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Abbu Khan’s goat & lessons it teaches

There lived an old man in Almora.

Abbu Khan’s goat & lessons it teaches


Dr Zakir Husain

There lived an old man in Almora. Abbu Khan was his name. He was very fond of taming goats. He was a lonely man, and kept only one or two goats. He grazed them for the whole day…

Poor Abbu Khan was extremely unfortunate. All his goats used to run away some time or the other at night, untying the thread of confinement. Hill goats are bored of remaining chained. These goats used to run away to the mountain. There lived a wolf that used to eat them up. But, surprisingly, neither Abbu Khan's affection, nor their greed for the evening feed, nor, even the fear of the wolf could stop the goats from running away. Probably so because there is too much love for freedom in the temperament of the hill animals. They are at no cost willing to bargain their freedom and despite hardships and dangers, consider freedom better than imprisonment with comfort and convenience…

One day, he brought a goat (Chandni) having purchased it from somewhere. Abbu Khan thought if he acquired a younger goat, it would probably become intimate and if it got habituated to superior feed in the beginning, it would not look to the mountain.

But Abbu Khan was mistaken. The urge for freedom does not go that easily. Free animals of mountains and jungles are suffocated inside the boundary of a house and they are deprived of comfort even in the confinement of the field. All confinements are similar.  Attention may be diverted for a few days, but then mountains and jungles come to memory and the prisoner thinks of breaking the chain. Abbu Khan's impression that Chandni had forgotten the breeze of the mountain was not correct.

One day, Chandni also ran away and came face to face with the wolf in the mountain. It did not surrender to the wolf. She knew full well that goats could not kill wolves, she only wanted a trial of strength with her fullest competence. Defeat and victory are not controllable, and they are in the hands of God. The trial is necessary. Chandni kept up the fight throughout the night but with the approach of the morning, “Chandni fell on the ground lifeless. Her coat of white hair was blood; the wolf took her into his full grip and ate her up.

Up on the tree birds were sitting and observing. The discussion among them is as to who is the victor. “All say that the wolf won: There is an elderly bird who is insistent that Chandni has won.”

***

The story of Chandni, the young goat who preferred the death of freedom to the life of confinement and lost her life instead of surrendering to the wolf, should not be brushed aside as an ordinary exercise in child-play. Apart from being a work of high literary calibre in original Urdu, it takes young boys and girls away from the world of fairies and kings, religious bigots and wrestlers, to a unique system of existence where truth prevails over evil designs, and honest struggle for survival and triumph become the highest value.

When Zakir Husain wrote this, and many such stories for children during the early 1920s, the British were exploiting the natives of colonial India. Every conscientious Indian, a farmer, a political worker, a teacher or a scientist, was trying to make his contribution to the great urge for freedom. To some, the straightforward way of political struggle was the answer to the forced domination by the British of India; to others; the process of persuasion was immensely important for inspiring the young ones to stand up to the task and fight, along with their elders, the battle for the achievement of Independence. 

Abbu Khan's Chandni and her story of a determined fight, despite all odds, are allegorical and give a significant lesson to the rising generation. While all birds were impressed by the superiority of that wolf over the goat, an elder one asserted that victory was of Chandni and not the wolf's. It is that assertion that moves the child reader who starts believing, with the elderly bird, in the ultimate superiority of struggle over cowardice as also the fairness of the end necessitating these means.

As AWB Qadri, a young psychologist at Jamia Millia who has made a comprehensive study of Zakir Husain's stories, points out, prior to Zakir Husain's commitment to the fascinating task of writing literary and inspiring stories or children, this important field was almost barren in Urdu, and probably in all other Indian languages. In Urdu, only Maulvi Mohammed Ismail Meeruti's curricular books could be classified in this category till then. In other languages too the situation was hardly different. Reliance was put only on the horror stories and comics supplied by entrepreneur-oriented foreign publishers and syndicates in whatever form they thought proper. They were given to the children only if it was thought worthwhile to deviate from the usual mythological and absurdly farcical stories on which the Indian vernacular magazines for children thrive even to this day.

An aesthetic repertoire

The late President, Dr. Zakir Husain, apart from being a great educationist, economist and political commentator,  was also a litterateur. 

He also held the august office of the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha as the Vice President. He wrote many stories to enable the development of a spirit of inquiry, a scientific attitude and a love for freedom and free thinking in the young generation. 

Abbu Khan's Bakri (Abbu Khan's Goat) is among one of the best stories written by him. 

It is a being reproduced here to coincide with Zakir Husain’s 47th death anniversary today (May 3). 

The story has been translated from the original in Urdu  by Anees Chishti, a senior journalist and Zakir Husain’s biographer.

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