Editorial: Issue 17/ March 2025

This issue contains translated fiction from Hindi and Marathi, alongside creative originals. The stories deal with the subjects of friendship and politics, social media and cinema, hunger and urban destitution, rebellion and justice, marital relationship and gender. The poems in this issue range from the partition and its sorrows to a poetic recording of everyday strife, from limitations of language to a quirky ordering of love and its expectations. We also have translated poems from Hindi which, in their short and direct anti-brahminical resistance, bring forth the exasperation of the historically oppressed castes. The poet bluntly asks the priest, “what is the politics/ behind this bell (ghanta) of yours?” and denounces all the scriptural “empty-talks” as sham and vows to “throw him off” his burdened back. The photo story in this issue recollects and gives us a glimpse of lesser-known lives, a realm of personal cultivation that at the same time shapes the familial and the cultural through a regard for the literary and the aesthetic.

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gulmohur stands in solidarity with the jailed activists and intellectuals of the Bhima Koregaon case; the victims of communal hatred and of state violence; the victims of caste and gender violence; the victims of fundamentalist oppression anywhere in the world; and with all those who dissent in the spirit of democracy to safeguard our ever-diminishing freedoms. We stand for the liberation of Palestine. We extend our solidarity to the Mahabodhi Mukti Andolan. 

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We would like to express our profound thankfulness to our readers and well-wishers everywhere. We are immensely grateful to all our friends (on and off social media) who have helped us reach out. We also thank our contributors for trusting us with their submissions.  

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We hope you enjoy reading Issue 17 of the quarterly. We always welcome critical feedback from our readers. Happy Dalit History Month!

Editors

gulmohur

March 2025