Living Together Separately

In this significant work, Mushirul Hasan draws on the family history of the Kidwais of Bara Banki district of the United Provinces to provide an engaging and colourful account of the qasbati life in colonial Awadh. Professor Hasan invokes a fragmanet of Bara Banki's past and present, highlighting the guiding principles of the qasbah people, whether expressed in rituals, in religion, fairs and festivals around shrines, in political activity, in inter-community relations, or in the routines of daily life. He profiles the life and times of many individuals hailing from the qasbati milieu who became leading personalities in various fields in independent India. The most important of these was Rafi Ahmad Kidawi, who hailed from the family whose story forms the core of this book. What was unique about life in the qasbah was the pluralism and mulitculuralism that characterized it, and it is this aspect of qabati culutre that the author focuses on. The author ends with an evocative concluding chapter on the consequences of Partition on the social make-up of the district of Bara Banki, leaving behind at best a fractured legacy of previous syncretism and boundless creativity.