Professor Rita Kothari’s translation of Guli Sadarangani’s novel, Ittehad (1941), is a retrieval of the progressive voice of the first woman writer of Sindh. Sadarangani’s invisibility in the history of Sindhi literature is attributable to her courage to idealise a Hindu-Muslim romance at a time of communal conflagrations in undivided India. The depiction of a romantic relationship between Asha and Hamid and its culmination in marriage earned the novel the epithet ‘controversial’. The conceptualisation of love, which is subversive of religious and geographical boundaries, must have been unpalatable to the representatives of the Sindhi community. Even the historical importance of the novel as the creation of the first Sindhi woman writer could not shield it from being consigned to oblivion. The translation of the novel, at a time when such marriages are precluded by vested interests, is a significant intervention by the translator, whose responsibilities include the maintenance of national integration in a religiously diverse society. The translation is also a useful reminder of the possibilities of romantic relationships in pre-independence India, which are fading away in a constricted political space.The excision of the last chapters from the first edition at the advice of the publisher was aimed at not infuriating the Muslim community by depicting a love marriage between a Muslim girl, Zarina and a Hindu boy, Ranjit. The truncated first version of the novel betrays the anxiety that restrained the imaginative possibilities of the novel, reflecting the precariousness of the minority Sindhi community in a province that assumed enormous significance as a site for the Pakistan movement. These chapters were included when it was republished as Melaapi Jeevan in independent India. The use of the Hindi title is an indicator of the uncertain future the migrant Sindhi community faced in post-independence India. The absence of Sadarangani from Indian literary history owes as much to her advocacy of inter-faith marriages as to ignorance about a linguistic and geographical formation that remains unknown and incomprehensible to the mainstream Indian society.In the preface to the first version, the author laments: “In the name of dharma or religion, lawlessness prevails. I feel we are descending into an abyss. What do we even mean by religion? Things that cause damage and actions that are inimical to religion, we define as religious and fan animosities.” It is this unflinching engagement with religion and its philosophy which is articulated time and again through literary portraits. Hamid is a representative of the new young leadership of the Sindhis, who gives a clarion call for the union of the two communities to strengthen the national movement. He has earned the Doctor of Literature degree in London and is a professor at a college in Lucknow. His immersion in the works of Shah Abdul Latif, Rabindranath Tagore and P.B. Shelley, along with his familiarity with the tenets of numerous religious philosophies, enables him to view people as extensions of a large universe and as the creations of the Lord, to be judged only by their actions and principles. Sadarangani’s invocation of the Sindhi Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif and his inclusive poetry in the novel served to reassert the syncretism of Sindhi culture over the dissensions that characterised her time. Hamid’s advocacy of interfaith marriages is predicated upon his belief that the idea of marriage needs to be viewed as a union of souls rather than of castes: “If religion means spiritual evolution, I don’t see why a Hindu or Muslim cannot achieve compatibility.” The love story of Asha and Hamid is emblematic of the possibilities of a spiritual union, articulated by Shah Abdul Latif’s verses at the time of their court marriage: “There was neither care nor a difference of you and I.” The use of an Urdu word of Arabic origin for the title of a Sindhi novel is the linguistic equivalent for communal harmony. The sprinkling of Urdu words in her novel is an outright rejection of puritanism of all kinds. Kothari’s retention of these words in italics draws the attention of readers to Sadarangani’s aesthetics of inclusion. The device of code-mixing in the novel is aligned well with the politics of communal harmony symbolised by Hamid and Asha’s child Satprem. The novel seeks to amalgamate the liberating possibilities of nationalism with the progressive outlook of Brahmo Samaj, the non-sectarianism of Gandhi, the secular ideals of Nehru, and the humanism and internationalism of Tagore. Hamid is an embodiment of the emancipatory promise of a secular nation struggling to overthrow a colonial regime. The expression of alarm by the novelist at the descent of country into a communal abyss in the 1941 preface is echoed in the concern Hamid expresses at the widening separatism: “When you travel between Sindh and Punjab, you will hear two distinct calls for water. Hindu water and Muslim water. Hindu roti, Muslim roti. Such voices fan communal differences. Even public places, restaurants, parks, and clubs are separate for Hindus and Muslims. Schools are separate, neighbourhoods are separate. How can differences not multiply? How will Hindus and Muslims coexist? Will enmity and distance not persist if we can’t even have common spaces? How will this ittehad happen?”The relevance of Ittehad cannot be overemphasised to an age when the chasm of separatism is widening and the trust between communities appears to be collapsing. The novel anticipates the tensions that emerge when the intertwined glorified past and religiosity become the markers of national identity. Since Hamid is aware of the pitfalls of a glorious version of the past, he does not want a derivative present shaped by the shadow of nostalgia. Hamid’s rejection of Jinnah’s separatist polity and his egalitarian vision of society are distinctively progressivist, and at the end of the novel he is given an assignment to reconstruct India under the Nehruvian vision. Hamid is also a votary of women’s equality. He tells Asha: “I don’t want your voice to carry the shadow of women’s unequal position. We are going to be the new voices of a world where nobody is a slave to another. Both men and women will have claims to the same things: the same respect, the same justice.” The portrait of Aruna, a Brahmo Bengali woman, includes the features of a feminist. The radical message of women’s autonomy and equality is delivered through her. The relegation of women to the status of an object and the annihilation of their very sense of self figure in her exchange with Hamid and her husband Vijay. The novel features a whole galaxy of strong, committed feminists who have no patience with oppressive institutions. The predominance of dialogues in the novel is inseparably linked with the participation of women characters in the intellectual discussions that unfold regarding the roles of women in Indian society. Its reconfiguration of marriage and religion as purely individual matters is intertwined with its emphasis on the liberation of women from the oppressive customs of patriarchal institutions. Rita Kothari’s translation of the novel is a recovery of a very important voice which sought to redefine women as public intellectuals and agents of change in a new India. Mohammed Afzal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.