NOOR SAHIB AN ICONIC TEACHER

Noor Sahib

An Iconic Teacher

Zahid G Muhammad #

Noor Sahib: An Iconic Teacher Zahid G Muhammad

I see a parallel between books and teachers. We read many books, admire quite a number, and love only a few. As someone once said—quite well, I might add—books shape our lives and increase our understanding, and there comes a phase in life when we deride a book that once influenced and shaped our thinking. That, I believe, holds for teachers as well.

Almost one-third of our lives are behind the ramparts of schools, colleges, and universities. It would be fair to say we pass these years away from real society on a sort of island, where our companions are a few classmates and buddies, our superiors are our teachers, and our superior boss is the school headmaster or principal, who expects us to believe every word they speak as sacrosanct as divine scriptures. Until we say goodbye to our schools, our buddies remain the same; that is not true with our teachers. With promotion from one class to another, we get a new class teacher and a new set of teachers to teach us different subjects, and our loyalties change. Over time, their memories fade from our minds. Yet some teachers leave unerasable memories with us—these memories could be chilling corporal punishments, a commitment to enforcing discipline in students, or love and care for students.

The memories of some teachers, etched on my mind for right and wrong reasons, are life assets. Whenever I found an opportunity, I spoke and wrote about them—the bony-cheeked, wooden-faced, stiff-as-the-cane-he-often-waved Ghulam Ahmed Zargar, headmaster of the Primary School; the yellow-turbaned, rubicund-faced, bespectacled Jagarnath, a great dramatist and master in creating massive canvas backdrops and staging plays on the legendary Ghani Kashmiri; the iconic Qadoos Gojwari; the highly dedicated science teacher Kashi Nath Koul; the most eloquent speakers on moral education and religious teachings at the morning assembly, Ghulam Ahmed Kamali and Molvi Noor-U-Din. The school, for its activities—daily mass drills and troupes of tidy cadets, the band of drummers and flautists with a royal grandeur—was remembered for its famed drillmaster, Naranjin Nath, popularly known as Nari Kak and Nari Batta.

In short, it can be said that school in our times was iconic in terms of personality development for the students. Keeping pace with changing times and understanding the importance of education for the development of the underprivileged, the school lived up to the ideals of its founder, Mirwaiz Rasool Shah, by blending modern education with moral and religious education. In the sixty years preceding my admission to the primary class, the school had produced leaders in all disciplines who transformed Kashmiri society. It continued to do so during my student days. One could hardly imagine a leader in Kashmir’s vanguard of growth and development who had not studied at Islamia School or its various branches.

 The beauty of the school’s education system was its pluralistic teaching staff. Almost fifty per cent of teachers at middle and high school levels were Kashmiri Pandits. The community had enjoyed the privilege of getting modern education before the majority community had earned the right to education after a strenuous struggle—petitioning the Viceroy of India. Another distinctive feature of the school was its many religious scholars on staff. Besides being qualified to teach theology and morality at the primary and middle levels, they were also scholars of Persian and Arabic languages. Dressed in long cloaks, huge turbans, and carrying walking sticks, they appeared to be people of medieval times. However, they had a certain aura that earned them much student respect. The names of some theology teachers, known for their quirks, dispositions, and dedication, live on in our memories. For my generation in primary school, it would be hard to forget our first Dinyat teacher, Abala Saib (perhaps his full name was Molvi Mohammad Abdullah). I had heard about him before I entered the school gates—stories that made me mortally afraid of him. He would bite students with his teeth for not parroting the lessons he taught. Seniors, including my elder brother, who was three classes ahead of me, often narrated horrifying stories about him—he bit the arms or hands of students ‘canine-deep,’ leaving pinkish scars that would take a couple of days to heal. Mama Saib, another Dinyat teacher, was no less terrifying than Abala Saib. With a cumbersome turban on his head, a long flowing grey beard, and a mace, he resembled ancient Ottoman Qazis. Like Abala Saib, he believed that the teachings of Din could be drilled into tender minds through arduous methods.

Teachers used various punishments to ensure pupils learned the Dinyat lesson by heart. Students were asked to recite the lessons loudly; those found guilty of not joining the chorus were punished. The punishments started with ear-clippings, and some who habitually did not follow the teacher’s command and chose silence were subjected to the Murga sentence, cane-charging on hands and buttocks. Let me reiterate what I wrote in my book Downtown Boy: “Corporal punishment, my good God! It could only be an evil genius who introduced such elaborate and harsher corporal punishment in schools with all its variants: standing murgha, sitting murgha, jumping murgha, and heels touching murgha. The punishment was made harsher by placing a takhtee or a brick on our backs.” Mama Saib made it even harsher; he kept a cup of water filled to the brim on the boys’ backs during the murgha punishment, and if the water spilt, the boy would be cane-charged. It would not be fair to say all Dinyat teachers believed that chastising and subjecting boys to bodily penalties would make them learn and remember Dinyat. Many Dinyat teachers used finer tact and persuasion to teach even the most reluctant students; these included Saad Saib (Saad-U-Din Chishti), Naza Saib (Nazam-U-Din Nazki), Shah Sahib (G.M. Shah), the green-turbaned Asadullah Saib, and many others.

Our school had a galaxy of highly proficient teachers in theology and modern education, teaching languages such as Urdu, Arabic, Persian, and English; mathematics; sciences; and social studies, including history and geography. In this glittering assembly, a few teachers taught us great moral values, human qualities, and discipline through their morning assembly lectures. Many of these lectures stayed with us and served as guiding stars. Besides Principal Mufti Ghulam Din and Headmaster Ghulam Mohammad Khadim, whose morning discourses left an imprint on our minds, there were Pitamber Nath Dhar Fani, Ghulam Ahmad Kamali, and Molvi Noor-U-Din. Interestingly, we students were unaware that Kamali Saib and Noor Saib were religious leaders and office-bearers of religious organizations subscribing to two schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

Kamali Sahib was slim. In his up-button, knee-length black coat, black Jinnah cap, and white trousers, he looked slenderer than he was. Unlike other theology teachers, he did not wear a long, flowing beard. With his thin line of black beard, he could almost pass for clean-shaven. His fluency with the Urdu language and lectures laced with Quranic verses, Hadith, and Allama Iqbal’s poetry at the morning assembly impressed me, but his expressionless face was disturbing. I don’t remember an occasion in my five years in high school when I saw a spark of cheerfulness on his face. He often strutted across the school in a mood described as melancholically meditative. I was never taught directly by him. Except for his erudite discourses at the morning assembly, I never had the opportunity to learn religion and ethics from him.

Noor Saib never taught me theology, either. Whatever lectures I listened to from him on the life of Prophet Muhammad and his being an absolute role model for us and morality were at the morning assembly. Because of his articulateness and persuasiveness, some of his lessons travelled to my heart, leaving an indelible imprint on my life. Nonetheless, my first introduction to him was unique outside religious scholarship—he embodied it. It was this introduction that made him an iconic teacher for me. One afternoon in June 1956, I was admitted to Soyam-C (Third Primary section) and put under the tutelage of class teacher Nizam-U-Din. The apple-red, fair-complexioned teacher, with a maize-red beard, could pass for any European traveller. My uncle accompanied me on my first day to a new school. My older brother was in class six and was known for his tidiness. To my amazement, the moment I passed through the school gate, I saw him standing with a white-turbaned, long-bearded teacher pouring water over the naked body of a boy at a drinking water tap on the side of the school grounds. Several students were standing in line, perhaps waiting for their turn. Later, at home, my brother briefly told me he was assisting Noor Sahib in bathing the unclean boys at the tap. Much later, as a student in the middle department, I understood the phenomenon of Noor Sahib bathing the boys and making them wash their uniforms.

To ensure the boys understood and lived by the essence of the Hadith on Iman: “Purity is half of faith, prayer is light,” the distinguished scholar-teacher took great pains. At the morning assembly—also known as the supplication session—he went from row to row, checking the tidiness of the boys to the dot. Metaphorically, he x-rayed every boy from head to toe: he checked haircuts, nails, body cleanliness, and uniforms of almost every student. The unclean were asked to come out of the assembly and form a separate line. After the assembly, these students were taken to the drinking water tap and bathed with the homemade soap used for washing numdah. Boys with untidy hair were told not to come to school without a haircut the next day.

He not only ensured cleanliness but also earnestly disciplined erring boys. After ten, until the start of the morning assembly, with a stick in his hand, he de facto functioned as gatekeeper, admonishing latecomers and sometimes hitting them with his stick. He was harsher towards habitually late-coming boys. At the morning assembly, they were summoned to the permanent platform, in full view of the students, chastised—cane-charged on their palms—and made to pledge that they would not be late to school henceforth. Fearing being caught coming late, some boys jumped over a backside wall—and if caught, they were subjected to harsher caning. Despite corporal punishment being a medieval practice, it worked in disciplining most students, remaining with them later in life.

In this piece of writing, I may not have done justice to the contribution of this illustrious multi-dimensional scholar-teacher—to profile him needs in-depth research.

It was Written on the wish of Manzoor Sahib, his son, for a book on him.

#Z.G. Muhammad is an author/ columnist. His works include Kashmir Story: Hope and Despair, Srinagar: My City and My Dream, Srinagar City of Resistance and Culture- Story of Downtown Boy.