‘Dust of the Caravan’ review: A keen sense of history and a critique of pre-1947 India

Anis Kidwai’s unfinished works, now translated into English, provide insights on how women got involved in nationalist politics

Translations, especially from Urdu to English, can be interesting resources in understanding how history and memory have been ‘produced’ for nation-building.

Dust of the Caravan is a translation of unfinished personal memoirs of Anis Kidwai by her granddaughter Ayesha Kidwai. It also includes extracts from previously published Partition memoirs of Anis Kidwai, also translated by Ayesha, two additional essays — character sketches of Saifuddin Kitchlew and Mridula Sarabhai — and a fictional feminist utopian piece titled ‘The Search for a Wife’.

I first read Anis Kidwai’s Nazr-e-Khush Guzre, which has several delightful essays including literary criticism and character sketches of political figures.