[Reader-list] “Tahzibi Bahin: Four Early Indian Muslim Women Writers: Gail Minault

[Yogi Sikand]

“Tahzibi Bahin: Four Early Indian Muslim Women Writers

Keynote Address for Workshop in Delhi, December 2010: “Women’s
Autobiographies in Islamic Societies: Context and Construction”

*Gail Minault, University of Texas at Austin*


    It is a great honor to be asked to give the keynote address for this
workshop on “Women’s Autobiographies in Islamic Societies: Context and
Construction.”  Last winter, in Austin, we held the first of three
workshops, and there the topic was: “Defining the Genre.”  It seems clear
that a woman’s autobiography may take many forms.  She may write something
called a “memoir” or an “autobiography,” but not necessarily.
Autobiographical writings may take many forms: diaries, letters, fiction,
even poetry.  Whether we succeeded in defining the genre or not, we
certainly managed to complicate what we think of as autobiography.
    Now we seek to look at the social and historical contexts of
autobiographies, and the various ways that autobiographical writings are
constructed.  As a historian, I am especially interested in the context of
texts, and today I want to talk about the lives and works of four North
Indian Muslim women writers who broke their silence in the early years of
women’s publication, in the pages of various women’s magazines, chiefly (but
not exclusively) in the pages of the periodical Tahzib un-Niswan that was
published from Lahore beginning in 1898.  The title “Tahzibi Bahin” or
sisters of Tahzib, refers to the network of contributors to this journal,
and those who wrote letters to its editor, Muhammadi Begam.  She referred to
them as such, and it seems a particularly appropriate image: a sisterhood
who were connected by their pens to a journal, the title of which meant “the
reform, or polishing, or perfection of women.”  These women were
enthusiastic about communicating with each other, expressing ideas about how
to better their lives, improving the comfort and health of their families,
advancing their children’s education, and expanding their knowledge of the
outside world.
    Most of these women, as middle class Muslims in the late 19th and early
20th century, were in purdah.  They seldom went out, and when they did they
were heavily veiled and accompanied by a male relative or a servant.  When
they were in company, it was with other women, or with members of their
immediate or extended families.  When they wrote, they wrote to communicate
with other women.  The public at large was more forbidding.  Many of the
earliest women authors, even those writing letters to the editor, used
pseudonyms: the mother, or the daughter, or the wife of so-and-so, or they
might use their initials or a poetic takhallus.  To go public with one’s
full name might be construed as stripping off the veil.
When Sayyid Mumtaz Ali and his wife Muhammadi Begum founded Tahzib
un-Niswan, they sent out issues gratis to names on the civil list, hoping to
enlist subscribers.  Some of their prospective clientele returned the
journal to sender with obscenities scrawled on the label.  Someone plastered
a poster on the gateway of Mumtaz Ali’s house, accusing him of promoting
prostitution.  Such a social context is hardly conducive to the
autobiographical form!  To find out who some of the early women writers were
is a challenge.  What is surprising and encouraging is that any women came
forward, subscribed (with the help, presumably, of their male relatives),
and sent in letters, articles, poems, housekeeping tips, answers to problems
raised by other correspondents, and ultimately made this journal (and others
like it) a success.  From reading Tahzib un-Niswan, ‘Ismat (published from
Delhi beginning in 1908), and other women’s magazines in Urdu, one can
construct a view of women’s lives at the time, and their desire for greater
knowledge and social involvement.  For even within the bounds of purdah, the
world, or its reflection, could come to them via print, and they could reach
out to others, their figurative sisters.  At least, that was the idea behind
the founding of these magazines.  But given this social context, and this
very embryonic public sphere, how did women express autobiographical
information?  Or how can we, who seek information about the lives of the
women who wrote in these magazines, reconstruct their lives?
To answer these questions, I turn to the lives of four women who are the
subject of my inquiry today, Ashrafunnissa Begam (1840-1903), Muhammadi
Begam (1878?- 1908), the editor of Tahzib un-Niswan, Zahida Khatun Sherwani,
who was known by her initials, Zay-Khay-Sheen (1894-1922), and Rokeya
Sakhawat Hossein (1880-1932).   The latter is especially known as a Bengali
woman educator and outspoken critic of purdah; less well known is that she
also spoke and wrote in Urdu and contributed frequently to Tahzib
un-Niswan.  Another tahzibi bahin that I might have described is Nazr Sajjad
Hyder, who before her marriage was the editor of Phul, the girls’ magazine
in the Tahzib un-Niswan family of publications, but she has already been
well described in a paper given this morning by Asiya Alam.
Ashrafunnissa Begam, affectionately known to her students as Bibi Ashraf,
contributed to one of the earliest issues of Tahzib un-Niswan in 1899,
encouraged by its editor, Muhammadi Begam, who felt that her story of how
she learned to read and write would be an inspiration to others.  After Bibi
Ashraf’s death, Muhammadi wrote a biography, Hayat-i-Ashraf, based on
Ashrafunnissa’s own story to give a fuller picture of her life.  Her memoir,
one of the few by a woman at that time, shows the amazing degree of
self-discipline and determination required to gain literacy, even in a
family with a literate tradition.  Bibi Ashraf came from a family of modest
means, but one in which the women were traditionally taught to read, though
never to write.  They were Sayyids and devout Shi'as, and had a small
landholding in district Bijnor.  Her father, a vakil (legal practitioner),
was employed in the princely state of Gwalior, so Bibi Ashraf and her
siblings grew up in her grandfather's house.  An ustani (female tutor) came
to the house to teach the girls to read the Quran, until one day when the
teacher, a widow, remarried.  Bibi Ashraf was six years old, and only half
way through the sacred book, when this happened.  Her grandfather was so
shocked by the woman's remarriage--in spite of the fact that widow
remarriage is permitted in Islam--that the woman was banned from ever
returning to the house, and the lessons necessarily ceased.
Her grandmother, however, encouraged her to read and reread the sections of
the Quran that she had already studied, and by persistent effort, she
completed the sacred book on her own.  She still could not read Urdu and
wanted to do so in order to participate in majalis--poetic recitations
organized by the family during the sacred month of Muharram to commemorate
the martyrdom of Imam Husain at Kerbala.  She asked a relative for the text
of some of the poems offered on such occasions, claiming that she would have
them copied so she could practice reading and reciting them.  She got the
texts and some paper, took some coal blacking from the underside of the
kitchen griddle (tava) in order to make ink to copy the texts herself, and
then stole off to the roof at midday--when everyone else in the household
was resting--to copy the texts, which she could not understand.
Then she found a teacher.  A male cousin needed help studying the Quran, so
she exchanged that service for help in learning to read some Urdu marsiyas,
elegiac poems honoring the Imams.  After a while, she found that she could
also read the poems that she had so painstakingly copied out in secret.
Then it was simply a matter of practice, reading everything that came to
hand.  When her uncle, a stern individual opposed to women's writing, left
home to join her father in Gwalior, the other women in the household
discovered that she could write, and she became the scribe who wrote their
family letters.
At the age of nineteen, Ashrafunnissa was married to a cousin, Sayyid
Alamdar Husain, and moved to Lahore.  Her husband, as was increasingly
common for members of his generation, had been educated in the colonial
system, at Delhi College, an institution that taught both western sciences
and oriental literatures through the medium of Urdu.  He became a Deputy
Inspector of Schools in the Punjab, and later taught at Lahore's Government
College.  They had four children, two of whom died in infancy.  Alamdar
Husain died in 1870, leaving Bibi Ashraf with two young daughters.  She
never remarried, but raised her children, educated them, and supported
herself, first by taking in sewing and later by teaching at Victoria Girls'
School in Lahore.  She was obviously a woman of tremendous determination,
sustained by a firm religious faith.  Having survived so much, to publish
her story for others to read did not cause her to fear for her
respectability.
Our second author, Muhammadi Begam, was the second wife of Sayyid Mumtaz
Ali.  His first wife had died, leaving him with two young children, in the
same year that he quite Punjab government service to found his publishing
business.  He needed a helpmate, and the woman he found was the educated
daughter of friends of his family.  Muhammadi, who had lost her mother
early, grew up in a family with numerous brothers, and consequently was used
to fending for herself.  She studied at home, first with her brothers,
learning to read the Quran and Urdu.  When they went off to school, she
studied from their textbooks.  When her sister married and moved away,
Muhammadi learned to write letters to remain in touch.  When she was
thirteen and her stepmother was away for a family wedding, she kept house,
cooked, cared for the younger children, did the household accounts, and
wrote daily letters.  As a teenager, she read Urdu newspapers and books and
started studying English grammar.  Her education, conducted at home, was
somewhat haphazard and related mainly to practical matters; yet, unlike Bibi
Ashraf, she received instruction and encouragement.  She was clearly very
intelligent and mastered new subjects quickly.  After she married Mumtaz
Ali, when he was thirty-seven and she was about nineteen, she continued her
studies.  Her husband taught her Arabic and Persian; an English woman came
to the house to tutor her in English; another woman tutored her in Hindi;
and a neighborhood boy, mathematics.   She took responsibility for Mumtaz
Ali’s household and his children, who were apparently very fond of her.  In
addition, she enthusiastically supported her husband’s plans to start a
newspaper for women and became the editor of Tahzib un-Niswan with its first
issue in 1898.
Muhammadi worked hard to insure the success of the weekly.  She rose early
to pray, to take care of the children, to do the cooking and housework.  She
worked late into the night to bring out Tahzib, personally writing much of
the material, editing, and answering letters, often not getting to sleep
until the wee hours.  She bore first a stillborn daughter, then in 1900, a
son, Sayyid Imtiaz Ali.  Muhammadi was thus wife, mother, homemaker, and
companion in her husband’s life work, proving that it was possible for an
Indian middle-class woman even at the turn of the twentieth century to “have
it all.”  But as women elsewhere and more recently have discovered, having
it all can be hard work.  The family was also plagued by ill health.  In
1906, her father died, and in 1907 her beloved younger step-brother died
suddenly of pneumonia.  The burden of work and two bereavements in rapid
succession seriously affected her health.  Mumtaz Ali became a widower for
the second time in November 1908.
Before her untimely death, Muhammadi Begam helped make Urdu journalism for
women not only acceptable, but successful.   She wrote voluminously: journal
articles, cook books, a household manual, a book of etiquette, as well as
novels and poetry, many of these works serialized in the pages of Tahzib.
Her novels are patterned on the popular novels of that day.  One of them,
Safiya Begam, is a cautionary tale about the dangers of marrying off a
daughter without her consent.  Safiya had been engaged at birth to her
cousin.  She grows into a lovely young woman, educated by her father, taught
the household arts by her mother, and to care for the sick by a family
friend who was a woman doctor.  Her mother feels that it is time to marry
her, and though her father has little enthusiasm for the match, and the
cousin has become a lazy good-for-nothing and a consumptive, the father
contacts the relatives.  The cousin, sensibly, turns down the marriage
proposal, citing his illness.  Safiya and her parents are relieved by this
turn of events and arrange her marriage to a well-educated upstanding young
man.
Unfortunately, before the marriage can take place, the cousin’s family
reconsiders, having decided that Safiya’s dowry is too good to pass up, and
they invoke the childhood betrothal.  Safiya’s parents are honor bound to
opt for their kinsmen, even though he is less worthy.  Safiya, not consulted
about this last-minute change in her intended spouse, dies of humiliation,
leaving behind a note imploring parents not to marry off their daughters
without their informed consent, an act which, in addition to everything
else, is counter to the shari’a.
This poignant story sounds much like the plot of a Bollywood film, yet
Safiya’s tragedy also reflects a distinctly feminist consciousness.  Safiya
is educated and skilled, but caught in a conflict between her duty to her
parents and their differing views of family and religious obligation.  In
the moral conflict between customary views of what is honorable and
religiously correct action, Safiya’s father gives in to his wife’s sense of
family obligation, violating both religious injunctions and Safiya’s best
interest.  Safiya cannot win, for to disobey her parents would dishonor them
all.  The only way out is to die, though she does not take her own life but
conveniently dies of a broken heart.  This melodramatic turn violates what
is otherwise a fairly realistic scenario.  Muhammadi Begam illustrates the
importance of family relationships and the sense of duty to them that
complicate moral choices and limit women’s freedom of action.
The content of Muhammadi Begam’s writing reflected the contents of Tahzib
un-Niswan during its first ten years under her editorship.  Muhammadi’s
distinctive, down-to-earth style enlivened the pages of the journal.
Articles discussed education, housekeeping, and child care, gave recipes,
advice to daughters-in-law on how to get along with their in-laws, and so
forth.  A constant theme was the reform and simplification of custom and the
need to eliminate wasteful expenditure on household rituals.  Muhammadi’s
novels expressed moral dilemmas within acceptable boundaries and her poetry
gave one of the few windows on her own feelings.  In particular, her grief
at the death of her younger brother, “Yadgar-i-Mahbub,” is contained in her
collected poems.  Muhammadi did not write an autobiography.  Much of what I
know about her life is from a manuscript biography written by her sister.
But surely, her writings in Tahzib and her editing of others’ writings
reflect much about her life and its priorities, her practical turn of mind,
and her take-charge style.  Mumtaz Ali was devastated by her death, but he
kept the journal going, under the editorship of other women members of his
extended family.
Zahida Khatun Sherwani, known as Zay-Khay-Sheen, was the younger daughter of
Nawab Sir Muzammillah Khan Sherwani, Rais of Bhikampur in Aligarh
district.   A follower of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, he was an important figure
in the Aligarh movement, a supporter of the British connection, and a
champion of turning Aligarh College into a Muslim University.  The Sherwanis
of Aligarh were a family that displayed an intriguing combination of the
progressive and the conservative.  They were distinguished in educational
circles, supporting both Islamic and western curricula, and they supported
education for women, although the women of the family maintained strict
purdah and were educated at home.  The family’s loyalist politics were
manifested in membership in reform associations along with resistance to the
growing force of anti-British nationalism before and after World War I.
Genealogically, they practiced cousin marriage to an almost exclusive
degree.  This kept the family properties intact, while taking a toll on the
health of their offspring.
Zahida Khatun was a product of this large and intellectually vibrant
family.  Her mother died when she was very young, and her father,
consequently, had a major role in her education, along with that of her
siblings, an older sister and a younger brother.  They learned to read the
Quran beginning at age four, and were tutored in Persian by an Iranian woman
whom their father hired upon the recommendation of the Begam of Bhopal.  She
taught them an appreciation for poetry, and under her tutelage Zahida
started writing poetry from a young age.
Around 1912 or so, Zahida started writing articles and verses and sent them
off to various women’s magazines and other literary periodicals.  She also
was the ringleader of an association of her cousins, the “Young Sherwanis’
League,” that met from time to  time, collected dues, started schools for
the poor children of their qasbah, and donated money to the drive to build a
boarding house for Aligarh Girls’ School.  During this time too, she became
concerned with the fate of Muslims elsewhere, and wrote verses about the
Balkan and Tripolitan wars and the Kanpur Mosque incident.  Aligarh was the
center of an effort to put together a Red Crescent Medical Mission to aid
Turkey during the Balkan wars of 1911-13.  Community leaders visited the
college, giving new life to the movement for a Muslim University.  Her
brother and male cousins doubtless reported this excitement to the
purdah-nashin members of the family.  In 1913, Zay-Khay-Sheen sent a poem
about the Kanpur Mosque incident to the Urdu newspaper Zamindar of Lahore.
Her father found out about it and was furious, called her an “extremist” and
ordered her to stop “cursing the government” as it put him in a very
delicate position.  She was so upset by his disapproval that she stopped
writing altogether for a while.  Eventually, she resumed publishing her
poetry without telling him (though he may have suspected), an act that
showed her considerable courage, not to mention her desire for
self-expression.
In 1916, her younger brother died suddenly, depriving her not only of a
beloved sibling, but also of her eyes and ears on current events in
Aligarh.  Following this bereavement, she went through a period of
depression and ill health.  Another serious blow occured two years later,
when she lost a friend and frequent correspondent, Rabia Sultan Begam, a
well-known Urdu woman author who was married into the Bilgrami family of
Hyderabad and also related, by the marriage of her niece, to the family of
Mumtaz Ali of Lahore.   Rabia Sultan was thus a vital link to the world of
women’s publishing in these two important literary hubs.  Losing her meant
not only losing a supportive friend, but also increased Zahida’s sense of
isolation.  Zahida also remained unmarried as the cousin who was intended
for her also died young, and there was no one else within the family of
appropriate age or fortune.
Thereafter, her poetry takes on a darker tone that characterized her later
works.  An example of this was her poem Sipas Nama-i-Urdu (“In Praise of
Urdu”), written in 1918 to honor the occasion of the inauguration of Osmania
University in Hyderabad, the only institution of higher education in India
that used Urdu as its medium of instruction.  The poem was read out at the
inauguration, and apparently no one knew that its author was a woman:

I am giving up the use of a comb,
Refusing to return the mirror’s gaze.
I have no heart nor zest
For self-displays.

In any case,
I am radiant of face.
But if no one observes,
Of what use is grace?...

I am a ruby wrapped in a rag,
     The moon in its darkened phase;
I am a rustic beauty,
     A blossom in a desolate place.

As is gold buried in the dust.
     Or a pearl lost in the sea;
A candle under a cover,
     Or in a void, the song of the shahnai.

Why was Yusuf enchained?
         Why the nightingale caged?
    Who gave the order?
         What wisdom so ordained?

What a shocking view it is,
Astonishing beyond astonishment.
That beauty of form can be
Regarded as unfortunate…

Indeed, in the company of rivals,
Like a candle, I weep.
Even with all this beauty,
In spite of all this grace…

They are useless, powerless,
All my turns of phrase.
A contest was proposed,
And I met my fate.

I could not find the words
My meaning to express.
How could one so powerless
Make clear her great distress?

The poet uses powerful imagery to draw parallels between the status of
Urdu—marginalized, ignored, hidden from view—and the status of women in her
society. Beginning with the imagery of not being seen and having an
under-appreciated beauty, she proceeds to the image of a musha’ira, or
poetic assembly, and changes the discourse to one of not being heard, or of
trying to speak and not being understood.  In spite of grace of form and
style, she is condemned for showing off her beauty and is powerless in the
face of incomprehension.  The audience may not have known that the author of
this lament was a woman, but Sipas-Nama shows that Zay-Khay-Sheen was
developing a distinctive voice, rich in irony and double entendres.
Can poetry be a form of autobiography?  In the case of Zay-Khay-Sheen, I
think it is clear that it can be, although such verses need to be placed in
the context of the times in which they were composed.  Zahida died in 1922
at the age of 27, another premature loss to the world of Urdu literature.
Her kulliyat or poetic work was published by Mumtaz Ali’s publishing firm in
1941, and we are also fortunate that a younger cousin wrote a very
informative biography, Hayat-i-Z-Kh-Sh, based on her letters, publications,
and family lore.  Her poetic voice is eloquent, and even though
Zay-Khay-Sheen remained hidden from view, there were ways in which she
pierced through her isolation.  By means of her close relationships with
family and with correspondents, and through the literary journals that
published her work, she made her voice heard in the political and
intellectual life of her time.
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein was born in a village near Rangpur in northern
Bengal, the daughter of a zamindar.  She had two brothers and two sisters
and grew up in a large and rambling household.  Her father was a learned man
who insisted that his sons learn Arabic and Persian as well as Urdu and
Bengali, and later sent them to St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta to learn
English so they might enter the civil service.  He was thus aware of the
need to educate his sons to meet changed circumstances, but he saw no need
to educate his purdah-observing daughters.
Rokeya’s elder sister learned to read Bengali from her brothers, but her
relatives caught her reading, criticized her, and married her off at a young
age.  Rokeya, also an avid reader, kept her literacy to herself.  She had an
ally in her elder brother, Ibrahim, who used to teach her Bengali and
English late at night.  Ibrahim also helped arrange Rokeya’s marriage to an
acquaintance, Sayyid Sakhawat Hossein, a civil servant posted to Rangpur.
Sakhawat Hossein was originally from Bhagalpur in Bihar, had been educated
in Patna, Calcutta, and London, and was a firm supporter of women’s
education.  He was pleased by Rokeya’s literacy and encouraged her literary
talents.  A widower, Sakhawat Hossein was in his thirties with a daughter,
and Rokeya was sixteen when they married in 1896.
The marriage was a happy one, though childless.   Rokeya spent her married
life in Bhagalpur near her husband’s family, who were Urdu speakers.  She
kept up her Bengali by corresponding with her sister.  Her husband
encouraged her to read widely, to mix with the educated Hindu and Christian
women in the town, and to express her views in writing.  She published her
first articles in 1903-04 in Bengali women’s magazines in Calcutta on
subjects related to the status of women.  She observed purdah, but became an
outspoken critic of its more extreme forms.  In 1905, she composed Sultana’s
Dream, a feminist utopian fantasy that tells of a society, “Ladyland,” where
women rule and the men are kept in mardanas—as opposed to zenanas—out of
sight, because of their unreliability and quarrelsomeness.  Her husband read
it, chuckled, pronounced it a “terrible revenge,” and urged her to publish
it.  It appeared in English in the Indian Ladies Magazine in 1905 (ten years
before Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, another feminist utopian tale
that appeared in 1915).
Rokeya’s happy marriage lasted only until 1909.  Her husbad, a diabetic in
the age before insulin, began to lose his eyesight in 1907.  In 1909,
realizing he had not long to live, he urged his wife to start a girls’
school in Bhagalpur, and gave her, in addition to her mehr, Rs. 10, 000 for
the purpose.  Rokeya founded a school in Bhagalpur, but moved to Calcutta in
1910 to be near her mother and sister, and re-established her school there
in 1911.  As a widow with an inheritance, she had enough financial
independence to overcome initial resistance, but she had to struggle to find
patrons and enlisted the help of the Begam of Bhopal to keep the Sakhawat
Memorial Girls’ School going.
She continued to write in both Urdu and Bengali journals, women’s magazines,
and newspapers.  She gave speeches and was active in a number of women’s
associations and educational reform efforts.  Her life and work have been
studied, and a number of her writings, including Sultana’s Dream, have been
reprinted.  She wrote no autobiography, but the imprint of her personality
was great in the context of her times and in the hearts and minds of
educated Bengali Muslim women.
Tahzib un-Niswan started small as a weekly of eight pages, but then grew to
ten, then sixteen pages.  Its circulation started small, maybe even negative
(with more returned to sender than sold), and grew to sixty or seventy
subscribers after three or four months.  After four years, Tahzib had some
three hundred or four hundred subscribers.  The sisterhood of writers and
subscribers was thus, relatively speaking, infinitesimal.  The women who
wrote for it were often obscure, their lives middle class, not extravagant,
their concerns practical and down to earth, their approaches to the outside
world tentative, often naïve.  They were veiled, but they were building
networks, webs of print that helped illumine their lives, expand their
horizons, and express their hopes, frustrations, and pain.  The four women I
have discussed here did not write autobiographies per se, they were too busy
educating others, getting out the paper, subverting purdah even while
keeping within its bounds.
We know when they wrote, and that context limited their possibilities, but
also gave them new means of expression.  For whom did they write?  For women
like themselves, a constantly expanding public.  How did they write?  Often
with great difficulty, grabbing time from other preoccupations.  Why did
they write?  Because they had something to say.  Was it autobiographical?
Frequently, but not uniquely, and sometimes obliquely.
-- 
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.


--The Buddha



-- 
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.


--The Buddha