Zohurul Hoque. Picture by Biju Boro

Guwahati, May 19: There could not have been a better gift for the Muslim community of Assam than Zohurul Hoque’s translation of the Quran into Assamese and making it available on the Net.

With this, Hoque has become the only person in the world to have translated the Quran in more than two languages — English, Bengali and Assamese — a feat recognised by the University of Jeddah.

The Holy Koran Publishing Project, a voluntary organisation based in the US, has arranged to place the entire Assamese translation on the Internet. The URL of the website is www.qurantoday.com.assamese.htm.

“A few more additions have to be incorporated into the Net to make it fully comprehensive, which should be over by the year end,” Hoque said.

“A UK publishing company had promised to publish 21,000 copies of the Quran in Assamese but had asked me to make some financial contribution, which I could not do,” Hoque said.

There are 25 different translations of the Quran available on the Net before the Assamese translation was made available.

Hoque said the US Project then approached him for translating the Quran into Assamese and also promised to place it on the Net. Hoque spent four months in the US to finish the work.

He said the translation is formatted in PDF files and the readers can easily access the files without any need to download fonts to read it.

Born on October 11, 1926, he had scored the highest marks in Arabic and his interest in writing was partly triggered by an old, rickety Remington typewriter that he purchased (and still owns) as a high school student during World War II.

Hoque published the Bengali translation of the Quran in 1985 after 12 years of hard work for the benefit of the Bengali Muslim population living in Assam.

From 1990-93, he started working on the Assamese translation of the Quran and published it in three volumes in four years. After that he started working on the English translation, which was published in 2000.

Age was no deterrent in learning new things and at 70, he learnt Adobe PageMaker and Photoshop, which helped him complete the page formatting of the translation, the commentary on the Quran and most of the formatting of the Arabic verses included in this book.

He also worked as director of health services, Assam, and was a national consultant to the World Health Organisation.