With Interests In Ship-Building, Marine Biology, Green Energy & Agriculture, This School Dropout Defies Labels & Disciplines
Ali Manikfan, 84, lives in a small rented house at Perumanna on the outskirts of Kozhikode. It does not even have enough mantle-space for the national and international trophies he has accumulated over a lifetime of free-wheeling experimentation and creativity. With his long white robe, intense sage-like gaze and white beard, the tall and lean Manikfan seems to be a perfect embodiment of the Jungian archetype of Wise Old Man. A voracious autodidact, Manikfan is an expert of various proficiencies in areas as diverse as marine biology, traditional ship-building, astronomy, ecology and agriculture, apart from being a polygot with command over 14 languages, including Sanskrit and Persian.
Manikfan’s formal education stopped at Class 7. Born to Musa Manikfan and Fathima Manika at Minicoy, an island in Lakshadweep, on March 16, 1938, the young boy’s first school was the sea. Musa was the last Amin (chief civil officer) in Minicoy Island under British rule which gave the family a good standing and influence in the community. Manikfan’s grandfather had a sailing background and often used to take ships to Kerala and Tamil Nadu for trade, and, of course, he tagged along.
As education facilities were scarce in the islands, Manikfan was sent to Kannur in Kerala after five years of homeschooling. The boy found formal education stifling: monotonous and lacking in originality. By seventh grade, he’d had enough and returned to the islands. From then, it was an unending process of learning through keen observation, relentless reading, and, never missing an opportunity to grasp traditional and practical knowledge and innovation and put them to work.
He has held jobs too. Manikfan began his “career” as a teacher in Minicoy in 1956 and later worked as a clerk of the chief civil officer of Minicoy. He also briefly served as staff at the observatory. It was a meeting with noted marine researcher and director of CMFRI Dr S Jones that changed the course of his life. Jones was in the islands as part of his research into the marine diversity in the archipelago. By then, Manikfan was considerably advanced in own research on marine diversity in these waters.
Jones was astonished by the abilities of the young man who helped him a lot. In his book ‘Fishes of the Laccadive Archipelago’, Jones acknowledged Manikfan’s contribution, and went on to recommend him to CMFRI where the latter soon got involved in classification, collection and identification of 400-odd marine species. He discovered a species of fish in 1968 while working with Jones; the chocolate brown fish was named Abudefduf Manikfani. In 1980-81, Manikfan got an opportunity to showcase his expertise in traditional shipbuilding on the international stage when Tim Severin, the British seafarer famed for replicating spectacular journeys of explorers, asked him to supervise the building of Sohar, a replica of the ship in which Sindbad the Sailor of the Arabian Nights is believed to have sailed. Severin met Manikfan in Calicut and together they arranged the Aini wood from Kerala to build the ship. Around four tonnes of coir husk rope came from Lakshadweep to stitch the planks of the 26 metre-long ship. It was built the traditional way by hand-sewing wooden planks with the hand-rolled coconut rope without using a single nail and powered by two triangular sails. The 30- member team of ship builders under Manikfan camped at the port town of Sur in Oman to build the ship in less than a year.
From the seas to the skies, the intellectual pursuit he was perhaps most invested in was to develop a lunar Hijri calendar, “the most scientific way of calculating months and years”. It was published in 1993. If the lunar calendar is followed, he says, it would ensure that key Muslim days including Ramadan fasts and Eid could be observed and celebrated in a uniform manner across the world. He has travelled extensively to popularise his version of the calendar and to convince authorities, including those in Saudi Arabia, but it hasn’t found widespread acceptance. In the course of his travels, he became conversant in up to 14 languages. Each of them, he says, opened up new cultures, people and perspectives before him. “I had picked up Urdu, Malayalam, English and Arabic early on. It was when I went to Calcutta on a voyage along with sailors from Minicoy that I collected books to learn Latin,” he says. Over the years, he learned French, Russian and other languages. Manikfan didn’t give any of his four children formal education. His son is a marine engineer and two of his daughters are teachers. The youngest daughter is also self-educated.
A strong exponent of equitable development, he says most problems of the modern world stem from over-exploitation of natural resources. “Raised in the islands where natural resources are limited to fish, coconut and some agricultural produce, self-reliance and frugality got instilled in me early on. I had lived on an almost coconut-based diet for four years without any issues as part of experimentation in Minicoy,” he says. Manikfan could well be the last of the polymaths in an age which reveres specialists and where education is highly compartmentalised. “Every student is unique but formal schooling just doesn’t take that into account. I managed to explore and understand the world around me just because I broke free from that system,” he says, his eyes unwavering. “The educational system should teach children how to live but sadly it is the one thing that is lacking.”
