On August 30, Saleem Kidwai (1951- 2021) – medieval historian, writer, translator and queer rights activist – passed away, leaving his family and vast network of friends bereft. He had just turned 70 on August 7 and while he suffered intermittent illnesses, his passing was unexpected. As one of our common friends wrote: “It feels like something has ended.”
Saleem was born in Lucknow, where he spent the first 17 years of his life. At a very young age, he realised he was `different’ so when he moved to Delhi to study history in St Stephen’s college, he had also embarked on a quest to discover new worlds. In 1973, he completed his masters and was hired by Delhi University to teach history. He was in his early 20s and confidently but discreetly gay. He was out to his sisters and many of his friends.
In 1976, Saleem went to Canada to study for a PhD in Islamic History at McGill University but his true mission was to experience greater freedom as a gay man. In Montreal, he revelled in the subculture of gay bars and discos. Here, he met lovers and friends, drag queens and transexuals. His guide and mentor during these heady days was photographer Sunil Gupta, who remained a lifelong friend. Saleem was becoming acquainted with a new social world of camaraderie and conviviality – till one night, when everything changed.
Police raided the gay bar in which Saleem and his friends were meeting. The violence was targeted and brutal. Patrons were assaulted, imprisoned and had charges filed against them. Saleem was horrified to realise that if he continued to stay back in Montreal, he would have to live as an undertrial with the constant threat of deportation. The incident scarred him and made him realise that the liberatory space of the gay friendly bars was embedded in a deeply homophobic society. Much work needed to be done if gay liberation had to be more than a dream. He felt that as an émigré to Canada, he was too vulnerable to make any significant contribution. If he had to make a difference, it would have to be where he belonged. Abandoning his PhD, Saleem returned to India.
Saleem taught history in Ramjas College, Delhi University for 20 years before he took early retirement in 1993. He was a popular teacher, respected and admired for his passion for history. His affability and quiet dignity endeared him to students and colleagues alike. For many of his contemporaries, homosexuality became more acceptable because it was Saleem who embodied it.
Also read: Chimamanda Adichie’s Essay and the Rise of Trans Exclusionary Feminism
Meanwhile, an entire community of queer people seemed to have gathered around him, of which I too had become a part. When he moved to a beautiful apartment in South Delhi, it became a vibrant hub of queer socialising. Saleem hosted parties and loved attending them. He believed that those who were fighting for their rights had to inhabit spaces that were different from the sombre world of protests and demonstrations. For Saleem, as indeed for many of us, there could be no politics of resistance without pleasure.
I most liked to meet Saleem after he had taken his afternoon nap and visitors had not begun to drop in. It was during these quiet interludes that we would look through his remarkable audio-cassette collection of Hindi film songs. They were stacked neatly and alphabetically in rows and rows of customised drawers. Saleem knew something about every film that the songs belonged to. To look through his collection and talk about Bombay films was like embarking on a wondrous magical tour.
A reading of Same Sex Love in India at the Centre for Feminist Legal Research. Photo: Author provided
Saleem loved Hindustani Classical music and his most cherished collection was devoted to Begum Akhtar, who had left a profound impact on him. Saleem and his close friend, the poet Agha Shahid Ali, had formed a close friendship with Akhtar. They were mesmerised by her singing and would make it a point to attend as many of her concerts as possible. She too developed a great affection for them and looked forward to having them in her mehfils. When the mehfil was over and the guests had left, she regaled them with stories about her life. The famous singer with her tawaif lineage and the two queer men, who like her had to live many lives, forged a deep bond. Saleem not only possessed every audio-cassette of Akhtar’s that had been released but had a large collection of his own recordings of her private concerts. After Akhtar died in 1974, he photocopied photographs of her from newspapers and magazines and made them into jackets for the audio tapes. It was a loving and painstaking curatorial feat.
Saleem brought to his collection of music, books and memorabilia, the enthusiasm of the ardent hobbyist and the meticulousness of the serious archivist. He had collected over the years every piece of writing he came across on same-sex love. When he met Ruth Vanita, he discovered that she too had maintained such a personal library. The original inspiration for what would later become the anthology titled Same Sex Love in India: Readings from History and Literature (St Martin’s Press, 2000) lay in these personal archives.
Drawing extensively from Sanskrit and Perso-Urdu traditions, the anthology presents a vast array of writings on same-sex love, thereby reimagining the history of desire. As the manuscript took shape, our collective excitement grew – till every publisher in India turned it down! The book ended up being published in the US, followed the next year with a paperback edition by Palgrave. Finally, in 2008, Penguin took a much-needed corrective measure and published what had now acquired the status of a contemporary classic. The book has dismantled many myths including the common mythology that homosexuality was a foreign import.
Over the three decades of our friendship, if Saleem and I argued about anything consistently, it was about his writing and scholarly practices. I complained that he never ended up writing about subjects that he had special insights into and often left projects unfinished. For decades, Saleem prepared to write the biography of Begum Akhtar but eventually did not. This will remain a huge loss to the cultural history of South Asia. In 2008, he was awarded a senior research fellowship by a scholarly initiative we had started at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC), Jamia Milla Islamia, for which he submitted an excellent proposal titled `Tawaifs in Urdu/ Hindi Cinema: Histories and Reinvention’. He produced a promising first draft but felt disinclined to work on a final version.
Also read: Why the International Law Angle Is Missing From Cases on Same-Sex Marriages
Similarly, I could never persuade him to write about his days with Agha Shahid Ali in Delhi. Shahid’s family had a longstanding relationship with Jamia Millia Islamia and Saleem’s family. He was also a frequent visitor to the MCRC, where two extensive interviews had been recorded with him. It was therefore fitting that when Shahid passed in 2001, his memorial was held at the MCRC with Saleem as one of the organisers. That little has been documented about Shahid’s formative years in Delhi where he was profoundly shaped by his relationship with Saleem and many others, remains a serious gap.
Even when they lived in two different continents, Saleem and Shahid’s relationship was marked by deep affection and child-like competition. Once, when I was visiting Saleem with my friend Sabeena Gadihoke, he showed us a photograph in which a radiant Begum Akhtar stood flanked by Saleem and Shahid. A bit wistfully, Saleem said he wished the photo had only him and Begum Akhtar. Sabeena decided to grant him this wish. Using a process that was the analogue equivalent to the digital photoshop, she removed Shahid from the picture and left only Saleem standing next to Begum Akhtar. Saleem was delighted and the photograph went on to enjoy a long and happy life on his mantlepiece.
If Saleem was a hesitant writer, there was also a scholarly reason for that. He took writing very seriously. Every line he wrote, every contention he made was subject to painstaking self-scrutiny. If the work did not match up to his exacting standards, he would rather perish than publish. Yet, the reluctant writer left behind two extraordinary literary accomplishments in the form of his translation of Qurratulain Hyder’s Chandni Begum (2017) and Ship of Sorrows (2019), both published by Women Unlimited. One of South Asia’s most important litterateurs, Qurratulain Hyder, best known for her epic novel Aag Ka Dariya (River of Fire, 1959), presents a formidable challenge to any translator. Her experiments with form, style and language combined with her erudition, knowledge and vast repertoire of literary and cultural allusions makes translating of her works a daunting mission. Saleem undertook to translate Hyder’s last novel Chandni Begum (1989), which spans four decades, has an elaborate cast of characters and unfolds across different places in South Asia. If Chandni Begum is an engaging read, the credit goes to Saleem who skilfully ensures that the narrative flows seamlessly while the wit, hilarity and riveting plot-twists remain intact.
The success of Chandni Begum and publisher Ritu Menon’s encouragement inspired Saleem to translate Safina e Gham e Dil (Ship of Sorrows, 1952), Hyder’s second novel, where her experiments with style and form, believed Saleem, was a preparation for her third and most famous novel, Aag Ka Dariya. The challenges he faced in translating Chandni Begum returned with some more complications. The original Urdu text was replete with typographical errors that the copy-editor missed. Inverted commas opened but didn’t close and it was hard to figure where the interior voice ended and the narrator’s voice began. There were times when he nearly gave up in exasperation but thankfully he persisted and finished what will always remain an invaluable literary contribution. His masterly introduction to the book will no doubt become essential reading for students and scholars of translation studies, as well as those interested in Hyder. What distinguished scholar and translator M. Asaduddin wrote in his review of Ship of Sorrows merits quoting in full:
“A translated text exists in an independent zone or a contact zone between the source language /culture and the target language/culture and its stature and impact often depends on the quality of mediation by the translator. A translator can make the reputation of a writer just as he can mar it irredeemably. This is greatly relevant for a book like Ship of Sorrows where the efforts and scholarship deployed by the translator in taking the novel to a wider (global) audience are truly impressive. Such a culturally rooted and hugely allusive text must have required much more than a readable linguistic transfer. …. There were other challenges that the translator has met valiantly, so much so that this may be set up as a textbook example of how to translate a certain genre of books that demand scholarly engagement. I applaud Saleem Kidwai’s painstaking efforts and have no doubt that his translation will rescue Ship of Sorrows from the neglect it has suffered in the original language and offer it an honourable habitation and ‘afterlife’ in English.”
(IACLALS Newsletter, Issue 9: 2020)
It is regrettable that Saleem has been taken away just when he seemed poised to produce more of such excellent work.
Saleem was a man who had not a few but many friends. I will therefore end with what may have resonance for all of us who have to live without him for the rest of our lives. These words were inscribed by Shahid in a book of his poems that he gifted Saleem.
In the City of Gardens
Where the city greens escape us
In the heat
In the dust
But here we are
Reliving losses through words and if only one
Could spend a lifetime with
Each friend
And we have though we haven’t.
Shohini Ghosh is Sajjad Zaheer Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia and a friend of Saleem Kidwai’s.
