Goodbye Saleem / सबके मेंटर थे सलीम किदवई
NB: Saleem was a dear personal friend and colleague at Ramjas College, in the University of Delhi. Both of us were also alumni of St Stephens College, albeit separated by a couple of years. He was a gentleman to his core and a brilliant historian. On the rare occasions he spoke in Staff Council meetings, he was heard with great respect. His students loved him: two moving tributes by them may be seen in this post. We shared many experiences during the turbulent years we were there: he retired a year before me, in 1993.
There are deeply personal memories, too. I was present at Saleem's 40th birthday party, that seems so long ago now. And in February 1982, when I was assaulted in consequence of a movement in Ramjas College, Saleem was the first to call my parents in Bombay to inform them of what had happened. Saleem remained intellectually active after retirement, producing two books of high calibre, one on same-sex love in India (co-authored by Ruth Vanita) and the other on Begum Akhtar.
Over the years I became close to other members of Saleem's family, and I share their grief. Saleem lived life on his own terms and maintained a cheerful demeanor throughout the worst times. It was an honour to be his friend. I will always remember him with love and the highest regard as a human being. Goodbye Sallu. May you rest in peace. Dilip
This is a moving tribute by Saleem's student, Sudhanva Deshpande
Saleem Kidwai was my teacher at Ramjas. A brilliant teacher, a thoughtful thinker, wonderful scholar, the nicest man. When I think grace and dignity, I think Saleem. He came out as gay after the time he taught us. The discourse around gay issues was advanced greatly by him and his work. He was a nurturing presence - both as a teacher and an activist. Never sought the limelight. Will never forget his classes.
We called him Prince Saleem (not to his face) because there was something regal about him - he cut such an attractive figure in his exquisite chikan kurtas and leather sandals, which were rumoured to have been hand made specially for him by a master craftsman in Pakistan. This was probably untrue, or greatly exaggerated, but if there was one person you could believe this about, it was Saleem. He gave us a perspective about the early Sultans of Delhi in a most unusual way — by talking about what it might have meant to be a common citizen at the time.
He also upturned my received notions of Akbar and Aurangzeb, without ever judging them, as rulers or persons. I was lucky to have been taught in a stellar history department, and Saleem personified all that was exciting and noble about it. Saleem, prince among teachers, there’s a star shining brighter than usual in the sky tonight.
#ramjascollege #ramjashistory #amazingteacher
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सबके मेंटर थे सलीम किदवई
रामजस कॉलेज का इतिहास विभाग दिग्गज इतिहास के प्राध्यापकों से भरा था। ख़ासतौर से, मैं जब 1983-86 के
बीच इतिहास का विद्यार्थी था। उस विभाग में सलीम किदवई भी थे जो मध्यकालीन इतिहास पढ़ाते थे। क्लास
ख़त्म होने के बाद अक्सर मैं कई सवाल पूछता ताकि जिन बातों को मैं नहीं समझ पाया हूँ वह मेरी समझ में आ
जाएँ। उनके धीरज और नरम व्यवहार का ही नतीजा था कि वह कई बातों को फिर से समझाते थे।
रामजस कालेज में पढ़ना और सलीम किदवई की शख़्सियत के प्रभाव से अछूता रहना नामुमकिन बात थी। मुझे
पता ही नहीं चला कि कब मेरे साथ महज़ एक प्राध्यापक ही नहीं बल्कि बतौर रास्ता दिखाने वाला एक सलाहकार
भी जुड़ गया। अपने फैसले लेने की दुविधा के धुंधलेपन को वह अपने मज़बूत तर्कों से लगातार आसान बना देते।
अपनी पैनी नज़रों से वह सदैव दिशा सुझाने का प्रयत्न करते। कॉलेज की ड्रामा सोसायटी के साथ नाटकों में भाग
लेने पर मेरी अभिनय प्रतिभा को भविष्य का विकल्प बनाने की सलाह देने में भी कोई देरी नहीं दिखाई बल्कि मुझे
जामिया मास कम्यूनिकेशन में सिनेमा की पढ़ाई के लिए प्रोत्साहित भी किया था।
तरक्कीपसंद संगीत और नाटकों के रास्ते की बाधाओं को भी बखूबी जानते और समझते थे। एक मर्तबा कॉलेज में
मंच नाटक के दौरान किसी विरोधी पक्ष के लड़कों ने नाटक के दौरान अंडे फेंके। हमने विरोध के तौर पर नाटक
रोक दिया। हम नाटक को आगे जारी रखना चाहते नहीं थे। तब सलीम ने आकर अपने सहज अंदाज़ में समझाया
कि अगर हम अपना नाटक पूरा ख़त्म नहीं करेंगे तो भविष्य में भी कॉलेज के अंदर कभी कोई विद्यार्थी नाटक
करने की हिम्मत नहीं दिखायेगा। क्यों सांस्कृतिक प्रदर्शन जारी रखना ज़रूरी है, कैसे प्रगतिशील रंगकर्म
दक्षिणपंथियों के निशाने पर रहा है और ये सब जारी रह सके इसका पहला सबक देने वाले भी सलीम किदवई थे।
मुझे सबकुछ याद है कि दिल्ली की गर्मी का सामना करने के लिए अगर कोई तैयार नज़र आता था तो वह भी
सलीम किदवई होते थे। इस्त्री किए हुए सफेद चिकन का कुर्ता पहने अगर कोई आँखों के सामने आएगा तो वह
कोई और नहीं वह सलीम ख़ुद होंगे। उनका सेवा संगठन के साथ कार्य सदैव याद किया जाएगा।
आज दिल्ली के स्कूलों में मेंटरशिप को अहमियत दी जा रही है। फिल्मी जगत के जाने-माने चेहरे को उसका
प्रतिनिधि बनाया जा रहा है ताकि स्कूल के विद्यार्थियों को दिशा दी जाए। इन गतिविधियों से मुझे सलीम किदवई
की याद बार-बार मस्तिष्क में उभर रही है और मुझे महसूस हो रहा है कि क्यों रामजस कॉलेज और विशेषकर
इतिहास विभाग का योगदान कई गुना बढ़ जाता है। आज जिस मेंटरशिप को खड़ा करने का प्रयत्न हो रहा है, वह
हमको सलीम किदवई जैसे प्राध्यापकों से मिला था। यही वजह है कि आज हम आपसी भाईचारा और सौहार्दपूर्ण
माहौल को बिगाड़ने वाली ताकतों को दूर से ही पहचानने की क्षमता रखते हैं। इसके लिए सलीम किदवई की
भूमिका को सदैव याद करेंगे। उनके दिये सबक को जिंदा रखेंगे। मंच पर नाटक रूकेगा नहीं वह जारी रहेगा।
आपका सदैव,
ऐश्वर्ज
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Tribute by Paola Bacchetta
Last night I received
the news that the incomparable Saleem Kidwai has passed. I was so devastated,
speechless, wordless. This morning I am equally devastated. This is the end of
an era.
I first met Saleem in
the 1980s in Delhi. I was a student and activist. Saleem was a brilliant
historian at the university and a very committed queer activist. We co-founded
a queer activist group, The Red Rose Group, with several others (Siddhartha,
Sandhya, Giti, Sonia, Sanju). He was so very gentle. Also fiercely protective
of our generation of queers. I have so many beautiful memories of Saleem in
meetings, Saleem at collective dinners. Saleem and I walking and talking.
Saleem on my terrace deep in conversation. Dinner or tea at Saleem's home. The Red
Rose group at India Cafe. Deep in conversation with Siddhartha who is no longer
with us. Saleem the night Siddhartha (Gautam Gupta) passed away. He sat on the
floor next to his body and cried all night. We held hands, cried together.
Later Saleem came to the U.S. to work on his co-edited book Queering India. Afterwards he went to Boston to visit his childhood friend, our mutual friend, Shahid (Aga Shahid Ali). I was at some conference in Boston and we planned that afterwards we three would spend time together at Shahid's home. Following that the plan was for Saleem and I to travel to NY together for a vacation. But Saleem fell very ill at Shahid's home - massive heart attack. Shahid was extremely upset and drove into Boston, to my hotel at the conference, to tell me and to take me to Saleem. I left the conference immediately to go with Shahid to the hospital to be with Saleem. It was terrifying for Shahid because it was the same hospital where his mother had died. We did not know it then but it would be the same hospital where Shahid himself would die. So many memories of those 10 days at the hospital.
In light of the heterosexist queerphobic notions of family that regulated hospital visits, we decided that we would pass Shahid off as Saleem's brother and pass me off as his wife. That way we could stay with him almost 24 hours a day. We slept on the hospital furniture. The hospital staff was extremely curious about why a patient's brother and wife would sleep on the same couch. We whispered innumerable jokes to each other about it; then the staff wondered how can these two family members laugh so much. We were both so upset, it was our only means of relief.
We went home from time to time to
Shahid's to make food for Saleem. A few times at home we re-visioned the film
about Begum Akhtar that Shahid and Saleem had made together in their youth. Our
Sallu had a massive by-pass operation. I went with him right up to the actual
operating room, and then was told I could not go any farther. After the
operation Sallu recovered well. When he was strong enough we brought him home
to Shahid's. Later he spent several weeks recovering in New Jersey. Then he
returned to India.
I am flooded with
decades of memories right now. Sallu at India International House in Delhi.
Sallu at music concerts. Sallu and I visiting the lovely hijira home in old
Delhi the night of their child's second birthday. (Sallu remarked to me as we
entered "I am the most butch person in this space." And I replied
"No Sallu, I am.").They had never met a lesbian before and so they
wanted to take picture after picture of me. And of course I obliged. We had
such a beautiful time there with the sisters and siblings.
Decades of times
together. How we laughed together. All the times we spent together with Siddhartha,
also at Sonia's and Sandhya's, at Manjari's. All the planning and envisioning
together, for queer liberation. How absolutely brilliant Sallu was. An
inspiration to all of us. The Urdu poetry he loved. The films he loved. The
music he loved. Especially the people he loved. Such a caring human being who
taught me so many important things about being human and about being human
together. Decades of love.
There is something
totally permanent in queer family love. I am only strong because of you.
At this moment I only
want to be with all of you who also loved Sallu. That's all.
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The consensus among
those who knew historian, scholar and queer rights activist Saleem Kidwai is
that he never said no to share the “wealth of knowledge he possessed”. “His
greatest quality was that he always encouraged people to explore their ideas
and for that, he never hesitated in sharing his knowledge. He was very generous
with his knowledge, which was immense and he was one of the most humble people
I have known,” said author Rana Safvi, speaking after Kidwai’s death — due to
heart-related complications at his residence in Lucknow’s Mahanagar area on
Monday morning.
Kidwai, who was openly
gay, taught medieval history at Delhi University’s Ramjas College for 20 years
till 1993, before he returned to Lucknow after taking early retirement to focus
on scholarship. He is survived by his three sisters – Azra Kidwai, Sufia Kidwai
and Afsaha Kidwai. His burial was conducted in his ancestral village Badagaon
in Barabanki district.
Kidwai was one of the
first academics to publicly speak as a member of the LGBT community. He
co-edited a book named ‘Same-Sex Love in India: Readings in Indian Literature’
with Ruth Vanita, an Indian academic who teaches at University of Montana. It
was a collection of writings on same-sex love from over 2,000 years of Indian
literature.
“The idea behind the
book was to contradict this idea that homosexuality as a concept emerged from the
west and was adopted by Indians…it was the British who came to India with their
Victorian values who villainised it,” said Lucknow-based author and journalist
Mehru Jaffer, who was a close friend of Kidwai. “I think one of his bigger
contributions was that he encouraged people to be comfortable with their
sexuality. He always told people from the LGBT community that they must accept
themselves and must talk to people about it.”
Authors such as Amitav
Ghosh and Devdutt Pattanaik, among others, also mourned Kidwai’s death. Mukul
Manglik, Kidwai’s friend from Lucknow and a former colleague from Ramjas
College, recounted his classes being hugely popular and students of other
colleges flocking to his classrooms to learn from him. “The early 1990s was the
time of the Babri Masjid and it upset him greatly, just as it upset many of us.
But what struck me was that his upset was also deeply tied to his passion for
the discipline. He was not just shaken by the implications of the events for
the present but also for its implications for the discipline of history, about
the instrumentalisation of the past, about what they were doing to the medieval
past… After his premature retirement he began doing research and writing about
a variety of different things, and in that too he always took pains to be true
to the craft of history.”
Jaffer said Kidwai’s
contribution to academia about Lucknow and its art is immense and he was a “sea
of knowledge” about art and culture. “He was part of a generation that saw
culture and knowledge excel in Lucknow city. He was among those people who
surrounded himself by books and regularly visited libraries to read more about
culture, art and the city.”
Born in Lucknow in
1951, Kidwai belonged to an influential family from Barabanki district’s Badagaon,
a small kasba (town). He also knew Begum Akhtar very closely as she was his
neighbour. “He was very fond of Begum Akhtar’s art and spoke about it often,”
said Jaffer.
Kidwai’s friend Askari
Naqvi, who is a performing artiste, and knew Kidwai for a decade, said, “When
Kidwai sahab was alive, he told me how it had rained the day Begum Akhtar died
and that was a way for nature to mourn her death. Today, when I am heading for
his burial, there is intense rain and I am reminded of what Kidwai sahab had
told me.”
