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| Islamia College at 100 |
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Part II
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Aziz Akhmad
Islamia College Peshawar is planning to celebrate its first centenary sometime in the next couple of years. Its Alumni Association will soon decide when to celebrate and what else to do on the occasion. They have already started soliciting ideas. At least, the Islamabad Chapter has.
Here are my two cents.
An educated person, compared to a less educated or uneducated one, is more aware of the world around him/her, is willing to entertain new ideas, has the ability to think critically, analyse different viewpoints, and express his/her opinions coherently and effectively. All these qualities are best developed during the early years in life. Some of them can be learnt from textbooks, but mostly they come from interaction with good teachers and fellow students, from dialogue and discussion, and from general reading. Reading broadens one's mind, expands a person's horizons and sensitises him/her to different cultures and civilisations.
This can be achieved only when the college provides an enabling environment where students can express themselves freely, where teachers act as catalysts --not deterrents -- for open and frank discussion of different issues and ideas.
Brick-and-mortar buildings are essential for any learning institution, but what goes on inside those buildings is critical for good education. Remember, what Iqbal said?
Jahan-e-taza ki afkar-e-taza say hai numood
Keh sang-o-khisht say hotay nahin jahaan paida
(New knowledge and discoveries grow out of fresh ideas
Stones and bricks do not produce fresh discoveries.)
We do not tire of quoting the Hadith: "Seek knowledge, even if you have to go to China." Imagine, what would a person find in China If he went there from Saudi Arabia, say, 1400 years ago? Certainly not Arabic. Nor any knowledge of his own religion. On the contrary, he would possibly learn Chinese, know something about Confucianism and about a totally different civilisation. In the process he might also pass on some of his own knowledge to the Chinese. This is how knowledge proliferates. "The more knowledge we share, the more knowledge grows."
The point I am trying to make is that the primary purpose of education is to broaden one's mind, not to narrow it.
This is what the early Abbasids did in the 8th and 9th centuries in Baghdad. Khalifa Abdullah al-Mamoon set up a Darul Hikmah and allowed the translation of Greek knowledge into Arabic. He brought scholars from all over to translate Greek books. The Arabs, through these translations, became familiar with Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, mathematician and scientist, and then proceeded to add value to that knowledge and came with their own theories and discoveries, which then travelled to Spain. In Spain, the Arabic works, further translated into Latin, went to Western Europe. Thus Europe discovered Aristotle and other Greek philosophy and sciences through the Arabs. This was the Arabs' period of Enlightenment, their golden age of science and philosophy, which produced luminaries like Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Haithem, Ibn Hayyan, Bu Ali Sena (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes).
Now, look at what we have done to our educational institutions.
Until the early 1970s, at Islamia College Peshawar, like other schools and colleges in the country, Persian was taught as one of the languages. Not any more. We discarded Persian in favour of Arabic. Why can't we have both? After all, Persian is the language of neighbouring Iran, and is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan (where it is called Dari). It is also spoken in Tajikistan. Urdu literature, particularly poetry, has substantial Persian content. In fact, we should be including more languages in our language classes, rather than reducing them.
Many senior alumni of Islamia College would remember from their school days that we studied history in schools, including English history, from the Tudors to the East India Company; we also studied Chandra Gupta Mauria, Buddha and Ashoka. None of us became a lesser Muslim by studying these; rather, we became more knowledgeable. I am not sure if any of that is taught today.
It is not easy to change curricula in Pakistan. But we can encourage reading and writing and free exchange of ideas among teachers and students. Reading would open their minds to new ideas, it would introduce them to new people and cultures; it would increase their vocabulary and thus help them express themselves more coherently and effectively, both orally and in writing.
To this end, specifically, I would recommend that Islamia College alumni create an endowment that generates a couple of hundred thousand rupees a year. This amount should be used to establish an annual award that should go to the best writer of an essay, a short story or a poem, in English, Urdu and Pashto. We could name these prizes after any person, who has done something remarkable for the college or society in general. The award should be substantial enough to attract a large number of students to the activity of reading and writing.
Let us also start an annual journal, professionally produced, which should publish the top three or more writings of the contesting students in each category. Along with these essays and stories, we should invite the alumni to write their personal stories and articles on other subjects of general interest but in the field of the writer's specialisation: e.g., water, energy, health, education, the environment.
In my last article about the college, I had mentioned Dean Sahib in some detail. I received several messages from "old students" remembering Dean Sahib and sharing some of their stories about him. A few, however, pointed out why I had left out H M Close. Well, I left him out, and several others, because of space constraints. Otherwise, who wouldn't remember H M Close? Mr Close lived in Hardinge Hostel just above our room. Although he was a professor of English, he was more known for introducing students to social work and adventure. When I think of him, I always see him in my mind's eye riding his bicycle, in his white shirt, khaki trousers clamped at the ankles. During Ramazan he would always fast from Sehri to Iftar along with the students, regularly go to his church on Sundays, riding his bike from college to wherever his church was in the Cantonment, five miles one way.
Another professor I remember was Qazi Inayatullah, from Gujrat, who taught us English essays. He was a stickler for pronunciation. He would enunciate each syllable of the word clearly and forcefully, in his roaring voice, while chewing paan at the same time.
We can write about them all in our annual journal. This would also motivate the current crop of teachers to try to be memorable.
Lastly, and this is for the college administration. Make a good, user-friendly website for the college. Websites are meant to help, not to confuse. A good website is like a book with an index, where one can easily find the information by looking up the index first and then going directly to information, which should be written in plain and simple language. High-flown language and clichés leave the reader clueless. The current websites of the college are difficult to navigate, have inconsistent spellings osf names and are poorly written. Even worse, they are not updated. And, if you provide a contact email address, someone should respond. Currently no one does.
The bottom line is, let's make Islamia College, once again, a liberal arts college that it was meant to be, teaching social and physical sciences and humanities and languages.
(Concluded)
The writer is currently based in Philadelphia. Email: azizakhmad @gmail.com
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ISSN 1563-9479 
