EDITION-67   

Yakub Ahmed Sadak of RANDER Passed B.Com.  exam taken through Veer Nurmad South Gujarat University, Surat at Evening commerece College, Surat with first class Congratulation and best wishes for bright future.         

                 Historically our SURTI SUNNI VOHRA villagers were not well-off but self-sufficient. They were able to make a living from the plots of land they had and though they knew very little about their religion they supported their local masajid and madaris and paid their imams and madaris teachers in cash and in kind.         

                 Migration and the earnings it made possible, changed the long-established village system of earning a living from the land and supporting their masajid and madaris. From the late 1800's many Vohras joined fellow Vohras and others to seek earning opportunities in other countries. When those who migrated, started earning and remitting to their families and other relatives our villages started becoming dependent on what the migrants sent. From supporting their families migrants started supporting their village masajid and madaris and started providing funds to build new masajid, madaris, dar-ul-ulooms, provide their villages with piped water supplies, all weather roads, electricity supplies and anything else their villages were in need of or asked for.

                 We are not against migrants supporting their villages and making available whatever the villagers asked for, but we feel the continued support with 'no questions asked' helped the villages and villagers look economically well-off it prevented most of the villagers from making economic progress. We sincerely feel that the support provided by the migrants prevented many villagers from paying more attention to cultivating their lands or moving on to engage in nontraditional work and it also kept our villagers from realising the need to acquire secular education for their own improvement or to seek and obtain employment.
As migrants took upon themselves to pay for whatever their villages needed or wished to have they had no need to find money to pay the imams of their masajid, pay the madaris teachers who taught their children, find money to build or repair their masajid or madaris, contribute towards getting electricity supplies for their villages or find money for building new roads or pay towards repairing the roads.

                 Even those village-based families of migrants as well as those families which had no direct connections with migrants who were able to improve their economic standing did not see the need to contribute towards the construction and running costs of the masajid, madaris and everything else their villages had acquired with financial support from the migrants.
We feel migrants who supported their villages and continue to do so also should take some of the blame for making their villages dependent. If attempts had been made to get the villagers to contribute towards the construction of places of worship, places of learning as well as anything else the villagers wished to have, we feel could had helped the villagers have responsibilities for whatever their villages came to have. We feel if a partnership approach between the villagers and the migrants had been taken.

                 The opportunity to involve villagers we feel migrants We feel there are many reasons why we Surti Sunni Vohras wherever we may live must encourage our village-based Vohra brothers and sisters to take on responsibilities for their village masajid, madaris and other facilities they have been provided with. No one can say that all our village-based brothers and sisters have no money. We feel that all will not have much money but there are those who are well-off. We can observe the prosperity of our villagers by the motor cars they drive, the houses many of them live in, the money they spend on sending their children to English medium teaching schools and the money they spend on celebrating the weddings of their children.
There is also a need for all Vohras settled in other countries to take account of the changes taking place around them Many of the countries where our people have settled no longer provide chances for acquiring much economic progress.

                 There is also a great need for those settled in other countries to take into consideration the changes in thinking of the new generations. The younger generations will not have much affinity with the places from where their fathers and their grandfathers had migrated from. Many from the younger generations will also not know the names of the villages from where their forefathers had migrated from.

                 There is also a need to take into consideration that our young persons will be more willing to support other Muslims or anyone else who suffer from man made or natural disasters rather than support those who want to spend money.