ABSTRACT
Khaja is one of the pioneering writers of Minority poetry and criticism in Telugu who declared his solidarity with Dalit movement and literature by acknowledging that they were all the indigenous people of India who built the Indus Valley Civilisation. This chapter is a version of the essay titled “Muslim Strila Kavitvam” included in the volume Muslimvada Tatvikata. This book deals with different aspects of Muslim writing and ideology. The essay specifically focuses on Muslim women’s concerns in the contemporary Indian context as articulated by them in their poetry and short fiction. Muslim women’s writing in Telugu has voiced strong feminist concerns. Writers like Mahejabeen, Shahjahana have written about the loaded image of a burkha, isolation, stigma, restrictions, conflict between languages, between Muslim and Dudekula identities, and between different regions of united Andhra Pradesh. Muslim women, especially like Dalit and Bahujan women carry multiple identities most of which are unacceptable to the mainstream society. Like Muslim men, Muslim women are also surrounded by social distrust and cultural suspicion apart from the dire poverty that most of them suffer from. Femininity in the Muslim women’s context also becomes synonymous with giving birth to children thus reducing their entities and identities to child-bearing pouches. Amidst all these challenges, Muslim women not only speak for themselves but also extend solidarity to other Muslim women as well as Dalit, tribal and Bahujan women.
