Fazle Umar
Early childhood and parental training
A P recocious C hil d a n d a Patie n t Father A phrase in the Arabic language says, “A child is a child even if he will become a prophet.” But if you combine with it the Urdu phrase, “A precocious child shows the man inside him” it makes the whole truth. No matter what high positions a child is going to reach in view of his innate powers, his childhood innocence and spontaneity remains intact, but at the same time occasionally you do see some glimpses of his glorious future. Seeing such a child, the perceptive mind soon realises that with the Grace of God one day this child will become a great man. During the childhood of Hadhrat Mirza Bashiruddin sahib (also referred to as Hadhrat Sahibzada Sahib) we see a wonderful intermingling of these two aspects. To illustrate this an incident of his childhood has been narrated by Hadhrat Maulvi Abdul Karim [ra] – a noble companion of the Promised Messiah [as]: “When Mahmud was about three years of age, the Promised Messiah [as] once happened to be in Ludhiana and I too, was with him. There was a partition wall between the male and female quarters of the house where we were staying. It was summer and the weather was very hot. I happened to wake up once in the middle of the night to hear Mahmud crying and the Promised Messiah [as] talking to him gently to divert his mind. The Promised Messiah [as] seemed to be carrying him in his arms, and pacing about to soothe him, but the child continued to cry. After some time the Promised Messiah [as] said: ‘Look how brightly that star shines Mahmud!’ This arrested the child’s attention evidently, for he quietened down for a moment but started crying again with a new basis
17
