Rahi Masoom Reza The Question of Text and Context

Introduction – Bodh Prakash

Part 1 Rahi’s Creative Expression

Fiction

1. Aadha Gaon (Extracts)
Translated by Ranjana Kaul
2. Topi Shukla (Extracts)
Translated by Gillian Wright
3. Desolation (Short story)
Translated by Munira Taiyeb

Poetry

4. Introduction to Rahi’s poetry
Sami Rafiq
5. Selected Poems
Translated by Sami Rafiq

Scripting

6. Mahabharat (Extracts)
Translated by Satish Bhatnagar and Shashi Magan
7. On Mahabharat
Kunwarpal Singh

Part 2 Rahi, the Critic

8. Tulsi’s Ramcharitmanas
Translated by Ranjana Kaul
9. Muharram, a genuine Indian festival
Translated by Shubhneet Kaushik
10. The Story- From the Writer to the Producer
Translated by Ranjana Kaul
11. Cinema, Literature and the Curriculum
Translated by Bodh Prakash
12. A Slice of Sunshine
Translated by Ranjana Kaul

Part 3 Assessing Rahi

 Partition, its Aftermath, and Indian Muslims

13. Memory, History and Fictional Representations of Partition
Alok Bhalla
14. Partition, Nationalism and the Indian Muslim
Virendra Yadav

Translated by Meenakshi Faith Paul
15. Society, Language and Nation in Rahi Masoom Reza’s Aadha Gaon and Topi Shukla
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui
16. The Tragedy of Partition and Women in Rahi’s Fiction
Ambreen Aftab

Translated by Bodh Prakash

Poetry, Progressive and Modern

17. Resistance and Representation: Rahi Masoom Reza’s 1857
Anisur Rehman
18. Introduction to Mein ek Pheriwala
Dharamvir Bharti
Translated by Sami Rafiq
19. Rahi Masoom Reza’s Writings and Contemporary times
Shakeel Siddiqui
Translated by Bodh Prakash

Language and Script

20. Rahi’s Language opens a new Window
Abdul Bismillah
Translated by Meenakshi Faith Paul

21. Rahi Masoom Reza and the Discourse on Language
Mohammad Asim Siddiqui

22. Tracing Shifts in the Linguistic and Communal Dynamics of India: A Re-reading of Rahi Masoom Reza’s Topi Shukla
Bharti Arora

Part 4 Translating Rahi

23. Translating Rahi Masoom Reza’s Aadha Gaon and Topi Shukla: A Critique
Nishat Haider
24. On translating Aadha Gaon
Gillian Wright
25. Re-ceiving Topi Shukla: Then and Now
Meenakshi Shivram

Part 5 Conversations

26. Rahi Was Dead Against Narrow-mindedness: Kunwarpal Singh in Conversation with Devendra Gupta
Translated by Girija Sharma
27. The Muslim Society was Created on the Basis of the Hindu Society: Dr. Abdul Bismillah in Conversation with Chandradev Yadav
Translated by Girija Sharma
28. May the Conversation not stop (between Ali Sardar Jafri and Dr Rahi Masoom Reza)
Translated by Bodh Prakash

Biography

Bodh Prakash is former Professor of English at the School of Letters, Ambedkar University Delhi. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Strasbourg and the College of Wooster, and a Long Room Hub Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. A member of the international SPECTRESS programme on Cultural Trauma, his work focuses on the Indian Partition of 1947. His major book is Writing Partition: Ideology and Aesthetics in Hindi and Urdu Literature. He has also co-edited Cultural Diversity, Linguistic Plurality and Literary Traditions in India (University of Delhi). He has engaged with the afterlife of the Indian Partition in independent India in many of his writings.