Sultana's Dream Read online

  Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. Reproduced by permission of Roushan Jahan.

  Sultana’s Dream

  A Feminist Utopia

  and Selections from

  THE SECLUDED ONES

  Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

  Edited and Translated by Roushan Jahan

  Afterword by Hanna Papanek

  Dedicated to the inheritors of Rokeya’s dream

  “Sultana’s Dream”: Purdha Reversed, “The Secluded Ones”: Purdah Observed, and Rokeya: An Introduction to Her Life © 1988 by Roushan Jahan. Translation of selections from The Secluded Ones © 1981, 1988 by Roushan Jahan. Caging the Lion: A Fable for Our Time © 1988 by Hanna Papanek. “Sultana’s Dream” and selections from The Secluded Ones are reprinted and translated, respectively, from Rokeya Racanavali, with the kind permission of the Bangla Academy, Dhaka, Bangladesh. All rights reserved.

  Published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016

  First edition, 1988

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rokeya, Begum.

  Sultana’s dream and selections from The secluded ones.

  Bibliography: p.

  “Publications of Rokeya Sakhawat Houssain” : p.

  1. Women—Bangladesh—Literary collections.

  2. Purdah—Literary collections. 3. Rokeya, Begum.

  4. Authors, Bengali—20th century—Biography.

  5. Feminists—Bangladesh—Biography. I. Jahan,

  Roushan. II. Papanek, Hanna. III. Rokeya, Begum.

  Abarodha-b-sin. English. Selections. 1988. IV. Title.

  PR420.9.R65S86 1988 823 88-11033

  eISBN 978-155861-735-3

  This publication is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. The Feminist Press is also grateful to Helene D. Goldfarb for her generosity.

  CONTENTS

  1.Cover Page

  2.Author Photo

  3.Title Page

  4.Copyright Page

  5.Table of Contents

  6.Preface

  7.Chronology

  8.“Sultana’s Dream”: Purdah Reversed

  9.Sultana’s Dream

  10.The Secluded Ones: Purdah Observed

  11.Selections from The Secluded Ones

  12.Rokeya: An Introduction To Her Life

  13.Afterward, Caging The Lion: A Fable for Our Time

  14.Glossary

  15.About the Author

  16.About the Feminist Press

  17.Also Available From the Feminist Press

  Preface

  IN THIS BOOK, we look at purdah—the seclusion and segregation of women—through three pairs of eyes: those of an early twentieth-century Muslim writer who saw purdah from the inside and campaigned against it most of her life; those of a modern Bangladeshi literary scholar and feminist activist; and those of a modern North American feminist social scientist familiar with South Asia and purdah.

  It is important to introduce Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain to a much wider readership—not only because her ideas are important but also because her short story “Sultana’s Dream” is a feminist Utopia that antedates by a decade the much better known feminist Utopian novel Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. By bringing this perceptive feminist foremother to the attention of a wider readership now, we hope to remedy a long period of neglect and make it clear that feminist sentiments grow from indigenous roots, without depending on foreign influence.

  We see this book as being useful to three broad audiences. For those students and teachers interested in literature by and about women, here is a well-contextualized introduction to a little-known Asian author. For students and teachers of Asian studies outside Asia, here is an addition that focuses on women’s experiences, which are all too often neglected. For Asian readers, here is an introduction to an Asian author who is not well known outside the language and culture of Bengal but whose experiences resonate for many South Asian readers.

  For all three readerships, however, a sense of history is crucial, for purdah observance is not a uniform phenomenon either in space or time. Changes in political, economic, social, and cultural forces can affect women’s lives with unexpected speed, and not always for the best. Rokeya’s portrayal of women in purdah in The Secluded Ones, her collection of journalistic vignettes, must, therefore, be seen in terms of the rapid shifts over time that have affected purdah observance in South Asia and in view of profound differences not only between cultures but also, within the same society, between classes and regions. Ironically, the excesses of purdah observance described by Rokeya at the start of this century may seem unbelievable to some South Asian readers and all too imaginable to some others in places where purdah is on the rise.

  “Sultana’s Dream,” a short story, and The Secluded Ones, factual reportage, represent two genres in which Rokeya worked and indicate her central focus on injustice against women. In “Sultana’s Dream: Purdah Reversed,” Roushan Jahan sets the scene for readers new to Rokeya, telling how Rokeya came to write the story and why it was written in English, and provides a literary analysis of the story. Similarly, in “The Secluded Ones: Purdah Observed,” Jahan discusses the significance of these reports in the context of other writings of the time about purdah. In “Rokeya: An Introduction to her Life,” Jahan provides a broader view of Rokeya’s life, her other writings and ideas, and her activism. Finally, in her Afterword, “Caging the Lion: A Fable for Our Time,” Hanna Papanek sketches aspects of purdah on a broad canvas, to show not only the diversity of practices called “purdah” but the decisive impact of purdah on outside observers of South Asia. Selections from Papanek’s own observations of South Asian purdah include excerpts from the life history of a woman who left purdah reluctantly, under pressure from her husband. In the Afterword, Papanek also discusses some of the underlying forces—especially the social control of sexuality and reproduction—that affect the relations between women and men in societies where purdah exists.

  This book should have been written sooner for we have both been concerned with its subject matter for a very long time. Other commitments—to our families and our other work—have made completion of the manuscript difficult. Our decision to finish it now is the the result of what we see as a rapid deterioration in the rights of women in many parts of the world, in many cultures, and many different religious traditions. Once again, women are being used as the targets of fears and resentments generated by rapid social change. Repressive regimes and powerful social movements in many parts of the world are once again tryng to restrict the human rights of women as part of their attempts to bring to their societies the imagined stability of a mythic past.

  But our work has also benefited from what is part of the response to these attacks on the position of women: the rapid development of action and research on women’s issues throughout South Asia, accompanied by a tangible growth of international feminist networks. We have both been active participants in these activities; in moments spared from research or conference work, we were able to exchange ideas about this book and, eventually, our draft manuscripts.

  The book is also the product of a long friendship. In the twenty-five years we (and our families) have known each other and explored each other’s countries, we have often talked about the joys and problems of being women in our very different societies. The question of purdah has never been far from our minds. Rokeya’s story of reverse purdah became a part of our converstions after Roushan Jahan’s sister, Rounaq Jahan, first told Hanna Papanek about this utopian story in the 1960s.

  Over the years, we have accumulated too many debts to family, friends, and colleagues to recount them all and confine ourselves here to a lis
t of more formal acknowledgements.

  For comments on drafts of all or part of our essays, we thank Dr. Anisuzzaman, Professor, Department of Bengali, Dhaka University; Dr. Riffat Hassan, Professor and Chair, Religious Studies Program, University of Louisville; Dr. Malavika Karlekar, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi; and Dr. Bruce Pray, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

  For many reasons, we are deeply grateful to “Hamida Khala” and the members of her family who spoke so frankly about life in purdah. We also thank Ela Bhatt, General Secretary of the Self-Employed Women’s Association, Ahmedabad, for sharing with us the story of the union organizer.

  We are also grateful to the Bangla Academy in Dhaka for permission to publish “Sultana’s Dream” and other excerpts from Rokeya Racanavali, the collected works of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, which appeared under their sponsorship in 1973. We also thank Women For Women, a research and study group in Dhaka, under whose auspices Roushan Jahan published Inside Seclusion: The Avarodhbasini of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1981), a translation of selected short essays by Rokeya.

  Thanks are also due to Surayia Rahman, the Bangladeshi artist who designed the embroidered quilt (nakshi kantha), a portion of which is reproduced on the cover, and to the anonymous Bangladeshi woman who stitched the entire embroidery. Hanna Papanek, the owner of the embroidery, made the photographs used for the cover.

  In the course of our individual work on purdah and Rokeya, we have each been helped by the support of several institutions that directly advanced our work on the present volume. Roushan Jahan worked on her critical biography of Rokeya while a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Asian Development Studies, Boston University, with a grant from The Ford Foundation (Dhaka). Hanna Papanek received support for research and writing on sex segregation and female seclusion in South Asia from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

  Given the logistical difficulties of prolonged international collaboration, we appreciate the support of the institutions that make it possible by bringing colleagues together at intervals for workshops and study tours. Most important in this connection has been the sponsorship of the United Nations University (Tokyo) of the Comparative Study of Women’s Work and Family Strategies in South and Southeast Asia in which we are both active participants. Study grants from the Smithsonian Institution and the American Institute of Indian Studies for Hanna Papanek’s other research in India are also greatly appreciated.

  Finally, we thank Florence Howe, Susannah Driver, and the staff of The Feminist Press for their patient and helpful support throughout the difficult process of getting a finished manuscript from peripatetic authors living half a world apart.

  Roushan Jahan, Bangladesh, and Hanna Papanek, USA

  Chronology

  1880

  Rokeya is born in the village of Pairaband.

  1896

  Marriage to Khan Bahadur Syed Sakhawat Hossain, Deputy Magistrate, Bengal Civil Sevice. Settles in Bhagalpur, Bihar.

  1903–4

  First publication, of articles on the oppression of women, in various journals in Calcutta.

  1909

  Death of Khan Bahadur Syed Sakhawat Hossain in Calcutta, May 3. Rokeya establishes the Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School, Bhagalpur.

  1910

  Rokeya leaves Bhagalpur and settles in Calcutta.

  1911

  Rokeya reopens the Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School in Calcutta, March 16.

  1916

  Founds the Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam, Bangla (Bengali Muslim Women’s Association).

  1917

  Inspection of the Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School by Lady Chelmsford, wife of the Governor General and Vicerory of India. Prominent figures such as the Agha Khan, Sir Abdur Rahim Moulana Mohammad Ali, and others help the school.

  1926

  Presides at the Bengal Women’s Education Conference held in Calcutta.

  1931

  Address, “The Bengali Muslims on Their Way to Decline,” given at the Sakhawat School.

  1932

  Rokeya presides at a session of the Indian Women’s Conference held in Aligarh. Dies, December 9. Buried in Sodpur, near Calcutta. Condolence meeting attended by many Hindu and Muslim social workers and educators, both male and female, Albert Hall, Calcutta. Message of condolence sent by the Governor of Bengal. Condolence meeting held at the Sakhawat School. The Monthly Mohammadi brings out a special memorial issue.

  “Sultana’s Dream”: Purdah Reversed

  Roushan Jahan

  “SOULTANA’S DREAM,” published in 1905 in a Madras-based English periodical, The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, is one of the earliest “self-consciously feminist”1 Utopian stories written in English by a woman. It is certainly the first such story to be written by an Indian woman. Its author, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), is the first and foremost feminist of Bengali Muslim Society. One hesitates to use a term that is not context-free, and feminism does mean different things to different people, yet it is the term that automatically occurs to many who read Rokeya’s work now. At the time she wrote this story, she had already attracted considerable attention as an essayist, having published several articles in Bangla dealing exclusively with the subordination and oppression of Bengali women, especially Bengali Muslim women.

  Rokeya reminisced about writing this story in 1930, twenty-five years after its publication. As she remembered, she was all alone in her house because her husband, Khan Bahadur Syed Sakhawat Hossain, a Deputy Magistrate, was away on a tour of inspection. He was stationed in Bamka, a small town in the district of Bhagalpur, in the present-day Indian state of Bihar. The young Bengali Muslim woman must have felt especially lonely in a household where everybody spoke Urdu; for, although Rokeya spoke Urdu, Bengali was her native tongue. “To pass the time, I wrote the story.”2 Her motivation was partly to demonstrate her proficiency in English to her non-Bengali husband, who encouraged her to read and write English, and who was her immediate and appreciative audience. Partly the desire must have been to test her ability in literary forms other than essays.

  When Sakhawat returned, he did exactly what Rokeya had anticipated. He casually inquired about what she had been doing. “When I showed him the manuscript, he read the whole thing without even bothering to sit down. ‘A terrible revenge!’ he said when he was finished.”3 He was impressed with the story, which is not surprising, and sent it to his friend Mr. McPherson, the divisional commissioner of Bhagalpur, for comments. Like any other young author, Rokeya was immensely relieved to receive flattering comments from him. “In his letter to my husband he wrote, ‘The ideas expressed in it are quite delightful and full of originality and they are written in perfect English…. I wonder if she has foretold here the manner in which we may be able to move about in the air at some future time. Her suggestions on this point are most ingenious.’ ”4 On the basis of such remarks, Sakhawat persuaded her to send the story to The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, which published it that year (1905). By 1908, Rokeya had gained enough confidence as an author to submit “Sultana’s Dream” for publication as a book. It appeared that year from S. K. Lahiri and Company in Calcutta.

  It is perhaps not surprising that most readers react to “Sultana’s Dream” as a pleasant fantasy and not “a terrible revenge” on men for their oppression of women, as her perceptive husband did. Even those who did perceive the bitter truth under the sugar-coating seemed to welcome this after the tremendous anger and biting wit displayed without camouflage in her essays. Critics like Abul Hussain thought of similarities with Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, a book Rokeya much enjoyed and to which she referred more than once in her essays. He thought that the extreme measure of secluding men in Ladyland was a “reaction to the prevailing oppression and vulnerability of our women…. perhaps Mrs. R. S. Hossain wrote this to create a sense of self-confidence among the very vulnerable Bengali women…. That women may possess faculties and talents equivalent to or gre
ater than men—that they are capable of developing themselves to a stage where they may attain complete mastery over nature without any help from men and create a new world of perfect beauty, great wealth and goodness—this is what ‘Sultana’s Dream’ depicts…. I hope the male readers of ‘Sultana’s Dream’ would try to motivate the women of their families toward self-realization.”5

  Indeed, to motivate Bengali Muslim women toward self-realization and to persuade their society not to obstruct their way to self-realization was the mission of Rokeya’s life. “Sultana’s Dream” was one of many sorties in her lifelong and relentless jihad (holy war) waged against some of the basic principles of her society. As a publicist in the cause of women, she wielded her pen with considerable skill. She had an unerring eye for the vulnerable points of the opponents. She also possessed a remarkable sense of the comic, which enhanced her resources as a challenger. Though her style is remarkably lively and witty (school children in Bangladesh are still grateful to her for not writing tremendously boring essays like many of her male contemporaries), she did not write primarily to entertain. Rather, she marshaled her thoughts and arguments in order to question the existing order of things, to raise doubts about seemingly accepted facts, and to motivate people to take the necessary actions to change customs she considered evil and unjust.

  This mission may well account for the fact that Rokeya did not continue writing and publishing in English, despite flattering comments from her contemporaries about her use of that language. Her pen was, first, a weapon in her crusade for social reform. Since her main concern was to raise the consciousness of the men and women of her own class of Muslim Bengal, her own language was the most appropriate medium for achieving her purpose. Moreover, she was a careful stylist, keen to achieve the desired effect with the words she used. Let us not forget that English was the fifth language she learned. Perhaps she was not confident when using English. It is likely that her experiment with the language as a medium of her creative writing convinced her that the idiom of English was not suited to her particular gifts. Whatever the reason, and she never shed any light on it, we know that she used English only when compelled to do so.