Atiqa Bano (Behan Ji) (1940 – 4 October 2017) was an Indian educationist and activist for the artistic and cultural heritage of
Kashmir
Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...
. She established and curated the ''
Meeras Mahal'', a private museum of history and art at
Highland Colony, Sopore in Baramulla Kashmir.
Biography
Atiqa Bano was born in 1940 in
Sopore
Sopore, known as Suyyapur in antiquity, is a city in the Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is north-west of Srinagar, and north-east from the city of Baramulla.
Sopore Town has Asia's second largest fruit mandi (wholesale ...
in the princely state of
Jammu and Kashmir.
Her father, Molvi Mohammad Yasin Masoodi, was a freedom fighter. He died when she was a few months old, and she was brought up by her mother.
Bano obtained an undergraduate degree from the
Women's College, Srinagar, followed by two master's degrees in economics and in Urdu. She then attended
Banasthali Vidyapeeth in
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern si ...
for a postgraduate degree in education.
[
Atiqa Bano died of cancer on 4 October 2017 in Sopore, aged 77.][
]
Career
Education
Atiqa Bano started her career in 1958 as a teacher. She became a schools inspector seven years later. In 1977 she was made Chief Education Officer. In 1994, she became a joint director of school education for the state of Jammu and Kashmir.[ She retired as the state director of Libraries and Research in 1999.][
]
Welfare
In the 1970s, Bano established the ''Majlis-un-Nisa'', an organisation for women's welfare, helping them to achieve financial independence. Part of this was a centre that trained women in sewing skills, which was set up in building she owned that would later also house her museum of Kashmiri heritage.
Museum
Part of Bano's career as schools inspector entailed travel across the state. Encountering the diversity of material culture in Kashmir, she thought of establishing a Museum. After retirement, she began then to collect historical and cultural artefacts, especially traditional ware and old manuscripts. Initially she housed them in a derelict hostel building that was part of a college of education that her family owned.[ In 2001, she set up the Meeras Mahal, a heritage museum.][
As the collection grew, she shifted it to a building in Highland Colony, Sopore. By now, it consisted of handwritten ]Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
s, Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit manuscripts, historical coins, an entire history of the evolution of the Kashmiri pheran (wedding trousseaus from both the Muslim and the Pandit
A Pandit ( sa, पण्डित, paṇḍit; hi, पंडित; also spelled Pundit, pronounced ; abbreviated Pt.) is a man with specialised knowledge or a teacher of any field of knowledge whether it is shashtra (Holy Books) or shastra (Wea ...
communities), pottery, and artefacts related to the weaving of Pashmina
Pashmina (, ) refers to, depending on the source, a term for cashmere wool of the Changthangi cashmere goat,Janet Rizvi: ''Pashmina: The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond''. Marg Foundation, 2009. ISBN 978-8185026909. for fine Indian cashmere woolRobert ...
textile.[
In contrast to the Shri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar, which concentrated on the royal history and elite art of Kashmir, the Meeras Mahal deals with the material culture of ordinary people.][ As the museum has received little support from the state, it remains privately maintained.
]
References
External links
Meeras Mahal
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bano, Atiqa
People from Sopore
1940 births
2017 deaths
20th-century Indian educational theorists
Scholars from Jammu and Kashmir