Love in the time of Hate

Once you and I were friends, whether you remember it now or not--Momin Khan Momin

This is a book about love—love for one’s country and for all that goes to make it one we can be proud to belong to. Poetry, it has been said, flourishes when all else is uncertain. With that in mind, renowned literary historian and translator, Rakhshanda Jalil, uses Urdu poetry to look at how the social fabric of secular India is changing. Rakhshanda delves into the past, to the events that have threatened communal harmony, from the bloodletting of partition, or the politics of successive elections, to communal riots, Mumbai, Gujarat and so on, to the present moment, to recent events around Ayodhya, cow slaughter and ‘love jihad’.

The book is divided into four sections: politics, people, passions, places. Strewn with delightful, thoughtful Urdu couplets that bring depth, lyricism and gravitas to the narratives, the writer cautions us against current popular sentiments based on hating the ‘other’. Living in an India that now requires us to be resolutely one or the ‘other’, all of us are losing the wonderful capacity to contain within ourselves many seemingly diverse ideologies and beliefs which is a motif that is reiterated through the verses and words in this book.