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HomeIndiaKerala Brahmin Arabic teacher's advice to BHU Muslim Sanskrit professor — go...

Kerala Brahmin Arabic teacher’s advice to BHU Muslim Sanskrit professor — go to court

Retired Kerala teacher Gopalika Antharjanam, who beat initial social opposition to teach Arabic, says it's BHU assistant professor Firoz Khan’s right to teach Sanskrit.

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Bengaluru: Gopalika Antharjanam can’t quite understand what the fuss at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) is all about. Popularly known as ‘Gopalika Teacher’, she is probably the first Brahmin to teach Arabic in India, and is proud to have learnt “such a beautiful language”.

Gopalika, who retired three years ago after teaching Arabic at a Kerala school for nearly three decades, feels every citizen in this country has the right to learn any language, and should not be tied down by religion or fanatics. She also said she is glad to have set an example for many who would love to explore other languages, appreciate their spirit, nuances and the culture associated with them.

BHU students have been up in arms over the appointment of Feroz Khan as assistant professor of Sanskrit, saying a Muslim is incapable of teaching them Hindu theology.

Gopalika, too, had been forced to leave the school where she was teaching because the management had objected to a Brahmin teaching Arabic. But armed with a strong will and an order from the Kerala High Court, she fought back and taught at the same school from 1989 to 2016.

She had a word of advice to Khan. “It is his right to learn or teach as he wishes. He must take it to court, just like I did decades ago, and be assured that justice will be delivered to him,” she told ThePrint from her home in Mallapuram, Kerala.

Gopalika’s story

Born in a traditional Namboothiri Brahmin family in Thrissur, Gopalika had decided to learn Arabic on a whim after her Class X examinations.

“I was not a brilliant student. I told my parents that I would like to learn Arabic, and they were open to it. I had two other Brahmin girls in my class, though I am not sure if any of them pursued a career in it,” she said.

“Arabic is such a beautiful language, and when I was young and expressed an interest in learning it, there was a passion in me, so I learnt it quite quickly,” Gopalika added.

In 1982, after her marriage to a Mallapuram-based auditor, Narayanan Namboothiri, she expressed her wish to teach. But her toughest battle lay not in convincing her family, but in breaking the society’s conservative mindset, which made it impossible for her to pursue her passion.

Mallapuram, which falls in Kerala’s northern Malabar region, is home to nearly 70 per cent Muslims, and Arabic is spoken alongside Malayalam. It is also one of the regions from where a large number of people have flocked to the Gulf countries for employment.

“My husband had a friend who was a teacher in a nearby school, and told him how there was a five-month vacancy for an Arabic teacher there. He took me there and I joined the school as a teacher,” she recalled.

“I was very hurt emotionally when they asked me to leave the school. They created a ruckus and that’s when I decided to fight it out in court. I won the case after four years, in 1986, and since then, it has been smooth sailing for me.”


Also read: BHU controversy: What’s the problem with a Muslim scholar teaching Sanskrit?


 

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Protest is not going for teaching Sanskrit language by a Muslim but for appointment of a Muslim for teaching Hindu Dharmic rituals.

  2. The Print should feel shame for deliberately spreading lies. Protest is not going for teaching Sanskrit language by a Muslim but for appointment of a Muslim for teaching Hindu Dharmic rituals.

  3. In Malappuram, nobody is speaking Arabic as language, Arabic scholars are there and many students learn Arabic in schools and madrasaas. For The Print’s info

  4. I am from malappuram(not mallapuram!) and Arabic is not spoken along side Malayalam here. It is true that a lot of people learn the language though

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