Autobiography of a Forgotten Indian

First things first

==HAPPY DIWALI== to all who enjoy Diwali festivities.



Aakar:

Interesting article. Would argue against the last paragraph though. Perhaps later.

Tell me one thing please. By what stretch of imagination or literary license can this be called an AUTObiography?

regards

t

During the Partition, as the land was shared, each of us, India and Pakistan, got less than the whole. As India`s treasury was divided, again India and Pakistan got less than the whole. However, as the legacy of of our culture was shared, each of us we took home the whole measure. It is up to us to ensure that we pass this on to succeeding generations and maintain the cultural continuity. That, more than anything else, defines us as a people and can serve to unite us as one even as we live across a militarized border.

Thank you for a soul-stirring article.

This article was going fine till the last paragraph. Maybe the author was pulling Pakistan`s leg when he said Pakistan may be the ``true`` inheritors of Khusro. If the author was serious, he has, in his desire to be generous and open-minded to Pakistan, shown he is a soul-mate of the extreme Hindu nationalists who argue that Indian identity cannot, or rather should not, claim as its own the achievements of its Muslims sons and daughters. The insidious whittling down of India`s composite identity into a Hindu identity is helped along by stupid, thoughtless throw-away lines such as the last paragraph. Or, maybe, I just lack a sense of humor.

Aakar,

Thanks for this bit on cultural history. Two questions:

First, was it not Amir Khusro who also developed the Sitar?

Second, my understanding of the origins of the Urdu languate is as follows: The word ``Urdu`` stems from the Turkish word ``Urd`` which means ``military camp`` in that language. ``Urd`` incidentally is also the basis for the English word ``horde`` reflecting the manner in which Europeans and Turks interacted for a few centuries. In India, ``Urdu`` bacame was the name given to the ``language of the camp``, where soldiers of different nationalities (Turk, Persian, local Old Punjabi, and so on)developed a kind of pidgin language (the same way the middle class of the sub-continent speaks that weird pidgin half English half Urdu/Hindi. I never heard about Hindvi that you mention though. While I am all for shedding the distrust and animosity that has plagued our two countries, I do suspect that by saying that Hindvi is the mother of Urdu may be stretching the point a bit.

Please explain though, and I may learn something new. Thanks for writing, and I did learn some new things in your article. Regards to the Queen of England.

Nice article, but we can`t be so sure about most of the musical ``inventions`` attributed to Khusro. Present day musicologist do not agree with these claims due to the lack of contemporary evidence. Khusro has certainly nothing to do with Dhrupad for instance. I may also clarify that Meraj Warsi whose name has been mentioned in the article as the head (sajjadah Nashin) of dargah of Nizamudding Aulia, is only a qawwal there. Mr.Hasan Sani Nizami may be the right person to be given that title.

I live a few kilometres away from the Dargah Hazrat Nizammudin Auliya, catch railway trains from the station of the same name next door, drive past the old bridge (till a couple of years ago we could drive OVER the old bridge) made in the days of the Moghuls, often trot over to the Dargah with friends to listen to the qawwalis there, most of which we don`t understand but it still brings us joy, but nobody ever explained it to me like Aakar has done. My father took me there for the first time when I was 12-13 years old, and I remember the old man there telling my father that this was correct, now he will come if he wants to on his own. Thank you, Aakar, often we forget . . .