{"id":4188,"date":"2020-04-27T11:17:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T05:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4188"},"modified":"2020-04-27T11:34:33","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T06:04:33","slug":"ramzan-an-our-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/ramzan-an-our-childhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramzan And Our Childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Religious Schooling <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Z.G. Muhammad <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reminisces\nhow so sweet they may be, have their poignancy. Many a time writing about my\nchildhood, I feel like Shelly that I am writing, an \u2018epitaph of the glory\nfled\u2019. Believing, \u2018the loveliest and the last, is dead\u2019, I hear the cry inside\nme, \u2018Rise, Memory, and write its praise- for now, the Earth has changed its\nface, a frown is on Heaven\u2019s brow.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Grand Mosque Srinagar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Indeed,\nthe earth has changed; childhood has fled. It cannot be brought back.  Every year on the sighting of the Ramadan moon\nthis harsh reality dawns on me but still, memories, make me bask in the\nspiritual ambience that overwhelmed our part of the city on the commencement of\nthe holy month. I remember the Sahar\nKhawan <\/em>during our childhood would not only just beat drums ferociously to\nwake up people for midnight meals and prayers, but many times they also recited\nloudly manqabat<\/em> and naats <\/em>in a melodious voice.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During\nour childhood, there were hardly any darul-ulooms\n<\/em>with boarding and lodging facilities in the city. Our part of the town had\nremained fountainhead of Islamic learning during the period of the Sultans.  Hundreds of students from Central Asia studied\nin many religious schools, seminaries and universities that were in around the\nJamia Masjid. The Sikh governors followed by Dogra rulers destroyed these\ninstitutions, leaving behind ruins only that spoke of their glory even during\nour school days. In our childhood, only a few Islamic seminaries had remained,\nof these the most important was the Anjuman-i-Nusrat-ul-Islam. This institution\nfounded in the latter part of the nineteenth century was mother institution of\nmy alma mater<\/em>. It functioned from a\nbuilding in our school, and only a few attained proficiency in Islamic studies\nin this institution. Widely most of the boys in our generation did not get any\nformal religious education and whatever little bit we learnt about religion was\nin our school, where Deenyat <\/em>was an\nimportant subject. I was not different from the lot- I got no formal education\nin theology.  Nevertheless, it was during\nthe Holy month of Ramadan only that boys of my generation got a rigorous\nreligious training. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nremember, many times, my peers and I supplemented the efforts of Sahar Khawan<\/em> in waking up people for\nmidnight meals by going around in our locality and knocking at the doors of the\npeople. Sometimes, we picked up an old tin canister from the piles of them in\nour area- our locality was famous for stocking and trading of the old canisters\nand bottles. Stacks of them were found in every open space. Beating the tin\ncanister loudly sometimes out of fun, we indulged in lots of jocular catcalls\nto the annoyance of some neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After\nhaving our Sahari, <\/em>our morning\njourney for having fajr <\/em>prayers\nstarted. Going for prayers had its fun for us- we very rarely said fajr <\/em>prayers in the masjid of our\nMohalla. At the very start of Ramadan, we drafted an itinerary for a full\nmonth. There would be hardly an Astana<\/em>\nor hospice in our part of the city where we did not offer our fajir<\/em> prayers. One of best pastimes\nafter the fajir<\/em> prayers was listening\nto the sermons on the importance of the holy month from smalltime preachers on\nthe lawns of Astana’s or <\/em>hospices and\nMasjids. Of all the places, where we enjoyed listening to sermons the most was under\nthe canopy of big Chinar tree on Kastur-Pand<\/em>,\na small plateau overlooking the Nageen and the Dal Lakes on the Koh-e-Maran.<\/em> Many a time, when I look\nback, Kastur-Pand<\/em>, lawns of Khanqah-e-<\/em>Moula<\/em> and Jamia Masjid <\/em>were\nfor us open-air religious schools. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening to the sermons of one\nor other preacher, from small wooden pulpits under the shade of Chinars in <\/em>Jamia\nMasjid,<\/em>  I remember many elders would feel nostalgic\nabout Mirwaiz Yusuf Sahib. They would often tell us that children born after\nhis exile  to the other side were\nunfortunate. Many remembered his sermons verbatim and could repeat it in the\nsame tone and tenor. We as children also looked for the day when we would\nlisten to his great discourses on Islam.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 It is fresh in mind, when I was yet to cross\nten yes that was 1958,     there were rumours about the return Yusuf Saib\nfrom Pakistan. Three months after Ramadan in July, he reached Amritsar with\nlock, stock and barrel. But, he was not permitted to visit Srinagar. For\nrefusing to sign some documents brought to him by an envoy from New Delhi, he sent\nback to Pakistan from Amritsar only.  So\nchildren of our generation were deprived of getting religious education from\nthis great religious scholar. Then started another phase of faith-based schooling\nfor the Downtown boy – tryst with Mirwiaz Muhammad Farooq.  <\/em><\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Religious Schooling <\/p>\n

By<\/p>\n

Z.G. Muhammad <\/p>\n

Reminisces
\nhow so sweet they may be, have their poignancy. Many a time writing about my
\nchildhood, I feel like Shelly that I am writing, an \u2018epitaph of the glory
\nfled\u2019. Believing, \u2018the loveliest and the last, is dead\u2019, I hear the cry inside
\nme, \u2018Rise, Memory, and write its praise- for now, the Earth has changed its
\nface, a frown is on Heaven\u2019s brow.\u2019<\/p>\n

Grand Mosque Srinagar<\/p>\n

Indeed,
\nthe earth has changed; childhood has fled. It cannot be brought back.  Every year on the sighting of the Ramadan moon
\nthis harsh reality dawns on me but still, memories, make me bask in the
\nspiritual ambience that overwhelmed our part of the city on the commencement of
\nthe holy month. I remember the Sahar
\nKhawan during our childhood would not only just beat drums ferociously to
\nwake up people for midnight meals and prayers, but many times they also recited
\nloudly manqabat and naats in a melodious voice.  <\/p>\n

During
\nour …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,5,319],"tags":[379,325,378,186],"class_list":["post-4188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-take","category-kashmir-talk","category-memeiors","tag-lost-kashmir","tag-nostalgia-zgm","tag-ramadan-kashmir","tag-z-g-mohammad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4188"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4195,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188\/revisions\/4195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}