Saturday, July 23, 2011

Professor Jamal Khwaja

Here is his home page.
More professional home page then the home page of Computer Science Department.
A philosopher, former parliamentarian and a man with family deeply interwoven into Indian National Congress.
He has written many books.
One day he came to meet Miyan.
This should be taken as a gesture of honour and kindness towards Miyan-a professor, even if retired, visiting him.
But this requires some explanation. Professors (and hence Readers and Lecturers) visiting Miyan was a routine thing. But there was a rub too. Most of these visitors visted because of non-academic reasons. Miyan had a complain that intelligentsia of Aligarh will never accept him as an intellectual. In a sense he was right. In fact he was right to a very large extent. There were not many people who measured up to his level in  in many academic matters-particularly Aligarh Movement. Many times, because of the problems associated with Minority Character of the university, it so happened that people will end up with him-no one had his perspective. But they never gave him credit for all the input he gave. That is life. Some bricks simply go into the foundation and disappear.

And hence the honour when a real academician turns up at the door of Miyan's room in Old Boys Lodge.
Professor Khwaja was disturbed. This was after his retirement ( and settlement in Shimla, as Miyan later told). The matter was academic. How could Mujaddid-e-Alf-e-Sani Shaikh Ahmed Sirhindi (RA) claim that he has reached the Qaiyoom state? To boot a person to whom Khwaja Sahab had presented his objections rejected them. How can people not accept the truth-he was outraged.

Anecdote over. Here is what a friend from Sunni Forum Dr76 says about Qaiyoom state. Italicization of non-English words and parenthetical words were inserted by your poor Alig.

.I told him see.. the whole alam is a mazhar of Tajalliyat e ilahi.. now someone has to be tajalliyat e sifaat mazhar..he is known as the ‘qayyum ‘ in isteyla of tasawwuf.. like when the sun draws close to a river .. the river absorbs its heat and gets hot.. but it never becomes the sun.. nor the sun becomes the river.. so in a limited frame a human imbibes the divine sifaat.. yet remains abd in the strictest sense..

Got it? If yes you are ahead of the personality of this post. And guess what. If you do not understand above then you are after him. Actually it is a win-win situation.