[Reader-list] WITH THE EDITORS OF MADRASA MAGAZINES

[mohd arshad]

Hi all,
I'm extremely sorry for being late. This is my third posting on the
theme of "Journalism in Madrasas and Madrasas in Journalism".In the
last posting, I studied the journalism of the Ahle Hadees madrasas.In
this posting , I have analyzed the problems editors of madrasa
journals face and other issues related to them.


                           WITH THE EDITORS OF MADRASA MAGAZINES
                            (With reference to the Deobandi madrasa journals)



(Deoband is a small town in the district of Saharanpur, UP. Here in
1867 a small maktab was raised to the status of a Darul Uloom which
soon began to attract the attention of students of Islamic learning
from far and near. The guiding spirit of this venture was Maulana
Qasim Nanatowi.He also exhorted the muslims to start such madrasas at
different places. His appeal was soon responded with opening of series
of them at a number of places first in UP and then all across the
country. Thus a network of madrasas, with the Deoband madrasa as its
center, got established in the country. Established within few years
after the unsuccessful uprising of 1857, in the very bases of these
madrasas lies a tradition of loyalty to the Hanafi School of
jurisprudence and disloyalty to the British rule. It is to this school
of thought these madrasas belong whose magazines have been analyzed
here.)



"To bring out a magazine from a madrasa and that's too in Urdu is
tantamount to wage Jihad at this juncture of history", says Mufti
Fuzailur Rahman Hilal Usmani,the editor-in -chief of the monthly Darus
Salam, Malerkotla. Sitting on the thinly carpeted floor in his office
which constitutes a part his house known as Mufti House in Malerkotla,
he continues "I write articles, edit the magazine, get it published
and then I myself carry its copies to the post office to send them to
the subscribers. I get assistance from my son Tariq Omair Usmani who
is the editor of the magazine." Born in Deoband in 1937 and a graduate
of the famous muslim seminary Darul Uloom of the same town, he "came
to Malerkotla in 1973 to spread the message of Allah in every corner"
of Punjab which had become almost "vacant of Muslims" after Partition.
Descendent of Maulana Fazlur Rahman Usmani who was one of the founders
of Darul Uloom, Deoband, Mufti Fuzailur Rahman founded Darus Salam
Islamic Centre (DSIC henceforth) in 1986 at Malerkotla. The DSIC
imparts correspondence courses in various Islamic disciplines. The
monthly Darus Salam (DS henceforth) is the organ of the institution.
DS is being published regularly since April 1988.


Mr.Vinod Sharma, my fellow-traveller in a bus from Patiala to
Malerkotla, informed me in a hushed tone that Malerkotla was regarded
as "Mini Pakistan" in the region. Malerkotla has a Muslim majority of
around 70 per cent, with a sizeable Sikh and Hindu population, but has
never witnessed a single riot since 1947. It is a Muslim majority town
in a Sikh majority state in a Hindu majority country, which makes it
really unique in some senses. Stressing the unique character of
Malerkotla, which derives from the shrine of Sheikh Haider Shah and
from the fact that the town is the only place where Muslims remain in
large numbers in the Indian Punjab, actually helps all the different
communities in the town since it gives the town a disproportionate
influence in Punjabi politics. Generally, the elected member of the
legislative assembly from Malerkotla, usually a Muslim is, included in
the state cabinet.
(http://www.islaminterfaith.org/jan2005/interview.htm)


Mufti Fuzailur Rahman, in an interview with me, laments that it was
very difficult to continue the publishing of the magazine as
subscribers and agents were not very punctual in sending their dues
money which became astronomical. DS made appeals, he continues,
writing to them as well as publishing announcements in the magazine
but in vain. Then he handed a copy of the DS over to me, which carried
sucn an announcement. It read: "…this magazine has been brought out
bearing heavy monetary loss. For this our subscribers and agents are
responsible….as 90% out of them don't pay their dues on a regular
basis, even after being reminded a lot…Madrasa magazines don't get
advertisements, and if they get any then the payment is delayed for
months, even for years in some cases…Now the magazine is not in
position to undergo more loss and it is hard to go on with
it….Halfheartedly its pages have been cut down…" (DS, May
2000.P32.).Till April2000, The DS whose circulation ranges from 3000
to 3500, used to carry 48 pages which were slashed down to 32 from
May2000 onwards. Apart from the cost of composing, designing and
postage, according to Maulana Tariq Omair Usmani, the editor of DS,
something around Rs.5000. gets spent in printing the magazine and out
of which only Rs.1000 is recovered from subscription fee. A graduate
of Darul Uloom, Deoband, Tariq Usmani says: "Subscribers, in most
cases, forget to send their annual subscription fee after doing so
once. There are instances that we sent the magazine for 11 years but
the subscriber didn't take the pain to pay his dues".


Almost all madrasa magazines are run under the same circumstances. The
experiences of Maulana Naushad Alam Qasmi, who looks after the
printing and postage of the monthly Tarjuman-e-Darul Uloom, New Delhi
for the last seven years, are not different from those of the editor
of the DS. "We spend Rs.18-19,000 in printing 1300 copies of
Tarjuman-e-Darul Uloom (TDU henceforth) out of which 500 are sent to
the eminent citizens for free of cost and also in exchange with other
magazines. Moreover, subscribers are not regular with renewing their
subscription. So, the TDU always runs in loss. ", says Maulana Naushad
who graduated from Darul Uloom in 1994.He once tried to make the TDU
available on the newsstands in UP, Bihar and Karnataka but the venture
did not bear the desired fruit. "We lacked the human resources to
follow the transactions with news agents and ,also the management was 
not very zealous about the new marketing technique I have introduced
as ours is not a commercial enterprise". But TDU had never to take
recourse to such a drastic measure of decreasing the number of pages
in the magazine as was the case with the DS. For this deficit, Maulana
Naushad Alam says, Tanzim Abna-e-Qadeem Darul Uloom Deoband (Darul
Uloom Deoband Old Boys Organization) whose organ is the TDU
recompenses with its own fund.


Tanzim Abna-e-Qadeem Darul Uloom Deoband (TAQDUD, henceforth) came
into existence in 1990. Situated in Zakir Nagar, New Delhi and headed
by Maulana Mohammad Afzalul Haq Jauhar Qasmi, though TAQDUD is an
autonomous body, independent of Darul Uloom Deoband, it shares the
ideology with the latter. It started the TDU in 1992 to keep the
masses informed of the activities of the organization and also as a
serious intervention into the field of madrasa journalism. The
magazine is ceaselessly in print since then. Not including its various
activities, the TAQDUD runs Institute for Specialization in Arabic
Language which provides a two year course in advanced studies in
Arabic language and literature for those Deobandi talibilms who have
the degree of Fazilat, the highest degree provided by an Indian
madrasa.


"The TAQDUD is more active than its predecessor Mo'tamar Abna-e-Qadeem
Darul Uloom Deoband.Iinstituted in early 80s; the latter is now almost
defunct. It issued a monthly magazine named Al Qasim from Deoband of
which I was the editor. Its publication came to an end just after two
years." says Maulana Habibur Rahman Azmi, editor of the monthly Darul
Uloom, organ of Darul Uloom Deoband madrasa.Unlike Mufti Fuzailur
Rahman Hilal Usmani who does all what needs to be done for bringing
out the DS, Maulana Habibur Rahman Azmi does not do more than editing
and compiling his monthly Darul Uloom (MDU, henceforth).He asked one
of  those students present at the time when I was doing his interview,
to show me the way to daftar, the office of the TDU. As we left Azmi
Manzil, a student hostel where Maulana Azmi has his residence as the
warden of the hostel and proceeded towards the Madani Gate, one of the
four gates of Darul Uloom Deoband, he told me in a lighter vein that
all that starts with Meem (an Urdu alphabet equivalent to M in
English) are in abundance in Deoband; like muslims, madrasas,
machchhar (mosquitoes) etc. In the office of MDU, I met Maulana Mohd
Ishrat Qasmi who graduated from Darul Uloom Deoband in 1989.It is his
job to  look after the composing, publishing and the dispatching of
the monthly. As he has been recently transferred to the office after
serving for 10 years in the main library of Darul Uloom madrasa, he is
at loss to guess how much the monthly budget of the MDU is. "There is
a huge communication gap among the departments involved in the process
of bringing out the journal. Moreover, the guy who was earlier in
charge of this office did not maintain the records properly. So I
can't provide you with the exact expenditure of the MDU." Though the
computer typists have replaced the traditional calligraphers, in
Maulana Ishrat's lexicon the term kitabat (calligraphy) is yet to be
replaced by the computer typing.



Advancements in the fields of technology, management and commerce
(marketing) have contributed significantly in shaping the contours of
the print media in the post Independence India. As a result,
journalism which had been a mission for the freedom fighters to wage a
war against the British imperialism, transformed into a thriving
industry .At the same time, it embraced the corporate values and
professionalism became the buzzword within the industry. Now, the
proprietors are more concerned about the departments of advertisements
and the circulation than the editorial board. But the madrasa journals
remained untouched with such a transmutation in the nature and the
objectives of journalism. Here is the world where it is the message
which gets preference. Monetary concerns and all other essentials are
secondary to it. DS, Malerkotla will be an apt example. Though the
magazine is run in heavy deficit due to the irregularities on the part
of the subscribers in paying the dues in the time, Mufti Fuzailur
Rahman Usmani, its editor-in-chief, is not ready to accept any grant
which will force him to publish stuffs he does not consider them worth
publishing. "We can easily get grants but we don't accept them because
donor agencies generally try to impose their own agenda while we are
not prepared to toe their line", says Mufti Fuzailur Rahman Usmani. In
short of human resources, he, with the help of his son Maulana Tariq
Omair Usmani, does all that is required to bring out DS..So the
responsibilities are not well defined. In the case of TDU, New Delhi
and MDU, Deoband, there are divisions of labour as the editors carry
out only the editorial works and other persons are responsible for the
printing and dissemination of the journals. However, this effort to
demarcate the responsibilities of different departments engaged in the
process of bringing out the journal is not proving helpful .in the
case of MDU as is evident from what Maulana Ishrat Alam Qasmi says:
"there is no coordination between different departments engaged in the
publication of the monthly."



As the madrasa journals don't offer any remuneration to the
contributors, it would be interesting to look into the manner their
editors arrange for the articles. Maulana Waris Mazhari Qasmi who
joined the TDU as the editor in 2001,is a graduate of the Deoband
madrasa.He has also studied at the Nadwat ul-'Ulama, Lucknow, and the
Jami'a Millia Islamia, New Delhi. As he is a fervent champion of
madrasa reform,. he initially  faced a lot of problems, as he puts it
,in arranging quality articles on a range of issues relating to  the
present day situation of the muslim ummah and that of the Indian
madrasas. "Generally nothing new gets published in the madrasa
journals. Repetitions are rampant in them. But I wanted to provide my
magazine a difference among other madrasa periodicals. So I contacted
peoples from different walks of life. Among them, the professors of
the central universities responded with their frequent contributions.
Then I myself started translating articles from the national press to
keep my readers aware of what is at the centre of debate in the
mainstream media. In this connection, contributions by the young
generation of the Deoband graduates who are now enrolled in any of the
central universities, proved shot in my arms". The TDU has, under his
editorship, contributed significantly to the debate of the madrasa
reform, publishing 13 articles on the theme within four years. It
should be acknowledged that it is the highest number of pieces
published ever by any madrasa journal on the issue. His outspoken
views have won him both applause as well as criticism from his fellow
Deobandis.In his own words, "My writings have been severely criticized
within the circles of the hawks of the Deobandi ulema. So, now they
(members of the executive body of the TAQDUD) scrutinize every word I
write and make amendments in it, sometimes cutting down pages and
pages, in the interest of the Deobandi school of thought."



Maulana Habibur Rahman Azmi has a different take on the issue. He
never feels any dearth of good and relevant articles for his magazine
TDU. He states with self-importance, "The TDU is the organ of the
Deoband madrasa. Among its graduates who are spread all over the
world, a sizeable number of them are really good at writing and are
very frequent with their contributions to different magazines. They
attach preference to get published in the magazine brought out from
their alma mater. So; I always have a plenty of quality pieces piled
up in my office. I don't have to run after people to arrange the
articles for my monthly. My job is to just select out of the stock of
articles the ones which are up to mark and are neither anachronous nor
the antithesis to the essentials of the Deobandi school of thought.".
If once in a while he needs a piece on a particular issue, unlike
Maulana Waris Mazhari, Maulana Azmi himself writes the required piece
instead of asking someone else to jot down for his journal.



Mufti Fuzailur Rahman Usmani's technique of putting together the DS,
Malerkotla, is very interesting. There is no denying the fact that his
DSIC is not at par with the Darul Uloom Deoband in terms of
reputation, resources and repertoire. As a result, he does not have a
pool of writers who pen down analytical and crisp write-ups on his
request.So; it is his son Maulana Tariq Omair Usmani who generally
writes the editorial and Mufti Fuzailur Rahman also jots down one or
two pieces for every issue. The rest of magazine is just the
reproduction of articles from the smaller and lesser known Indian as
well as Pakistani journals which are out of the reach of the Urdu
readers of the country. It has to be acknowledged that in this way
Mufti Fuzailur Rahman Usmani manages to edit a magazine which offers a
range of interesting and positive readings to his target readers who
generally come from the lower middle class and are layman practioner
of Islam. The DS has the policy not to name the source of the 
articles it is reproducing. It is interesting to mention here that the
DS presented in 2001 a special issue called "Shagofey".It was the
combined issue of the months of June and July of the year. It is the
anthology of the satirical pieces published in the DS so far. Though
it makes an interesting reading, what is really disturbing about it is
the names of the authors did not get mention. It was considered
sufficient to cite only the reference of the issue in which the piece
had been initially reproduced.




The DS and the TDU are open to the commercial advertisements, though
with some conditions. In this regard unlike any other madrasa
magazine, the TDU goes to an extent that its every issue carries the
rates for printing ads in the TDU at the very first page of the
magazine. At the same time, Maulana Habibur Rahman Azmi does not feel
any need to publish any advertisement as the Darul Uloom has enough
budgets to support the expenses of the MDU. "It's our policy not to
publish any advertisement from any outside agency. If Darul Uloom has
something to publicize then it is a different case", informs Maulana
Azmi.Another exclusive aspect of the TDU which really makes it
distinguished among the all madrasa journals is its web edition. The
current issue of the magazine is available on the website of the Darul
Uloom, Deoband (www.darululoom-deoband.com). Maulana Aijaz Arshad
Qasmi, the web editor of the site, is working on it since 2000.He
tells, "Every month we make it online with great punctuality. Apart
from the TDU, we also put Al Daa'i, the Arabic monthly journal of
Darul Uloom on the website. As Urdu is yet to develop its own software
and font, we face recurrent problem in uploading the content of the
TDU. So we need to convert the content into GIFF files  which consume
a lot of space. This is the reason why the previous issues of the TDU
are not available online. At the same time, previous issues of Al
Daa'i are available on the site as Arabic has its own softwares and
fonts which are really advanced and users' friendly". Apart from the
updated editions of both the magazines, the website provides stunning
visuals of the campus of this historical seminary and ample
information about it as well as about the services it has been
rendering to the nation and the society. It has an interesting link
called "Online Fatwa" which has the facility to answer to queries of a
fatwa seeker within 3-7 days.



arshad amanullah
35,masihgarh,
jamia nagar
new delhi-25.