Imamia Medics International Silver Jubilee Celebration in SF Bay Area
By AbdusSattarGhazali
The Silver Jubilee celebration of the Imamia Medics International (IMI) was held on July 20, 2019 at the Mehran Restaurant in Newark CA. Internationally acclaimed Urdu poet, ManzarBhopali, graced the occasion with his presence and was the chief guest.
Maryam Turab, a well-known face in the Bay Area, was the emcee of the event.
The event’s proceedings began with a recitation from the Holy Qur’an by Hamid Mushraf.
DrWajih Rizvi, IMI founder, flew from New Jersey to grace the occasion. His speech provided an insight into the IMI mission and global work.
The Imamia Medics International was established in 1987. It has, since then, grown from a grassroots, local effort to a global initiative, spanning five continents, 17 countries, countless cities and impacting millions of people.
The IMI Global, headquartered in the USA, is currently comprised of active regional chapters in Europe and East Africa and national chapters in Australia, Canada, India, Iraq, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Local chapters at state and city levels exist in many of these locations as well.
The IMI’s work is not contained to only those regions where it has its chapters. The work by its chapters is augmented by IMI’s International Medical Delegations and Humanitarian Relief missions increasing the organization’s capacity to serve. Wherever it works, its beneficiaries include individuals from all backgrounds irrespective of religious affiliation.
DrWajih Rizvi also recalled the beginning of the IMI by young doctors.
As immigrants and foreign medical graduates, IMI’s founders faced numerous challenges in establishing their professional roots in the United States. As they laid the foundations of their own successful careers, IMI’s founders and core members began to identity ways to work through vetted community networks to help new immigrant health professionals as they landed in the US. During one such meeting in the famed basement of a New York residence, Imamia Medics International was born.
Imamia Medics will hold its 10 International Conference in Islamabad. This will be the first conference of Imamia Medics in Pakistan that will be inaugurated by President ArifAlvi.
Urdu Language
DrKhalda Akhtar presented a well-researched maqala about the Urdu language which is one of the major languages of the world. Altogether Urdu is estimated to have 120 million native speakers and 500-600 million second language speakers, giving a grand total of close to 700 million people who speak it as of 2018, according to quora.com.
She traced the development of the Urdu language. It perhaps started evolving from Persian and Arabic contacts during the invasions of the Indian subcontinent by Persian and Turkic forces from the 11th century onward.
Urdu developed more decisively during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) and the Mughal Empire (1526–1858). When the Delhi Sultanate expanded south to the Deccan Plateau, the literary language was influenced by the languages spoken in the south, by Punjabi and Haryanvi, and by Sufi and court usage.
Urdu’s first major poet was Amir Khosrow (1253–1325), who composed dohas (couplets), folk songs, and riddles in the newly formed speech, then called Hindvi. This mixed speech was variously called Hindvi, Zaban-e-Hind, Hindi, Zaban-e-Delhi, Rekhta, Gujari, Dakkhani, Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Mualla, Zaban-e-Urdu, or just Urdu, literally ‘the language of the camp.’
Today Urdu is spoken in many countries around the world, including Britain, Canada, United states of America, India, Pakistan and the Middle East. It is the official language of Pakistan. Urdu is one of the 20 official languages of India, having official status in the six states of Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, as well as the national capital territory of Delhi.
Urdu is also spoken in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Fiji, Germany, Guyana, India, Malawi, Mauritius, Nepal, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, the UAE, the UK and Zambia.
DrShehla Naqvi
The second session of the Silver Jubilee celebration was dedicated to poetry.
DrNuzhat Zaidi introduced DrShehla Naqvi who is also an excellent prose and poetry writer. She was an active member of the Young Writers’ Forum Karachi.
Dr Naqvi received her medical degree from Dow Medical College, Dow University of Health Sciences. She is now working as a pediatric infectious disease specialist in Mount Vernon, New York.
Dr Naqvi is Sahiba-e-Deewan since she has published a collection of her poetry under the title “Nakhl-e-Maryam.” Another poetical collection “ParindonKeeAawaaz” is currently under production.
Dr Naqvi has also published a collection of short stories under the title “AawaazonKaa Shor.”
At present, she is writing two novels, one in Urdu and the other in English.
Dr Naqvi captivated the audience with her presentation of Qaseeda for Bi BiFatema. She also mesmerized the audience with a poem “Bojh” about the responsibility of women in our society. She also recited her insightful ghazals.
ManzarBhopali
Internationally acclaimed poet ManzarBhopali was the chief guest of the event. MC Maryam Turab introduced ManzarBhopali who was born in December 1959 in Amrawati, Maharashtra, India.
ManzarBhopali is his pen name. His name is Syed Ali Raza. His father, Mir Abbas Ali Rizvi, worked in art and literature. He was also a poet. His mother, TahiraNikhat, was a teacher.
During his teenage years, Manzar started taking interest in poetry and attended his first Mushaira at the age of 17. Over the course of three decades, he has penned more than a dozen books in Hindi and Urdu.
In a career spanning three decades, Manzar has recited his poems in thousands of Mushairas in five continents and more than 30 countries. He has published several books, in Urdu, Hindi, and English.
Manzar has been honored with several awards, both in India and abroad. He was given the honorary citizenship of Louisville, Kentucky and was felicitated with the key to the city.
For more than one hour, Manzar captivated the audience with his poetry which included ‘manqabat,’ ghazals and poems. One of Manzar’s poem about the plight of Urdu language is very popular.
Plight of Urdu in India
The future of Urdu seemed bleak. It became a victim of linguistic segregation under the campaign of the Hindi nationalist movement, according to ShahzamanHaque, Co-director of the Department of South Asia and Himalaya at Institut des langues et civilisationsorientales (INALCO), Paris.
In an article published by The Diplomat, ShahzamanHaque writes:
“More recently, when the BhartiyaJanta Party (BJP) government came to power in Rajasthan in 2013, it merged Urdu-medium schools to the benefit of Hindi-medium schools, developments that were reported by Shruti Jain. The recruitment of Urdu teachers was subsequently postponed and exam papers were no longer available in Urdu for public primary schools in Rajasthan. In 2016, the same Rajasthan government removed Urdu author IsmatChughtai from the Class VIII Hindi textbook.
“In 2017, two Muslim members of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly were denied permission to take the oath in Urdu, the second official language of the state. In December of the same year, a BahujanSamaj Party member was charged for offending religious sentiments when he took his oath in Urdu.
Linguistic landscape and city names in Urdu or linked with Islamic heritage have also come under attack from Hindi chauvinist politicians since 2014. The name of the famous emblematic railway station, Mughal Sarai, was metamorphosed into DeenDyalUpadhya following a chilling fervor by nationalist extremists, just to name one major example. Other examples include Mustafabad being renamed Saraswati Nagar in 2016 and Allahabad being renamed Prayagraj in 2018 by BJP-led governments. The proposal for changing the name of Ahmedabad, a UNESCO World Heritage City, into Karnavati has been a dream of the same crowd since 1990.
The argument of Hindi chauvinists is that Urdu has greatly deviated from its original Sanskrit roots, and it needs to be brought back to its original forms, echoing the gharwaapsi of the converted Muslims. Such a claim is absurd, for though the languages of Hindi and Urdu have a shared history going back some seven centuries, how can one ignore the evolution (lexical, syntactic, and scriptural) over these years, resulting in two extensively divergent written codes?
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