چاک سے اُتری خاک
ابھی آنکھوں کے دریچے کم سن اور عقل کے جگنوئوں کی روشنی مدھم تھی ،جب دل کی تاریک گلیوں سے یہ خیال اکثر کسی انجان مسافرکی طرح گزرتا کہ یہ بھٹکے ہوئے لفظوں کے سوداگریونہی کہنہ کتابوں کا بوجھ اٹھائے پھرتے ہیں ۔ان کی سطریں طلسمی افسانوں کے سوا کچھ نہیں ۔ان کی باتیں فریب کی واضح دلیلوں کے سوا کچھ نہیں ۔بھلا لفظوں کے لمس سے کسے شفا ملی ہے ؟بھلا جملوں کی تپش سے کب پتھر پگھلے ہیں ؟مگر اک روز میں اداس شام کے غمزدہ حجرے میںجونؔ کے صحیفہ’’شاید‘‘ میں موجودغزل(نیا اک رشتہ پیدا کیوں کریں ہم) کے ابتدائی اشعار کی قرأت میں منہمک تھا تو مقدس پردوں میں لپٹی ، پہلی معصوم آیت نے مجھ پر کھلتے ہوئے گواہی دی’’یہ خدا کے چنیدہ لوگ ہیں‘‘۔
دوستی جو کبھی محبت کے مہکتے پھولوں کا جزیرہ ہوتی تھی ۔ا ب د لکش مگر آتشی سانپوں کا جنگل بن چکی ہے ۔میں چاہتا تو لفظوں کی بین کے زور پر منتروں سے جکڑی پٹاری میں انھیں قید کر سکتا تھا لیکن دانستاً ایسا نہیں کیا۔یہ یونہی چاہت کا ملاوٹی دودھ پی کرنیلی رگوں میں زہر اتارتے رہیں۔میں نہیں چاہتا تھا یہ سانپ جن کی مفادی آستینوں میں پل رہے ہیں وہ میرے چاکِ گریباںکو اور تار تار کریں ۔
میں اکثر سوچتا اگر خدا نے یہ جدید حرف گر(ن۔م راشدؔ ،مجید امجدؔ،میرؔا جی )نہ بھیجے ہوتے،تو میرے لیے بھٹکنا کتنا آسان تھا۔میرے بہت سے ژولیدہ خیالات اور کومل جذبات الفاظ کا پیراہن زیب تن کیے بنا غزل کی روایتی گلیوں میں سراسیمگی اوڑھے دربدر کی ٹھوکریں کھاتے یا پھر کسی روز دل و دماغ کی کسی کنج میں لاوارث لاش کی طرح پائے جاتے۔
‘A great man’, says Justice Oliver Wendell, Jr, ‘represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in being there’. (italic ours). And Maulana Muhammad Ali was one such nerve-centre in Indo-Muslim society during the second and third decades of the twentieth century. Indeed, he was one such strategic point in the onward march of Indo-Muslim politics that eventually found culmination and crystallization in the emergence of Pakistan. Actually no one else represented the tone, tenor and temper of the romanticist, Khilafatist era (in the 1910s and 1920s) as he did in his hectic life, his revolutionary activities his numerous discomfitures, and in his tragic death. Whether he led a hectic life, whether he took recourse to a revolutionary path, or whether he goaded himself to die a tragic death outside the frontiers of his motherland cataclysmically, in whatever he did, he, consciously or unconsciously, carried forward the campaign of Indo-Muslim history: the redemption of Islam in India and abroad. In other words, he stood, above all, for an honourable existence for Muslims in India and in the rest of the troubled Muslim world in the existential crisis that convulsed Muslim India and that world.
School leadership plays a pivotal role to bring about change and improvement in a school. Generally, leadership is considered the prerogative of principals/head teachers in schools and teacher leaders are treated as subordinates. This study aimed at exploring how the head teacher and teacher leaders can co-exist and work together in parallel as leaders in a private school in Karachi, Pakistan. The central research question that guided the study was: what are the possibilities of parallel leadership in a private school in Karachi? This study was conducted in a private school in Karachi. Case study method, within the qualitative research paradigm, was employed to conduct this study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, document analysis and observations. Since the purpose of the study was to explore the phenomenon of parallel leadership, the head teacher and two teacher leaders (a section head and a subject coordinator) were selected as research participants through purposive sampling. The study has identified factors that may contribute to parallel leadership in a school context. The findings indicate that parallel leadership can be developed through providing teacher leaders with the opportunities to lead by providing them with formal leadership roles and empowering them to exercise their skills and knowledge. The study found that mutual trust and respect between teacher leaders and principal leaders enable teacher leaders to work in parallel with the head teacher. Moreover, the findings revealed that professional development opportunities for teachers in the school, and a supportive environment where both the teacher leaders and the head teacher leader have developed a collaborative culture underpin parallel leadership. The positive attitude of the head teacher and teacher leaders and informal relationship between them can develop and strengthen parallel leadership. The study also found that the teacher leaders' and the head teacher's shared religious values contributed to develop a context appropriate for the promotion of parallel leadership. This study sought acknowledgement as the first of its kind in the context of Pakistan which would contribute to the improvement of schools by identifying how principal leaders and teacher leaders work together in a school to achieve common goals. Moreover, it is also likely to contribute to the development of a healthy working relationship between principal leaders and teacher leaders in schools in general.