#Title

Toward Ladyland

In commemoration of the birth and death anniversary of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain on December 9, an excerpt from Elora Shehabuddin’s book, ‘Sisters in the Mirror’, published in South Asia by The University Press Limited in 2022.
BOOK EXCERPT: NONFICTION
She was not particularly impressed with the Western model of women’s emancipation or the efforts of some Indian male reformers to usher in modernity simply by unveiling women.
ELORA SHEHABUDDIN
In 1905, the year of the Partition of Bengal, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain published “Sultana’s Dream,” a parable about a utopian society called Ladyland, a land without religious conflict, war, bloodshed, crime, poverty, or even mosquito bites, where all the men live in seclusion in mardanas and women run society, using science and technology responsibly and ethically. Hossain’s short story appeared in Indian Ladies’ Magazine , published in Madras (today Chennai), the first English-language magazine for Indian women and one of the first to be edited by a woman.
Roquiah Khatun, or Mrs. R. S. Hossein, as she signed her name in English (popularly known today as Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, or Begum Rokeya), was born in 1880 into an educated and powerful jomidar family in the village of Pairaband in Rangpur, East Bengal, in what is now Bangladesh.
According to her recollections in Aborodhbashini (Women in seclusion), a book she dedicated to her mother, Begum Rokeya was made to start observing purdah when she was only five years old. While it could not have been easy, we should keep in mind that at least for the women of elite families, seclusion did not mean being confined in a small dark space but rather a demarcation of distinct male and female spaces in a vast home and estate. Begum Rokeya would remember, “We rise to the cry of the morning birds; the call of the foxes signals that Maghreb (evening) prayer is near. . . . ​Our childhood passed in bliss in the midst of shady forests in rural Bengal.”
Rokeya later described her education at home as learning the Arabic alphabet, followed by reading the Quran. Comprehension was not an objective, let alone a priority. The furthest a woman might get with Arabic, with her father’s encouragement, was to become a hafeza , one who had memorized the entire Quran. As for Persian and Urdu, she remarked, it was difficult to make progress because there were no easy books for new learners. Finally, she complained bitterly, “even in Bengal, young girls are not taught Bengali in a systematic manner.”
Begum Rokeya’s protégée and first biographer, Shamsunnahar Mahmud, later reported Rokeya’s deep gratitude for her siblings’ “love and care” in the matter of her education. Although the educated Muslim Bengali elite of her time frowned on Bengali and preferred Urdu and Persian—because they felt Bengali was not sufficiently Islamic—the young Rokeya had the opportunity to master both Bengali and English with the help of a supportive older brother, older sister, and husband.
Begum Rokeya wrote primarily in Bengali and started publishing in 1902, mainly essays on social issues. Her 1903 piece “Alonkar na badge of slavery” (Jewelry or badge of slavery), marked the start of Rokeya’s explicitly feminist writing. It was published in the Calcutta journal Mahila (Woman), edited by Girish Chandra Sen, a Brahmo who, interestingly enough, had been the first to translate the Quran into Bengali. In “Alonkar” Rokeya warned women against allowing themselves to be belittled and bribed with trinkets and jewels, which were nothing but marks of “slavery on our bodies,” much like the “iron shackles” of prisoners.
A modified version of the essay appeared as “Amader Abonoti” (Our degradation) in September 1904 in Nabanoor (New heavenly light), edited by Syed Emdad Ali. One of the earliest periodicals to be published by Muslim intellectuals in Bengal, Nabanoor ran between 1903 and 1906 and actively invited women to participate and “assist us in our literary efforts and lead the nation to greater development.” Begum Rokeya heeded the call, along with many other women, Hindu and Muslim. Another version of this article, with the title “Strijatir Abonoti” (The degradation of women), was included in her first collection of essays, Motichur (A string of pearls), also published in 1904. In the course of the revisions and modifications, five powerful paragraphs were expunged because of the furor they had already provoked, no doubt because they were critical of religion: “Whenever a sister has tried to lift her head, her head has been pulverized with the excuse of religion or the force of utterances from holy texts. . . . ​It must be said that, ultimately ‘religion’ has strengthened the bonds of our enslavement; men are lording over women using the pretext of religion.”
These passages were removed because they outraged many readers. With her criticism of “religion” generally, she had offended not only her fellow Muslims but also members of the other communities among whom she lived in early twentieth-century India. Even though she was writing in a period of growing Muslim nationalist sentiment among some elite Muslim males that would culminate in the 1905 Partition of Bengal, Rokeya had no interest in claiming the superiority of women’s rights under Islam in such matters as inheritance or the right to contract. For her all religions, including Islam, were inherently problematic for women. Even though she was writing in the early years of the Indian anticolonial nationalist movement, Rokeya did not subscribe to the Indian nationalist position that the Indian private sphere, and hence its denizens, women, were morally and spiritually superior to their Western counterparts. Finally, writing at a time of imperial Britain’s preoccupation with downtrodden Indian and Muslim women, she was not particularly impressed with the Western model of women’s emancipation or the efforts of some Indian male reformers to usher in modernity simply by unveiling women. In “Strijatir Abonoti” she wondered whether the Parsi (Zoroastrian) women of India, who had been among the first to unveil and wear Western dress, were “truly free from mental slavery.” Her response: “Certainly not! Their unveiling is not a result of their own decision. The Parsi men have dragged their women out of purdah in a blind imitation of the Europeans. It does not show any initiative of their women. They are as lifeless as they were before. When their men kept them in seclusion they stayed there. When the men dragged them out by their ‘nose-rings’ they came out. That cannot be called an achievement by women.”
This excerpt has been condensed for brevity. Find the rest of the chapter on The Daily Star website and on Daily Star Books’ social media pages.
Elora Shehabuddin is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, and Global Studies at University of California, Berkeley.