The minority initiative at Anveshi seeks to understand and create a space for the issues of the minorities—religious and sexual minorities—in the context of Telangana and Hyderabad.
Our work on religious minorities began in the context of the communal riots in Hyderabad and the debate around Uniform Civil Code in the 1990s. Anveshi was part of the women’s groups that articulated the problems with the initiative to formulate a Uniform Civil Code without understanding the larger issues related to personal law regimes in the country.
In the 2000s, the changing national and local political contexts enabled newer kinds of probe into history and politics of the Deccan. The changing national situation—communal pogram in Gurjarat, report by the Sachar Committee and the rise of majoritarianism and cultural nationalism—also provided the context for us to ask probing questions about the political stances and role played by Muslim political formations in the Deccan region. The debate around the separate Telangana movement from 2009 provided the context in which the specific questions related to the place of religious minorities in Telangana history and culture were raised and probed. The Minority Initiative at Anveshi, shaped in this dual context, has tried to understand the politics, literature, gender among the religious minorities in Deccan, Telangana and Hyderabad.
The first major activity in this regard was the seminar on ‘Islam in South India’, organised in 2007, that sought to understand the political, cultural and historical situation of the religious minorities in South India. Soon after the intensification of separate Telengana statehood movement provided specific direction to the study of Muslim concerns as it raised many questions about the history of Hyderabad State. The debates about the Muslim question in the Telengana movement around the personality of last Nizam and his rule became the topic of Anveshi’s first Broad Sheet in 2010.
Our study on ‘Crosscurrents and Tensions in Muslim Politics: Post 1990 Scenario” , sponsored by Indian Council for Social Science Research (2010-2012), sought to understand the nature of Muslim political articulations in different domains of gender politics, language and literature and mainstream politics.
The studies inaugurated during this period continued over the last decade in the following ways. During 2011-12, we studied the role of the local Muslim political party in the lives of the people which was done through field work at the office of AIMIM. The longer history of the Muslim question in the region was probed into by looking at the rapidly changing political scenario of the pre 1948 Hyderabad State and the role of the MIM during this time. The insights from these studies fed into our research on modern history of the Hyderabad State, especially of the 1940s.
As part of this work, we have collected and built an archive of the legislative interventions of the Muslim representatives in the Andhra Pradesh assembly from 1960s to 2000s.
Research on Muslim women’s activism and women’s madrassas in Hyderabad probed into the ways in which gender question was being articulated with secularism, religiosity and Muslim identity. The research enabled networking with several Muslim women’s organizations in Hyderabad which in turn deepened our understanding of the Muslim woman’s question.
On another node, our translation of the short stories of a prominent vernacular Muslim author SKY Baba were translated into English as Vegetarians Only. Stories from this volume and the book itself have now become a part of the curriculum in some universities.
Our research findings have appeared in ‘Comprehensive History of South India’ (Volume 9), Indian Economic and Social History Review (2018), Economic and Political Weekly (2012), Contemporary South Asia (2019). A number of essays have appeared in the local newspapers, magazines and blogs on these issues in English, Urdu and Telugu over the last ten years.
We have mentored a few Short Term Fellows who looked into the problems of madrassa-educated students in the universities and history of syncretism in Bengal.
Our engagement with concerns and issues of sexual minorities has proceeded episodically, mostly in public domain activities, on the initiative of individuals and groups identifying themselves as queer and with queer movements. In 2004, a group of students active in Anveshi organized a well attended conference on Sexuality that looked into issues of sexual identity, law, culture and movements around sexual rights. In 2011, our engagement was revived when a newly formed queer group, Wajood of Hyderabad, approached us to hold a two day art exhibition that included performaces. The success of this event then spurred late Vishal Tandon to hold a week-long curated exhibition Exclusively Inclusive with the work of Jehangir Jani, Waswo X Waswo, Qasim Raza Shaheen, Elizabeth M.Stephens & Annie M.Sprinkle, Manjari Chakravarti and Mithu Sen. As Hyderabad began its annual pride walks, the space of Anveshi began to be used for pride preparation. In fact, the Pride banner was quilted at Anveshi office.
Between 2014-2016, Tashi Chodeup, a short-term fellow consolidated this space for queer issues at Anveshi by holding regular discussions and film screenings. In this time, they engaged actively with local Telugu print and television media by participating in various discussions and also was active part of many crisis interventions in the community. Transgender issues were also introduced to Anveshi during this time. Pride walk transformed into Queer Swabhiman Yatra as it turned political by tuning into caste, gender, region and class inequalities. During this time, Anveshi collaborated with Hyderabad Book Trust to launch translation of Revathi’s autobiography into Telugu. Tashi’s project involved anthologizing the stories and life narratives of gay and lesbian individuals writing in Telugu. It is yet to see the light of the day.
In 2019, we kicked into high gear with the two-month course Queer Up! aimed at developing a space to discuss difficult issues and concerns of the sexual minorities in Hyderabad. Over eight weeks, Chayanika Shah, Ponni Arasu, Rachana Mudraboyina, Grace Banu, Vasudha Nagaraj, Pushpesh Kumar, Tashi Choedup, Madhumeeta Sinha facilitated such discussions. Queer Up! continues at a slower pace now, with one talk per month.
Miscellaneous Projects
Md. Mujeebuddin’s study on the Problems of Urdu medium and Madrassa Students in MANUU
Most students who reach MANUU are first generation learners, whose parents are either daily wage labourers in villages or petty businessmen or crafts people or imams of village mosques. Most of them study in the Urdu medium government schools in Andhra Pradesh, Maharastra, Karnataka and a few from Kashmir. They also join after completing their religious education in madrassas of these states. Many of them would have entered through the Distance Education Programme of the University. MANUU is the preferred option for many as there are limited options available for higher studies in Urdu medium, relatively easy availability of seats compared to other Central universities, low fee structure, availability of hostel facilities and the option to continue education in Urdu medium. But once they enter the University they have to listen to lectures, read reference material and write exams as well as thesis in English as many teachers do not know Urdu and have a condescending attitude towards Urdu language and the students. Shocked students embark upon their own English learning programme through self-learning books, seniors and English speaking classes in the city. They often prepare their own course material by translating English texts and reference material into Urdu with the help of dictionaries, which they pass on to the juniors. They learn to scatter the Urdu medium answer sheet with adequate English words so that the evaluating teachers understand what they write.
An essay based on this study was published in the Anveshi Broadsheet on Language ed. by N.Manohar, M.A.Moid and Gogu Shyamala.
In the Mirror of Secularism: Muslim Students in Central Universities (2006)
The aim of this project, undertaken by Shefali Jha, was to assemble a critical, reflective description of secularism, primarily in response to the question: how do we think about the relationship between secularism and minority? The focus of the analysis was the central university as one such crucial space for the fashioning of modern, secular citizens, and the research was carried out in three central institutions – the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad Central University, and Maulana Azad National Urdu University. One of the main arguments was that an abstract definition of secularism, as a set of laws designed to keep order and promote harmony between different religious groups, in the process both instituting and ensuring abstract equality among them, is inadequate to the crisis we are faced with today.
Political History of Old City of Hyderabad
The main aim of this project is to map the reasons for the changing political affiliations in the old city of Hyderabad in the 1950s and 60s. Specifically, the focus is on understanding the reasons for the Communist Party of India’s success in the mid-50s Municipal Corporation elections in the old city followed by their rout at the hands of the MIM (Majlis Ittehad Muslimeen) and the Congress in subsequent elections. M. A. Moid worked on this project.
SNDP and Ezhava Women: Power, Possibility and Predicament
This project attempts to understand the status of Ezhava women in the community organisation Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogum. Ezhava women have not figured prominently in the history of Kerala. This project bridges that gap by documenting the history of Ezhava women and their current status in Kerala society by examining the functioning of SNDP’s women’s wing. P. V. Sreebitha worked on this project.