Public meetings for women, fiery speeches and calls for Hindu-Muslim unity by women, growing membership marked the beginning of women’s full participation in the independence struggle. In 1921, Anis successfully forms a local branch of the Women’s Congress in Masauli. Several women take off their ghunghats, donate jewellery to Congress Committees inspiring many more to join. Gradually, she becomes acquainted with the activism of Begum Hasrat Mohani, Bi Amma, Kasturba Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu as the movement begins to spread. Later, her desire to participate in the Swadeshi movement just like other male members of the family begins to materialise thanks to Rafibhai. She wishes for the skies and craves for changes in her life which are painfully slow to come about after her marriage to Shafisaab at age 15. Young Anis watches her male relatives get education and freedom to move around while she is confined to the zanana after age 12. It is another matter that the sole objective of girls’ education was to make them religious and prevent them from venturing into the business of love and romance! Maulvis and gurus taught Hindi, Urdu, Farsi and mathematics to Hindu and Muslim male children. Goat meat dishes were served at social gatherings and cow was never sacrificed out of respect. Gatherings for qawwalis, bhajans, naats were jointly attended by Hindus and Muslims. Here the Muslims were customarily friends with Rajputs and Pandits who were all deeply religious people who celebrated Basant, Holi, Diwali and Eid with equal gusto. Anis belongs to a large family in a rural milieu marked by a “pure Hindustani character”. It describes how the women of the day including Anis (1906-1982) struggled to join the freedom movement and succeeded after much effort.Īlthough the book is about a bygone era, it has a tremendous relevance today in our religiously polarised times. ![]() It captures the beauty as well as shortcomings of contemporary society and particularly how discriminatory it was towards womenfolk in general. Based on Anis Kidwai’s writings in Urdu and translated by Ayesha Kidwai, it provides a kaleidoscopic view of life and society in Awadh and later on, its peoples’ participation in the freedom struggle. ![]() DUST OF THE Caravan is the memoir of a Muslim woman belonging to a land-owning family in north India in the pre-Independence decades.
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