A Chronicle of Muslims in Independent India

Nama or Namahs is a narrative/epic genre in Persian used to narrate chronicles of the lives and times of a parsonage, community, or nation. Firdousi’s Shah Nama and Ibadat Khan’s Shajahan Nama are a few examples of the genre. Anglophone fiction writers have used the term to evoke a sense of narrative fabulation within the fiction form. Allen Sealy’s Trotter Nama and Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama are a few examples. In Bengali fiction, Akhtaruzzaman Elias’s classic Khwabnama stands out as a Bengali chronicle of Partition and Bangladesh War, encapsulating a new way of narrating the nation—one which is still a dream vision. Talashnama is a chronicle of the search for meaning in a world ridden with conflicts in the name of religion.