Sultana's Sisters

Genre, Gender, and Genealogy in South Asian Muslim Women's Fiction

Haris Qadeer, P. K. Yasser Arafath, Haris Qadeer, P. K. Yasser Arafath

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000458015
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Colecciones literarias asiáticas

This book traces the genealogy of 'women's fiction' in South Asia and looks at the interesting and fascinating world of fiction by Muslim women. It explores how Muslim women have contributed to the growth and development of genre fiction in South Asia and brings into focus diverse genres, including speculative, horror, campus fiction, romance, graphic, dystopian amongst others, from the early 20th century to the present.

The book debunks myths about stereotypical representations of South Asian Muslim women and critically explores how they have located their sensibilities, body, religious/secular identities, emotions, and history, and have created a space of their own. It discusses works by authors such as Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Mrs. Abdul Qadir, Muhammadi Begum, Abbasi Begum, Khadija Mastur, Qurratulain Hyder, Wajida Tabbasum, Attia Hosain, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, Selina Hossain, Shaheen Akhtar, Bilquis Sheikh, Gulshan Esther, Maha Khan Phillips, Zahida Zaidi, Bina Shah, Andaleeb Wajid, and Ayesha Tariq.

A volume full of remarkable discoveries for the field of genre fiction, both in South Asia and for the wider world, this book, in the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, will be useful for scholars and researchers of English literary studies, South Asian literature, cultural studies, history, Islamic feminism, religious studies, gender and sexuality, sociology, translation studies, and comparative literatures.

SECTION II
Genres and modernity

5
Women who wielded pens

Khadija Mastur

Mehr Afshan Farooqi

DOI: 10.4324/9781003002062-8

Only women who wielded a pen could express the desires, thoughts and ideas of their gender.

Akhtar Husain Raipuri¹

What are the common motivations that prompt women to write? Do men and women write differently in given political, social, and cultural circumstances? How did Urdu literary culture enable women to explore new forms of writing? This chapter is an attempt to take a more complex approach to women’s history and the relationship between gender, history, and the self through the writing of Khadija Mastur.²

Educating Muslim women; the role of men

Historically and politically, the aftermath of the rebellion of 1857 signaled an almost complete abolition of the old culture and its values. The Muslim elite and service gentry who had served the Mughal rulers had to come to terms with the realities of British rule, its ideas and institutions. One of the most evident examples of the reaction among Muslims was the emergence of educational, social, and literary modernism, a movement led by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–98). Among the points at issue in the context of change, the status of women gained increasing importance. Although Sir Syed himself cannot be considered a staunch advocate of female education, some of his supporters felt a deep urge to challenge the old values and make an argument for literature to become socially responsible and responsive. Among these intellectuals, Saiyyid Mumtaz Ali holds a special position.

Saiyyid Mumtaz Ali (1860–1935) authored a somewhat radical treatise in defense of women’s rights in Islamic law, Huquq un-Niswan (Women’s Rights).³ When he showed it to Syed Ahmad Khan on a visit to Aligarh in the 1890s, Sir Syed was shocked. He tore the manuscript and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Fortunately, lunch was announced at this moment and Mumtaz Ali quickly retrieved his manuscript when Sir Syed left the room. In deference to Sir Syed, Mumtaz Ali waited until the former’s death before publishing it in 1898. The most pressing argument that Mumtaz Ali made in his book was in favour of women’s education. He argued that educated women will know their rights and duties as true Muslims and not be slaves to custom and superstition.

According to Gail Minault, Huquq un-Niswan is an impressive volume because of its careful organization; logical, debate-style arguments; and its rationality in dealing with a subject that is close to people’s intimate lives and emotions. Mumtaz Ali wished to equip Muslim women with a re-affirmation of their equality with men as human souls and with a reformulation of the fundamentals of their rights in Islamic law. He stated that keeping women in ignorance and isolation was not a requirement of Islam.⁴ On the question of women’s education, he discussed what kind of education was appropriate for women and proposed a broad, humanistic one, instead of a narrow, household-centred one. His views on purdah are open-minded. He does not argue for abolishing purdah, but for a pattern of behaviour and dress that embodies shari’at inspired modesty. Mumtaz Ali recommended a burqa, for outdoor activities. Unfortunately, Huquq un-Niswan was too advanced for the times. The slim volume was mostly treated with apathy and quickly forgotten. Nonetheless, Mumtaz Ali had great success in disseminating his ideas through his weekly newspaper, Tehzeeb-e-Niswan (Women’s Culture, Lahore 1898), founded in partnership with his wife, the talented Muhammadi Begum (1878–1908).⁵

Although Huquq un-Niswan was not a success, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi’s monumental compendium of useful knowledge for women Bihisti Zevar (Ornaments of Paradise 1905) was very popular and soon became an integral part of every Muslim bride’s dowry. Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (1864–1943) was a scholar and a Sufi, one of the most prominent mystics of his time. Bihishti Zevar’s premise was the hadith: It is a duty incumbent on every Muslim man and every Muslim woman to acquire knowledge. Maulana Thanvi emphasized individual piety over public ritual as the core of religious life. The phenomenal success of Bihisti Zevar lies in perpetuating a ‘feminine’ ideal that applies to all believers.⁶

To Nazir Ahmad (1833–1912) goes the credit of producing fictional heroines as role models. A younger contemporary of Syed Ahmad Khan, Nazir Ahmad was one of the brightest students of Delhi College and one of its most renowned graduates. He became a Deputy Inspector of Schools at Allahabad in the 1860s and eventually became a Deputy Collector in the Revenue Service. Deputy Nazir Ahmad’s first novel, Mirat ul-Arus (The Bride’s Mirror), was originally written as a guide for his daughters. In 1869, Deputy Nazir Ahmad entered the book for a competition for useful works in the vernacular, especially suitable for women of India. Mirat ul-Arus won the prize; the government bought two thousand copies of the book and recommended it for adoption as a textbook for girls.

The Deputy wrote many more prize-winning novels.⁷ His interest in women’s education went beyond the conventional misogynistic views of his senior contemporary Sir Syed Ahmad. He felt that women might be physically weaker to men, but their minds were equal. Education was more important for women than for men because women could educate the children before they started school and provide them with moral guidance. The stories of his fictional heroines, Akbari and Asghari, became very popular. The awareness of the powerful influence of the zenana in men’s lives was acknowledged by Nazir Ahmad and Muslim reformers. Within this reformist trend, Nazir Ahmad had many imitators, among them his son Bashiruddin Ahmad and his nephew Rashidul Khairi, but his merit, in comparison with the others, lies in his greater ability to combine didactic intentions with literary quality.⁸

Poet-critic-reformer Altaf Husain Hali’s (1837–1914) Majalis un Nissa (Assemblies of Women 1874) created another fictional heroine, the paradigmatic Zubaida Khatun.⁹ She was educated at home by her parents and triumphed over adversity because of her virtues. The book unfolds through a series of fictional conversations among women in a prosperous Muslim household narrated by an old governess who is an outspoken advocate of women’s education. Majalis un Nissa, like Mirat ul-Arus, won a prize and was adopted as a textbook for girls’ schools. Maulana Hali, as his pen name ‘Hali’ denotes, was consciously ‘up to date.’ There was a pronounced influence of Western (English) ways of thinking, especially about literature, on Hali. His ideas on women’s education written in his exemplary prose style had great appeal. His women characters reflect on the need of girls to be educated. Hali’s reformist vision was not extreme but it was tinged with Victorian attitudes such as the importance of emotional restraint.

Urdu as the language of modernity: women novelists

With all the excitement about social reform for women, and the launch of journals, such as Tehzeeb-e-Niswan (a weekly that lasted from 1898 to 1949), that were especially for women writers and readers, it doesn’t come as a surprise that women novelists emerge in this period. Muhammadi Begum (d. 1908), the first woman to edit a journal, began by writing manuals on subjects of domestic interest. She branched into full-fledged novels, leading the way for other women writers. Her early death from influenza at age 30 was a big loss to the genre. Noteworthy among those who followed Muhammadi Begum’s lead are Nazr Sajjad Hyder (1894–1967), Abbasi Begum, and Akbari Begum, who chose to be known through her son’s name, Valida Afzal Ali. Akbari Begum was the author of a three-volume saga titled Gudar ka Lal, (The Ruby among Rags).¹⁰ As Aamer Hussein has pointed in his illuminating essay on Muhammadi Begum, ‘the pioneering presence of women in the Urdu novel’s evolution is remarkable and worthy of canonization. These women’s contribution to fiction had a tinge of feminist colors at a time when such a practice could not even be conceived of in Europe.’¹¹ Though Nazr Sajjad Hyder’s novels are now forgotten, her fame lives on through her daughter Qurratulain Hyder, one of contemporary India’s most acclaimed novelists. Hijab Ismail, the daughter of Abbasi Begum, a budding writer herself, was married to Muhammadi Begum’s writer-dramatist, filmmaker son, Imtiaz Ali Taj. Hijab’s work has recently received the renewed attention that it deserves.

The publication of Angare (Embers), a collection of short stories, in 1932 was the precursor of the Progressive Writers Association, which was officially launched in Lucknow in 1936. Rashid Jahan, (1905–52) a woman medical doctor, was among the contributors of Angare. She was the eldest daughter of Shaikh Abdullah, a pioneer of women’s education and founder of Aligarh Zenana Madrasah (Aligarh Girls’ School) in 1906. His wife, Begum Waheed Jahan, supervised the school with exemplary dedication and was responsible for its unprecedented success. The school became a boarding school when the residence hall opened in 1914. It went on to become an intermediate college in 1925 and started degree classes in 1937. Rashid Jahan graduated from Aligarh Women’s College, then went on for medical degrees. Her work inspired one of the greatest fiction writers in Urdu, Ismat Chughtai (1915–91).

The models of writing presented by the Muslim reformers, be they scholars, novelists, or journalists, informed and guided a second wave of women writers in Urdu. The role of popular Urdu fiction in Urdu impacted the young Muslim girl’s sense of self as she grew up in the 1930s. Middle-class girls who became avid readers were encouraged to read didactic literature. However, it is easy to imagine that they were drawn to novels such as those by Rashidul Khairi, which were romantic sagas tinged with a message for social reform. It was in the 1930s that we find women expressing themselves in Urdu literature in a big way.

Khadija Mastur (1927–82) was prolific in that she published five collections of short stories and two novels in the space of a tumultuous life riven by the scarring ordeal of losing her father at a tender age and the upheaval of Partition.¹² She started writing at a very early age, and her work was noted by Urdu’s stalwart Marxist-Progressive critics such as Ehtesham Husain, Akhtar Husain Raipuri, and eminent poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. In Pakistan, Mastur’s mentor Ahmad Nadim Qasmi (1916–2006) was the influential editor of the journal Funoon (Arts). Qasmi helped the fledgling writer find her feet in the new nation’s literary surroundings.¹³ Mastur served as the secretary for the Progressive Writer’s Association at Lahore (1950-?) Yet, Mastur’s name is seldom mentioned in the same breath as her senior contemporary Ismat Chughtai. In fact, her fictional voice pales in comparison to Ismat Chughtai’s strident, trenchant critique of patriarchy and the claustrophobic life in the zenana. Mastur’s unadorned, matter-of -fact style does not match with her peer Qurratulain Hyder’s (1927–2007) sublime, historically rich, nostalgia-filled prose either. Although Mastur’s affiliation with Progressive ideology becomes a given because of her association with Qasmi, I will argue that her work transcends ideology. She reflects on women’s lives with a symbiotic lens that imbricates the relationship between gender, history, and the self.

Akhtar Husain Raipuri’s foreword to Mastur’s second collection Bochchar is on point. Raipuri, an eminent Urdu literary critic, proved to be the theoretical anchor of the Progressive Writer’s Movement.¹⁴ In his foreword to Mastur’s collection, Raipuri sums up the literary debate on women in literature in bold strokes and goes on to make an incisive statement:

Thus far, the writing on women’s issues were the triumph of men. They were gazing at the subject of woman that had evolved from an imagined, idealized topic to a novel one [jins-e latif]. Still, it was impossible for them to understand how a woman views the challenges of life, what she thinks, what she really feels. Only women who wielded a pen could express the desires, thoughts and ideas of their gender.

(Raipuri 258)

Raipuri endorsed Khadija Mastur’s promising style even at this early stage of her writing. He describes her style to be unaffected but sharp:

I am convinced that readers will find a uniqueness in her writing that is rare in men fiction writers who focus on gender. In her stories we see the sketches of middle-class and lower-class women. Her writing is imbued with reality; it is not couched in fancy. She knows how to describe ordinary events in an evocative manner.

(259)

Khadija Mastur in Hajira Masrur’s memory

Khadija Mastur’s diminutive physique enfolded a fiery personality that is described by her sister Hajira Masrur in a refreshing introduction to Mastur’s short story collection Thake Hare (Tired, Defeated).¹⁵ Hajira lovingly reminisces the childhood memories of her sister, only a year and five days older, who she describes was both sensitive and hot-headed. I think Khadija may have felt neglected at the arrival of her younger sibling. A vignette described by Hajira illustrates her sister’s sensitivity. That Hajira chose ...