Personhood as a product of many contexts

TRANSLATION } OF THE FIRST SINDHI NOVEL BY A WOMAN

- Akankshya Abismruta [e-mail]

The first woman writer to publish a novel in Sindhi, Guli Sadarangani's Ittehad (1941) is an interfaith love story. Despite this achievement, however, she has largely gone unrecognised. Perhaps her work was too idealistic; perhaps this near-erasure is emblematic of the state of the Sindhi language in independent India, where it is the first language of Hindu Sindhis, who arrived as refugees during Partition.

The novel's subject — a Hindu woman who marries a Muslim man without converting to Islam - is a contentious one even today. First published in undivided India, Ittehad was later expanded and republished as Milaapi Jeewan in 1983.

Rita Kothari's translation is an attempt to give this underrated writer her due. This is the story of Hamid, “a gentle and low-key person” with “a big heart and a sharp mind,” who comes from a progressive Sindhi Muslim family. His parents support education for women, and his mother actively engages in community efforts. Armed with a PhD from Cambridge, Hamid returns to India and meets his friends Vijay and Aruna in Almora, with whom he engages in lively discussions on equality beyond caste and religion, and advocates for women's rights. Through them he meets Asha, the daughter of Vijay's conservative uncle.