Muslim Politics in India

Hamid Dalwai (Author)
Hamid Dalwai was a social reformer, activist, author and journalist. He was the founder of the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal and Indian Secular Society. His writings include the short-story collection Laat and the novel Indhan.

Dilip Chitre (Translator)
Dilip Chitre was a bilingual poet and critic who wrote in Marathi and English. He was also a teacher, painter and film-maker.

Hamid Dalwai has been called a Muslim modernizer who relentlessly worked towards promoting reason and justice among Muslims. Historian Ram Guha writes, '[He] worked tirelessly to get Muslims to shed their social and religious prejudices. The pursuit of gender equality was of pre-eminent importance to him; and he waged a long battle against triple talaq.'

Born in a lower-middle-class family in rural Maharashtra in 1932, Dalwai was a gifted writer who broke on to the Marathi literary scene as a highly promising writer. His novel Indhan is now recognized as a significant contribution to Marathi literature. Dalwai was attracted by the ideas of Ram Manohar Lohia and became an active member of the Socialist Party.

Dalwai's writing displayed the same passion and forthrightness, eloquence and commitment, which informed all his actions as a social worker. Above all was his courage of conviction, which made him brave the various threats to his life and family. More than once was he physically assaulted.

Dalwai's Muslim Politics in India is arguably the most perceptive analysis of Muslim politics to appear in post-Independence India. It retains the same freshness-and relevance-which it had when it was first published some three decades back. First published in 1968, an enlarged edition was later published under the title Muslim Politics in Secular India by Hind Pocket Books, Delhi, in 1972.

This translation, the first of its kind, is a product of numerous meetings which Hamid Dalwai had with noted poet Dilip Chitre, during which the latter made extensive notes and rendered them into articles in English. It combines his most evocative and fiery essays, and emerges as a fine voice of reason relevant to our contemporary times.