Ittehad: A Life Together

Known and celebrated in her time, Guli Sadarangani, the first woman writer of Sindh, later sank into oblivion. Perhaps this was because she dared to write about a Hindu-Muslim romance that culminated in marriage. The novel that told this story, Ittehad, was first published in undivided India, and later appeared under another title, Melaapi Jeevan. Rita Kothari’s elegant and empathetic translation of the love story of Asha and Hamid teases out the nuances of their understated relationship and reveals how pre-Independence and pre-Partition India held so many possibilities of living and loving together. Perhaps that is why, the translator speculates, members of the Sindhi community trying to find their feet in post-Partition India were uncertain of showcasing a writer whose writings represented a world that no longer seemed possible.

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Guli Sadarangani (1906-1994) was the first woman writer of Sindh. She was a courageous writer who wrote about a difficult subject—Hindu-Muslim relations at a time when tensions between the two communities were growing and the shadow of Partition loomed. In the annals of literature in Indian languages, and more specifically in Sindhi literature, she has remained largely invisible, not only because of her choice of subject but also the language in which she wrote, Sindhi, which itself was not accorded the status of an important literary language. This is the first English translation of her work.

Rita Kothari is professor of English at Ashoka University. An accomplished writer, multilingual scholar and translator, she is also co-director of the Ashoka Centre for Translation. She has translated extensively from Gujarati and Sindhi into English, and vice versa. She has a body of important work on the Sindhi experience of Partition, particularly her book The Burden of Refuge: Partition Experiences of the Sindhis of Gujarat (2009). Her most recent book, Uneasy Translations: Self, Experience and Indian Literature (2022), interweaves her personal journey as an academic into reflections around self, language, and translation.