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Azadi’s Daughter, A Memoir: Being a Secular Muslim in India

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AuthorSeema Mustafa
ISBN9789386582195
Published LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2017
PublisherSpeaking Tiger
BindingPaperback
Pages208
Ships By2-3 days
SKU: ST-110 Categories: , Tag:

Description

A fascinating account of an audacious woman’s journey and a rapidly vanishing way of life, Azadi’s Daughter is both a personal memoir and a political commentary. Journalist Seema Mustafa writes evocatively of the secular, pluralist India of the 1960s and ’70s, chronicling her life as a Muslim woman born into the nationalist, progressive Kidwai family in Lucknow. As a child, her life was untouched by communalism, and even as she realizes that this was not the case for many, her book is a testament to the syncretic nature of secularism, in which a staunchly Muslim household was not limited to conservative interpretations of Islam.
Seema Mustafa incisively charts the events which have slowly begun to erode this tolerant, diverse ethosÑthe government’s handling of the Shah Bano case in the 1980s, the demolition of the Babri Masjid in the 1990s, the mass arrests and torture of Indian Muslim youth in the aftermath of the 9/11 bombings, and the Gujarat riots of the 2000s. She also examines the current state of secularism where people face marginalization and the threat of violence merely for exercising their right to religion, to livelihood and even to what they eat.
This book should set to rest lazy assumptions about Indian Muslims, and women in particular. Even as it highlights the dominant concerns of Indian MuslimsÑsecurity, employment, education, housingÑit also underlines their abiding faith in Indian democracy and its pluralistic ethos. A memoir that defies old assumptions and prejudices, Azadi’s Daughter is an important account of Indian Muslims in the modern world.

About the author
Seema Mustafa has been a journalist since the age of 19. She has worked in almost all major Indian newspapers and written for many othersÑThe Pioneer, The Patriot, The Indian Express, The Telegraph, Economic Times, Asian AgeÑduring a long career that has taken her across the globe on assignments. She has covered conflict in Assam, Punjab and Kashmir; communal violence in different states of India; and was the first Indian journalist to cover the first war in Beirut. In addition, she has worked for a couple of years as the National Affairs Editor for the News X television channel. She is presently the Founder-Editor of The Citizen, an online initiative.

Additional information

Author

ISBN

Published Language

Publication Year

Publisher

Binding

Pages

208

Ships By

2-3 days