Omair Ahmad, author, Jimmy the Terrorist
There is no one identity that is ‘Indian Muslim’. Muslims live across the length and breadth of India, and so the lives they inhabit - in Punjab, in Assam, in Bengal, in Karnataka, all have their own rhythm and feel defined by the place - its music, food, and even ways of praying. To represent Indian Muslims well, you have to represent all of India well, and that is a huge ask. Furthermore, writing in English has largely been dominated by writing about the big cities. Half of the Indian Muslim population lives in the economically struggling states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, and Assam. These states, and their inhabitants, usually get a miss in Indian literature in English.
You don't have to be Muslim to write sensitively about Muslims, a writer does not have to be the subject. Mukul Kesavan's "Looking Through Glass" is a great example. The Kashmiri Muslim character in Mahesh Rao’s One Point Two Billion is also lovingly brought out.
Zehra Naqvi, author, The Reluctant Mother
True, the stories of Indian Muslim women have not been adequately represented. However, the situation is changing with time. Muslim women are coming in numbers and telling their stories, and those are not partition or riot memoirs. For instance, Reema Ahmad’s book Unparenting talks about a Muslim woman’s journey after divorce, and it explores ways to raise children. Teresa Rehman’s book Bulletproof talks about her journey as a journalist. Annie Zaidi has also spoken about nation and belongingness.
However, there are significant challenges Muslim women have to face in terms of penning their experiences. On the one hand, they have to deal with a lot of Islamophobia. Muslim women are often not included in the list of Indian writers. They have to go through patriarchal notions that exist within the community. I have also been accused of fostering Islamophobia many times for penning my experience, which criticises many practices of my community. But there will always be challenges, and writers are also overcoming them.
Zeyad Masroor Khan, author, City On Fire
It is a problem of binary. A Muslim is considered either a traitor or too loyal to the state - both of these ideas dehumanise them and turn them into images instead of actual people. Muslims are humans too, and they can do good or bad—the pre-conceived attitude creates invisibilisation. Writers like Premchand looked at Muslim lives, their problems, and traumas in works like Idgah. Modern-day writers have failed to do this due to their bias of seeing Muslims as either good or bad, or in other simplified images.
Nusrat F Jafri, author, This Land We Call Home
When I wrote my book, This Land We Call Home, it was welcomed by people from across religions. So, I do not think that the audience will not welcome me, or, for instance, any other authors, if they want to see the world through the lens of a Muslim protagonist. Yes, there are fewer narratives by Muslim women, and I believe greater access to education is key to changing that.
Abdullah Khan, author, Patna Blues
It is true that the cultural diversity among the Indian Muslims has not been talked about. The primary reason is that there are not many authors from the community or from middle-class or lower-middle-class backgrounds writing in English. English is still considered a language of a certain class, and it needs some amount of money to learn that. As a community, which is financially not so well off, a large section of Muslims, hence, do not have the privilege to learn that language. Hence, the lives of the small towns or villages, where the majority of the Muslims live, go missing. I grew up in villages, studied in a madrasa, and later decided to write in English. But you will not find many like me writing in that language.
Lopa Ghosh, author, Age Of Mondays
Characters are born of stories – their identity, religion and other matters are just minor details. It is the voice in which they speak about their lives that matters to me. Incidentally, in my novel Age of Mondays, there are several Muslim characters - a little girl Armish whose Nani's house is barricaded, Mian Pagla, a Jugnu or legendary healer who followed the river. They bring with them different contexts and realities of Muslim lives. Those distances and longings shape and mirror my protagonist, ten-year-old Narois's, sense of displacement. Stories and the people who bear those stories are rivers that flow through the act of writing.