In the Western view, Jihad is depicted within a framework of communal hostility and destruction, but in the documents of Malabar it is a word of interfaith harmony and peaceful coexistence, Abbas said.
Author of the book ‘Hindu Amir of Muslims: Indigenised Islam from the Indian Ocean Littoral of Malabar’ Abbas Panakkal.Photo | Special Arrangement
Kozhikode :
Contradicting popular narratives put forth by extremist Islamic organisations and the West that portray Jihad as a violent aggression on non-Muslims to establish the supremacy of Islam, is a one originating in Kerala that describes the unified efforts of Muslims and non-Muslims to protect a Hindu king.
Historian Abbas Panakkal’s intriguingly titled book Hindu Amir of Muslims: Indigenised Islam from the Indian Ocean Littoral of Malabar counters the argument that a non-Muslim cannot be the Amir of Muslims, quoting the works of Islamic scholars such as Sheikh Zainuddin Makhdoom and Qazi Muhammad. Some Muslim organisations assert that a true believer should at least strive mentally to establish an Islamic rule, otherwise his/her Islam will remain incomplete.
Abbas argues that Islamic scholars around the sixteenth century had called for Jihad against the Portuguese when the intruders locked horns with the Zamorins. In the Western view, Jihad is depicted within a framework of communal hostility and destruction, but in the documents of Malabar it is a word of interfaith harmony and peaceful coexistence, Abbas said.
“Qazi Muhammad’s poem Fat’hul Mubin narrates an incident during the attack on Chaliyam fort, built by the Portuguese. Zamorin was the ruler and the Muslims had taken a vow to sacrifice their life in the fight for the king. On hearing this, the Hindus felt sad and said that Muslims should not let Muslims die as they are the minority. Finally, they decided to fight together,” Abbas said.
The Qazi conducted prayers for the king and requested all Muslims to pray for the non-Muslim sovereign. He criticised Muslim kings, who signed treaties with the Portuguese and supported their cruelties, the book says.
“Here, jihad was declared to support the local ruler, irrespective of his religion. It was not to crown a Muslim ruler or to turn a Darul Harb into a Darul Islam. Within the Kingdom of Zamorin the Jihad became a tool of accord and interreligious cohabitation,” the book says.
Abbas quotes an incident narrated in Fat’hul Mubin to show the camaraderie between Hindus and Muslims during the siege of the Chaliyam fort.
Zamorin’s mother wrote a letter to the Muslim leaders seeking their intervention and important warriors of the times including Kunjali Marakkar, Umar Anthabi and Abdul Azeez gathered at a mosque in Kozhikode along with the officials of Zamorin to discuss the war strategies.
Tufat al-Mujahidin by Sheikh Zainuddin Makhdoom II, written in the sixteenth century, narrates the privileges enjoyed by Muslims under the rule of Zamorin. Proper burial was given to the bodies of Muslim offenders as per the Islamic custom while the bodies of non-Muslim criminals were left to be consumed by wild animals, says the book.
“Non-Muslim rulers actively supported the construction of mosques and the organization of religious observances, and the state provided funding for the salaries of qazis (judges) and other religious officials, such as mu’addins (callers to prayer). In this pluralistic context, where Muslims enjoyed considerable freedom and leniency,” the book said.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Kerala / by MP Prashanth /August 06th, 2025
A new book sheds light on the ‘Malabar Revolt’ in a region which had a history of Muslims and Hindus collaboratively persevering in their resistance against colonial forces. Other books explore its links to the Khilafat movement and why it is more than a peasant uprising.
Moplah prisoners go on trial in Calicut | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Growing up in Delhi, one had only a limited idea about the resistance movement in the Malabar region. The popular history books tended to treat it at best as a little outpost of the freedom movement. Noted historian Bipan Chandra in India’s Struggle for Independence (Penguin) dubbed it as a peasant movement.
“In August 1921, peasant discontent erupted in the Malabar district of Kerala. Here, Mappila tenants rebelled. Their grievances related to lack of any security of tenure, renewal fees, high rents…the impetus for resistance had first come from the Malabar District Congress Conference at Manjeri in April 1920,” Chandra writes. Sumit Sarkar too, confined himself to calling it an “anti-landlord revolt” in his book, Modern India (1885-1947), published by Pearson. There have been noises about the association with the Khilafat movement in academic circles, though. Just as there are historians who see it merely from a communal prism. A holistic picture had failed to emerge.
Enlightening exploration
Some belated but well-deserved attention on the resistance movement has come courtesy Abbas Panakkal’s Musaliar King: Decolonial Historiography of Malabar’s Resistance (Bloomsbury). Starting off as an exploratory exercise on the 75th anniversary of the movement, Panakkal’s venture transforms into an enlightening journey.
Early in the book, the author writes, “The socio-geographical landscape of our community underwent profound transformations in the wake of the cataclysmic events of 1921-22. This epoch witnessed a staggering loss of lives, the forced displacement of families… The old mosque of Tirurangadi emerged as a veritable repository of memories and narratives, a historical bastion of ideological resistance against the British colonial apparatus.” Fittingly, it was on the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the 1921 resistance that Panakkal started his exploration, speaking to the family members of those directly involved.
Among them was Muhammed Ali Musaliar, grandson of Ali Musaliar, a luminary of the 1921 struggle. The British referred to Ali Musaliar as a king; the locals regarded him as a community and spiritual leader, calling him Musaliar Uppapa. Indeed, if Musaliar was a ‘king’, Malabar was his ‘kingdom’.
Incidentally, the term Malabar is derived from the vernacular Mala, signifying hill, and the affix originating from the Arabic word barr, which means the source of all goodness. The region had a long tradition of anti-colonial resistance dating back to the 16th century. “Muslims and Hindus collaboratively persevered in their resistance against colonial forces,” writes Panakkal.
This strong anti-colonial stance had unforeseen consequences. The British, with not a little help from some Indian officials, sought to undermine the movement. Among them was C. Gopalan Nair, Malabar district deputy collector, who “unabashedly deployed his literary prowess in favour of the British cause”. Observes Panakkal: “The usage of terms such as Malabar Revolt and Moplah Rebellion to delineate these struggles is emblematic of this issue. Revolt itself is a term crafted by colonial administration, characterising violent actions against a recognised government or ruler.”
‘Peaceful coexistence’
There were others, though, whose hearts beat for the locals, luminaries who either linked the resistance to the Khilafat movement or, in isolation, read it as an agrarian struggle. Among them were Saumyendranath Tagore, who regarded it as “an organic and spontaneous ‘uprising’ of the Malabar peasantry against British imperial rule” and E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who too “didn’t discount the role played by agrarian discontent”. There was a common thread: the oppression and exploitation meted out by colonial officials and landlords was no less severe upon the Hindu peasants as they were on their Muslim counterparts. Writes Panakkal, “The Malabar narrative heralded a rare phenomenon: the harmonious convergence of Hindus and Muslims. This coalition was underpinned by a shared objective — to oust the oppressor — and a collective aspiration for a peaceful coexistence in the region.”
It is something with which even R.N. Hitchcock, police superintendent of Malabar, agreed. As written by N.P. Chekkutty in Mappila and Comrades: A Century of Communist-Muslim Relations (Other Books). “Hitchcock also reveals that Hindus were involved in the rebellion, at least in some parts of the affected areas. ‘The Hindus took an active part only in the extreme south-eastern area of the Valluvanad taluk and in small numbers for a concise time. They were then responsible for much property damage’.” In his persuasively argued book, with much of the focus on the post-resistance time in the late 1930s and 40s, Chekkutty also talks of the rebels not harming any substantial section of the local population before going on to document the failure of the Congress to retain local Muslim support after the resistance movement. It was a vacuum which both the Communist Party of India and the All India Muslim League attempted to fill.
The Khilafat angle
Interestingly, against this background of common cause transcending the confines of faith came the pan-Islamist Khilafat movement. Things became even more ironic as Malabar’s historical tapestry of anti-colonial resistance “had been woven with threads of unity binding Muslims and non-Muslims in a shared ‘jihad’ to safeguard the throne of the Hindu king, the Zamorin of Calicut,” as analysed by Panakkal. Khilafat, Non-Cooperation, Mappila, with seemingly disparate social elements, all fused to bring about a strong anti-colonial movement.
Indeed, here both the communities enjoyed a rare camaraderie, and there was a happy collective involvement even in religiously significant events like the nercha and utsavam. During the latter, Muslim families returned with bags full of jaggery candies, much like Ali Musaliar used to do for Amina, his daughter. Sums up Panakkal: “The experience of Muslims and Islam in South India is different from the experience in North India, and this is not trivial.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books> Bibliography / by Ziya Us Salam / September 18th, 2025
Tushar Goel’s film, ‘The Taj Story’, has reignited controversy over the Taj Mahal’s origins, claiming it is a Hindu temple rather than a mausoleum built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The film’s debut highlights debates about the interplay of history and ideology in contemporary India.
Scaffoldings are pictured as restoration work goes on at the dome of the Taj Mahal in Agra on October 17. | Photo Credit: AFP
A little over 60 years ago, Purushottam Nagesh Oak slept and dreamt. He woke up and claimed that the Taj Mahal in Agra was actually a Hindu palace going back all the way to 4th century. Friends of Mr. Oak, an English teacher-turned-lawyer-turned-journalist but never a historian, told him that the Taj Mahal couldn’t have been a fourth century structure as the technology employed in building the Taj in the 17th century didn’t exist back then. The fantasist turned a pragmatist, and Oak brought his argument forward by a few centuries. The Taj was now claimed to be a Hindu temple. This was in 1989. He wrote articles and a book too, but found no support from historians. Even the Supreme Court dismissed his claims as “a bee in his bonnet” in 2000.
But post-2014, history is like a revolving door, you enter and exit at your ease and pleasure. You pick and choose, you circumvent and invent. Dress it up as a movie and claim you are looking at history anew. That is how we get a movie like Tushar Amrish Goel’s The Taj Story, starring former BJP MP Paresh Rawal; just like we had The Kashmir Files and The Bengal Files, starring Anupam Kher and Mithun Chakraborty, all ideological partners of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
With The Taj Story, Goel goes where no historian has gone. Proof, evidence and knowledge amount for nothing as the director makes a case for the Mughal monument being actually a Hindu temple, much like the BJP leader Sangeet Som who called it alternately a Shiva temple and a monument built by a man who incarcerated his father. Mr. Som obviously couldn’t make out a Shah Jahan from an Aurangzeb and hence got mixed up. Much like Oak, oops, Goel, who sees no difference between history and mythology, facts and fantasy.
Recorded history
Talking of facts, the Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan after his favourite wife Arjumand Bano Begum breathed her last after bearing the last of their 14 children. Its chief architect was Ustad Ahmed Lahori. The land for her last resting place was procured from Mirza Raja Jai Singh of Amber who had inherited it from Raja Man Singh, a celebrated general of Akbar, who was Shah Jahan’s grandfather. Shah Jahan compensated Jai Singh with four havelis from the royal property for the massive haveli in which rests Mumtaz Mahal. His firman to Jai Singh, the latter’s agreement and the Mughal emperor’s subsequent letter of granting him four havelis in lieu of one, are all part of history; unlike the claim of The Taj Story which talks in terms of a massacre and genocide of the locals for fulfilling the wishes of an emperor and his consort!
The work on the tomb started in 1632 with the finest craftsmen from across the country and West Asia. The chief mason was Mohammed Hanif from Baghdad who earned ₹1000 a month for his efforts. The pinnacle was built by Qayam Khan of Lahore and its Quranic inscriptions were done by Amanat Khan Shirazi. The mosaic work was done by local Hindu workers. Above all, some 20,000 workmen toiled for 22 years to build the monument to love. Its white marble came from Jaipur, lapis lazuli from Sri Lanka, crystal from China and coral from Arabia. The monument uses the double dome technique, previously seen only in the Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, and never seen in the country before the arrivals of the Turks.
Not the first time
Over the years, many have tried to appropriate credit for its beauty and majesty. In the 17th century, it was claimed by many in the West that the architect of the Taj was Venetian Geronimo Veroneo, a jeweller by profession. Then came the claim by Mughal Beg in Tarikh-e-Taj Mahal that it was designed by Muhammad Effendi, an architect supposedly sent by the Sultan of Turkey. Effendi though was as much an architect as Oak was a historian. In the mid 19th century it was claimed that the monument was the result of the genius of Frenchman Austin de Bordeaux, a jeweller. However, Austin died in 1632, the year the work on the Taj began. With his death all claims of Austin being the Taj’s architect were buried. And facts began to be raised.
As for fantasy, well there is Goel’s film, never mind its claim of presenting the “untold history of the Taj Mahal”. The film, replete with stereotypes of kohl-lined, skullcap-donning Muslims aims at building a nation’s memory on unreasoned mythology, far removed from the well argued debates of history. Much like Oak’s view that Christianity was nothing but Krishan-Niti. Not game for any ridiculous claims in an insipid film which opened with a mere 14% attendance in the first show? Watch M. Sadiq’s 1963-saga Taj Mahal. Sure, you would remember its song, ‘Jo wada kiya woh nibhana padega’, penned by Sahir Ludhianvi and sung with much love by Mohammad Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar. Sadiq’s film with Pradip Kumar and Bina Rai in the lead cast, made no effort at replacing history with mythology.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment> Movies> In the limelight / by Zia Us Salam / November 07th, 2025
Renowned Scholar and Former Jamia Dean Recognized for Five Decades of Academic and Social Contributions
In a grand ceremony held in the capital, the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) conferred the prestigious IOS Lifetime Achievement Award upon Professor Zahoor Mohammad Khan (Z.M. Khan)— an eminent scholar, researcher, author, and former Dean of Social Sciences at Jamia Millia Islamia.
Prof. Khan, who also served as the former Secretary General of IOS, was presented with a citation, memento, and a cash prize of ₹1 lakh in recognition of his outstanding services to education, research, and social development.
Prof. Khan’s illustrious career spans over five decades, marked by his multifaceted roles as an academician, researcher, author, and institution builder. He has authored eight books and dozens of research papers, contributing significantly to the study of political science and sociology in India. During his 23-year tenure as Secretary General of IOS, the institution evolved from a modest initiative into a nationally respected think tank. He also played a pivotal role in launching the IOS Scholarship Programme, which has supported numerous students and researchers over the years.
The IOS Lifetime Achievement Award, instituted in 2007, aims to recognize individuals, organizations, or voluntary groups who have rendered exceptional service to the nation and society, irrespective of religion, caste, or creed.
Previous recipients of this distinguished award include former Chief Justice of India A.M. Ahmadi, Dr. A.R. Kidwai, Prof. B. Sheikh Ali, A.G. Noorani,, Prof. Akhtarul Wasey, Prof. Mohsin Usmani Nadwi Maulana Hakim Abdulllah Mughaisi, and K. Rahman Khan, among others. Prof. Khan’s inclusion in this eminent list was greeted with enthusiastic applause from the audience.
Expressing his gratitude upon receiving the honour, Prof. Z.M. Khan said, Faith in God and the spirit of service are the most precious blessings one can receive. Faith brings with it a sense of responsibility and accountability to the Creator — that is the greatest reward of life. He also acknowledged the crucial role of institutions such as Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia, and the Institute of Objective Studiesin shaping his academic journey.
The ceremony was chaired by Prof. M. Afzal Wani, Chairman of IOS, and graced by Justice Zakiullah Khan (former Judge, Allahabad High Court) as the chief guest.
Distinguished guests included Prof. Akhtarul Wasey (Jamia Millia Islamia & former Vice Chancellor, Maulana Azad University, Jodhpur), Prof. M. Akhtar Siddiqui, Mr. M. Afzal (former MP), and Prof. Furqan Ahmad.
The event began with a recitation from the Holy Quran by Dr. Nighat Husain Nadwi, a welcome address by IOS Secretary General Mohammad Alam, and was conducted by Prof. Hasina Hashia Vice Chairperson of IOS, who also delivered the vote of thanks.
The event not only celebrated Prof. Khan’s extraordinary contributions but also reaffirmed IOS’s commitment to honouring individuals who have significantly influenced India’s intellectual and moral landscape.
source: http://www.radiancenews.com / Radiance News / Home> Latest News> Report / by Radiance News Bureau / November 07th, 2025
Social activist and Former Bihar Minister Parveen Amanullah passed away today in New Delhi. She was suffering from cancer for some time.
The family had moved from Patna to Delhi for treatment. She also went to America for treatment and recovered from there. Her health had deteriorated for two-three days. she passed away today at seven PM.
Amanullah was the daughter of former Kishanganj MP Syed Shahabuddin and the wife of senior Bihar cadre IAS officer Afzal Amanullah.
Before entering politics she was known for her activism, especially in regard to her use of the Right to Information Act, 2005 to bring out the apathy prevalent in government institutions.
Amanullah was elected as a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly in 2010 from the Sahebpur Kamal constituency in Begusarai district as a candidate of the Janata Dal (United) after defeating Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Shreenarayan Yadav.
She became the Social Welfare minister of Bihar in Nitish Kumar’s government and held the portfolio until February 2014 when she resigned from JD(U) citing “governance issues” and “lack of work satisfaction”. She joined Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party two days later.
source: http://www.theindianawaaz.com / The Indian Awaaz / Home> Quami Awaaz / by Indian Awaaz / October 01st, 2023
Indian-American Ghazala Hashmi, who is closely linked with the prestigious Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), has won the Virginia Lieutenant Governor 2025 Election result of which was declared on Monday.
Virginia:
Indian-American Ghazala Hashmi, who is closely linked with the prestigious Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), has won the Virginia Lieutenant Governor 2025 Election result of which was declared on Monday.
A Democrat Party candidate, Ghazala Hashmi, defeated Republican candidate and the state’s first gay statewide nominee, John Reid, to become first Muslim and first South Asian American elected as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, a Republican stronghold.
Ghazala Hashmi polled over 55% votes as against her nearest rival John Reid who got the support of around 44.7% voters. Hashmi had earlier defeated five primary challengers in June, narrowly winning the nomination with 28% of the vote, as per the final result of the Virginia Lieutenant Governor Election 2025.
Ghazala Hashmi was the first Muslim woman to be elected to the Virginia State Senate following her stunning victory over sitting Republican Senator Republican Glen Sturtevant in the 2019 U.S. elections.
Ghazala Hashmi was born in India and emigrated to the US as a child with her family. She is also a former director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning at Reynolds Community College.
Ghazala Hashmi’s AMU Link
Ghazala Hashmi was born to Zia Hashmi and Tanveer Hashmi in Hyderabad in 1964. She spent her childhood days at her maternal grandparents’ house in Malakpet, Telangana.
She migrated to the United States with her mother and older brother as a 4-year-old child to join her father in Georgia.
Ghazala Hashmi’s mother, Tanveer Hashmi, is an alumna of Osmania University’s Women’s College in Kothi from where she did BA and B.Ed before migrating to the United States.
Ghazala’s father Professor Zia Hashmi is the alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) from where he did MA and LLB. He completed his PhD in International Relations from University of South Carolina and soon after began his university teaching career. He retired as the Director of Centre for International Studies which he founded.
Ghazala Hashmi is married to Azhar Rafiq. The couple have two adult daughters – Yasmin and Noor – who both graduated from Chesterfield County Public Schools and the University of Virginia.
According to information available on her official website, Ghazala Hashmi is an experienced educator and an advocate of inclusive values and social justice. Her legislative priorities focus on public education, voting rights and the preservation of democracy, reproductive freedom, gun violence prevention, environmental protection, housing, and affordable healthcare access.
Hashmi spent nearly 30 years as a professor, first teaching at the University of Richmond and then at Reynolds Community College. At Reynolds Community College, Hashmi also served as the Founding Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL).
Former Minister, MLA and BRS leader KT Ramarao has congratulated Ghazala Hashmi on her victory.
“This is massive! From Malakpet to Virginia… Congratulations to Ghazala Hashmi on becoming the first Indian-American Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. There is nothing more beautiful when democracies celebrate diversity of the world”. KTR wrote on X.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> United States / by ummid.com news network / November 05th, 2025
Well-known Mangaluru-based entrepreneur and philanthropist Hashim Khan (45) passed away due to a heart attack in his native village in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.
Khan had travelled to his hometown to attend a family function when he reportedly suffered a massive cardiac arrest.
He is survived by his wife, three sons, and a daughter.
Having arrived in Mangaluru at a young age in search of work, Hashim Khan gradually built a successful business and earned wide respect in the city’s business circles. Beyond entrepreneurship, he was equally known for his acts of generosity and social commitment.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Khan personally distributed food supplies and essential items to needy families, winning the admiration of many.
His untimely demise has left a deep void among the city’s business community and those who benefited from his charitable work.
source: http://www.daijiworld.com / Daijiworld.com / Home> Karnataka / by Daijiworld Media News Network – Mangaluru / November 05th, 2025
There are individuals in smaller cities who have taken upon themselves the task of archiving, preserving, narrating, and circulating historical narratives — all for the love of the place and history. Indore-based Zafar Ansari is one such person who has been painstakingly collecting historical artefacts on Indore since three decades.
Zafar Ansari in his Museum Office. Photo: C. Yamini Krishna
As I was preparing for my research visit to Indore for a study on the princely state of Indore, all I found online were a few articles from Free Press Journal on the city. It was just a glimpse of how much of the ‘national’ media coverage and public history writing is focussed on the metropolitan cities.
Absence, inaccessibility, decay of archives and historical artefacts are constant challenges faced by history scholars in India. The lack of historical consciousness, poor funding, disinterest, discrimination, and destruction of the archives based on the ideology of the ruling disposition are some of the known reasons why such problems exist. These challenges are acute as one moves beyond the metropolitan cities, into the smaller cities and towns.
History in India, has mostly been studied from the perspective of the nation and to such endeavour small places are often insignificant. Also due to the policy of housing all the state archives in capital cities and the absence of efforts to do neighbourhood or local/regional histories, smaller cities almost feel ‘history less.’
However, inspite of the institutional gap, voices from the smaller cities are not silent. Each time I have ventured into these cities in search of archives, I have always met individuals who have taken upon themselves the task of archiving, preserving, narrating, and circulating historical narratives — all for the love of the place and history.
Indore-based Zafar Ansari is one such person who has been painstakingly collecting historical artefacts on Indore since three decades. “It all started when I received the National Youth Award for my social activities in 1994. The then President Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma said, do something great, and then I decided I will build a museum for Indore,”Ansari says with a sparkle in his eye as he narrated his dream to make a museum for his beloved city Indore.
“This will be one of its kind museum, dedicated to the city, telling the story of the city,” he mentioned. His office in Barwani Plaza in Old Palasia, bustling with artefacts, feels like a portal into another time. As one spends time with these objects, they start speaking through the voice of Ansari.
A miniature maker for industries by profession, Ansari spends more than 60% of his income towards the museum. He never lets any historical object pertaining to Indore pass, without acquiring it, sometimes this means he has had to pay very high price. “It is almost like an addiction,” he says, “It has its flip sides. I have never been able to pay my daughter’s education fee before the last date.”
The history walks, myth-busting artefacts and rare photographs
Ansari is also committed towards sharing his collection. He conducts history walks in the city and curates specific objects from his collection to tell stories of the city. Ansari has recently conducted one such walk for some of the dignitaries who had visited India during the G20 summit. He regularly runs a history column in Dainik Bhaskar where he reintroduces stories of the past to Indore’s citizens.
“I don’t just write about Kings, but also about common people, their lives,” he says, what a historian would call the social history of the place.
Through his consistent effort of writing more than 300 essays on history, Ansari has built a cannon of public history for Indore. Sitting among those objects, he narrated how Indore (state) became a commercial centre due to its close connection with opium trade, “Opium would come from Mansur to Indore and then to Bombay. Many traders and merchants from Rajputana and Gujarat settled here to do opium trade with China. After the ban on opium, the trade was converted to cotton industry.”
Ansari is hopeful that his museum will be a pedagogic intervention. “History is not something to be taught in a classroom, it has to be taught in an archive or a monument or on field using objects and artefacts,” he notes. His work with the artefacts also helps him dispel certain myths and false narratives in circulation.
Ansari’s collection has helped writers like Geraldin Lenain to write books such as The Last Maharaja of Indore by providing access to many rare photographs.
A historian or an antiquarian
After meeting Ansari, I was wondering, if there is a term to describe this love for history, something like a cinephile in case of film.
A historian is often a tag used to describe someone who engages in the work associated with history making, professionally, i.e. as a main vocation. A history buff, focusses more on consumption of history and fails to capture the commitment shown by these keepers of a city’s lore. A collector, is often differentiated from an archivist as someone who is more involved in the process of acquiring artefacts, and is not primarily oriented towards providing access. Someone like Ansari, however, who harbours a hope to build a museum, would fall somewhere in between these two.
Cambridge Dictionary offers a word antiquarian, “a person who studies or collects old and valuable or rare objects.” Antiquarianism historically has often had a negative connotation, as someone in an almost ‘mindless’ pursuit of collecting objects and committed to the minute details of it. Historian, on the other hand, is someone who narrativised the past, with the focus on writing.
Historian Rosemary Sweet notes that history writing could be done for political or polemical purposes while antiquarians prided themselves to be impartial and staying true to the material. Antiquarians are often interested even in objects of everyday life which was not of interest to historians. Interestingly, Sweet points out that the contemporary practice of history, associated with archival study, which relies on the details presented by historical artefacts is very close to antiquarianism.
After searching for these variety of terms, I am still left with no word to capture the affective engagement with history which I experienced in the office of Ansari, where history is not just a vocation or a profession, where there is a lot at stake in telling stories of the past, a significant portion of one’s earnings. This voice of history is not a dispassionate, distant evaluation of the past, but is an expression of belongingness.
Deeply personal work like this has larger social implications, it is about communities taking the ownership of their own history, and inculcating historical consciousness among themselves. Such efforts go a long way in forming the first line of defence against vilification of history and weaponisation of history for political gains, of which we are seeing increasing incidence.
C. Yamini Krishna works on film history, urban history and Deccan history. She is a part of the Khidki collective. She currently teaches at FLAME University.
This work was done as a part of the Foundation Project is implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) under the Arts Research programme, made possible with support from BNP Paribas India.
source: http://www.m.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Culture / by C Yamini Krishna / May 16th, 2024
What sets Zeenath Sajida’s creative repertoire apart is its reach, stretching well beyond the domestic concerns and romantic themes one might stereotypically associate with a female writer in mid-twentieth-century Hyderabad.
Image of Zeenath Sajida’s book, translated by Nazia Akhtar
Can humorous essays and fictional stories by a single writer paint a holistically authentic portrait of the Deccan? Particularly when filtered through an urban, middle-class, academic lens?
And what happens when that prose is resurrected for an English-reading audience? Translation demands fluency across traditions, sensitivity to historical currents, and an intuitive grasp of possibilities.
The Deccan Sun, a selection of Zeenath Sajida’s Urdu writings, represents exactly this kind of sustained care. Translated and curated by Professor Nazia Akhtar, this collection brings together nine satirical essays and five short stories that offer bundles of pleasure and provocation.
Hyderabad’s Zeenath apa
A prolific Urdu Professor at Osmania University and a literary icon shaped by the leftist wave that turned many youngsters of princely Hyderabad toward rebellion, the mere mention of Zeenath Sajida still evokes a smile among a fading generation of the city’s progressives.
She produced works of considerable intellectual ambition, including A History of Telugu Literature, written in 1960.
But what sets her creative repertoire apart is its reach, stretching well beyond the domestic concerns and romantic themes one might stereotypically associate with a female writer in mid-twentieth-century Hyderabad. Her questions span the practical and the metaphysical: from work-life balance to memory and ageing. This breadth, alongside her engagement with gender, establishes Sajida as a crystallising force within Deccan literature.
Sadly, Sajida’s writings have suffered critical neglect.
Until now, only a single essay of hers had found life in English—thanks to Nazia Akhtar’s earlier offering, Bibi’s Room. The book also contained tantalising glimpses of Sajida’s inimitable biographical sketch of Makhdoom Mohiuddin, the celebrated poet she exalts and irreverently mocks, even branding him a lapoot (scoundrel). Originally delivered at a gathering in Hyderabad’s Urdu Hall, the event was jokingly dubbed Jashn-e-Makhdoom: part tribute, part roast of a comrade. The sketch hinted at the easy cosmopolitanism that once threaded through the city’s cultural circles.
But those were just glimpses.
The Deccan Sun finally delivers, showcasing Sajida’s full creative range. More importantly, the collection corrects reductive narratives that have long confined Hyderabadi women’s stories to tales of exploitation. It provides crucial cultural clues and gives interior lives the breathing space that more documentary modes often flatten or omit altogether.
Ox at an oil press
Sajida’s central tension seems to revolve around competing hungers: the quiet solitude for reading and writing versus the public acknowledgement of her labour. This struggle animates the essay I Got Myself a Job, where she likens the drudgery of a stagnant workplace to “an ox circling in an oilpress”, grimly awaiting holidays that arrive only upon the death of eminent people. This rage at invisibility, whether in households or intellectual circles, surfaces through observations about poets jealous of Makhdoom’s fame. It’s a pain that resonates universally, yet cuts especially deep for women navigating careers within constrictive social structures.
The satirical method at play follows a deceptively simple pattern. First, open with bland, widely held assertions and then excavate them through unflinching personal experience until readers question her true position. Is she earnest or sarcastic? In If I Were a Man, the writer begins by wondering how delightful male privilege might be. Then she chips away at heroic masculinity, and in the process, exposes revolutionaries for what they truly are.
And that is aimless poseurs marching under the banner of self-respect. The game becomes clear: there’s zero intention of being a man. Her worldview remains stubbornly intact and cheerful as ever.
No one is spared in the collection’s funniest piece, From Storeroom to Museum, be it a famous king, his moustache, historians who invent their own history, or doctors “in whose name graveyards thrive”.
Even the qazis and the rigid interpretations of Islamic law they uphold come under fire. Writing as a Muslim woman in post-Razakar Hyderabad, when her community faced suspicion and strain, turning satire inward and choosing stark honesty over protective silence was no small risk.
Naturally, such wit and honesty carry complications well beyond fatwas.
In Building a House, Sajida wryly catches herself making classist remarks—about servants using her soap when she’s away or taking advantage of her generosity. She knows their innocence is something she ought to celebrate. Still, resisting those barbs proves difficult because their exploitation stings!
Though the translator suggests a self-deprecating tone, the humour feels more defiant than apologetic. Comparing stories with essays reveals Sajida’s evolution. The stories, chosen from Jal Tarang (published in 1947 when she was just 24!), infantilise the titular characters’ desires without retribution, while the essays own those same longings with fierce pride. They embrace her job, gender, and sartorial choices, laughing in the face of absurdity.
My Hens embodies this mature confidence with perfect clarity. Against family objections, the narrator acquires chickens and endures subsequent chaos. These birds become emblems of unruly desire, pushing back against blanket resistance.
She recoils in disgust when some are slaughtered. Nonetheless, the ending is satisfying as she’s already anticipating her next trip to the market. Nothing deters her from wanting. The searing rage and humour intertwine to yield a stance that is utterly assured.
Chasing fireflies
The short stories reveal a younger Sajida, one who is still finding her artistic footing. Where the essays crackle with precision, the stories sometimes drown in ornamental excess, mirroring preoccupations of mid-1900s Urdu readers. The translator’s admission about reducing repetitions confirms the original’s verbosity. Even so, young Sajida possessed remarkable instincts for imagery. In The Stranger, memories become “moments flitting like fireflies on a dark night” before melodrama takes over, chasing those fireflies to a dead end.
Formally, Bibi stands apart, approaching the analytical brilliance of Chekhov’s The Darling—both protagonists transform recurring domestic episodes. Here, Sajida demonstrates her architectural sense, building tension through careful structural pacing. Each section shifts the emotional register while maintaining the same configuration. What begins as amorous banter gradually sours into genuine bitterness, yet paradoxically, the acts of care deepen. The story rewards multiple readings, revealing omissions and callbacks that initially escape one’s notice.
Does loneliness lick or feed on us?
Translations inevitably create friction. Most readers prize smooth prose that overlooks the translator’s labour, but Nazia’s occasional bumps through deliberate references (Hatim Tai, Alif Laila) gently remind us that we are entering a world rooted in another language.
The friction becomes sharper when comparing languages head-on. Professor Shagufta Shaheen’s lively Urdu reading of the story What Time Is It? shows how even a thoughtful rendering of a dramatic line—“loneliness feeds on them like termites”—dilutes its original menace: “tanhai unhe deemak ki tarah chaat rahi hai”. Though it lands smoothly, feed can’t quite match the threat of that slow, intimate licking (chaat). Likewise, scoundrel misses the mischievous warmth of the Dakhni lapoot. English’s imperfect lens will always create such distortions. Yet receiving anything from the previously inaccessible feels miraculous.
The translator didn’t just convert Urdu into English; she collated specific pieces from Sajida’s larger corpus, provided context, secured publication, and built literary networks across years, believing in its relevance. Such cultural stewardship enables conversations that couldn’t have existed otherwise.
Nazia amplifies the Deccan sun’s raging flame like oil feeding a lamp, letting us moths finally gather around it in ecstatic circles.
Surya Bulusu, a Researcher and Software Engineer at Avanti Fellows, is working on open-source tech for government school systems. He lives in Mumbai, but has spent several years in Hyderabad. His write-ups can be accessed on his blog.
Views expressed are the author’s own.
source: http://www.thenewsminute.com / The News Minute / Home> Telangana / by Surya Bulusu / July 18th, 2025
Amirbai Karnataki is one of the earliest Kannada singer-actress who made it big in Hindi cinema. She went to Bombay when women artistes were labelled ‘fallen’, but with grit and passion Amirbai became a star and sang 380 songs in 150 Kannada and Hindi films.
Amirbai’s tale is one of inspiration
For someone who didn’t belong to the gramophone generation but the golden period of radio, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Mukesh, and Rafi ruled our hearts and constituted our imagination of a film song. The same AIR, during a light music programme, had played “Ninnane Neneyuta Ratriya Kalede”. This, was a carbon copy of Lata’s memorable “Saari Saari Raat Teri Yaad Sataye”, but the voice was starkly different. It had a heavy nasal tone, and the flawless rendition had a simplicity to it. The charming song left an indelible mark and I felt I had to recover her voice from pages that were unknown to me.
Amirbai Karnataki was an unheard voice for the Seventies: she was long gone, and had faded into the archives of black and white era of early films. She was someone who lived on in personal memories of people who had known and heard her.
Amirbai Karnataki (1912-65), who sang 380 songs in 150 films, was an early singer and actress of Hindi cinema. This singer who sang the unforgettable “Main to pavan chali hoon bole papiha” and “Bairan Nindiya Kyon Nahi Aaye”, was born in Bijapur in Karnataka. During the 1930s Amirbai was a prominent name along with stars like Suraiyya, Shamshad Begum, Noor Jahan and Zohrabai Ambalewali.
When Lata Mangeshkar came on to the scene, many of these singers moved into the background and for the later generations they remained unknown.
Born into a family of artistes, Amirbai’s parents Ameenabi and Husensaab worked for a theatre company and even ran one for many years. Growing up years for Amirbai and her five siblings was filled with music and theatre, what with many of her uncles and aunts being top musicians and actors in theatre. She lost her father early and her uncle, Hatel Saheb took care of all the children.
During those years, Bijapur was part of Mumbai Presidency and the sangeet natak tradition in these parts was flourishing. The famous Balagandharva’s company and several other theatre companies camped at Bijapur; Amirbai and her sister Goharbai, trained as they were in classical music, impressed these companies with their singing and they began to not only sing for several of them, but also act.
As Rahmat Tarikere writes in his biography of Amirbai Karnataki, Amirbai moved from Bijapur to Mumbai, from theatre to films. But the exact date and nature of these movements and transitions are hard to tell. The story of Amirbai is a sum total of several happenings in a historical period as there are few definitive documents to lead us to any accurate picture. Painstakingly put together by the biographer, Tarikere says that when Amirbai reached Mumbai (it was perhaps the year of Alam Ara’s release, 1931), women who worked in films, theatre and music were still seen as “fallen”.
Women artistes were often ridiculed as “free women” and among the several women performers, Amirbai and her sister Goharbai too, tried to free women of this stigma. In fact, families not only disowned such women, but there were instances of women being killed for choosing the arts.
In fact, Rahmat Tarikere says that the kind of fight these women put up with the social circumstances of those days is no less significant than the freedom struggle itself. If women artistes, in the later years, earned fame and reputation, it was because of the sacrifices these women made. Ironically, two very popular films “Basant” and “Kismet” in which Amirbai acted deals with the plight of actresses.
Amirbai became a very reputed singer and actress of her times. She was highly paid, and even built a theatre Amir Talkies in Bijapur. She travelled the length and breadth of North Karnataka giving programmes related to theatre and cinema.
A singer who sang some of the finest love songs, had a very unhappy love life though. Tarikere writes how her husband, a Parsi actor who played villain in those days, Himalayavala, abused her physically and emotionally. She had to suffer several assaults from him and even separation became a painful affair. Unable to recover from the trauma, she went into oblivion for several years, and later Badri Kanchawala, with his love and care brought back peace into her life.
At the age of 55, Amirbai passed away; Karnataka had been unified by then and the rest of Karnataka hardly knew of her. Even the newspapers reported her death four days later. It was only later that people have slowly learnt of Amirbai’s greatness and how Gandhiji was immensely fond of her rendition of “Vaishnava Janato”.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Deepa Ganesh / February 27th, 2015
