Today our topic of discussion is Musulman Suhrid Sammilani .
Musulman Suhrid Sammilani
In 1883 a group of young, Dhaka progressives founded an association for the education of women within the andarmahal similar to the government aided projects of zenana education which became quite popular at the time.
The Sammilani which was in plain words a small voluntary association epitomized the ambivalence of the situation with regard to female education among the middle class in the community.
On the one hand, there were all the strictures of purdah which no self-respecting Muslim would care to violate: on the other, there was the example of the Brahmo community and the inviting prospect of being ‘modern’ with all its emphases on female emancipation and the raising of women’s status, The Sammilani was one of the myriad responses being devised by the ‘natives’ in their colonial encounter.
It was a compromise between a traditional andarmahal education and a ‘modern’ institutionalized one an association which, along with its preceptors stood halfway between the old road and the new. In this lay the significance of this otherwise small, if unusual, association.
A group of students mostly from Dhaka College Abdul Majid, Abdul Aziz, Fazlul Karim, Bazlur Rahim and Hemayetuddin decided to found a small voluntary association with the grandiose aim (as was the wont of those inspired by reformist seal in those days) of regenerating the mori- bund Muslim society.
Though this was the original aim of the Sammilani, in its yearly report for 1883 it was stated: “…for the time being this ansociation will devote itself to the spread and development of female education in the Muslim community.
The association drew up a syllabus corresponding to the one in the Calcutta University and distributed it in the andarmahal along with books. Private tutions were provided: girls studied in the privacy of their homes and took the examinations.
Results (e. promotions’) were handed out. Abdul Aziz’s wife Rabeya Khatun and Hemayetuddin’s wife Hanina Khatun were promoted from the 4th to 5th class in this manner. A total of 37 students from Dhaka, Barisal, Mymensingh and Calcutta, took the examinations conducted by the Sammitoni in Urdu and Bengali. Thirty-three candidates passed. The organization functioned well till 1887 and ceased to exist in 1905.
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