![]() In one of your articles for a news website, you wrote about how ancient poetry had a lot to do with farmers and their lives. Considering the recent crisis farmers are in, do you think the literature community is helping? A writer must speak up for their age or else find another calling!ĥ. (We kept writing passionate blood-drenched narrativesĮven though our hands were chopped off for it)Įvery age has its tyrannies. Har-chand iss mein haath hamare qalam huwey Likhte rahe junoon ki hikaayat-e khoon-chakaan In a time in India where dissent is being punished, how do you as a writer/critic continue to put your views across? What would you say to other writers/critics? I am proud that Hindustani Awaaz has no bank account we take no money and we give none to those who work with us.Ĥ. In doing so, it also seeks to showcase the rich pluralistic heritage of India that is also known as Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. With this, I am trying to establish, repeatedly, that much can be done without any funds whatsoever. In the broadest sense, it endeavours to provide a platform for scholarly and non-scholarly views and voices in Hindustani on Hindustani. It seeks to popularise various elements culled from the different genres of Urdu and Hindi language and literature. I set up Hindustani Awaaz in 2003, single-handedly and with no financial support, to position and promote Hindustani literature and its rich oral tradition. What change did you hope to bring about when you started it and how it that going now? ![]() Tell us a bit about your organisation Hindustani Awaaz. A love for heritage, for books and reading was in the very air that I breathed as a child!ģ. Our parents would take us for picnics to nearby old monuments and Delhi has so many of them everywhere. As a middle-class family, we may not have had many luxuries but we always had money to buy books. My siblings and I had enough books to start a library. ![]() In our house too, we were surrounded by books. After junior school, I would stay back to go home with her she encouraged me to read. My mother was the senior school librarian in our school. What inspired you to start writing about Indian history and heritage? True religion, we were constantly told, is a private and personal matter. We were religious, yes, but we were taught not to wear our religion on our sleeve. And yes, secularism was an article of faith in my family. We were mindful that we had the greatest privilege, namely education and education alone was the great leveller - not money, not class or caste. ![]() You didn't waste food, you didn't overspend, you didn't leave the tap or the light on because - as you were repeatedly told - someone, somewhere in our country was trudging miles to fetch water or was studying under the light of a flickering lamp. Waste-not, want-not was pretty much a mantra. How different was India then compared to India today, in terms of secularism?īorn in 1963, I grew up in an India that still had vestiges of Nehruvian idealism and born to parents who were fervent admirers of both Gandhi and Nehru, I was raised to believe in the values of thrift, self-sufficiency and independence. In an interview, she tells us all about her love for Indian literature and why writers need to keep speaking up against the many injustices occurring today. The Mahatma award is founded and constituted by philanthropist and social entrepreneur Amit Sachdeva to honour social impact leaders and change-makers. Recently, she was rightly rewarded for her work by being conferred the Mahatma Award for her contributions in promoting Indian heritage through literature. She also runs an organisation called Hindustani Awaaz to promote Urdu-Hindi literature and culture, frequently writes opinion pieces for prominent newspapers and translates Urdu poems. With several highly acclaimed books like Invisible City: Hidden Monuments of Delhi and Release & Other Stories, the 57-year-old has made a huge contribution to the promotion of Indian heritage through literature. Rakshanda Jalil tells us about her work and how she is trying to bring back the pluralistic heritage of India.Ī writer, historian, and critic, Rakshanda Jalil has spent decades introducing her readers to Indian heritage, history, and poetry.
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