ME AND MAULANA: A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION OF WAHIDUDDIN KHAN - John M. Butt

ME AND MAULANA: A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION OF WAHIDUDDIN KHAN John M. Butt T here were two things that were striking about Talha. For one, of all the students who were my contemporaries at Darul Uloom Deoband, he was the most brilliant. At least, he was the brightest of all the students whom I came across. Secondly, Talha had the ability to think out of the box. His thinking was not constrained by the conventions of Deobandi thought. I was just getting into Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi’s Bayan’alQuran at the time. “It would be good if it could be translated into English,” I said one day to Talha. “True,” Talha said. “But first of all it has to be translated into Urdu!” Immediately, one could see what Talha was getting at. Bayan’al-Quran is in Urdu. But the Urdu of Bayan’al-Quran is so dense that not everyone can understand it. Most madrasa students would not be able to make such a cutting and perceptive comment about one of the icons of Deobandi thought. Talha had that capacity. So it was not surprising, then, that it was Talha who introduced me to Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. You had to have the power