious pluralism and the need for a humanistic outlook broadened even further, and he openly identified parallels between Vedantic and Sufi thought in some of his addresses. He was among those few who were not shaken in their faith in composite nationalism even by partition. Education Minister (15.08.47 - 22.02.1958) In 1947, when the Interim Government was formed, Maulana Azad was included as Member for Education and Arts. On August 15, 1947, when India attained Independence he became Free India's first Education Minister with a cabinet rank (the post, which he held until his death in 1958, for almost 11 years) and served in the Constituent Assembly to draft India's constitution. Azad's persuasion was instrumental in obtaining the approval of Muslim representatives to end the communal electorates, and was a forceful advocate of enshrining the principle of secularism, religious freedom, and equality for all Indians. He supported provisions for Muslim citizens to make avail of Muslim personal law in courts. (Gandhi, 1990) Maulana Azad was indeed an institution in himself. As a distinguished scholar, great statesman, Azad was imbued with lofty ideas of nationalism, democracy, freedom, and rationalism. His contribution to the field of Indian education is not only massive but also remarkable when viewed in historical perspective. Being a dynamic and visionary educationist, he realized the importance of education not only in terms of eradicating poverty, illiteracy, and gender bias from the Indian scene but also wanted to use education as an effective tool for

social change and rapid economic growth of our country. He played a significant role in reshaping, restructuring, and reorganizing the education system of our country. He is also regarded as an architect of modern Indian education system. (Sharma, 2010) As Education Minister Maulana Azad oversaw the establishment of a National Education System, with free primary education and modern institutions of higher education, which is today the bed-rock of the National Policy on Education (1986) updated in 1992. The concept implies that, up to a given level, all students, irrespective of caste, creed, location, or sex have access to education of a comparable quality. He said, We must not for a moment forget, it is a birth right of every individual to receive at least the basic education without which he cannot fully discharge his duties as a citizen. As Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education, an apex body to recommend to the Government educational reform both at the center and the states including universities, Maulana Azad advocated, in particular, universal primary education, free and compulsory for all children up to the age of 14, girls' education, vocational training, agricultural education, and technical education. He realized the fact that the country could achieve a higher level of progress and advancement only by making the education system of the country more practical, pragmatic and, above all, by meeting the immediate demands of society and the industry as a whole. If Maulana Azad were alive today he would have been the happiest to see the Right to Education Bill approved by the Parliament. The Right to Education Bill seeks to make free and compulsory education a fundamental right. (Akshaya Mukul, Times of India, New Delhi, Jan 6, 2010) Regarding school education, he advocated that the reform of school education was even more important and urgent. Until schools improve, university education cannot but remain unsatisfactory. "The wealth of a nation, according to Maulana Azad, was not the country's bank but in primary schools." Of the various stages of school education, the one which is in most urgent need of reform is that of secondary education. He opined: "There are three stages in the secondary education - elementary, middle, and higher. Of these, elementary and middle are the most important because the foundation of the entire edifice of national education is laid in these two early stages. If the foundation is weak or wrongly laid, the rest of the structure is insecure and faulty. For these two stages we have accepted the

pattern of basic education, which is of great importance to the whole structure of our national education." While delivering a speech at the diamond jubilee celebration of Scindia School, Gwalior, on February 26, 1949, he remarked: "A good school is a national asset of the highest value at any place or at any time. Schools are the laboratories which produce the future citizens of the state." All educational programmes, he said, must be carried out in strict conformity with secular values and constitutional framework. He stood for a common educational structure of 10+2+3 throughout India. The Maulana was also a great votary of the concept of Neighborhood schools and the Common School System. Maulana Azad was also fully conscious about the composite cultures of India. So, in order to bridge the socio-religious and cultural gaps and to enrich Indian culture and heritage, he set up a number of institutions of national importance such as the three National Academies, viz., the Sangeet Natak Academy (1953), Sahitya Academy (1954), and Lalit Kala Academy (1954). The Maulana felt that the cultural content in Indian Education was very low during the British rule and needs to be strengthened through curriculum. Similarly, another important achievement of Maulana Azad establishing the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) earlier in 1950 with the aim to establishing and improving cultural relations with other countries. Although education was on the State List, Azad insisted that the Centre must share the responsibility with State Governments in its promotion. He appointed the University Education Commission (1948) and the Secondary Education Commission (1952). He also established University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1953 by an Act of Parliament for disbursement of grants and maintenance of standards in Indian universities. (UGC Genesis) He firmly believed with Nehru that if the universities discharged their functions well, all will be well with the Nation. According to him, the universities have not only academic functions they have social responsibilities as well. He was pioneer in the field of adult education. His greatest contribution, however, is that in spite of being an eminent scholar of Urdu, Persian, and Arabic he stood for the retention of English language for educational advantages and national and international needs. However, primary education should be imparted in the mother-tongue. On the technical education side he strengthened All Indian Council for Technical Education (AICTE) (established in November 1945 first as an advisory body and later on in 1987 given statutory status by an

Act of Parliament) for the expansion of technological education in free India. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - conceived by a 22-member committee of scholars and entrepreneurs in order to promote technical education - was inaugurated on 18 August 1951 at Kharagpur in West Bengal by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad setting in motion the modern engineering education in India. While inaugurating IIT Kharagpur, the Maulana said: "We must improve the facilities for higher technical education in the country so that we could ourselves meet most of our needs. The large number of our young men who had been going abroad for higher training could have received such training in the country itself. Indeed, I looked and still look forward to the day when the facilities for technical education in India will be of such a level that people from abroad will come to India for higher scientific and technical training." He foresaw a great future in the IITs for India when he said, "I have no doubt that the establishment of this Institute will form a landmark in the progress of higher technological education and research in the country." (Proceedings of the 19th meeting of The Central Advisory Board of Education, New Delhi on March 15 and 16, 1952) IIT Kharagpur was followed by a chain of IITs at Bombay (1958), Madras (1959), Kanpur (1959), Delhi (1961), Guwahati (1994), Roorkee (estb. 1847, joined IITs in 2001), and eight others (at Gandhinagar, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Hyderabad, Indore, Mandi, Jodhpur, and Ropar) established between 2008 and 2010 for imparting quality engineering education in the country. The birth of the IITs epitomized modern engineering education in India. The IITs were mandated to produce the brains that would take the country into a new era of technology and industrialization. He laid emphasis on the development of the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and the Faculty of Technology of the Delhi th University. (Proceedings of the 19 meeting of The Central Advisory Board of Education, New Delhi, on March 15 and 16, 1952) School of Planning and Architecture came into existence at Delhi in 1955. He is celebrated as one of the founders and greatest patrons of the Jamia Millia Islamia. He made Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, a Central University in 1952. From 1952 he also assumed charge of the Ministry of National Resources and Scientific Research. Apart from all these he had taken many major decisions on Education and Scientific Research during 1947-1958, the early phase of India. While inaugurating the first 'National Education Day' at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil said that

education is essential for preparing a population that is not only knowledgeable and skilled but is aware of its responsibilities and willing to contribute to the growth of the nation as well as well being of society. Paying rich tributes to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the great freedom fighter, visionary, and the first Education Minister of Independent India, she said, Education should be a process that imparts knowledge, develops the personality of the individual and opens up new opportunities. (Press Information Bureau, Govt. of India, MHRD, 11 November, 2008, 16:40 IST) She also said, To reflect on Maulana Azad's contribution to education in independent India, we have to survey the post-independence educational scenario in India when he became its first Education Minister. After 1947 it was felt that there was a need for careful prioritization in planning, so that 'our limited resources are not frittered away in doing too many things simultaneously.' His vision for the reconstruction of education in independent India was centered on the creation of a common identity and purpose. In the Central Advisory Board of Education in 1955, he said, 'You will remember that at the last meeting of the Board, I placed before you my ideas on Secondary education. This is the stage up to which all should have the opportunity to go. In any case, it is the stage, which marks, and will continue to mark the end of education for the vast majority. It should, therefore, prepare them for life.' While Maulana Azad envisioned a modern India built through strengthening higher and technical education, he also held the belief that along with training engineers and technicians for the development of the industries, it is equally necessary 'to spread general education for raising the general level of economic activities in the country.' Maulana Azad advocated religious teaching in schools, not from a narrow, factional sense of religiosity, but from a liberal and open perspective. His definition of 'secular' was different even from the mainstream opinion of the period, for he believed and worked for multi-culturalism and interfaith understanding. A strong advocate of the need to transcend narrow provincialism, he declared, 'We want to build in India a national outlook which will transcend the limitations of province, State, religion, caste or language.' He believed that the solution to the problems created by religious fanatics lay not in rejecting religious instruction in elementary stages but in imparting sound and healthy religious education so that children in their formative stages

would not be misguided to fanaticism and intolerance of other religions. He felt the necessity of modernization of madrasas (crucial for Muslim's progress) in spite of having some disagreements with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan on the way this needed to be carried out. He was a product of Madarsa education system, but at times he was also a critic of the traditional Madarsa education system. (Mohammed Ali Rafat, Indian Muslim Observer, November 06 2010) As the minister of education, he tried to establish an all India madrasa board to stabilize the religious education with a proper scale for teachers and a proper examination for students; however, he was meted out with utmost resistance by Mufti Atiq-ur-Rehman Usmani, Maulana Shibli Nomani, and Maulana Hifzur-Rehman, all his close associates. (Ahmed, 2012) Paying rich tributes to Maulana Azad, Shri Arjun Singh, former Minister of Human Resource Development, said: (Press Information Bureau, Govt. of India, MHRD, 11 November, 2008, 16:40 IST) The vision that Maulana Abul Kalam Azad set out for education is that of universal education of the basic pattern for all children of school-going age, followed by a diversified secondary education. He believed that an unsatisfactory system of Secondary education undermines the entire system of education in the country. On the question of Muslim traditional religious education also Maulana Azad was unorthodox. He wanted to see the graduates of traditional Madrasah equipped with modern sciences. In his early days he himself had started (July 1914) a training-cumeducational institution, Darul-Irshad, at Calcutta. That was a center to impart religions education with modern methods and techniques. The institution, however, could not live long due to his political preoccupations. Later on when he was the Educational Minister, he again persuaded the Ulemas, who were in charge of Muslim religious education, to introduce changes in the traditional system of Madrasah education. But he could not succeed in removing their apprehension that such a move would entail governmental intervention in the independent system of Muslim religious education. (Haq, 2006) Abul Kalam Azad formulated the policies in order to carry the light of education in the remotest rural areas and also chalked out programmes for the training of teachers to make them abreast of the developments taking place in the world of education. At this moment, the nation is in need of a vital agenda to reach the hitherto uncovered populace with a new education policy with thrust on values and skills.

As Education Minister, he chaired 9 of the 12 meetings of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) held during his period as education minister. Student Unrest Secular to the marrow of his bones, Maulana's advice to students was: Bury communalism once for all. Student indiscipline, however, continued to worry him. Presiding over the meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) on 7 February 1954, he said: What worries me most is that the extent and magnitude of the student's unrest is very often without any relation whatsoever to the supposed cause. Such unrest among the students strikes at the root of our national culture. The student of today is the potential leader of tomorrow. He will have to sustain the social, political and economic activities. If he is not properly trained and does not develop the necessary resources of character and knowledge he cannot supply the leadership which the nation will need. (Khullar, 2010) If Maulana Azad were alive today he would have been the saddest person to see the recent unrest in educational campuses. Author Maulana Azad was a prolific writer with books in Urdu, Persian, and Arabic notable amongst which is India Wins Freedom, his political biography, translated from Urdu to English. He has more than twenty other titles to his credit, which include Tarjaman-ul-Quran (The Meaning of the Qur'an), Vols. I & II, Basic Concepts of the Quran, Gubar-eKhatir (Sallies of Mind), Hijr-o-Vasal, Khatbat-iAzad, Hamari Azadi, Tazkirah (the reminder), Mazameen-e-Al-Hilal (An Anthology of Al-Hilal Articles), Intekhab-e-Hilal, Dawat-e-Haq, Falsafa, Tarziat-e-Azad, Tarikh-e-Azadi, Muzameen-i-Abul Kalam Azad (compiled by Syed Sifarish Hussain, vol. I), Nigarastan-i-Azad, Malfuzat-e-Azad (compiled by Ajmal Khan, vol. I), Speeches of Maulana Azad, Subh-e-Ummid, Part I, Azad ki kahani Khud Azad ki Zubani (compiled by A.R. Maliabadi, 1958), Among his writings, the famous Tarjuman-ulQur'an, his Urdu translation and commentary on the Quran, published in 1931, is indeed his 'Magnum Opus'. It was during the periods of imprisonment that the Maulana was able to complete its first edition. A second expanded edition was published during the 1940s. It was essentially a commentary on the sacred text of Islam, which he used to demonstrate the moral legitimacy of India as a

homeland for the Muslim community in subcontinent. This incomplete translation and commentary would end up being his most definitive, though controversial, theological statement on how Indian Muslims could live out their religion in a religiously pluralist and politically secular environment. Hence, he articulated an Islam that was hospitable towards other religions, especially Hinduism, and which placed emphasis on commonly held rules of righteous conduct. He desired to co-ordinate the teachings of Islam with the principles of human welfare and for this it was necessary to cleanse the Islamic principles of the myths and superstitions which had crept into them. Tarjuman ul-Quran turned out to be a highly successful commentary as it reflected Azad's amazingly vast stock of knowledge, his clarity of mind, his phenomenal memory, and his extra-ordinary power of expression and communication. Tarjaman-ul-Quran was also published by Sahitya Akademy in six volumes in 1977. Since then several editions of Tarjaman-ul-Quran have come out. Commenting on the fundamental unity of all religions, Azad wrote in Tarjuman-ul-Qur'an, The fundamental concept of all religions is belief in the existence of God. All the religions teach the same truth and the worship of God is ingrained in human nature. Thus differences in religion are created (only) by three factors, dispute over the attributes of God, differences in modes of worship, and differences in religious laws. These differences are created by time circumstances, by environment. None doubts the existence of God. Discussing the unity of religions and oneness of God, he said, The tragedy is that the world worships words and not meanings and even though all are seeking and worshipping but they quarrel with one another and differ on mere names. Once the veil of names is lifted and the real meaning being the same is brought out all quarrels would cease. Though it was a landmark effort to inject a liberal ethos into Islam, the Tarjuman, unfortunately, did not have the overwhelming impact he hoped it would. The controversies that sprung up around this work, particularly from members of the ulema that were supporting him politically, dried up any inspiration in him to carry out the larger task of comprehensive religious reform and reinterpretation. Next to Tanuman-ul-Qur'an, Tazkirah is the most important book written by Azad. It represents the first chapter of his autobiography though he stopped proceeding further in autobiography lines after writing about his great ancestors. However, it contains revelations about Azad's life, more about

his turbulent youth, presented in romantic style. Tazkira was the first book of Azad to be published. It also discusses religion, philosophy, logic, history, Sheikh Wasti, Imam ibn Taimiyya - two great Islamic scholars, the life of the prophets and various other topics. Ghubar-e-Khatir is Azad's last book before he wrote his autobiography India Wins Freedom. After writing it, the pre-occupation with politics gave him no time for writing. It is a collection of letters, written as pastime, when he was detained in the Ahmed Nagar Fort, to Nawab Salar Jung Habibur Rahman Khan Sherwani - a renowned theologian with the Nizam's Government at Hyderabad, which were never posted. These letters convey, in balanced and dignified manner, the essence of Azad's mature experience. Besides revealing various things about himself, implicity or explicity, it also describes how prisoners spent their days in Ahmednagar jail. He also attacked religious superstitions and rituals and the conflicts between the creeds. There is no better or more reliable source for any biographer of Azad than Ghubare-Khatir. It carries details about Azad's personal bio-data, his family history, his education, his psychological make-ups and the motivations that shaped his character. He gave a new life to Anjamane-Tarrqui-e-Urdu-eHind. During the partition riots when the AnjamaneTarrqui-Urdu suffered, its Secretary Maulvi Abdul Haqq decided to leave for Pakistan along with the books of the Anjaman. Abdul Haqq had packed the books but Maulana Azad got them retrieved and thus saved a national treasure being lost to Pakistan. He also helped the Anjaman to revive by sanctioning a grant of Rs. 48,000 per month from the Ministry of Education. Likewise he increased the grants of Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University in their days of financial crisis. He paid particular attention to the Archaeological Survey of India's efforts to repair and maintain the protected monuments. Throughout his life he stood for the chords of cordiality between Hindus and Muslims and the composite culture of India. He stood for modern India with secular credentials, a cosmopolitan character and international outlook. Orator As an orator Azad had no equal among his contemporaries. When he spoke the audience listened to him spell-bound. Recalling the memories of the Roman and the Greek orators, there was magic in his words, his language was chaste and civilized; his speech was dramatic. In October 1947, when the

Delhi Muslims were leaving for Pakistan tens of thousands of them, he spoke from the ramparts of Jama Masjid, like an ancient oracle: Behold, the high towers of Jama Masjid are asking you: where have you lost the pages of your history. Only yesterday your caravans had performed Wazu (Ablutions) on the banks of Jamuna. And today you are afraid to live here. Remember that you have nourished Delhi with your blood. You are afraid of tremors, time was when you yourself were an earthquake. You fear darkness when you yourself symbolized light only recently. The clouds have only poured dirty water and you have raised your trousers for fear of being drenched. They were your forefathers who had dived deep into the seas, cut across the mighty mountains, laughed away the lightnings, answered the thunder of the skies with the velocity of your laughter, changed the direction of the winds and turned the typhoons that they have been misled to a wrong destination. It is an irony of faith that those who played with the destinies of the kings are victims of their own destiny today. And in doing so, they have become so forgetful of their God as if it never existed. Go back it is your home, your country. The effect of his speech was dramatic. Those who packed up their baggages to migrate to Pakistan returned home filled with a new sense of freedom and patriotism. There was no mass migration thereafter. In the history of international oratory Maulana Azad's Jama Masjid speech can only be compared with the Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln, Birla House speech of Nehru on Gandhi's assassination and recently of Martin Luther's speech: I have a dream. Azad's own views "I am a Muslim and profoundly conscious of the fact that I have inherited Islam's glorious tradition of the last fourteen hundred years. I am not prepared to loose even a small part of that legacy. The history and teachings of Islam, its arts and letters, its culture and civilization are part of my wealth and it is my duty to cherish and guard them. But, with all these feelings, I have another equally deep realization, born out of my life's experience which is strengthened and not hindered by the Islamic spirit. I am equally proud of the fact that I am an Indian, an essential part of the indivisible unity of the Indian nationhood, a vital factor in its total makeup, without which this noble edifice will remain incomplete." "If the whole world is our country and is to be honored, the dust of India has the first place. If all mankind are our brothers, then the Indians have the

first place." "It was India's historic destiny that many human races, cultures, and religions should flow to her, and that many a caravan should find rest here... One of the last of these caravans was that of the followers of Islam. This came here and settled for good. In India everything bears the stamp of the joint endeavors of the Hindus and Muslims. Our languages were different, but we grew to use a common language. Our manners and customs were dissimilar, but they produced a new synthesis. No fantasy or artificial scheming to separate and divide us can break this unity." Not only is our national freedom impossible without Hindu-Muslim unity, we also cannot create without it, the primary principles of humanity. "If an angel were to descend from the clouds today, settle on the Qutub Minar of Delhi and proclaim from there that India will attain Swaraj provided HinduMuslim Unity is renounced, then I would renounce Swaraj and not sacrifice Hindu-Muslim Unity, because if Swaraj is delayed, it is the loss to India, but if Hindu-Muslim Unity is lost, it is the loss to humanity." (From the Presidential Address, Indian National Congress Session, 1923, Gaya) Full eleven centuries have passed by since then. Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism. If Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousands of years Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism so also we can say with equal pride that we are Indians and follow Islam. I shall enlarge this orbit still further. The Indian Christian is equally entitled to say with pride that he is an Indian and is following a religion of India, namely Christianity. (From the Presidential Address, Indian National Congress Session, 1940, Ramgarh) Who said what about Maulana Azad Maulana is the emperor of learning. I consider him as a person of the caliber of Plato, Aristotle and Pythogorus. He is a great authority on history. Mahatma Gandhi "Maulana Azad is the most forceful, truthful, and fearless satyagrahi and fighter against oppression and injustice that I have come across." - Mahatma Gandhi "Though I am grateful to all my companions, I would like to mention especially Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose erudition has delighted me incredibly, and has sometimes overwhelmed me. In Azad along

with the good qualities of the past, the graciousness, the deep learning and tolerance, there is a strange and unique mixture of the urges of today and the modern outlook." - Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru "Maulana Azad was a very special representative in a high degree, of the great composite culture which has gradually grown in India. He represented the synthesis of various cultures which had flown in and lost themselves in the ocean of Indian life and humanity, affecting and changing them and being changed themselves by them. In that sense, I can hardly conceive of any other person who can replace him, because the age which produced him is past." Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru ..He was great in many ways. He combined in himself the greatness of the past with the greatness of the present. He always reminded me of the great men of several hundred years ago about whom I have read in history, the great men of the Renaissance, or in a later period the encyclopaedists who proceeded the French Revolution, men of intellect and men of action. He remembered also of what might be called the great quality of olden days - the graciousness which we sadly seek in the world today.It was the strange and unique of the good qualities of the past, the graciousness, the deep learning and toleration and the urges of today which made Maulan Azad what he was. - Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru The Maulan Azad stood for what may be called the emancipation of the mind free from superstitions, obscurantism and lanaticisrn. This mind should be free from narrow prejudices of race or language, province or dialect, religion or caste. It is only then that it is a civilized mind. He worked for the ideals of national unity, probity in administration and economic progress. In a philosophical vein, the Maulana points out that 'to find out the meaning of life and existence in the purpose of the philosophical quest, we may not succeed in finding it out but the pursuit of the quest is its own reward.' Those who follow the path never tire because it is both the way and the destination. - Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Death is last years were marked by sadness and loneliness, a consequence of a life lived so individualistically. His wife Zulekha Begum died on 9 April 1943. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad died of a stroke on 22 February 1958 and was buried in a dignified corner in Old Delhi near the Jama Masjid. One of the foremost leaders of Indian freedom struggle and one of the founders of modern Indian passed away.

It is a great irony that, while possessing a thorough Islamic training, Azad ended up espousing a secular nationalism informed by personal religious sensibilities, while his opponent Jinnah, a modernist with a minimal religious upbringing, ended up vying for a separate Muslim state informed by purely political considerations. For his invaluable contribution to the nation, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was posthumously awarded India's highest civilian honor, Bharat Ratna in 1992. While paying tribute to him, Jawaharlal Nehru said: "We mourn today the passing of a great man of luminous intelligence and mighty intellect with an amazing capacity to pierce through a problem to its core. I use the word 'luminous'. I think that is the best word I can use about his mind a luminous mind. When we miss such a companion, friend, colleague, comrade, leader, teacher call him what you will there is inevitably a tremendous void created in our life and activities. Throughout his life, he lived a frugal and austere life; and apart from books and papers, there were hardly any other effects that the Maulana possessed at the time of his demise. At the time of his death he had neither any property nor any bank account. In his personal almirah were found some cotton 'Achkans', a dozen 'Khadi Kurtas' and 'pyjama', two pairs of sandals, an old dressing gown, and a used brush. But there were lots of rare books which are now a property of the Nation. A man like Maulana Azad is born rarely. Throughout his life he stood for the unity of India and its composite culture. His opposition to partition of India has created a niche in the hearts of all patriotic Indians. There he stands with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, his senior an Ashfaqullah his junior. In the words of Iqbal: Hazaron sall Nargis apni benoori par roti hai, Bari Mushkil sey hota hai chaman mein deeda var paida. (For a thousand years the Narcissus weeps for her blindness, with great difficulty is born in the garden a man with vision). Legacy The Ministry of Minority Affairs of the Government of India set up the Maulana Azad Education Foundation in 1989 on the occasion of his birth centenary to promote education amongst educationally backward sections of the Society. (Maulana Azad Education Foundation website) The Ministry also provides the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad National Fellowship, an integrated five year

fellowship in the form of financial assistance to students from minority communities to pursue higher studies such as M.Phil and Ph.D. (Shri Salman Khurshid Launches Maulana Abul Kalam Azad National Fellowship, Press Information Bureau, Government of India, December 22, 2009) Numerous institutions across India have also been named in his honor. Some of them are the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (Hyderabad), Maulana Azad Centre for Elementary and Social Education (Delhi University), Maulana Azad Medical College (New Delhi), Maulana Azad College (Kolkata), and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (Kolkata). National Education Day In recognition of his contribution to establishing the education foundation of India, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's Birthday, 11th November, has been declared as National Education Day. Paying rich tributes to Maulana Azad on the first 'National Education Day' at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, President, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil said, (Press Information Bureau, Govt. of India, MHRD, 11 Nov., 2008, 16:40 IST) It is a great privilege and honour for me to participate in the First National Education Day celebrations. Today is the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a great visionary, freedom fighter, scholar, secularist and eminent educationist. As India's first Education Minister, he was convinced that education is a tool of social transformation. He had a clear vision that all individuals should have a right to education that would develop their faculties and enable them to live an enriched life. His wellrounded view of education prompted him to set up apex education bodies like the All India Council of Technical Education and the University Grants Commission. It is befitting that this day, a day on which this great son of India was born, should be celebrated this year onwards as the National Education Day. I congratulate the Ministry of Human Resource Development for taking this initiative. The objective of celebrating National Education Day should be to strengthen our educational institutions and to raise the quality of education to greater heights. It should be an occasion to remember Maulana Azad's contribution in laying the

foundations of the education system in an independent India as well as to evaluate our current performance in this field. Henceforth, on this day, all stakeholders involved in the field of education should come together to seek ways to advance India's prestige in the world, as a knowledge society and to focus on how to educate our people. Acknowledgement The author is proud of Maulana Azad's contribution to the nation and salutes him and thanks him for making India what it is today. This article would not have been possible to be compiled without taking the help of the works of several scholars too many to be mentioned here; the author acknowledges his indebtedness to each one of them. Bibliography Abduhu, G. Rasool (1973), The educational ideas of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi. 2. Ahmed, Firoz Bakht (2011, November, 10), Forgotten crusader, Deccan Herald, Bangalore. 3. Ahmed, Firoz Bakht (2012, January 11), Modernisation of madrasas crucial for Muslims' progress, Deccan Herald, Bangalore. 4. Azad, Abul Kalam (1931), Tarjuman al-Qur'an, vol.1; (1936), vol. 2, Daftar-e-Tarjuman alQur'an, Delhi; (n.d.), Shaikh Mubarak Ali, Lahore; (1945), 2nd edition, Karachi; (1962) English translation by Syed Abdul Latif, Asia Publishing House, Bombay. 5. Azad, Abul Kalam (1958), Basic Concepts of the Quran, Translation by Syed Abdul Latif, ed., Academy of Islamic Studies, Hyderabad. 6. Azad, Abul Kalam (1959), India Wins Freedom An Autobiographical Narrative, Humayun Kabir, ed., Orient Longman, Bombay. 7. Azad, Abul Kalam (1967), Ghubar-e-Khatir, Malik Ram, ed. Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi and (n.d.), Anarkali Kitab Ghar, Lahore. 8. Azad, Abulkalam; Hameed, Syeda Saiyidain; Rizvi, Mujib; and Mahdi, Sughra (1990), India's Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Indian Council for Cultural Relations. 9. Chopra, Pran Nath (1990a), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: unfulfilled dreams, Interprint, New Delhi. 10. Chopra, Pran Nath (1990b), Maulana Azad, selected speeches & statements, 1940-47, Reliance Pub. House, New Delhi. 11. Datta, Vishwa Nath (1990), Maulana Azad, Manohar, New Delhi. 12. Desai, Mahadev Haribhai (1941), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, G. Allen and Unwin Limited, 1.

London. 13. Douglas, Ian Henderson (1993), Abul Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography, Edited by Gail Minnault and Christian Troll, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. 14. Gandhi, Rajmohan (1986), Eight Lives: A Study of the Hindu-Muslim Encounter, State University of New York Press, USA, p. 219, ISBN 0-88706-196-6. 15. Gandhi, Rajmohan (1990), Patel: A Life, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, p. 50205, ISBN 8172291388;. 16. Ghosh, Avijit (2008), 50 years after death, Maulana hasn't got his due, Times of India, TNN Feb 22, 2008. 17. Hameed, Syeda Saiyidain (1998), Islamic Seal on India's Independence; Abul Kalam Azad - A Fresh Look, Oxford University Press, Karachi. 18. Hasan, Mushirul (2000 January), One hundred people who shaped India in the 20th century, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad - II (PHP), India Today, special millennium issue, Retrieved 2007-06-14. 19. Huq, Mushirul (2006), President Azad (PHP), www.aicc.org.in/new/past-presidentdetail.php?id=35, Retrieved 2006-07-23. 20. Ikram, S.M. (1995), Indian Muslims and Partition of India, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. P.139. 21. Islam, Sirajul (2006), Azad Biography (PHP), banglapedia.org, Retrieved 2006-07-23. 22. Iyer, R. Subramonia and Lal, K. Sajan (2006), The role of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: the Indian politics, Abul Kalam Azad Oriental Research Institute Publication, Hyderabad; Editor: Khwaja Mohammed Ahmad. 23. Kabir, Humayub (1959), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: A memorial volume, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, Originally from the University of California. 24. Kashyap, Subhash C. (1989), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: a centenary volume (edited), National Publishing House, New Delhi. 25. Khullar, K.K. (2010), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: Educationist & Scholar Extraordinary, India Current Affairs, A Leading Source of Online Information on India, Nov. 11, 2010.

26. Kumar, Ravindra (1991), Life and Works of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi. 27. Malik, Sadaket (2008), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad - The Builder of Modern India, India Education News, indiaedunews.net, November 11. 28. Menon, V.P. (1957), Transfer of Power in India, Princeton University Press, p. 235. 29. Minault, Gail (1982), The Khilafat movement: religious symbolism and political mobilization in India, Columbia University Press, New York, ISBN 0231050720. 30. Muzzammil, Safia (1988), Abul Kalam Azad: Islam and humanity, al-Kausar Publishers, Hyderabad. 31. Rajput, A.B. (1964), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Lion Press, Lahore. 32. Samiuddin, Abida (editor) (2007), Encyclopedic Dictionary in Urdu Literature (in 2 Volumes), DK Publishers Distributors (INDIA), ISBN 8182201918. 33. Shaidai, Shamsul Haque (1991), Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: some personal glimpses, Academic Publishers, New Delhi. 34. Sharma, Arun Kumar (2010), Visionary educationist, The tribune, Chandigarh, India, On line edition, Sunday, November 7. 35. Singh, S.B.; Srivastava, Nagendra Mohana Prasad; and Kumar, Vijoy (1993), Life and times of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Kashi Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna. 36. Singh, N.K. and Samiuddin, A. (2003), Editors, Encyclopaedic Historiography of the Muslim World,Vol. 1, Global Vision Publishing House, Delhi, Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam - Indian Historian and Theologian, p. 119-129. 37. Troll, Christian W. (1986), Islam in India: studies and commentaries, Volume 3, Vikas, New Delhi. 38. Zillur Rahman, Hakim Syed (1989), Maulana Azad Aur Bhopal, Fikro Nazar (Maulana Azad Number), Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, p. 107-112. 39. Zillur Rahman, Hakim Syed (1990), Maulana Azad ek Muttala, Jawahar aur Azad, Edited by Professor Abdul Qavi Dasnavi, Saifia College, Bhopal.

Aliah University has published a Dictionary entitled: "A Dictionary of Common Words of The Holy Qur'aan", jointly edited by Professor Syed Samsul Alam, Vice-Chancellor of Aliah University and Dr. Md. Maseehur Rahman, Assistant Professor of the Department of Arabic, Aliah University.

Relevance of Madrasah Education In India


Dr. Anowar Hossain Registrar The word 'Madrasah' is an Arabic term meaning educational institution or school imparting education to all. According to encyclopedia of Islam, Madrasah is an institution of learning, where Islamic Sciences including literary and philosophical ones are taught. Avowed aim of madrasah education is also to inculcate the belief and practice of Islam among its followers and guide them to follow the Quran and Hadith. The foundation of Madrasah Education is basically standing on two pillars of the Quran and Sunna. This wider connotation definitely imparts universality to this system contrary to the prevailing idea of its being orthodox and confined to particular religion. The history of madrasah dates back to the rise of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself actively undertook the promotion of education. In Darul Akram, at the base of the Saafa Mountain, the Prophet (pbuh) himself established and taught in the first Madrasah. The first students of the very first educational institute established under Islam were Abu Bakr (ra), Omar (ra) and the other Sahabis. Later the Prophet (pbuh) handed over the responsibility of teaching to Hazrat Ibn Umme Maktun and Mas Aab Bin Umayr and migrated to Madinah to spread the word of Islam. After his arrival in Madinah, the Prophet (pbuh) established an educational institute in a place near Nabubi mosque. This was named the Madrasah-ESoffa. The institution included living quarters for poor students from out of the town. Sahabis such as Hazrat Abu Horayra (ra), Hazrat Muyaz Ibn Jabal (ra), Hazrat Abuzar Giffari (ra) were students there. Gradually this Madrasah evolved into the central learning institution of Madinah. Following the death of the Prophet (pbuh), during the time of the Kholafaye Rasedin, Madrasah education expanded further. The second phase of Islamic education began with the reign of Hazrat Umar Bin Abdul Aziz, the eighth Khalifa of the Umaiya lineage. The whole of Arab and Iran was transformed into Muslim centres of learning, knowledge and research. During this time state proclamations were made throughout the country and wages and allowances for teachers and scholarships for students were arranged. Separate learning rooms for students and teachers were established in the mosques during this period. The arrival of the Arabs through Muhammad Bin Qasim's conquest of the Indus in 711 A.D. had a great influence on the Indian localities. The Muslim conquest of India did not succeed in presenting a superior educational system to the Indian subcontinent. Instead, following the tradition of Indian educational institutions teaching religion and Sanskrit, they established maktabs and Madrasahs. During the twelfth thirteen centuries with the growth of Muslim population Madrasah system of education expanded in the major cities like Delhi, Lucknow, Rampur, Agra, Madras, Dhaka and major cities of the western region of India. 'Tarikh-E-Fereshta' mentions that the first Madrasah was established in the Multan province of western India. It was probably in the sixth century that Nasiruddin Kabacha built the Madrasah Firuzi building for Maulana Kutubuddin Kasani. It is believed that this was the first formally approved Madrasah in the sub-continent. According to another source, Muslim religious education in India the establishment of maktabs and madrasahs occurred in the twelfth century. Muhammad Ghuri established a number of Madrasahs in Ajmir, where slaves he had brought to India with him and the local converted Muslims received education. After the conquest of Bengal and Bihar by Ikhtiaruddin Muhammad Bin Bakhtiar Khilji in 1203 Islamic education spread widely throughout this land. A large number of mosques and Madrasahs were established. During Turkho-Afgan and Mughal rule several madrasahs were established in Multan, Ucha, Ajmir, Delhi, Punjab, Agra, Ayodh, Bihar, the Deccan, Malab, Kashmir, Gujarat, Surat and Bengal. In Bengal ancient madrasahs were found in Rangpur, Dhaka, Murshidabad, Laxmanabati, Gour, Ashtipur, Ghorasheed mahalla, Shilapur and other towns. During the reign of the later Mughals although maktabs and madrasah did exist, state control over

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them had lessened. With the disintegration of Muslim rule particularly after the advent of the British, Madrasah education gradually lost its shine it had during the Muslim rule. It received a major setback and suffered further reversal with the introduction of modern education. Following the British colonization of India, there was a gradual decline in the maktabs of Bengal. Madrasahs developed a more rigid attitude towards religion-centric education for Muslims. On the other hand, for completely political reasons, in accordance with the Oriental School of Educational Policy, the British themselves patronized this religious-based mode of education in the then India. In 1780 Warren Hastings established Calcutta Madrasah since the Muslims needed to be engaged by the criminal court, the police and the other departments. In the midst of anglicistorientalist controversy that arose from the very dawn of the nineteenth century, the Muslims, instead of modern education, were satisfied with learning Arabic/Persian languages and maktabs and madrasah. Still, after many debates, it was decided to introduce English classes in the Calcutta Madrasah in 1824. A large number of students enrolled within the first three days when the General Committee for Education established the Mohsin College in Hoogli with funding from the Mohsin Fund in 1836. It was surprising that among 1200 students enrolled in English and 300 in the Oriental Studies department there were only 31 and 81 Muslim students respectively. Grabbing the opportunity William Hunter in 1882 proposed that instead of spending the available resources on the Mohsin College, the money should be spent in establishing madrasah in Hoogli, Dhaka and Chittagong. After the failure of 1857 revolt Muslims in India by and large feared that the Muslim mode of life may get diluted due to western education introduced by the British. Their immediate need was to keep a check on the possibility of their community moving towards modern education and to ensure carrying forward the Perso-Arab legacy, which was possible only through madrasah education. They launched madrasah movement by establishing an Islamic Seminary known as Darul Uloom at Deoband in 1866 with a view to educate Indian Muslims with the Islamic system of education. By the close of nineteenth century madrasahs like Farangi Mahal (Lucknow), Dar-al-Ulum (Deoband) and Nadwat-al-Ulama (Lucknow), emerged as the advocate of Islamic education. Contrary to the Deoband movement Sir Syed Ahmed Khan launched Aligarh movement and

established Madrasatul Ulum at Aligarh in 1873 for imparting modern education, which later became Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College and then Aligarh Muslim University. Deriving inspiration from both Deoband and Aligarh, other prominent Islamic Seminaries like Nadwatul Ulama and Jamia Millia were later established in Lucknow and Delhi respectively. During pre-partition and post-partition periods so many madrasahs were established in different parts of India. Today the madrasah system of education is prevalent in large parts of the country. The number of madrasahs in India is estimated to be between thirty and forty thousand. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, there are 721 madrasahs catering to over 1,20,000 children in Assam, 18,825 madrasahs catering to 1,20,000 children in Gujarat, 961 for 84,864 children in Karnataka, 9,975 for 7,38,000 children in Kerala, 6,000 for over 4,00,000 children in Madhya Pradesh and some 1,780 catering over to 25,000 children in Rajasthan, In Uttar Pradesh, the number of maktabs is more than 15,000 and madrasahs over 10,000 and there are 3,500 madrasahs in Bihar. In West Bengal there are 609 madrasahs catering to over 4,50,000 children. Similar are the figures for the other state of India. Except in some parts of Kerala, these madrasahs cater strictly to Muslim children. Today, Official Circles, fiercely anti- Muslim Hindutva groups and large section of the Indian press seem to have mounted a concerted campaign to dismiss the madrasahs not just as bastions of conservatism and reaction but also as training grounds for Islamic terrorists. In February 2001, the Indian Government brought out a document prepared by a group of Ministers on National Securities, alleging that madrasahs, particularly in some bordering regions, were working in league with pan-Islamic militant outfits and radical organizations in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and some other west Asian States. In the wake of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001, attacks on the madrasahs in the Indian press have mounted. In the present climate of hostility and suspicion, the agenda of reforming the madrasahs has become difficult. Besides the current wave of attacks on madrasahs in India, the other factors make the task of reform more difficult. Given the fact that almost all their teachers and students now come from lower and lower-middle class backgrounds and that they remain largely insulated from the developments in wider society, the need for reform is not felt as urgently as it should be. Madrasahs that wish to

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introduce modern subjects often lack the necessary funds and trained teachers. The existence of fierce difference of schools of thought and sect has made it impossible for the setting up of an all-India body to regulate the policies and activities of the schools, and efforts to do so in the past have all failed. In the light of the above, madrasah education in India need reorientation. The format of the education imparted to the students of madrasahs ought to be modified keeping in view the shifting demands of the employers a concern which can no longer be underplayed. And this is perfectly possible without an erosion of the cultural and religious identity. Madrasahs need to recognize that the world has undergone a transformation. Employers have specialized needs which the current education is unable to meet. Global and private competition, not to mention financial constraints, is not likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. Forwarding more of what they are currently doing is not the solution to these problems. To survive present and future challenges the madrasahs must find new ways to extend contemporary education to their students in the globalized India. Reference: 1. Abdul Huq Faridi, Madrasah Education: Bangladesh, Dhaka.

2. 3.

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10. 11. 12.

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Abdus Sattar, The History of Aaliyah Madrasah, Dhaka. Badruddin Umar, The Education Commission Report and Regarding Madrasah and Religious Education, 25th Sanskriti, Anniversary Issue. The Daily Inqilab, July 15, 1999. Yoginder Sikand, Reforming the Indian Madrasahs: Contemporary Muslim Voices. Manzoo Ahmad, Islamic Education: Redefinitions of Aims and Methodology, New Delhi. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Religious Education and the Rhetoric of Reform: The Madrasahs in British India and Pakistan Comparative studies in Society and History. S. Farooq, Madrasah Education India A need for Reorientation. Madrasah Education: What Creative Associates has learned, Jeanne Moulton, with John Silverstone, Uzma Azhar and Amir Ullah Khan, February, 2008 Manzar Imam, Madrasahs Education in India , The Milli Gazette. Alexander Evans, Madrasah Education: Necessity or Rational choice? December19, 2008. Madrasah Education in West Bengal, Minority Affairs & Madrasah Education Department, Government of west Bengal. R. Upadhyay, Madrasah Education in India Is it to sustain medieval attitude among Muslims?

Way back in 1902, the Indian University Commission said, The greatest evil from which the university education in India suffers is that teaching is subordinate to examination. In his Presidential Address at the 98th Indian Science Congress held at Chennai on January 3, 2011, Prof. K. C. Pandey said, The present examination system contributes to strain, slackness, corruption and inefficiency. Such a system has to be dismantled and replaced with a system of continuous and comprehensive internal assessment which would eliminate the fear of examinations, evaluate the student's proficiency, encourage regular study habits, facilitate continuous feedback on performance and help to improve it and also ensure teacher's accountability. The teacher who teaches a course has to have the responsibility for assessing and grading the students. There should not be any secrecy about any part of assessment. If continuous internal assessment is introduced in all institutions, there will be a thorough decentralization in the examination system which will pave the way for real competition where the best alone will stand the test and survive. We have no choice except to introduce this system in the entire university education. It would be worth mentioning that the University of Mysore has introduced choice based credit system (CBCS) and continuous assessment and grading system (CAGS) for post graduate courses under which a student will be subjected to continuous evaluation. There will be flexibility in the curriculum and reforms in the examination pattern. The concept to fail will be a thing of the past, with options to drop or register afresh for a new paper or improve the credits. Several other institutions including some agricultural universities and Indian Institute of Technology have introduced the system of continuous evaluation and internal assessment with success and proved its efficiency. (Quality Education and Excellence in Science Research in Indian Universities, Prof. K. C. Pandey, Presidential Address, NISCAIR, CSIR, New Delhi, p.)

New Thoughts on University Examinations

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Carbon Nanotubes Application in Modern Science


Dr. Sk. Faruque Ahmed Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Aliah University Carbon, which belongs to group IV of the periodic table, is the lightest element in this group, and it possesses countless interesting physical and chemical properties. In contrast to silicon, germanium and tin, which have the same number of electrons in the outermost shell as carbon and can only exist in cubic sp3 hybridization, carbon not only exhibits sp3 hybridization (diamond), but also planar sp2 hybridization as in the graphite structure and sp1 hybridization as in carbynes. Elemental carbon in the sp2 hybridization can form a variety of amazing structures. Apart from the well-known graphite, carbon can build closed and open cages with honeycomb atomic arrangement. Carbon nanotubes are members of the fullerene structural family, which also includes buckyballs. Whereas buckyballs are spherical in shape, a nanotube is cylindrical, with at least one end typically capped with a hemisphere of the buckyball structure. A single-wall carbon nanotube is best described as a rolled-up tubular shell of graphene sheet (single layer of graphite) which is made of benzene-type hexagonal rings of carbon atoms. There are many possible orientations of the hexagons on the nanotubes, even though the basic shape of the carbon nanotube wall is a cylinder. The planar sp2 bonding, which is characteristic of graphite, plays a significant role in carbon nanotubes. A multi-wall carbon nanotube is a rolled-up stack of graphene sheets of coaxial single-wall carbon nanotube. The number of walls present can vary from two (double wall nanotubes) to several tens, so that the external diameter can reach 100 nm. The main difference between nanotubes and nanofibers consists in the lack of a hollow cavity for the latter. The diameters of carbon nanofiber are generally higher than the ones presented by nanotubes and can easily reach 500 nm. Since last two decade, new carbon forms like carbon nanofibers and carbon nanotubes have generated an interest in the scientific community. However, one of the first evidence that the carbon nano filaments synthesized by thermal decomposition of hydrocarbons exhibiting an inner cavity, can be found in the transmission electron microscope micrographs discovered by Hillert et al in the year of 1958. The production of graphite nanofibers is even older and the first reports date of more than a century (1890). The interest in fibrous carbon has since then been recurrent and a significant boost in the research in carbon nanostructure field coincides with the discovery of multiwall carbon nanotubes by Japanese scientist Iijima in 1991. Electronic properties of carbon nanotubes are mainly governed by two factors: the tube diameter and the helicity, which is defined by the way in which the graphene layer is rolled up. Nanotubes can be as small as 1 nm in diameter and as long as 100,000 nm. These tubes are extremely strong, approaching the strength of diamond and also dissipate heat better than any other known material. Carbon

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nanotubes are one of the strongest and stiffest materials known, in terms of tensile strength and elastic modulus respectively. Carbon nanotubes have very good elasto-mechanical properties because the two dimensional arrangement of carbon atoms in a graphene sheet allows large out-of-plane distortions, while the strength of carbon-carbon in-plane bonds keeps the graphene sheet exceptionally strong against any in-plane distortion or fracture. This strength results from the covalent sp2 bonds formed between the individual carbon atoms. Depending on how they are configured, carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity and can also act as semiconductors for molecular electronics. Carbon nanotubes are three dimensional as opposed to the current silicon based electronics that are twodimensional. They appear to be able to extend the miniaturization process by several additional orders of magnitude over current methods as they conduct electricity better than copper. Also due to their semi conducting properties, nanotubes may be the building blocks for smaller, faster computers. It was

proposed to use nanotubes as central elements of electronic devices including single-electron transistors, rectifying diodes and for logic circuits. The geometric properties of nanotubes such as the high aspect ratio and small tip radius of curvature, coupled with the extraordinary mechanical strength and chemical stability, make them an ideal candidate for electron field emitters. Carbon nanotubes field emitters have several industrial and research applications; flat panel displays, outdoor displays, traffic signals and electron microscopy and nanothermometer. Their impressive mechanical properties, high current carrying ability and field emission performance have opened the way to a number of applications such as field emission devices, interconnects, sensors, super-capacitors, fuel cells, battery electrodes and as a thermal interface material in both IC packaging and equipment cooling applications. The vertical geometry of carbon nanotubes is particularly useful in technologies such as nano-electronics, electrodes for bio-sensing and stimulation.

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Maulavi Bhai Girish Chandra Sen


Dr. Shabnam Begum, In the 19th century, the socio-economic disparity between the two major communities in Bengal caused a great rift in their relationship and they stood aloof from each other and never made any sincere attempts in knowing each other. At this point of time a section came out of the Hindu society and expressed their separate identity as Naboday Brahma Samaj. They would believe in the unity of God instead of worshipping multiple gods. It was this Brahma Samaj that first showed genuine interest in knowing every religion and they made an honest endeavour in finding out the good and imitable things of each religion and publishing them in vernacular so that a great majority of Bengali knowing people could comprehend them easily. With this object in view, Maulavi Bhai Girish Chandra Sen, one of the proponents of the Naboday Brahma Samaj, was entrusted with the responsibilities of translating Al-Quran, biographies of Muslim religious personalities and their remarkable works into Bengali. At that time Persian, Arabic and Bengali knowing Muslims were no less but they dared not do it--partly because of some fear psychosis that would play into their minds that translating the holy Quran into Bengali might be a sinful act and they might be the victims of God's wrath for this act and partly because of adverse criticism from the Muslim intelligentsia. However one Muslim named Glulam Akbar Khan of Calcutta dared to translate the Holy Quran in part but the credit of translating the entire Quran goes to Bhai Girish Chandra Sen. Bhai Girish Chandra was born in the year 1835 at Panchadona village under the subdivision Narayangunj in the family of Darponarayan Ray who was the Dewan of Nawab Aliburdi. He was the youngest child of his parents Madhabram and Joykali Debi. His grandfather and great grandfather were well versed in the Persian language and specialists in Persian calligraphy. According to his own statement, his family life was not conducive to proper development of personality; most of his relatives were drunkards and long association with them caused his moral degradation also. His education started at the age of five. Though initially he started learning Bengali but later on his father asked him to learn Persian because Persian was then the court language was more helpful in getting jobs.After the expiry of his father, his elder brother Ishwar Chandra took his guardianship and sent him to Dhaka Pogos School. But he soon left the English Medium School and again started to learn Persian from Umanath Gupta, Krishnachandra Ray, Maulavi Abdul Karim who was the Deputy Magistrate of Mymensingh. He worked as a deed writer at the office of this Magistrate. He left this job and joined Hardinge School in Mymensingh and studied up to normal class. Later on, he became a teacher of this School. In 1871 under the influence of Keshab Chandra Sen and Vijoy Krishna Goshami, he converted to the Brahma religion. According to the instructions of Keshab Chandra Sen, Girish Chandra went to Lucknow, to learn Arabic with Ehsan Ali Saheb in 1876. After coming back from Lucknow he further learnt Arabic with Maulavi Alimuddin in Calcutta. Girish Chandra Sen was a self-educated person. It is true that he couldn't attain higher education but with his own efforts learnt Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali and a little bit of English. From the beginning of his student life, he used to lead a very simple life. He married Brahmamayee Devi of Bhatpara village in Dacca district in the year 1856. As he adopted the Braham faith, he was ostracized from society; at that time his wife was his only source of inspiration as well as consolation. So when his wife expired prematurely within a few years of his married life, he was overwhelmed with profound grief. After the expiry of his wife he was so upset that he could not settle himself in one place for long and started virtually a wandering life as a monk. He worked for some time as a journalist and used to

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write in a weekly named Dhaka Prakash and was also the reporter in charge of Mymensingh district. He was the editor of Bongo Bandhu Patrika and Mahila Patrika for some time. Girish Chandra Sen observed that the objective of the The Mahila was to remove superstitions that were deep rooted among women in the country and prevent obscenity and indecency which are being imported from foreign culture. It carried on its efforts to educate women and to increase their self-esteem and self-confidence. Girish Chandra Sen told about Paricharika which was published from the Braratiya Brahma Samaj: "It was my proposal and endevour that was behind this Patrika. Though I did not take up the post of the editor but I used to write regularly in this Patrika. He first left the post of Pandit from Mymensingh Zila School and came to Calcutta in 1875 to join the post of a teacher in Keshab Chandra Sen's Girls School. He again left this job to start preaching the message of Brahma Samaj countrywide. He had an attack of cerebral stroke at old age, which paralysed his right hand. But this could not deter his enthusiasm and he started writing with his left hand and continued to do so till death. After long illness, he expired at the age of 76 years. Many people from both communities attended his funeral procession. He wrote about forty two books in his life time. Most of these were either translations or adaptations of works in Persian and Arabic. Hitopokhanmala (1871) was a translation in Bengali prose from Gulistan and Bustan written by Sheikh Sadi. Tattamala contains anecdotes of a moral and religious import from a Persian work. Hafiz was based on the moral sayings of the famous Persian poet Hafiz, published in 3 volumes between 1877 and 1892. Darbesh Diger Ukti (1877) is the Bengali translation of Tazkiratul Aulia originally written by Fariduddin Attar in Persian. Neetimala (1877) was translated from Aksir-eHdayat, an Urdu work. Darbeshdiger Kriya (1878) discusses the life of the Sufis. Dareshdiger Sadhan Pranali (1879) describes the method of meditation, prayer etc adopted by the Muslim Sufis. Prabachanabali (1880) is the compilations of morals collected from the Holy Quran. Tapashmala, one of the more important works of Girish Chandra, is the Bengali translation of Tajkiratul Awlia originally written in Persian by Fariuddin Attar. In some places

he gave the literal meaning, in some places only the summary and sometimes he even deleted some portions. The translation has been completed in six volumes, published between 1880 and 1895. After having gone through Tajkiratul Awlia Girish Chandra Sen was so overwhelmed that he could not control the temptation of translating it into Bengali. He would regard it as an act of virtue to discuss the holy life of the Sufi saints. He also undertook this task in an attempt to remove the misconception of the nonMuslims about Islam. In the introduction of the Tapasmala Girish Chandra Sen admitted that he had been profusely benefited by translating the book and said, "I have been charmed by studying the pious lives of the great Sufis of Islam and by their immortal messages I wanted my country men to study these lives, which will help in removing their deep-rooted misconceptions about the Muslim community and increasing their devotion to God as well as their respects towards the saints. Besides some main differences regarding the conception of Heaven and Hell, a great many similarities exist between the two religions i.e. Islam and Brahmo Samaj--and both believe in Monotheism, so there are ample scopes for developing a rapport between these two religions Girish Chandra Sen's greatest achievement was the translation of the Holy Quran into Bengali. He completed Quran Sharif in twelve volumes along with footnotes from 1881 to 1885. It is to be noted that most scholars still believe that Girish Chandra Sen was the first to translate the Quran into Bengali. It is not entirely true. Ghulam Akbar Khan of Patwar Bagan, Kolkata first translated the first volume (Ampara) of Quran into Bengali in 1868. In 1871 Amiruddin of Mukutpur village of Rangpur translated Ampara into Bengali. Rajendra Nath Mitra also translated some part of the Quran into Bengali in 1879. But Girish Chandra Sen is to be undoubtedly credited as the first who translated the entire Quran i.e. 30 volumes of Quran into Bengali along with footnotes. The Bengali translation of the Quran by Girish Chandra Sen was highly appreciated by the scholars of the Calcutta Madrasah College like Ahmedullah, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Aala as "a faithful, literal translation from a classic language as Arabic which varies so widely in its construction from all other languages of the world. The version of the Quran

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above quoted has such a wonderful success that we would wish the author would publish his name to the public, to whom he has done such a valuable service, and thus gain a personal regard from the public. His Mahapurush Muhammader Jibon Charit is a biography of prophet Muhammad (sa) in three volumes. The first part (1886) contains the events of his life up to his migration to Medina. The second volume (1887) describes the first five years of his life after migration to Medina. The last volume (1887) includes the events of the last part of the Prophets life. He also wrote the biographies of Prophet Ibrahim (a.s.), Prophet David (a.s.) and Prophet Moses (a.s.) in a book called Mahapurush Charit ((1883-85). He consulted the Bible as well as Muslim works to write this book. Tatta Kusum (1882) contains "small essays on subject of religious interest based on a Persian work and issued by the Brahma Samaj of India." Tatta Ratna

Mala (1882) was based on a Persian work Mantikuttayar and on Masnabi of Rumi. It was written in the form of small stories which convey moral teachings. Apart from interesting facts many themes have also been discussed in it that really delights the mind. Maskat Masabih (Hadith) (1892-1908) is a Bengali translation of a well known work with commentary. According to Muhammad Mansuruddin, "he was the first translator of the whole Maskat Sharif in Bengali." After the demise of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), his favorite companions known as Kholafa-E-Rashedin, who took up the leadership of Muslim Ummah, were described in Girish Chandra's book Charrijon Dharmaneta (1906). His autobiography, Amar Jibon was published in 1907. We should all pay our homage to this great ambassador of inter-religion understanding and harmony.

National Mathematics Year 2012


While addressing the 125th birth anniversary celebrations of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887- 1920) on 26 December 2011, in Chennai, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh paid tribute to the famous mathematician by declaring his birthday, that is December 22, as the National Mathematics Day and the year 2012 as a whole as the National Mathematical Year. Dr. Singh hopes these steps will help in providing the additional impetus to the study of mathematics in India, apart from making Indians more aware of the work of Ramanujan. (International Business Times, December 26, 2011) The prime Minister also spoke of the country's "long and glorious tradition of mathematics" and encouraged people to nurture the subject. He called Ramanujan "one of the greatest mathematicians the world has seen, whose extraordinary genius so very brightly lit up the world of mathematics in the second decade of the last century" and added that his genius was ranked by English mathematician G. H. Hardy in the same class as giants like Euler, Gauss, Archimedes and Isaac Newton. Dr. Singh also spoke about the gradual decline of mathematics as a subject, pointing out that the country made considerable headway in the subject in the early years of the Common Era, only to see the subject lose centre-stage to other subjects. He stressed that Ramanujan's contributions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought the country back to the attention of mathematicians across the world. He said, Let me end by wishing the National Mathematical Year all success. I expect the activities initiated during this year would be continued in the coming years as well, so as to help our country make it to the forefront of education and research in mathematics. That is my ardent prayer. (IBNS)

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The Honble Chief Minister Smt. Mamata Banerjee Lays the Foundation Stone of Aliah University Campus

It is a matter great joy that the Honble Chief Minister of West Bengal, Smt. Mamata Banerjee, laid the foundation stone of Aliah University Campus at New Town, Kolkata on 15 December 2011. On this occasion she expressed the hope that Aliah Univeristy would develop to be a centre fo excellence and students from not only West Bengal but also from all over India and even from other countries would come to study here. Her kind and encouraging words touched the heart of the audience consisting of a number of Honble Ministers, distinguished guests,, the teachers and the students of Aliah University. It is worth mentioning that the Govt. of West Bengal headed by the Honble Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee had a allotted 24 acres of land at a prime location in New Town, Kolkata.

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Aliah Faculty and Students at the 4th Science Conclave at IIIT, Allahabad
Three faculty members along with eight students of Aliah University participated in the 4th Science Conclave (26th Nov. to 2nd Dec. 2011) held at Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad. This science conclave is an interaction programme of Nobel Laureates and eminent national and international academicians, scientists, technologists and industrialists with selected students, young teachers and researchers to inspire and motivate them towards careers in Basic Sciences. Three faculty members and eight students of our university went to attend the 4th science conclave. The faculty members and the students took part in the interactive session with the Nobel Laureates and eminent national and international scientists. Two students of the Department of Chemistry presented posters and Dr. Sk. Faruque Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics presented his research paper entitled Nanostructure evolution on polypropylene induced by low energy Ar ion beam irradiation in this conclave.

Faculty members and Students of Aliah University with Professor Doglus Curie.

Dr. Sk. Faruque Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Physics, Aliah University presenting his research paper entitled "Nanostructure evolution on polypropylene induced by low energy Ar ion beam irradiation" in the 4th Science Conclave, Allahabad.

Asif Arfan Seikh, Student 3rd year, Department of Chemistry with his poster on Antibacterial Drug along with Dr. Harun Al Rashid Gazi.

Nurunnesa Siddiqui Student 3 r d year, Department of Chemistry with her poster on Anti- tubercular Drug: Structure and Mechanism along with Dr. Md. Maidul Islam.

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Students Seminar at the Department of English


The Department of English at Aliah University organized a student seminar on "Perspectives on the British Romantic Poetry" on December 8, 2011. The titles of the papers presented by the students of the 2-year masters program are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Revival of Medievalism in the Romantic Era (Alamin Sk., MA 2nd yr) Birds as the Media of Expressing Romantic Ecstasy (Jarqua Jarrin, MA 1st yr) Theme of Liberty Evinced in Romantic Poetry (Shabana Sayeed, MA 1st yr) 'An Addition of Strangeness to Beauty'-a Mode in Appreciating Romantic Poetry (Sagufta Sahin, MA 2nd yr) Lucy Poems as Impassioned Lyrics (Firoz Ahmed, MA 2nd yr)

The presentations were followed by an interesting question-answer session and a lively discussion that touched upon several literary issues. Vote of Thanks was offered by Reshma Begum (MA 2nd yr). Among the faculty members, Dr. Akram H. Mollah (Chair person), Dr. Paromita Mukherjee (Rapporteur), Dr. Amzed Hossein (Assessor), and Dr. P.C. Chakraborty (Key-note speaker) were present. A large number of students, who were present at the gathering, participated enthusiastically. The Department looks forward to more of such seminars in the near future.

Students receiving the certificates for their presentations.

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Achievements
Faculty:
Professor P.K.Nag, Professor of Aliah University, brought out the Third Edition of his book 'Heat and Mass Transfer' published by Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi in 2011, where he had gratefully acknowledged the help kindly extended by our V.C. Professor Samsul Alam. Professor P.K.Nag, an Expert Member of the Review Committee (AICTE) on 'Virtual Laboratory' coordinated by the Mechanical Engineering Department of IIT, Kharagpur, attended a Workshop at the IIT, Kharagpur guest house, HC Block, Salt Lake, Sector-III, Kolkata in August,2011. Sk. Faruque Ahmed* (Aliah University), K. R. Lee and M. W. Moon (Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Republic of Korea), J. I. Yoon (Hansung University, Seoul, Republic of Korea) published a international journal paper Characterization of nanoporous structures of polyimide induced by Ar ion beam irradiation, Applied Surface Science, In Press (2011), doi:10.1016/j.apsusc.2011.12.042. Dr. Sk. Faruque Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Aliah University presented a paper entitled Nanostructure evolution on polymer induced by Ar ion beam irradiation and study the optical and mechanical properties India-Australia International Workshop on Nanotechnology In Materials and Energy Application, (IAWNT-2011) on 29 - 31 Dec, 2011, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Dr. Sk. Faruque Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Aliah University presented a paper entitled Nanostructure evolution on polypropylene induced by low energy Ar ion beam irradiation 4th Science Conclave: A Congregation of Nobel laureates, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, from 26th Nov. to 2nd Dec. 2011. Dr. Md. Hedayetullah Mir, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Aliah University, has published the following paper: M. H. Mir, J. X. Ong, G. K. Kole, G. K. Tan, M. J. McGlinchey, Y. Wu and J. J. Vittal, Photoreactive gold(I) macrocycles with diphosphine and trans, trans- muconate Ligands, Chem. Commun. 2011, 47, 11633. It is a peer-reviewed scientific journal with the highest impact factor (5.787) for any chemistry journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Dr. Md. Mehedi Kalam, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Aliah University published journal paper entitled A comparison of Horava--Lifshitz gravity and Einstein gravity through thin-shell wormhole construction, Collaboration with Prof. Peter K . F. Kuhfittig (Milwaukee School of Engineering, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA),Dr. F. Rahaman(Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India) Dr. A. A. Usmani(Aligarh Muslim University, UP,India) and Dr. S. Ray( Govt. College of Engineering and Ceramic Technology,Kolkata,India) in Classical Quantum Gravity 28, 155021 (2011) Dr. Md. Mehedi Kalam, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Aliah University published journal paper entitled Modeling galactic halos with predominantly quintessential matter Collaboration with Dr. F. Rahaman and D. Hossain(Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India), Prof. Peter K . F. Kuhfittig (Milwaukee School of Engineering, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA), K. Chakraborty (A Government Training College, Hooghly,India ) in International Journal of Theoretical Physics. 50, 2655 (2011) Dr. Md. Mehedi Kalam, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Aliah University has Delivered a talk on Perfect fluid dark matter in the International Workshop on Dark Energy held at the Center For Theoretical Physics, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi during 21st to 23rd December, 2011.

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Dr. Md. Mehedi Kalam, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Aliah University has visited InterUniversity Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) , Pune as a Visiting Associates of IUCAA on January 06-21, 2012 for research work and discussed various research topics with National and International delegates. Dr. Harun Al Rasid Gazi, along with Biswajit Guchhait, Ranjit Biswas and Namrata Sarma, Jayanta M. Borah and Sekh Mahiuddin, has published the following paper Influence of Chain Length of Alcohols on Stokes Shift Dynamics in Catanionic Vesicles as a collaborative work in The Journal of Physical Chemistry. B 2011, 115, 9040-9049. Dr. Sadek Hossain Mallik, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, Aliah University has participated in the International Conference on Recent Development in Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications held during December 9-11, 2011 in Calcutta Mathematical Society, Kolkata. Dr. Sadek Hossain Mallik, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, Aliah University has participated in the Symposium on Recent Trends in Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics held on 24th September, 2011 in Institute of Theoretical Physics, Kolkata. Dr. Sadek Hossain Mallik along with Mohsin Islam and M. Kanoria, has published the following paper: Study of dynamic response in a two dimensional transversely isotropic thick plate with spatially varying heat sources and body forces, Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, 32(10), 1315-1332, 2011. Mukandar Sekh, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aliah University has presented a paper entitled Development of an Empirical Method to Measure the Wire Lag in WEDM and published in the Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Precision, Meso, Micro and Nano Engineering, pp. 224-228, organized by Department of Production Engineering, College of Engineering, Pune, 10-11 December, 2011. Dr. Ashraf Hossain, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics & Communication Engg. (ECE) has become the Member of the Editorial Board, Journal of Communications of Information Science and Management Engineering (CISME) in 2011. Dr. Hossain also has become the Technical Program Committee (TPC) member of the Mosharaka International Conference on Communications and Signal Processing (MIC-CSP 2012) which will be held at Barcelona, Spain during April 6-8, 2012. Dr. Ashraf Hossain, published the following two papers: [1] Ashraf Hossain, On the Impact of Energy Dissipation Model on Characteristic Distance in Wireless Networks, in the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Communication and Industrial Application 2011 (ICCIA 2011), Science City, Kolkata, India, December 26-28, 2011. Dr. Ashraf Hossain, Network Configuration and Energy-Efficient Compression to Maximize Network Lifetime in Wireless Image Sensor Network, in the Proceedings of the National Conference on Emerging Area of Photonics & Electronics 2011 (EAPE 2011), B. P. Poddar Institute of Management and Technology, Kolkata, India. Dr. Md. Mustaquim, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Aliah University, Kolkata has published two research papers: !A Comparative Analysis of Housing Shortage and Levels of Deprivation in India, European Journal of Social Sciences (ISSN: 1450-2267), Vol. 27, No. 2, January, 2012, pp.193-205. !Female Literacy and Levels of Socio-Economic Development in West Bengal: A Geographical Analysis, Education Today: An International Journal of Education & Humanities (ISSN: 2229-5755), Vol. 2, No. 2, JulyDecember, 2011, pp.20-32.

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"FSO: An Alternative to High Speed Communication Technology", Md. Asraful Sekh, Proceeding of the International Conference on Laser, Material Science and Communication, 'ICLMSC-2011', Burdwan University, Burdwan, Dec 7-9, 2011, pp. 228-230. Dr. Sudarshana Sen, Dept of Sociology, has published an article published on 'Feminist Methodology' (in Bengali) in an edited book by Dr. Basabi Chakraborty Named: 'Nar Prithwi: Bohu Swar' from URBEE PRAKASHAN in 2011 (ISBN: 978-93-80648-10-1). Dr. Sudarshana Sen, delivered a Lecture as a Panelist on 'Inhabiting Interdisciplinary Spaces: Sharing Experiences' in a Workshop on Gender and Politics: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching and Research School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University on 23 February 2011. Dr. Sudarshana Sen, presented a research paper,Everyday Life of Anglo-Indian Women in Kolkata in a two day National Conference on Pratyaha: Everyday Lifeworld organized by Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata on 20 -21 October 2011. She was an invited speaker at an UGC Sponsored International Conference on Human Rights at Bijoy Krishna Girls' College, Howrah on 16 December 2011. "Anamorphic gradient index (GRIN) lens for beam shaping", N SoodBiswas, Md. A Sekh, S Sarkar, A Basuray, accepted for publication on 19.12.2011, in the International Journal of 'Optics Communication'. Kh. Jinnatul Islam, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, has been awarded Chartered Engineer (India) by Institution of Engineers (India) has become a member of International Association of Engineers (Hong Kong). BOOK CHAPTERS PUBLICATIONS 1. Electron field emission properties of nonmetal and metal doped diamond like carbon; Sk. Faruque Ahmed*, In: Y. S. Tanaka (Eds.); Diamond like Carbon, Nova Science Publishers, NY, USA, ISBN 978-1-61324-791-4, (2011). 2. Optical properties diamond like carbon thin films; Sk. Faruque Ahmed*, In: T. Eisenberg and E. Schreiner (Eds.); Diamonds: Properties, Synthesis and Applications, Nova Science Publishers, NY, USA, ISBN 978-1-61470-591-8, (2011).

Students:
Aliah Students at Infocom Science Fair at Milan Mela Ground
Tanvir Alam Md. Sk., Md. Sohail and Md. Ataur Safi Rahaman Loshkar presented a model on Foot step generating electricity, in Infocom Science Fair held on 09.12.2001 to 12.12.2011 at Milan Mela ground under the guidance of Dr. Md. Maidul Islam.

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Courses Offered by

1.

a) 3-year Kamil (Hons & Gen.) in Islamic Theology b) 2-year Mumtazul Mohaddethin c) 3-year Arabic (Hons) 5 - year Inegrated M. Sc. a) Computer Science b) Chemistry (with specialisation in Medical Chemistry c) Physics (with specialisation in Engineering Physics) d) Mathematics and Computing e) Statistics and Informatics f) Economics g) Geography a) 5-year Integrated MCA. b) 5-year Integrated MBA (with specialisation in Hospital, Retail and Financial Management) 4-year B.Tech / 5-year dual-degree M.Tech a) Computer Science and Engineering b) Electronics and Electronic Communication Engineering c) Electrical Engineering d) Civil Engineering e) Mechanical Engineering a) 5-year Integrated M.A. : English b) 2-year M.A. / M. Sc. : Journalism and Mass Communication c) 2-year M.A. : (I)Engish; (ii) Bengali; (iii) History d) 2-year M.Sc. : Geography

2.

3.

4.

5.

All the courses except those in Section 1 are taught under the Semester system. Letter Grading has been adopted in the examination systems. For details of admission process contact the University Office or visit the University Website : www.aliah.ac.in

Proposed G+20 Building of Aliah University at New Town, Kolkata

A building under construction at the city campus of Aliah University, 17 Gora Chand Road, Kolkata - 700 014

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