"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
The Widow Remarriage is revised and reedited version of Col.P.M. Taylor’s work About the Tara –A Tale of Maratha Brahmin Widow is revised and reedited version of Col.P.M. Taylor’s work with same title, published in 1879 in England. The original historical romance is of 93 chapters and 530 pages in crown-size print. The Widow Remarriage Act was passed in 1856 in spite of protests by the upper caste Brahmin caste people.
The long story is told by the ‘omniscient’ narrator in Fieldingsque manner. The two strands of the narrative are -one of Tara, the high caste Brahmin widow and the other of Rajah Shivaji’s assassination of Afzul Khan, the military officer serving the Adil Shah dynasty of Bijapur Kingdom. Of the two only Tara’s story is chosen and modified to suit the interest of the contemporary readers, highlighting the progressive dimension of the widow remarriage of a Hindu widow and Fazil Khan, an officer who falls in love with her and marries after the siege of Sholapur by the forces of Bijapur. After marriage, she is renamed by groom’s party as ‘Ayesha’ but she chooses to remain Tara for him, retaining her Hindu identity.
It is great story of suffering, anxiety, sorrow, frustration and love.
V.r.badiger
Prof V.R. Badiger is a retired professor of English who guided research in the field of British writings of India. Out of his academic experience of having read the historical romances of Col. Taylor, he has found it an academic necessity of to revise and reedit his century old works written in Elizabethan English into modern English, changing the names of persons and places in the North Karnataka region. This century old novel still has social relevance to the marriage of Hindus and Muslims-‘love jihad’. The phenomena of ‘conversion’ of Hindu girls by marriage, is a matter of great controversy in our country now.
