Qari Saheb

Once, a student (the scribe) requests his mentor to accompany him on an errand. The student hires a conveyance that the mentor refuses to use to reach the place. Despite the student’s indulgent insistence, the mentor persists and exhorts the student that even if the mentor had to go to that place for some purpose of his own, he would gladly walk it on foot. He said: “A genuine mentor never luxuriates himself on anybody’s resources.”

Another student, after becoming head of an educational institution through PPSC, visited the mentor to express his gratitude and sought the mentor’s advice to conduct his professional duty. The teacher said: “To re-check homework copies of students as head of the institution is better than offering tahajjud (the supererogatory night prayer).”

The mentor’s colleagues and students affirm that he never left his class to meet any visitor or attend a phone call. He never took leave of absence for his personal interests. Even on the day of his daughter’s marriage, he was teaching with the same devotion. His colleagues then offered their services that they would teach his class, and he should leave and take care of the marriage ceremony. By then, half day had passed.

Once, his colleagues who were picking holes with the principal’s policies asked him why he didn’t say anything against the principal, whether he feared him. He replied that he would say anything to the principal if he felt like, but behind him, it would be backbiting. It was not in his axiology to talk frivolous.

He was strictly against the arrogance of one’s knowledge. Once, a student was found interrupting a senior speaker with his own interlopings. When the speaker left, the mentor exhorted the student whether the student’s brother, who was illiterate, would have talked with the same hubris.

Religiously and spiritually, he was such a consummate practitioner that many a scion of various spiritual families visited him for their personal, social, and spiritual issues.

He taught at Government Model High School Kasur to those students who were “discarded” as hopeless cases — the students who opted arts subjects, as the science subjects are offered only to brilliant students. He was known for his magic of turning around even the dullest of students. His above ninety per cent pass results in arts classes stunned everyone.

At a prize distribution ceremony, when one of his students won second position in Lahore Board exams in 2002, he was asked how the plight of public schools could be improved. He pointed towards the governor Khalid Maqbool, the chief guest at the ceremony, and replied that when the governor would get his children enrolled in a government school, the schools would fare better. The emcee asked him to cite an example. He replied that when a governor like Sardar Abdur Rab Nishter would send his children to Govt Central Model School Lower Mall Lahore, the standard of public schools was far better.

One day, the mentor explained to his disciples how he was initiated by his teacher. Once, he was travelling with his teacher. Both now had a saintly appearance. At one stop, the grand-mentor (GM) asked his mentee to purchase some eatables. When the mentee offered his purchase to the GM, the latter ordered the former to return the eatables to the vendor.

The GM taught his mentee (our mentor) a life lesson that the vendor gave the disciple more than the paid price, venerating his religious garb. He exhorted: “If we keep our purchase more than the price, we encash our religion and saintly looks. In this way, we would adulterate the purity of our religion.”

The mentor is a well-known teacher and religious personality of Kasur with hundreds of followers. He is Hafez Raza-ur-Rehman, popularly known as Qari Saheb. People of all social strata and religious denominations felt equally connected to him. He used to say that one dies only when one’s name is mentioned no more. His deathless death anniversary falls on 8^th June. Be divinely exalted Qari Saheb!

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2024.

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