Saleem Kidwai, a novelist and homosexual rights campaigner, died today, a great loss for the literary world. In 1951, he was born in Lucknow and died there. Kidwai was also a mediaeval historian and translator who served as a history professor at Ramjas College, University of Delhi, till 1993, when he left to pursue his research. He leaves an illustrious and incomparable legacy.
Kidwai was one of the first academics to identify as an LGBT person publicly. He co-edited the book ‘Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History,’ which chronicled and investigated the roots of same-sex relationships in South Asia with Ruth Vanita as co-editor.
While hearing a slew of petitions challenging Section 377, colonial-era legislation that criminalised adult consenting same-sex relationships, a copy of this book was presented to the Supreme Court’s Constitution bench. After a historic legal struggle that lasted over two decades in the Delhi high court and then with several benches of the Supreme Court, the statute was read down in 2018.
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Kidwai taught Indian mediaeval history at the University of Delhi for over two decades and was involved in the homosexual rights movement, developing support spaces for the LGBT community in the national capital. Cultural History, the history of sexuality, and courtesan singers, sometimes known as tawaifs, were among the late academic’s other passions.
Author Rana Safvi announced his death on Twitter, writing that she learned of it through Askari Naqvi, a friend of the Kidwais. Saleem Kidwai was an incredibly kind guy who was always eager to offer his enormous knowledge to anybody who asked. He didn’t flaunt his intelligence. All those whose lives he touched will miss his humility, humanity, and gentleness.
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Amitav Ghosh and Devdutt Pattanaik, among others, were among those who grieved his death. He was an Urdu literary expert who also translated Malika Pukhraj’s memoirs into English. He most recently published Ship of Sorrows, a translation of Qurratulain Hyder’s 1952 novel Safina-e-gham-e-dil.
