Ayesha Kidwai
Ayesha Kidwai is a Professor of Linguistics at the Centre for Linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a translator and activist. She was awarded the Infosys Prize in Humanities, 2013. She was the President of the JNU Teachers Association in 2017-18. She is also a women’s rights activist whose focus has been on gender-based violence in university spaces, with special emphasis on the institutional role of anti-sexual harassment committees in the redressal of complaints. In her home institution, she has been actively associated with the Jawaharlal Nehru University Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) from its inception in 1999, and has played an important role in its development. She has written and lectured extensively on the important role that such institutional bodies have in fostering gender-sensitive and gender-just university workplaces.
NIF Books
Appearing for the first time in English translation, In Freedom’s Shade is Anis Kidwai’s moving personal memoir of the first two years of nascent India. It is an activist’s record that reveals both the architecture of the violence during Partition as well as the efforts of ordinary citizens to bring the cycle of reprisal and retribution to a close.
Beginning from the murder of her husband in October 1947, with a rare frankness, sympathy and depth of insight, Anis Kidwai tells the stories of the thousands who were driven away from their homelands in Delhi and its neighbouring areas by eviction or abduction or the threat of forced religious conversion. Of historical importance for its account of the activities of the Shanti Dal, the recovery of abducted women and the history of Delhi, In Freedom’s Shade also has an equal contemporary relevance. In part a delineation of the roots of the afflictions that beset Indian society and in part prophetic about the plagues that were to come, Anis Kidwai’s testament is an enduring reminder that memory without truth is futile; only when it serves the objective of reconciliation, does it achieve meaning and significance.
Purchase: Amazon
Reviews:
Begum Anis Kidwai's memoir captures the social anguish of Partition and its aftermath far better than any novel or academic study. Previously known only to readers of Urdu and Hindi, through the loving labours of Ayesha Kidwai, it is now available to a wider world. To a sensitive and compellingly readable translation, she has added a substantial biographical essay. This landmark work should be read by every thinking Indian'—Ramachandra Guha
'This memoir of Partition brings to life the unknown people and the hidden stories behind the making of India. It relates a story of anguish and courage that belongs to each one of us. And every page of this vivid translation brings us closer to an extraordinary woman, Anis Kidwai, brutally honest but humorous, challenging but hopeful'—Githa Hariharan, author of The Thousand Faces of Night and Fugitive Histories
'Anis Kidwai took up the challenge presented to the witness of history . . . to safeguard a narrative of Partition that goes beyond just dates, to touch upon the things that lie deeper, to use it to face one's own self . . .' —Urvashi Butalia, author of The Other Side of Silence
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