However, this story is not only about Hishamuddins learning Sanskrit. It's also about 13-year-old Ravi Prakash Pandey, a Brahmin and the son of a Sanskrit professor, opting to learn Quran in Class 1. A former student of Azizia Islamia, he can now recite the holy text from memory and has a copy at home that he peruses religiously. "Quran teaches that we must help others and do good deeds and stay away from evil," he says, without batting an eyelid, and then rushes to wash himself and wear a cap before reading it aloud for us.
We hear this echo back in Salfia where two Hindu girls—14-year-old Arti Kumari and Anita Kumari—are writing about Prophet Mohammed in Urdu on the blackboard—"Jab hamare Hazrat ki umr paintees baras ki thi (when our prophet was 35 years old)...". "They face absolutely no problem in writing, reading or understanding Urdu," their teacher Kaiser Jahan informs us.
At Madrassa Arbiya Zia-ul-uloom in Mandey in Azamgarh district, sisters Manju and Ranju Kumari have been learning Urdu from Class 1. They mean it when they recite: "Urdu hai jiska naam hamari zubaan hai, duniya ki har zubaan se pyaari zubaan hai (Urdu is the sweetest of the languages in the world)." Passing by Class 1, you can hear Prashant Kumar explaining Urdu numerals to his classmates.
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3:17 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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