Choosing to stay - Memoirs of an Indian Muslim

Author: Nasim Ansari
Translator(s)/ Editors(s): Ralph Russell
Publisher: CP Free Press
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 196
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9608380302

Description

English version of Jawab-e-Dost (A Friend's Reply) which was written in response to a highly acclaimed book Awaz-e-Dost (A Friend's Voice).

Masood and Ansari had studied together in the Aligarh Muslim University. The former's book, published in Pakistan in 1972, is a treatise on the generation of educated Muslim young men who studied at Aligarh and were in favor of the partition of the subcontinent; many of them came to join the civil or military bureaucracy of the new nation and played a significant part in its affairs.

Ansari's book, serialized in a Lucknow newspaper before coming out as a volume, deals with the diametrically opposite situation of those Muslims of a similar educational background who consciously chose to stay in India and participate in the affairs of the Indian society as equal citizens.

Through his experiences as a student leader, a surgeon, a teacher and an active member of a very significant minority, Ansari traces the role that the Indian Muslims played and continue to play in the social and political life of India.