Hamid Dalwai has been called a Muslim modernizer who relentlessly worked towards promoting reason and justice among Muslims. He was attracted by the ideas of Ram Manohar Lohia and became an active member of the Socialist Party. Soon after, concerned with issues besetting the Muslim community, Dalwai became a dedicated social worker, arguing for a critical introspection of the values that informed it. Forming the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal in the 1970s, he tirelessly fought the orthodoxy in the community, pursuing the emancipation of women through the abolishment of triple talaq and promoting a truly secular outlook that would inform the politics of the country.
The essays in Muslim Politics in India emerged from a series of interviews that Dalwai had with the Marathi poet Dilip Chitre, who then rendered them as essays in English. They display the same passion and forthrightness, eloquence and commitment that informed Dalwai’s actions as a social worker. Muslim Politics in India is arguably the most perceptive analysis of Muslim politics to appear in post-Independence India. It retains the same freshness―and relevance―that it had when it was first published some three decades ago.
