Half-Women Or Half-Dreams?

Half-Women or Half-Dreams? The Lives and Afterlives of Ismat Chughtai’s Women in Pakistan Raza Naeem Instructor in History, Senior School, Beaconhouse School Systems, Johar Town Girls Campus, Lahore Email: [email protected] Introduction • Ismat Chughtai (1915-91) is universally regarded as one of the four pillars of Urdu fiction in our time, apart from her contemporaries Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi. • While in India, she and her legacy is being feted and commemorated, in Pakistan, this unrelenting and daring champion of women’s rights and feminism, who anticipated by a few decades the heaven-stormers of the 60s powered and pioneered in the West by Simone de Beauvoir, has been consciously ignored. • Perhaps firstly, owing to the controversy she created with one of her earliest short-stories Lihaaf (The Quilt) which was banned in 1942 for its erotic and lesbian undertones, and overshadowed almost the whole of Chughtai’s subsequent work, much to her chagrin. • Chughtai subsequently won the case and went on to write many masterpieces in short fiction as well as in the longer form, of which the most notable is Terhi Lakeer (The Crooked Line). Contd. • It stands out among her six novels with its Joycean, largely autobiographical heroine ‘Shamman’ (Shamshad) who matures from a precocious, rebellious independent-minded girl to a politically-conscious feminist activist involved in the Indian independence struggle. • For a writer routinely nicknamed as the ‘female Manto’ (owing to her rebellious and daring persona) by some and ‘Lady Changez Khan’ (she traced her descent from the family of Tamerlane) by others, her life and legacy are surprisingly ignored and marginalised by scores of middle-class girls here in Pakistan, who are glued to pop-schlock television serials and Bollywood films advocating female submission and stereotyping. • Not for nothing then are the achievements of courageous icons like the 2014 Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai scorned and belittled by a section of our own ‘liberal’ elite. Contd. • The second reason why Chughtai could never become a household name in Pakistan may have to do with the controversy regarding Chughtai’s burial rites; she was cremated rather than buried as per the orthodox Muslim tradition. • Critics have unfairly stereotyped Chughtai as a spokesperson for the respectable women of the Indian Muslim middle-class owing to her unmatched knowledge of the inner lives of the middle-class Muslim zenana. Some even refuse to regard her as a great fiction writer. • On the occasion of her birth centenary in 2015 and more recently, her 25th death anniversary on October 24th, I have translated one of Chughtai’s lesser-known essays ‘Woman’, (also titled as ‘Half Woman, Half Dream’) which provocatively lays bare the hypocrisy of the male champions of women’s rights and the myths they have constructed about women, and then proceeds to invent nothing less than a new language for the women of our own time. Contd. • I hope it will aid a much-needed understanding of Chughtai and her work, away from vilification and hagiography, especially for the new generation of readers in our own still-young century. Some Male Aphorisms about Women • “Woman’s status is second only to God.” • “A deceitful woman is more dangerous than a deceitful man.” • “Woman is a coward.” • “When the time comes, women put their lives at stake.” • “The glory of the woman lies in that the world should be unacquainted with her. The husband’s love is her abundant treasure and small household (is) her world.” • “If a woman’s heart is pierced, it will contain nothing but perseverance, patience, hidden sacrifices and unseen qualities.” Contd. • “When a child is breast-fed for the first time, the mother goes red with happiness, and starts trembling.” • “Nature has made woman such that she loves, and dies for, one person alone.” New Aphorisms for the 21st century • When we know that women will indeed have to work with men tomorrow, if not today, we will have to construct new aphorisms, forgetting the present ones: 1. In college or school, you are neither mother nor daughter; nor beloved, just a student; and the others are professors and students. 2. In offices, you are neither loyal nor disloyal in love; just do your work properly and forget your airs. 3. The people who are around you are all human; neither men nor women, they are either officers or clerks; here is a table, chair and peon. You are neither weak nor strong, neither the delicate sex nor the harsher sex. Your work is for what you get paid until you change your profession. You have been created by nature for this same use; you are here not for luring a husband or wife but only for work. Neither take advantage, nor damage anyone with (your) physical or mental strength or weakness. 4. Your destination is not just marriage; because marriage is not reaching your destination, rather negotiating it is actually the long road. The Afterlives of Ismat Chughtai’s Women in Pakistan and India • Pakistani television dramas • Qandeel Baloch’s murder • Triple talaq in India.

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