When I read this line from a poem by Agha Shahid Ali in 1998, it immediately resonated through the restless chambers of my mind. In Hyderabad on September 17 of that same year, I had witnessed a public rally of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and listened to India's then home minister Lal Krishna Advani give a provocative speech. Invoking anti-Muslim sentiment in Hyderabad and Telangana states, Advani declared that September 17 should be celebrated as “Telangana Liberation Day.” That charged declaration stoked a hundred questions in me about the history of Hyderabad, a history which is already replete with intense memories of Muslim lives and their discourses between the 1930s and 1950s. On that September day, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the integration of the Hyderabad princely state into the Indian government, the BJP was jubilant about the military action of the Indian government code-named “Operation Polo” or “Police Action.” But could we really call it a “celebration” given the violent history that led to the killing of thousands of Muslims and Hindus, and to the global displacement and migration of thousands of Hyderabadis?

Since the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, Advani had already been part of the heightened consciousness of the local Muslims. During this period, wherever I went I heard resounding critiques of Advani's statements. However, September 17, 1998, was different. Like many young Muslims of the 1990s, I too had grown up with anti-Muslim slogans buzzing around me—among them Musalmaan ke do hi sthan, qabristan ya Pakistan (A Muslim has only two choices of abode: the graveyard or Pakistan)—and had been called names such as Babar ke aulad (the children of Babar, the Mughal emperor), Aurangzeb vārasulu (the heirs of Aurangzeb, another Mughal emperor often remembered for his policies on anti-Hindu and Islamic fundamentalism), and “Jihadists.” Graffiti and jeers constantly reminded me that my mulk (home country) is somewhere in Pakistan. As Advani and his followers explicitly stated several times, I am not a patriot according to their “nationalist” framework. Those intense moments prompted me to write a poem entitled “No Birthplace” remembering the violent experiences of the Partition of 1947 and the rise of Muslim minoritization.