Ramayana, Gita And Hanuman Chalisa To Reveal In Urdu

The epic Indian mythological texts – The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Gita and Hanuman Chalisa – will reveal their Persian and Urdu avatar of sorts. The texts, which are a given in almost every Hindu household will be shown to writers and littérateurs.

The Karimi library hall, housed in the 140-year-old educational institute Anjumani-I-Islam in CST will be putting up a digital presentation of these books that date back to the post 1857 period.

Available for seeing, will be pages that have partly crumbled and become stiff, but continue to sport the motifs and flowers on their borders, which are considered synonymous with decorations in Persian and other books belonging to legacies of different cultures.

Some like the Mahabharata, the text that documents the epic war, has all the weapons that went into it on its front page encircling the name of the historical book.

Those like Walmiki's Ramayan even sport a picture of a saint with all his disciples listening to him. A list of various chapters finds a mention on the cover page itself. 

Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta has images of Ganesha in the inside pages, while the cover page adorns Krishna. Also on display will be Shiv Puran, Ganesh Puran, Ramayan from different authors among others.

Zahir Kazi, president of the Anjumani-I-Islam, said that the idea was to tell those interested in these books what the library is all about. It is also about sending a message that books of all hues of various religions are there in the library.

“Anjumani-I-Islam believes in inclusiveness. We have been having a tradition of inclusiveness for over 140 years, with all the founding fathers being part of the freedom struggle,” said Kazi.

While most books have seen translations by Hindu scholars, some have also been done by Muslim writers. “It is an attempt to show the multi-lingual heritage of India and to clean the misconception that Urdu is confined to Muslims only,” said Shamim Tariq, director of the Karimi library.

Tariq added that while some books are beyond improvement, others have been kept aside for phased binding. “We will also be talking about works of Afghan traveller A Burane who has written great things about India,” informed Tariq.

Zubair Azmi, director of Urdu Markaz, an organisation that works towards promoting Urdu language and culture, said that the language does not belong only to the Muslim community.

He added: “It is good that these books are coming out. People should know the Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb of Indian culture. Many a time, when these texts were written, people writing them would have ablutions to observe respect towards them.”