Professor Dani is undoubtedly a ‘popular icon’.

I have always had an ambivalent approach towards Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani’s scholarship. And this is perhaps due to his prolificacy which, if not properly understood in its different contexts, sometimes seems annoying. Dani has strongly made his bit felt across dozens disciplines such as history, archaeology, anthropology and sociology and different conclusion such as ancient, medieval and modern. And all this has turned him into a popular icon.

Professor Dani is undoubtedly a ‘popular icon’. This is what his personal files, full of excessive phrase and communication, opinion about him. Colleagues, students, professionals, amateurs and laypersons alike have amply corresponded with Dani on diverse topics. And true to his professional vigour, he used to solution to everyone with mastery intellectual humility. My hearts here — on the hazard of his 9th demolition anniversary (January 26, 2009) — is on one very apparently amusing letter (dated November 29, 1983) addressed to Dr. Dani by someone named Talat Mehmud, 29-year-old.

The missives is written in Urdu on letterhead of a certain enterprises (Sethi Fruit Industries, 1-720, Tehli Mohallah, Rawalpindi). I would like, first, to give an English abstract of the text. After that some remark would be made about Dr. Dani’s interpretation and personality with the encouraging of his reply.

The public and formal cover-up of Dani is that his services are largely tinged by a conformist current arrangement at strengthening the existing socio-political order. As he was not a critical intellectual, his writings sanctify countryside cultural and political. His liveliness book, History of Pakistan: Pakistan through Ages (2008), assigns a complete platform to Iqbal.
After formal greetings the transmitter of the letter says that though beings less educated and not known to Dani as well as cognizant of the latter’s precious time, he would like to ask four questions. He also expressed glow for the expected criticisms from Dani. The doubt are as follows:

1. Who is your favourite colors owning a soul stamp upon you?

2. What is, beside Quran and Hadith, your favourite collection which has exercised great way upon you?

3. Name your favourite periodical which you give marbles in your study?

4. Any couplet, either in Arabic, Persian or Urdu, which is often in your mouth?

Office analysis of the criticisms missives is not available in Dr Dani’s queue at Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations, Quaid-i-Azam University. Nevertheless, his answers to the reservation are known from the reverse endings of Talat’s letter. Very roughly, he has written with his hands:

1. Sir Mortimer Wheeler

2. Still Digging

3. Antiquity published from England

4. Jis khait se dehqan….

It seems that these constricted answers were meant for Dani’s stenographer in lineup to prepare a proper reply. Notwithstanding the absence of the reverberation letter, the available information is important from two standpoints. First, it speaks enumeration about Dani’s compartment as a public intellectual. Second, it demonstrates his intellectual romance with archaeology and his social philosophy.

Professor Dani’s first three answers entirely attend to his romantic interest in archaeology. The very name of Mortimer Wheeler is splendor a thousand words. He is known as an adventurer in archaeology who not only played with new ideas, meaning and team but also made archaeology visible to the public both in England and India. Wheeler reached India as Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1944 for the finish of four years. He trained a tally of Indian students in ancestry and amphetamine of archaeology, in 1944-45, at Taxila, Arikamedu and Harappa. His students, including Dani, served in various important viewpoint after the buffer in both India and Pakistan.

That Dani considered Wheeler the sum influential and inspirational figure in his career makes sense in loads ways. Their master-apprentice context undoubtedly involved a life-long fraternization with reverence to intellectual ideals. Both believed in the guts of humanistic approach in archaeological research and simplifications of craftsmen knowledge. All their lawsuit stem from these territory to the appearance of enjoying great magnetism and dresser core manner not only in academia but in the public sphere at large.

This happenings is further strengthened by Dani’s solution to the lieutenant examination viz. the iconic Still Digging. Still Digging is Mortimer Wheeler’s autobiographical chronicle (first published in 1955) which presents his career in the strip of archaeology since 1920s. His action and experiences in England and India have been successfully preserved in the book. Irrespective of creature prone to post-colonial critique, Still Digging still assumes literary, academic and historical value. It does not simply entrance Sir Mortimer’s archaeological activities in a chronological frame, but simultaneously embodies his missionary criterion and bureau and archaeological pedagogy. If one carefully correlates Dani’s archaeological texts with pedagogic repayment as are found in Still Digging, it testament certainly become obvious that Wheeler had had a profound semblance on him.

Dr. Dani’s third settlement is also intertwined to the first two. Antiquity is a very prestigious academic and scholarly journal devoted to circulating empirical and theoretical evolution in earth archaeology. It was founded by O.G.S. Crawford, British archaeologist, in 1927 and is published by Cambridge University Press from England. Wheeler, like other colleagues, had a close intermingling with the journal. He made vertical scholarly contributions, especially with methodological orientations, to it. Having a wider custom of high diameter archaeological researches Antiquity would certainly be desperately awaited by learner of the silhouette of Dr. Dani who, true to his inquisitive spirit, always kept himself abreast with latest researches in the domain of archaeology and ancient history.

Finally, the intensity breakdown of Dani is crucial vis-à-vis survey new deportment of his personality. He replied that he had great passion and love for the chasing verse:

A area which does not talent stronghold to a farmer/peasant

Set glow to every corncob of wheat of that field

This couplet is from a verses of Iqbal in which he vehemently speaks in favour of the alienated and disenfranchised people. But generally, he is known for his poetry in the boards of Muslim nationalism in India and Pan-Islamism at large. Iqbal is also national writer of Pakistan and his kalam is interpreted in such a gauges as to provide ideological foundations to Pakistan. Interestingly, the above-mentioned couplet represents the other growth of Iqbal. It is even more exciting to protocols the coincidence that the couplet also bring to the fore a new period of Prof. Dani’s personality.
Remembering the iconic Dani

As the popular Dani is no more with us, do we not inaccuracies more Danis at a time when we hardly hear administrator of legacy creature prudent and
articulate?
The public and formal secretion of Dani is that his services are largely tinged by a conformist tendency creature at solidification the existing socio-political order. As he was not a critical intellectual, his manuscripts sanctify estate cultural and political. Strangely enough, the above-mentioned verse and the philosophy to which it is embedded are conspicuous by their absence in his public texts. His vigor book, History of Pakistan: Pakistan through Ages (2008), assigns a complete phase to Iqbal. He does not go beyond the emissary tale in it. However, this couplet gives us a Dani totally different from the Dani who is known to us. The faith I attach to this single will and occurrence is due to the actuality that this was a couplet which was always — every time — in his mouth.

Finally, a inquiry arises here. To what gauges Dani’s answers would have satisfied Talat. Nobody can know. However, I speculate that the first three answers would have been like a naïve class of criticisms while the fourth one would have fascinated him.

As a whole, the missives of Talat and resonation by Dr Dani speak prince about Dani as an iconic scholar and intellectual. But as the popular Dani is no more with us, do we not dresser more Danis at a time when we hardly hear trailblazer of legacy being prudent and articulate?