S FROM MAULANA'S DIARY

PAGES FROM MAULANA'S DIARY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES The following is a selection from the diary of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. January 1, 1986 Today Advocate Daniyal Latifi came to my office (Nizamuddin, New Delhi). During our conversation, I found out some very interesting legal anecdotes. He said that even the best of lawyers cannot manipulate an honest witness, provided he says only what he has seen without adding or deleting a single word. He reported some incidents in this regard. Then he told a funny incident. A UK court decided to hand death sentence to a criminal. The words of the court were: He shall be hanged. When the magistrate saw the verdict, he said, “I can’t hang him. The verdict only says that he should be hanged, but it is not said how. Now I am not sure whether I should hang him from neck or feet.” Such incidents took place in courts of different countries. So the words of the law were made more comprehensive. I asked Mr Daniyal to write this incident in my diary. I gifted him an audio cassette of my Urdu Book Jadeed Imkanat. The same evening, he telephoned me saying he had heard the cassette twice and liked it. I also presented to him my latest Urdu book Hal Yahan Hai. January 2, 1986 Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi (d. 965) is a famous Arabic poet. His verses are famous for wisdom and philosophy of life. I met an elder in Delhi today. I said to him that a thriving nation possesses the quality of acknowledgement, and a nation on the decline lacks this quality of acknowledgement. I gave some examples in this regard. He listened silently. He then read a couplet of al-Mutanabbi: If you honour a gentleman, you will make him your servant, And if you honour a degenerate man, he will rebel against you