1st International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference 2018
ISMAT CHUGTAI’S LIHAAF & ATTIA HOSAIN’S SUNLIGHT ON A BROKEN COLUMN: A FEMINIST REPRESENTATION OF MUSLIM WRITINGS IN SOUTH ASIA
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ISMAT CHUGTAI’S LIHAAF & ATTIA HOSAIN’S SUNLIGHT ON A BROKEN COLUMN: A FEMINIST REPRESENTATION OF MUSLIM WRITINGS IN SOUTH ASIAAhmed Saad AzizInstructor, Department of English, College of Education Universityof Al-qadisiyah, Iraq 
ABSTRACT From ages, women have been considered as a subaltern or a poor mean creature in patriarchal construct be it any religion. It is so because rules and regulation in every religion are made by men, hence favouring them in all ways and are made harder for women. This has resulted in the subjugation of women since ancient times. Although the religion does not impose such rules & regulations which discriminate on the basis of gender but it is people or society who implement such kinds of laws for their own benefits and interest. This unequal law enforcement had marginalized women and made them voiceless from centuries. But with the passage of time, many things have changed and now we see women in almost every field. This is due to the efforts of many reformers and strong women who have changed the course of time. In my paper, I am discussing, two Muslim women writers of South Asia; Ismat Chugtai and Attia Hosain, who are considered as feminist writers and who have created sensation through their phenomenal writing pieces like Lihaaf & Sunlight on a Broken Column. Keywords: Feminist Representation, Muslim women writing, South Asia, Ismat Chugtai, Attia Hossain. __________________________________________________________________________________ Introduction With the rise of feminism in Western world which had great impact on the lives of women in raising their status there has also influenced the Oriental world especially countries in the Indian sub-continent; India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. As many reformers emerged from different sections of society who have struggled to fight for various rights related with women like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Mahatma Gandhi. These reforms somewhat tried to help in the emancipation of women belonging to all religions, castes and creeds of the Indian sub-continent but still there are certain section of the society which needs upliftment and one such is Muslim women. As V. P. Singh in his essay, ‘Emerging from the Veil: A Study of Selected Muslim Women’s Feminist Writing from the Indian Subcontinent’ speaks: One of the most marginalized sections of Indian women have been Muslim women and those Muslim women in particular who belong to the conservative social milieu. Their struggle has been a long and bitter one because it has involved fighting for such basic rights as the right to be visible and the right to literacy so that they can make sense of the world they live in. (253) But the fact is that, from time to time there have been women belonging to the Muslim society who have made a mark and have been a trailblazer in many fields. One such name is Meera sahib Fatima Bibi; first woman to become Judge of a High court in India, RokeyaSakhawatHussain; the pioneer of feminist writing in the Indian subcontinent, ZeenatAmaan; winner of Miss Asia Pacific beauty pageant, tennis sensation SaniaMirza and first biker and car racer from India, Alisha Abdullah. Some moreremarkable names of such women are-NazmaHeptullah in Politics, Madhubala, MeenaKumari&Nargis in Films, Sorayya in Playback singing. Even our literary world had witnessedmany Muslim women writers who have gained name and fame in the international scenario.In the Urdu literature, there are some remarkable names in the series like__ Muhammadi Begum, IsmatChugtai, Rashid Jahan, RaziaSajjadZaheer, JeelaniBano and QurratulainHyder and so on but in the English literature although there are some writers but their name and works has to be recognized and acclaimed by the world yet. Some Indian Muslim Women Writers who have contributed to the English literature are__AttiaHosain, ShamaFutehally, ShohailaAbdulali and AsraNomani. With the rise in women writers in the Indian literary milieu, there emerges feminist writing as literature is the best medium to express one’s innermost feelings and expressions. Singh further claims: Despite severe repression the repertoire of Muslim women’s feminist writing poses a sheer challenge to the clout of male hegemony. The term Muslim and feminist taken together has a ambivalence. (253) Feminism is a word which has been interpreted in many ways by different feminists. ShashiDeshpande, the famous Indian English writer and winner of prestigious Sahitya Academy award believes that men and women are equal and they should co-operate in the all the fields of life respectively. Women are no less inferior to men and so they should get equal rights with them. She thinks, feminist should not be anti — men. She speaks: Is to be feminist to want to be like men? I don’t think so. On the contrary, to me it has meant an acceptance of my womanhood as a positive thing, not as a lack. An understanding that I am different,not inferior. And how can feminism be anti - men when it is reallyworking for a better, a more meaningful and companionable relationship between men and women, instead of the uneasy relationshipbetweentyrant relationship between tyrant andoppressed? (83) This is a very justified and appropriate definition of feminism for a better functioning of human order. And with the rise of feminist writing in India especially in the Muslim world, there have been a tremendous literary input on the theme. Two names which are prominent and representative of Muslim writing in India are Ismat Chugtai & Attia Hossein. Recently, there has been tremendous rise in translation literature in India as lot of works is being carried out in this field in terms of Hindi, Urdu & other regional languages. There has been a lot of translation being carried out from Indian languages into English, giving those works more popularity around the world. This has also resulted into the expand of Indian literature. Urdu literature has given many classical writers to the world including women writers. IsmatChugtai, Rashid Jahan, WajedaTabassum and QurratulainHyder belong to that category of women writers who are credited with bringing revolutionary feminist politics and also aestheticism in twentieth century Urdu literature. Hence IsmatChugtai is one of the prominent writers of Urdu literature, famous in India and Pakistan for her progressive writings. She is famous for her unyielding spirit and fiery feminism in those days when it was rare to be seen in women writings. She is considered as a pillar in Urdu literature. In her writings, she has explored themes like middle-class social superiority and other evolving conflicts existing in modern India and also some bold themes like feminine sexuality depicted in an artistic manner. In the contemporary scenario, Chugtai has become a motivational writer for writers, scholars & readers of younger generations because of her liberal, outspoken and progressive style of writing though sometimes leading towards controversies. She is considered as a ‘voice of voiceless’ or the passionate voice for the unheard. Being born in Badayun, Uttar Pradesh and daughter of a Civil servant, she has mostly lived in Jodhpur but received her early education at Women’s College of Aligarh Muslim University. Born in a family of ten children, she was the youngest daughter and had spent her childhood mainly in the companies of six brothers. This is one of the greatest reasons which she herself admitted in shaping her nature and personality which further reflected in her writings. Her first association with Progressive Writer’s Association was in 1936, when as a Bachelor degree student, she attended the first meeting of it. During this course of time, she started writing secretly, because of the opposition she was facing by her Muslim relatives due to her education in college. Chugtai has written many short stories, keeping in mind the cultural legacy to the region which she belonged. Although, she has written many short stories but her story, “Sacred Duty” notably reflects this trait where she has highlighted the social pressures in India, referring to specific national, religious and cultural traditions. She is the winner of many awards like Ghalib Award for her Urdu drama, ‘TerhiLakeer’ in 1974, Soviet Land Nehru Award in 1982 and in 1990, IqbalSamman (Iqbal Award) from Urdu Akademi, Rajasthan for the year 1989. Along with KaifiAzmi, she won Filmfare Award for best story for classic movie, GaramHawa. Chugtai’s popularity is not confined to just India only as she is considered as trailblazer, a path breaker for women writers in the entire sub-continent. Now with the rise of translation literature, her popularity is reaching to much greater heights as now it is available for the masses. A bold feminist voice, Chugtai had to face lots of problems in her lifetime because of her reformist and progressive outlook much beyond the times. She faced much opposition in her career as many of her writings including her most popular works, Lihaaf and Angarey were banned by religious groups and Government in South Asia. A great reformist and feminist, she is the advocator of reforms in the Muslim societies all around the world. In her stories, she wrote against the purdah system imposed on women in the Muslim societies. She hated the oppressive and feudal mindset of the Muslim men who want to keep women under subjugation. This enraged the fundamentalists as they felt offended and this led to the banning of her books many times. Her short story, Lihaaf (The Quilt)is the most controversial and the highly praised one. The story first appeared in an Urdu journal, Adab-i-Latif in 1942 and was very much disliked by the certain section of the society as it was leveled with charges of obscenity and blashphemy. In 1944, a case was filed against her and she was summoned by the Lahore court. The reason was that the theme of story, Lihaaf was homosexuality in Aligarh. This was a theme which earlier nobody had ventured to write upon and for a woman to write such thing was unacceptable. The journal also had to face much opposition because of publishing the story and many angry letters were sent to the editor. The fearless Chugtai did not apologize for writing the story but she fought her case successfully denying the charges and finally won it. She, with the co-operation of her lawyer proved that the story does not contain any explicit references to homoeroticism and so charges against her writings are false. The protagonist of the story is Begum Jaan, a married woman deprived of her husband’s love and who feels neglected anddejected. Her husband, Nawab is very respectable man and who is much older than her. He has a good reputation that he doesn’t visit any prostitute but there is a reason hidden behind it as he is interested in other gender so he does not give importance to his wife leaving her alone and disappointed. As the English translator of the story says: Having married Begum Jann he tucked her away in the house with his other possessions and promptly forget her. The frail, beautiful Begum wasted away in anguished loneliness. One did not know when Begum Jaan’s life began__ whether it was when she committed the mistake of being born or when she came to the Nawab’s house as his bride, climbed the four-poster bed and started counting her days. (36) This is the plight of women caught between the whirlpools of emotions of family duty and personal life. At this juncture of life, she met Rabbu, who is her masseuse and the two women become very intimate with each other due to uneven circumstances. The narrator of the story, who is a small girl and the niece of Begum Jaan has a high admiration for her but she is disappointed to find many secrets related to her. When she comes to stay with her she is shocked to the secret relationship unfolding her Aunt and the servant. Lihaaf as a story was considered as very bold and for a woman to write such stuff was a daring effort. So, this was indeed a challenge to write a story on such theme in those days which reflects writer’s progressive thinking beyond her age. For this she faced many problems in her lifetime but now the world is recognizing her talents and her works are being translated into English and other languages of the world. The story was adapted into a movie, Fire by Deepa Mehta in 1996 starring actress like ShabanaAzmi and Nandita Das. Though not very commercial successful, it was very much liked by the film critics. Although there are many differences in Urdu literature and Indian English literature and their growth and development is also different from each but what is common is the depiction of sentiments of women writers. The feelings, emotions poured by women writers are almost same in all the literatures. This is so because women all the world over have suffered same problems and crisis in their lives especially those belonging to the patriarchal society. After the independence of India, there appeared many great women novelists on the horizon of the Indian English literature. These women novelists have been remarkable in portraying women issues in the backdrops of the post-independence period and the various challenges women faced in a newly independent country. K. D. Vermaput it together in the following remarks: It is somewhat surprising to note that the post-independence era has witnessed the emergence of a large number of eminent women novelists. The work of such writers as Kamala Markandaya, Ruth PrawerJhabvala, Anita Desai, AttiaHossein and NayantaraSahgal simply shows that Indian women writers have vigorously and effectively responded to conflictual developments in a newly evolving post-colonial literature. One may wonder if this unique structure of feminine sensibility possesses special psychological characteristics and if this literary phenomenon is any way related to developments in contemporary feminism. (6) AttiaHossein being one of those women writers is credited with highlighting feminine sensibility of Muslim women in her novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column. She was born in Lucknow in 1913 andwas educated in La Matiniere and Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, blending in English liberal education with that of a traditional Muslim household where she was taught Persian, Urdu and Arabic. She was the first woman to graduate from amongst the feudal “Taluqdari” families into which she was born. Influenced, in the 1930’s by the Nationalist Movement and the Progressive Writers group in India, she became a journalist, broadcaster and writer of short fiction. In 1947 she went to England with her husband and two children. Presenting her own woman’s programme on the BBC Eastern service, amongst others, for many years, she also appeared on television and the Western stage. In addition to this, she lectured on the confluence of Indian and Western culture and wrote Phoenix Fled (1953), a collection of short stories and Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), a novel. Anita Desai, who has written ‘Introduction’ in the novel, speaks: AttiaHosain’s novel and collection of short stories are monuments monuments of the past; the history of North India, beforePartition. A monument suggests a gravestone___ grey, coldand immutable. Her books are delicate and tender, like new grass, and they stir with life and the play of sunlight and rain.To read them is as if one had parted a curtain, or opened adoor, and strayed into the past. (1-2) The family tradition of weaving together the political and the intellectual strands influenced AttiaHosain’s life and thoughts. She claims: I was greatly influenced in 30’s by the young friends and relationswho came back from English schools and Universities as left Wing activists, CommunistsCongress, Socialists. I was at the first Progressive Writers’ Conference and could be called a “fellowtravelers” at the time.I did notactively enter politicsas I was (and mayalways have been?)tied and restrictedin many ways by traditionalbonds of duty to the family. (4) Hosain confesses that her own ideal of womanhood was embodied in Sarojni Naidu, the poet/politician who made her “overcome my shyness and go the All India Women’s Conference in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1933. Sunlight on a Broken Column is a story about an orphan girl named as Laila, who belongs to a feudal family of Lucknow. Her family is a distinguished Muslim family but orthodox in terms of rules and regulations which is headed by Babajan, Laila’s grandfather. In the household, she is brought up by an orthodox aunt Abida, who keeps purdah. She lives in her grandfather’s household.The novel opens with Babajan, the head of the family being ill for three months and the members of the family being affected by it. The novel deals with partition of India. It is a time before the partition of India where Muslims and Hindus were living together like friends but because of partition the gulf between the two communities widened. When Laila was fifteen years old, she was taken to the home of an uncle in Lucknow, who was liberal but autocratic. Living in her uncle’s house gives her new experience as she was brought up in a conservative atmosphere. In her Uncle’s house, it was a time during 1930’s, a time when Indian freedom struggle movement was on verge. So, she was surrounded by relatives and friends caught up in politics. But she is unable to take part as being a Muslim girl and belonging to a traditional family, she herself has to fight for her own independence. She wants to break the age-old customs and traditions of her family and she does by falling in love with a man, whom her family has not chosen for her. In the novel, she has given the readers, a glimpse of the insider view of women belonging to Elite class of Muslim society, who though are living lavish lives with all the facilities but without their own choice. They are marginalized in a feudal set-up which is a reflection of patriarchal society. The family house, Ashiana (the nest) is an epitome of the society consisting of characters from every section of contemporary society.Jasbir Jain points out: Ashiana in Sunlight on a Broken Column serves as a microcosm of the world at large with not only its womenfolk in purdah but its retinue of servants who represents the community at large. It has a living relationship with the past not merely through the culture it cultivates but also through the house at Hasanpur at the outskirts of the city, which symbolizes continuity and permanence. (143) In drawing the character of Laila in the novel, Hossein has shared her own experiences. It is somewhat reflection of her own life and experiences of growing up in a Muslim feudal set-up. She too, like IsmatChugtai was associated with Progressive Writer’s Association and was very much influenced by it. Hossein had vividly described the purdah culture of her family in an interview given to Omar Khan: We were not in purdah in the sense that we were wearing burqas when we went out but we had a confined kind of life. People who came to visit us in the house were the sons of friends or relations but that was it because my remarkable mother herself never went anywhere. (web) These strict gender segregations became the cause of motivating her to depict it in her writing. The other reason is the influenced of Progressive Writers on her thinking so she adopted a radical approach against the pseudo morality existing in the conservative society. Hence she has drawn realistic picture of gender oppression and marginalization inflicted upon women or any subaltern class in her novel. She believes that religion is not the reason for the reflection of her political thinking in her writing. Although, she had never shuns religion altogether because she supports the humanitarian aspects of religion, as she says: I believed in my religion but so what? I believed in a religion that to me never said you kill anybody. Never did I believe that religion taught violence. (web) Her protagonist Laila in Sunlight on a Broken Column is a fine portrayal of a girl being brought up in a traditional set-up where there is strictness among gender.There is an instance in the novel when Baba Jan, Laila’s grandfather is seriously ill and his death seems impending. It is this time that she experiences the strict patriarchal system prevailing in her house reveling her clairvoyance. The gender segregation is quite reflective from the first sentence of the novel. As we see the day my aunt Abida moved from the zenana into the guest room off the corridor that led to the men’s wing of the house, within call of her father’s room, we knew Baba Jan had not much longer to live. (14) Marriage is also an important theme in the novel focusing its relevance in the lives of young girls in a Muslim household. How girls are made aware of it since childhood. But Laila though being born in such traditional set-up is quite different from girls of her society and household. This is due to the influence of Western education being granted to her and the intensive attention of her aunt that moulded her personality. She finds other girls to be different from herand are surprised by their attitudes towards lives. As one of the female characters, Zahra think, “I was brought up to do my duty.” (147) But we also see a very progressive female character, Zainab who is far more liberal in many ways than Laila or any other liberal girl in the novel. Though being lived in a small place like Hasanpur, she is very free and promiscuous. Laila is the narrator of the novel and the story revolves around her, it is the story of her individual growth and development within the context of defined social order. It is her quest for individual identity and a significant existence in a social and traditional set-up before and after partition. The story shows her maturity from the beginning of the novel till the end and her quest for identity in a splendid way, although in a slow way. Most important is the intellectual development of Laila from childhood to maturity having emphasized in over-abundance form though in archaic events. It also comprises of some conflicts and quarrels existing between the desires, needs and aspirations of individuals and also the value system which the social order had specified for each individuals in lives. So the foremost duty of an individual is to accommodate in the society according to the social order whether it is up to his/her choice or not and to adopt the guidelines, spirit and values of the social norms propounded by the society for the individuals. This is what Hossain has depicted in the novel. Finally in the end, the novelist succeeded in accomplishing the protagonist of her individuality and her position in the society. While all the other girls have married according to the choices of their family, Laila being a progressive Western educated girl dissuades this notion. She postulates the idea of marrying a man of her choice, Ameer. This progressive outlook is however proved to be very disadvantageous for her as she had to face disgrace and unfavourable response of her family. But for Laila, her marriage with Ameer was like an attainment of her selfhood, an achievement of her individual being in a time when it was almost impossible for a traditional girl in a patriarchal society. The protagonist, Lailawho belonged to an Indian Muslim society in pre-partition India; a society which was highly patriarchal in form. In her childhood, she lost her parents and was compel to live with her paternal grandfather, who is a grand old monarch of his family. She was kept under the tender care of her father’s unmarried sister Abida who gave her love and support throughout her life. The novel is considered autobiographical in nature as it has a quite resemblance with Attia’s social, political and personal life which she had denied in some interviews. The novel was published in 1961 featuring the years spanning from 1932 to 1952, a critical time in the Indian history when the subcontinent was facing social and political upheavals due to independence and partition. The novel also focuses on the change in mindset of people belonging to patriarchal society. Her grandfather, Baba Jan who was earlier not in favour of female and Western education started supporting it. As it is reflective in the following lines: At the end of the last century Baba Jan had been influenced by ideas of reform among Muslims and had sent his sons to English universities. He had thought the weapons of foreigners should be used against them to preserve inherited values and culture. To copy their way was abhorrent to him. (86) So in this way, the novel has given a positive message by it progressive outlook in many spheres. Short story, Lihaaf and the novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column are feminist writings as they both reflects progressive female outlook though in different ways. These two writers, IsmatChugtai and AttiaHossain were born in pre-partition India in a Muslim society. Societies in those days were very conservative giving less room for women. These two writers grew up in conservative, traditional atmosphere but they were progressive in their outlook and thoughts. And these progressive thoughts they have demonstrated in their writings in the form of short stories, novels and other genre. They are representative of Muslim women writing in the Indian sub-continent and role-models for women. References
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