By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
Banaras Hindu University (BHU) is gearing up to establish a research chair in the name of Mirza Ghalib, the renowned poet from the 18th century. The initiative to establish chair has been taken up by the Department of Urdu, Faculty of Arts. Professor Aftab Ahmad, head of the department, has planned to pass letters to all the relevant official channels, up to the Ministry of Human Resources and Development, to establish the chair as soon as possible.
The plan to establish a Ghalib chair was introduced in 2008, when Professor Punjab Singh, the then vice-chancellor of BHU, promised the same in a seminar jointly organised by BHU and Ghalib Institute, Delhi. But the verbal initiative to establish a chair in the name of Mirza Ghalib was stalled as there was no sound approach from the administration of BHU.
Almost a decade after the announcement, Aftab Ahmad — who gained the head chair in November 2017 only — has taken the charge of it. Ahmad told TwoCircles.net, “We believe that there should be more research on Ghalib and his stand on the cultural aspects of Banaras, as well as that of India.
“It is not the question of poetry, but of the cultural heritage. Ghalib termed Varanasi as ‘Qaba-e-Hindustan’. There was some reasoning behind it, he understood it all with his eyes for minute details,” said Professor Aftab Ahmad. “Ghalib chair will enhance the Urdu and cultural research on the campus,” he added.
As of now, the Urdu department of BHU has around 30 research scholars, a number which was gained very slowly. Establishment of the chair will add eight more seats for research purposes, but to gain the same, a minimum fund of Rs 1 crore is needed to support the research under the Ghalib’s chair.
With radical nationalist propaganda spreading quickly inside BHU, the chair’s establishment is likely to face certain objections from the administration and certain groups inside the university. But Professor Ahmad claims that he has all the support needed to establish the chair, including the university administration’s, adding that “Ghalib has the true answer to all the fanaticism and ultra-nationalism gestures which are infamous these days.”
BHU’s various faculties and departments have several chairs — recent one is the Deendayal Upadhyay Chair established in September 2017 on the special ‘request’ by Ministry of Culture — but Urdu department has none. With the establishment of its first chair, BHU’s Urdu department — which is fighting hard to be counted on education map — hopes to gain some name and recognition.