BHOPAL: Religion is no barrier in attainment of spiritual knowledge. Mushariff Khan from Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district is a perfect example of this. The Class VIII student can recite shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita with élan, much to the delight of her parents and teachers.
Mushariff started learning the holy Hindu scripture as part of memory retention training, and now she and her parents are proud that she has imbibed the best tenets of another religion.
The talented girl has learnt by heart 500 out of the total 701 shlokas in the Bhagavad Gita, using the memory retention technique taught by her Abacus and Vedic Mathematics teacher Rohini Menon.
“Mushariff is one of my best students. I gave her three options to showcase her memory retention technique: memorising the entire dictionary, the entire Constitution of India or the Bhagavad Gita. To the surprise of us all, she opted for learning the Bhagavad Gita. She started learning when she was in Class VI and has so far memorised 500 Sanskrit sholkas,” Menon told this newspaper.
Menon said many of her other students, too, have tried to learn the shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita, but only Mushariff has succeeded in memorising 500 shlokas till now and is determined to learn and understand the remaining ones, too.
Mushariff, whose father is a Mathematics teacher and mother a housewife, had joined the short course of Memory Retention under Menon two years back.
“After doing the short course, I wanted to do something unique and different. I chose to memorise the Bhagavad Gita because my mother has always taught me that ‘out of your house, you are a just a human being and not an individual following a particular religion’. My parents permitted me to learn the Bhagavad Gita as they wanted me to gain knowledge of every religion,” said Musharraf.
Proud of Mushariff’s achievement, her mother Zeenat Khan said, “Yes, we are Muslims. But we want to bring up our daughter in a manner that she grows up to be a noble human being ingrained with the best tenets of every religion.”