{"id":4304,"date":"2021-08-02T23:14:41","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T17:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4304"},"modified":"2021-08-02T23:16:03","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T17:46:03","slug":"myean-kath-life-writing-of-an-educationist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/point-of-view\/kashmir-talk\/myean-kath-life-writing-of-an-educationist\/","title":{"rendered":"Myean Kath – Life Writing Of An Educationist."},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

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

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Shamla Mufti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/smufti2-207x300.jpg\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Everyone has a tale to tell and a\nnostalgia to share. Nostalgia is cathartic but equally a life-writing that goes\nbeyond biography. It not only ‘encompasses everything from the complete life to\nday-in-the-life, from the fictional to factional’ and connects us with others\nand their immediate past, social and cultural moorings. Some days back, a\ndoctoral thesis by one of our young United States-based scholars Hafsa Kanjwal,\nAssistant Professor of History’ the University of Michigan, guided me to\nreading a life-writing ‘<\/strong><\/strong><\/a>Chilman-se-Chaman,’ by\nProf Shamla Mufti. This name has been part of the collective memory of a whole\ngeneration of girl students.   <\/strong>  <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myean Kath (Kashmiri) Chilman-se-Chaman\n(Urdu) is a  blend of protest against an\narchaic social system,  struggle of young women against patriarchal\neccentricities, memories, and nostalgia. On filliping through the pages of this\nwriting, I instantaneously established a bond with it. The book enabled me to\nestablish a relationship with the author’s times and the social and\ncultural  ethos of the author’s family. Taking\nme down the memory lane connected me to my teachers, school days, and days at\nthe campus. The Father of the author, Saad-u-Din Chisti, was my theology\nteacher in class seven. Her husband, Mufti Ghulam Din,  and her brother-in-law,  Master Salam-u-Dinwere Principal and\nHeadmaster of the two schools I was educated in.   Mohammad Amin Chisti, a\nnoble and humble man, was registrar of Kashmir University during my student\nactivism days on the campus. One of the nieces of the author was my contemporary\nat post-graduation level.  Moreover, it provided me a slit with a\ntelescopic lens   to peep into the social structures, customs,\ntraditions, values, practices, and  institutions of my father’s and\ngrandfather’s times. Filliping through the pages of this beautiful memoir\nwritten in chaste Urdu, on umpteen occasions for my kinship with the downtown\nethos and culture, I felt I was going through a compilation of the nostalgia,\n my column.  <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first chapter of the book ‘Chisti\nKocha,’ Sona Masjid, the lane author was born and brought up\n  mirrors the social scene as obtained during her  childhood in\nthe twenties of the past century. The house of the author was on the banks of\nKuti-Kul, a tributary of the Jhelum river. The rivulet, for the Maharaja’s\nsoldiers drowning to death twenty-nine Muslim artisans in 1865,  for\nraising their voices against the brutal taxes is part of our sacred history and\npopular narrative.  Taking us to the historical past of the area she\n tells us that in the family manuscripts, nikahnamas and other documents\nof the family the area is mentioned as Bagh-e-Yousef-  the palace of the\nlast sovereign king of Yusuf Shah Chak is believed to have been in this garden.\n The rivulet gushed with translucent waters for the whole year. She also\ntakes us on tour in and around her birth burg and introduces us to\n gardens lie the ‘Headow garden.’ These gardens  had disappeared\nyears before I was born.  <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>Though nostalgic in tone and tenor, the\nauthor in this chapters intimately looks at the life of the boat women and\nwomen from the elite time. Those days drinking  water tapes   at\nhomes were a rarity. In summers women, when everything around drowned in pitch\ndarkness,   went for a few quick dips in the rivulet. Young girls\nwould do some swimming also. ‘The only pastime for the elderly women were\nvisiting the Jamia Masjid on Friday to listen to sermons delivered by Mirwaiz\nMolvi Yusuf Shah mostly  bordering on seeking penance and forgiveness from\nAllah instead of on knowledge and research. In writing , a yard of cloth cost\ntwo and half-anna, and  it cost seven annas for making a male-trouser, but\nmany could not afford to make a touser, author of Chilmen-se-Chaman  gives\nus a vivid picture of economic deprivation of  the Muslims of Kashmir\nduring the Dogra rule.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are subtle protests of the author\nagainst the class distinction  in the Muslim society that existed between\nnatives and immigrants- that had arrived from Central Asia.  She also\ntells us how a dress code such as two types of headgears’ Kasabas’  had\nbeen evolved to differentiated natives from the descendants of the saints from\nCentral Asia.  Quoting Prof. Shams-u-Din Ahmad, She writes ‘Kasaba’ had\ncome to Kashmir from Central Asia- and there it was worn by one and all.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making a mention of her teachers,\nShamala Mufti tells us that her English teacher was Miss Birjees Mirajudin, she\nalways insisted her students  to read books outside their syllabi. She is\nremembered in history as  Birjees Gani Rentoo, who was arrested by Sheikh\nAbdullah and sent to a jail in Jammu for presenting a memorandum to UNCIP team\nin 1948 at Srinagar and then exiled to Pakistan.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shamala Mufti’s nostalgia is our\nsocio-cultural history.         <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shamla Mufti<\/p>\n

Everyone has a tale to tell and a
\nnostalgia to share. Nostalgia is cathartic but equally a life-writing that goes
\nbeyond biography. It not only ‘encompasses everything from the complete life to
\nday-in-the-life, from the fictional to factional’ and connects us with others
\nand their immediate past, social and cultural moorings. Some days back, a
\ndoctoral thesis by one of our young United States-based scholars Hafsa Kanjwal,
\nAssistant Professor of History’ the University of Michigan, guided me to
\nreading a life-writing ‘Chilman-se-Chaman,’ by
\nProf Shamla Mufti. This name has been part of the collective memory of a whole
\ngeneration of girl students.     <\/p>\n

Myean Kath (Kashmiri) Chilman-se-Chaman
\n(Urdu) is a  blend of protest against an
\narchaic social system,  struggle of young women against patriarchal
\neccentricities, memories, and nostalgia. On filliping through the pages of this
\nwriting, I instantaneously established a bond with it. The book enabled me to
\nestablish a relationship with the author’s times and the social and
\ncultural  ethos of the author’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[402,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-kashmir-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4304"}],"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=4304"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4308,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4304\/revisions\/4308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}