MMHAPU catches attention of foreign countries

The Maulana Mazharul Haque Arabic and Persian University catches attention of some foreign countries, which have offered help to it, reports V K Tripathi.

Non-functioning right from the day it came into being about a decade ago, Maulana Mazharul Haque Arabic and Persian University (MMHAPU) has caught the attention of some foreign countries, which have offered help to it.

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Sans students, teachers and a campus of its own (it is housed in a government building in the Patna), MMHAPU is an university only in name. For, even after a decade of existence, this university is yet to open its counter for admission.

MMHAPU was established through an Act in 1992, but it actually came into existence only in April 1998. Though it has a duly appointed vice-chancellor (VC) and registrar, the university has neither any institution affiliated to it nor a faculty.

Still, seven West and Central Asian countries have shown interest in the university. Recently, embassies of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Uzbekistan expressed their willingness to help enrich the university’s faculty and library, said MHAPU Vice-Chancellor Prof S Alam, a noted scholar and author.

He said some of the foreign embassies had even offered to set up language labs that could help train translators of different languages who are in great demand in both Asian and European countries.

Alam, however, admitted that despite approval granted by the Bihar Inter University Board for different traditional and professional courses, the university could not start teaching in the absence of final sanction by the state government.

The government had earlier decided to convert the senior section of the Government Madarsa Shamshul Hoda into a constituent unit of the MHAPU and also transfer 34 madarsas offering Alim and Fazil courses from Bihar Madarsa Education Board to the MHAPU.

Besides, the issues of allotting land to MHAPU in Mithapur locality and affiliating the Government Arabic and Persian Institute to the university were also discussed at a meeting chaired by the Chancellor on December 5, 2006.

However, none of its proposals have been translated into action till date. Minister for Human Resource Development Brishen Patel said that the government would soon convene a meeting to finalise the pending issues, including conversion of Madarsa Shamshul Hoda into a constituent unit of the MHAPU.