Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies ISSN: 2321-8274
Burqa and the Begum: Strategic Adoption of Islam in Rokeya’s Later Writings
Durdana Matin
Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh
Page | 35
Abstract: Evidence can be found in the life and works of Begum Rokeya, a major cultural
figure in the Indian subcontinent, to support the popular notion that she pioneered and
strongly advocated the importance of the advancement of female education in Bengal. She
encountered certain issues in her time that would be recognized by feminists today as their
rallying points too. They would also perceive in her response to those issues a clear feminist
edge. However, one is likely to notice a marked change in her position from intransigence in
her early life to pacifism later. Both conservatives and liberals lay claim to her as their
champion though the idealistic and pacifist image of her carved by the conservatives has been
established as her true representation and more successfully instilled in the popular psyche
ever since her death. On the other hand, those who depict her as belligerent and unapologetic
have not been able to make a strong case for this image as Rokeya did not stick to this
polemical position for too long. Consequently, the popular version of Rokeya as a pious,
modest and God-fearing person concerned with the deplorable condition of women in her
community in colonial Bengal has stuck. However, even this interpretation of Rokeya has its
limitations. This paper attempts to explore the true identity of Rokeya in the light of her life
and works contrary to the one constructed by the prevailing popular discourse.
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Begum Rokeya‟s life and works are mostly dedicated to the issues of gender
inequality and the marginalisation of women. Her writings express a deep concern with
finding a way out for this marginalised multitude of human beings whose miseries, she would
think, resulted from the opportunities they were deprived of under the patriarchal family and
Page | 36 social systems. She understood that these institutions were entrenched in a mindset nurtured
for ages and thereby fortified and strengthened further by the male interpretation of religion
in which women figured as spiritually vulnerable and potential sinners. Begum Rokeya‟s
object was to disabuse the society of the false notion about women and expose their human
potential. She knew that even women themselves were not ready for their freedom if it were
given to them. Hence her intentions were basically twofold: to wean women away from
superstition and enlighten their mind with reason and to persuade the forbidding patriarchs of
the good that would come of female freedom.
Unlike her renowned counterparts in the West, Begum Rokeya combined her
intellectual and literary works with her practical experiences of working for gender equality
on the ground. The fact that she was more of an activist than a writer made her literary
aspiration take a back seat and give way to her social activism. In spite of that she has left
behind a good number of literary works, which include two anthologies, short stories, novel,
essays, letters as well as many other works not collected and published during her lifetime.
After her maiden work “Pipasha (Thirst),” published in 1902, Begum Rokeya‟s campaign for
women‟s rights began in 1903 with the publication of her essay “Alangkar na Badge of
Slavery (Ornaments or Badge of Slavery?”—a severe attack mainly on patriarchy and
religion. Later in 1904 that essay was published again with a changed title “Amader Abanati
(Our Degradation)”. Rokeya argues that women‟s oppression should be understood as a
direct consequence of unfair, male-centric “social injunctions” embodied in all religions, and
not merely as a by-product of the misplaced conservatism of a few orthodox mullahs (Sarkar
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13). The ill-treatment of women in the society was prompted by the misogyny inherent in all
religions which actually reflected the mindset of males during that time. Born and raised in an
orthodox Muslim family of landed aristocracy, Rokeya had experienced all types of
oppression from gender discrimination since her childhood and could very well discern from
Page | 37 the beginning the true nature of patriarchy and its mechanism. In an essay published in 1904,
when she was only twenty four, she wrote, “In order to keep us in the dark ... men have
preached the scriptures as God‟s commandments. As a matter of fact, these scriptures are
nothing but the rules and regulations made by men” (qtd. in Sabak). Simone De Beauvoir
after almost four decades also took a view very similar to Begum Rokeya‟s; like her she also
thought that men control religion and God to legitimize their domination of women. De
Beauvoir said that in the three major religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam,
man is the master by divine right; so rebellion against this domination was akin to that against
God (621). The lines quoted above apparently reflect Rokeya‟s strong desire to do away with
religion which, in her opinion, serves only patriarchy; as a matter of fact they were not so
much against religion as against patriarchy, showing patriarchy‟s clever manipulation of God
and organized religion against women. Rokeya identified religion as a major tool of
patriarchy against women‟s progress when she wrote in “Amader Abanati (Our
Degradation),” “Where the bond of religion is slack ... women are in a state as advanced as
men.... I have to say that ultimately „religion‟ has strengthened the bonds of our
enslavement…” (Quadir 11-12). She implied that the influence of religion was much stronger
in the Indian subcontinent due to the lack of education among its populace. However, at the
time of writing those lines, Rokeya did not know that they would create so much repercussion
in the society. Not only did she implicate all religions in the oppression of women, but she
also stripped the Holy Scriptures off their divine origin by saying that they were written by
men. She also argued that had they been written by female sages, the world would have seen
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different versions of those scriptures (qtd. in Hasan 14). The fact that people of the Indian
subcontinent were more theocentric than that of Europe and America made Rokeya‟s frontal
attack on religion look more precarious. Now we know in hindsight that the adverse reaction
of the Hindu and Muslim readers at the anti-religious lines was quite inevitable. As Rokeya
Page | 38 did not expect such strong disapproval and unfavorable criticism, she became somewhat
defensive. The essay “Alangkar na Badge of Slavery? (Ornament or Badge of Slavery?)” was
reprinted in Motichur, the first anthology of her works the following year with its title
changed from “Amader Abanati (Our Degradation)” to “Streejatir Abanati (The Degradation
of Women)” and with the provocative paragraphs removed. However, in spite of the revision,
there remained residues here and there, which showed that Rokeya‟s view on religion did not
really change. For example, in the revised version there are still lines like, “What we learn
from our own experiences and those of others is the real religious teaching. Sometimes,
lessons from the simple experiences of life are superior to bookish knowledge” (11). In the
texts following her famous or infamous essay indicting religion, she would continue to focus
on the issues of gender discrimination and women‟s rights with a conscious effort to overlook
the complicity of religion in them. Having apprehended the danger of meddling with religion
in a theocentric country like India, she chose a middle ground discarding the old one. So we
can divide Begum Rokeya‟s life into two phases: in the first one, she was naively bold and
forthright, whereas in the second one, she became calculative and mature, could hide under
an artificially constructed façade. In her writings of the latter phase she neither lost any of her
incendiaries nor the sight of her destination, only the path to it had gone askew. She felt the
need to create a new identity for herself in order to fight the old values from within the
system. It is because of the difference between the two phases, Rokeya appears self-
contradictory and somewhat ambivalent to her readers. In the latter phase her language
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became more layered and codified; however only in her fictions did she take the freedom to
breathe somewhat more freely.
In “Streejatir Abanati (Degradation of Women),” the modified version of her
iconoclastic essay, “Amader Abanati (Our Degradation),” she criticized women‟s agency in
Page | 39 strengthening the reign of patriarchy and worsening their own condition. Rokeya understood
that women‟s dependence on men was a threat to their individuality. They do not engage in
any meaningful activity and spend their time doing trifles. So she showed that along with
men, women, too, were responsible for their own subordination to a great extent. Rokeya
said, “Slowly, even our minds have become enslaved. Being serfs for centuries, we have now
become used to our serfdom” (7). Having been subjugated by men for long, women became
habituated to this and gradually accepted it as a natural situation. This issue of women‟s role
in bringing about their own downfall had also been pointed out and amply discussed by the
English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women‟s rights Mary Wollstonecraft in A
Vindication of Rights of Woman, her trailblazing work on woman‟s place in the society
published in 1792. The similarity between the arguments about this put forward by the two is
nothing less than astounding. According to Wollstonecraft, patriarchy, by deliberately using
the educational system of her time, turned women into thoughtless and superficial beings,
incapable of carrying out a single task of responsibility. While Wollstonecraft said the
conversion of women was mainly done through the educational system, Rokeya said women,
being deprived of proper opportunities for engaging in social activities, could not but become
inactive and idle. Wollstonecraft was severely critical of women in her time for their manners
and habits. She said having destroyed women‟s mental strength, patriarchy taught them to be
preoccupied with trivialities like beauty care, entertainment and sentimental issues, reading of
novels, etc. Women had nothing of intrinsic value and used to take pride in trivialities.
Rokeya also expressed her annoyance at all of this and, like Wollstonecraft, mocked women
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for their lack of strength—both mental and physical. Again this enraged many people, mostly
women; both Begum Rokeya and Mary Wollstonecraft were misunderstood by men and
women for their scathing attacks on women. As a matter of fact, Rokeya was taken to task
and accused of spewing venom against women because of her style of writing and aggressive
Page | 40 sense of humour. She was labelled as misguided, misogynistic and anti-feminine (Sarkar 15).
She said that women‟s love of jewelry reflected their materialistic and infantile minds. Her
attacks on it could be read as a critique of what she thought was a sign of their willing
submission to masculine rule—i.e. their husbands‟ unquestioned access to and control over
their bodies (Sarkar 15). We are reminded of Nora of Ibsen‟s A Doll’s House here. Nora also
acts in a childish manner before her husband Torvald Helmer to show how she enjoys his
dominance and the protection. She does not object to being a sex thing and also likes being
called by the names of diminutive creatures. She rather enjoys that he considers her to be his
own prized possession. This is what Rokeya is hinting at: the danger of being tempted by the
material things. This is one of patriarchy‟s snares lying in wait to trap the naïve and
unsuspecting women. Sarkar says in this regard, “Rokeya‟s criticism is directed at this
normative vision of femininity—docile, inactive and ultimately serving to strengthen male
dominance both at home and in the world—that was underwritten by middle/upper class
privilege” (15). Patriarchy cannot rule alone; it perpetuates its rule by the repeated
reinforcement of its ideas by its social institutions, showing the patriarchal constructions as
natural, justifying the necessity of its presence and, more importantly, by creating a band of
cohorts to assist it. It can be inferred from what she meant by her attack on women‟s love of
jewelry that the sexual subordination of women is obtained by their male counterparts
through women‟s economic dependency on them and through other material means. Rokeya
said, “By cooping us up in their emotional cage, men have deprived us from the light of
knowledge and unadulterated air, which is causing our slow death” (“Amader” 9). She is
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actually not being misogynistic when she criticizes this type of women; she only draws our
attention to the fact that for years men have been keeping women in their control by different
means; sometimes in the name of over-protection or caring for them, treating them not as
equals but as possessions, most of the time by coercive methods. Years of domination make
Page | 41 women dependent, powerless and infantile. In “Alangkar na Badge of Slavery? (Ornaments
or Badge of Slavery?),” Rokeya relates the ornaments that women wear to emblems of
slavery; women are being commodified when they accept this expensive ornaments in
exchange of their self-respect and freedom. They behave as if their happiness depended
solely on those ornaments, which Rokeya calls “mental enslavement” (Ardhangi 43). She
further says that the band of cohorts of patriarchy consists of those dull, docile and inactive
women who fail to understand that they are bribed to give up their self-respect and
competence to strengthen the rule of patriarchy are slaves to their own mentality. Being
habituated to doing nothing, they lose their ability to think and solve problems just like the
girl in Bihar, described in one of the anecdotes in Abarodhbashini (The Secluded Ones), who
lost her vision keeping her eyes always closed for six months (320). And while Rokeya often
defined independence for women as equality with men, her work is also suggestive at times
of a desire to see women as both self-respecting and truly independent of men, in thought and
deed—yet another feature that separated her reformist vision from that of most of her
contemporaries (Hossein 15). She said the idea of women as frail, docile and frightened is
actually constructed by the society. Many attributes of women have been socially constructed
because of male hegemony. They will change if the social structure changes. The traits of a
person are things to be acquired through gaining knowledge and daily exposure to life
experiences. Rokeya says, “If the description of a Bengali woman as slender, delicate, frail
and frightened were true, she would gradually transform into an aerial body and easily vanish
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into vapour by now. But the reality is anything but pleasant” (“Strijatir Abanati” 9). Here she
hinted at the social construction of women as unreliable and devoid of any truth.
Rokeya understood that women‟s dependence on men is a threat to her individuality.
In Islam, one of the reasons that man is given superiority over a woman is he spends from his
Page | 42 property to maintain her. Women‟s dependence on men is the main obstacle for a woman in
the way to her emancipation. If they are no more a responsibility to men they could strive for
equality. She thought that men should be attacked right on their sense of superiority and it
would be possible when women would start earning to provide for themselves (Sabak). She
in one of her essays writes, “To achieve equality with men we will do whatever is needed of
us” (“Strijatir Abanati” 38). She said there was no reason for women to not work and earn
like men as they also had hands, feet and intelligence: “Groom them to enter professional life
and let them earn their own livelihood” (“Srijatir Abanati” 15). By asking the women to join
the paid workforce, seek employment outside, she defied the conservative notion of assigning
women to fixed slots of wife and mother. She wanted to shatter all negative social constructs
of woman. Begum Rokeya correctly pointed out that education was the first step for women
in order to prepare themselves for all of this. She thought the existing practice of keeping
women illiterate was doing incalculable harm to the Muslim society (Ray 438). Women were
not being educated because of the ill practice of purdah; it made them secluded from the rest
of the society. At the time when bringing even one girl child out of the four walls of the home
was near to impossible, she was thinking of access to equal opportunities for the whole
womenfolk in the country.
In the Indian subcontinent, the women among the upper-class Hindu and Muslim
communities observed a rigorous type of purdah or seclusion to keep themselves out of gaze
of men. She was very critical of this type of seclusion which she thought cost women their
free movement and education but she never opposed burqa, the attire which a considerable
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number of Muslims think as the prescribed dress code of the Muslim women. burqa is
actually a portable purdah. “A burqa, while designedly formless and obviously inconvenient,
may nevertheless be viewed by the wearer as a liberating garment. It permits her to move
about in public and still remain relatively invisible” (Chowdury). However, with the
Page | 43 migration of Muslims to the West, burqa and hijab have acquired new implications these
days. There are some Muslims living in the West who want to retain their cultural and
religious identity by keeping some elements specifically related to women that directly clash
with the Western concept of freedom and feminism. Many independent practicing Muslim
women in the West don these attires as a symbol of religious identity; some also wear it as a
form of resistance to the West‟s sexualisation and objectification of women. What they see in
women opting for burqa is the oppression they feel for being pressurized by men to conform
to the objectification of women‟s bodies in Western societies (Considine). This is all good
but in it they are totally trying to overlook the oppressive history of burqa and still what this
outfit is inflicting on women in the countries governed by Sharia laws. Burqa originates in the
idea that women are nothing but sexual objects and they should be properly covered to avoid
troubles, disturbance and turmoil in the society. It is also connected with body-shaming.
Another important reason behind the veiling of women is that women are thought of as the
possessions of men; they want to keep them in a safe place as they are constantly in fear of
psychological dispossession. The bases on which the idea of this covering of woman stands is
equally humiliating to both men and women as it portrays women as sexual distractions to
men and men as weak, vulnerable and sex-driven creatures, who can be aroused even by the
mere sight of women‟s hair. The idea of burqa and hijab connects women to sin and
temptation where the burden of honour and chastity is always placed on women. Hijab is
treated as a sign of patriarchal suppression (Alloula) both by secular and post-secular
feminists, and so is burqa. At present the followers ofIslam are sharply divided over the issue
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of mandatory head covering; there are people who think, and rightly so, that there is no
mention of mandatory hijab or burqa anywhere in the Koran. It is understood from their
arguments that the burqa is not a religious requirement but rather a political statement—at
best merely an ethnic and misogynistic custom. So we understand that this is in itself a much
Page | 44 contested issue within Islamic theology. This idea of covering actually comes from Islam‟s
strong emphasis on the concept of decency and modesty to all, irrespective of their genders,
but ended up being applied to women only. During the late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century it was not proper for the women to take part in sex related debate and
discussion. Because of this reason those who worked for the emancipation of women in the
Indian subcontinent avoided issues relating to sex, desire and female body. So one tentative
reason for Rokeya‟s not criticizing burqa was perhaps her not being comfortable with topics
like sexuality and female body closely related to this attire. However more obvious reason
was to avoid any type of confrontation with religious conservatives. Being at the initial stage
of the movement, people promoting women‟s rights accepted many issues which the present
day feminists would find reprehensible. Begum Rokeya‟s only focus during that time was
how she would collect girls for her school. She was ready to accept Burqa as it at least did not
force women to stay indoors. Rokeya‟s full length essay in favour of burqa was in all
likelihood written out of compulsion. To quote her, “Rejecting the irrational practice of
coverings, we will wear what is essential to protect our decency. If necessary we can go out
in veil (aka burqa) to have a stroll on the field. We can even travel to the hill station in burqa
to restore our health. It is a problem to move around wearing burqa. However we would need
a little practice to do that; can anything be done without practice?” (Burqa 61-62). In these
lines if the readers only discover her support of burqa then I would say that they have
completely missed her true intention. Here I see her desperation to go to any extent to open
the door for women to get themselves educated. This essay came about when she had to
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convince people every now and then to send their daughters to school. We have noted earlier
that Rokeya‟s social activism and her intellectual pursuit were not separate from each other.
That is the reason why she could not ignore the possible repercussion her writing would have
in the society. As people were already viewing her with suspicion she thought it was not a
Page | 45 good idea to incite them further by her nonconformist behaviour, for it could create
impediments in reaching her goals. In all probabilities her writing of the essay on burqa took
place under this extremely trying circumstances when she needed to prove to the society that
she was by no means a heretic, bent on corrupting the womenfolk of the society, and that all
her efforts in promoting women‟s education were being made without disregarding the
Islamic teachings. Having said that, burqa is just not consistent with her ideology. As she did
not hold women responsible for the wrongdoings of men against them, it would have been
proper if she had taken this conservative attire to task. While her eulogizing burqa seemingly
shows that she also panders to the orthodox view that the lustful gaze of males on women are
actually women‟s responsibility, but the stories under the title of Abarodhbashini make us
think otherwise. The stories full of wry humour show what the system of segregation does to
the women and their intellect; interestingly we also find in the same work references to
different types of burqa and experiences of burqa-clad women several times and that too in a
comical vein and with scorn and pity. The unprepossessing look of burqa made Rokeya dwell
on different ideas of making it presentable and comfortable. Comparing it with the Western
coat and scarf, she proposes soft and fine materials for it instead of coarse and thick ones. A
person who knows about her struggles and how single-minded she was in her war against
patriarchy would not miss her mollifying tone in the texts published around this time; they
would feel that some kind of societal pressure was pulling at her strings during that time.
Reading only this kind of writings with no idea of her early writings, struggles and the overall
context, it is quite natural to mistake her to be an agent of patriarchy. Her writings during this
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time appear to be sincere and free of sarcastic tone, yet they are ironic. Now we know that
she did not believe in some of what she was writing. She was duping the orthodox section of
readers or that group of people who she daily interacted with regarding her social activities.
She could not see in a long time a remote possibility of both the genders working side by side
Page | 46 in a free environment because of the strong presence of orthodoxy in the Indian subcontinent.
Instead of declaring an open war against the old system she concentrated on evolving the
minds through education. Judging from her wisdom and wide knowledge of world history
and mythology, it was unlikely that she was not familiar with the infamous history of burqa‟s
origin. Knowing how she felt about seclusion of women it did not look like a genuine
intention when she accepted burqa as an outfit of decent Muslim women. She regularly faced
different societal pressures from many types of people, relative or acquaintance, to mend her
ways. Humayun Azad, in his notable book Nari (Women), mentions one such incident where
her nephew said to her if she observed purdah, he would help her in the nationalization of her
school (248). So it is quite obvious that Begum Rokeya did not observe purdah during that
time. It is certain that she accepted burqa not out of reverence but when the pressure to
conform was mounting on her from different quarters. It was impossible on her part to submit
to any religious norm out of respect as she had already discovered the evil nexus between
patriarchy and religion. She might be thinking she was at least setting the ground for their
future emancipation. Accepting this regressive attire was a small sacrifice on her part to keep
her campaign alive. Otherwise it could have been halted then and there. In many of her
writings and public speeches we see her quoting extensively from the Koran and the
Prophet‟s life to support her argument in favour of women‟s education. We find great
similarities between Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Begum Rokeya in this regard.
Vidyasagar, being well-versed in Sanskrit and Vedic scriptures, could challenge the
conservative power centres of the Hindu society with his references from the scriptures. He
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understood that citing scriptural evidence might be helpful to convince the common God
fearing people and orthodox community. Like Vidyasagar, Rokeya, too sought a new
women-friendly reading of the verses of the Koran and Hadiths. Rokeya knew freedom of
women should not need any religious validation, yet we find her seeking validation for them
Page | 47 in the sacred books. She had to put away the thorns and bleed while paving the path for the
womenfolk. Her lived experiences forced her to adopt a middle path to take her movement
forward. This path has close resonances with the present-day Islamic feminism. A
combination of Islam and feminism has been advocated as “a feminist discourse and practice
articulated within an Islamic paradigm” (Margot). But the writings and speech of this period
still contain here and there sudden digs at religion. The irony lies in the fact that someone
who had started her journey ripping religion to shreds took religion as a recourse to keep her
movement alive and effective. There are reasons to believe that she was aware of the
women‟s liberation movement in the West. It just could not have been otherwise for a woman
with so much perspicacity, passion and interest about women issues. But she realized through
her life experiences that working in her cultural context for the emancipation of women and
her struggle is not the same as it was in the West. She could be named a reluctant Islamic
feminist at best, one who sees that the cultural reality has to shape the nature of her
movement. She tells women, “Education (mental culture) is essential even to be good
housewives” (Shugrihinee 50). Through this line it seems that Rokeya is saying that the most
important work for women is her household works whereas what she means to say is even
housework requires education. Whatever we do in our life, we need to be educated first and
foremost. In order to collect students for her school she had to go from door to door,
entreating the conservative and religious parents or guardians to send their daughters to her
school. She had to guarantee security and purdah for the girls by offering covered vehicles to
transport them to and from school. From the total number of students she gathered for the
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school we can assume that more often than not she came back rejected and dejected. She
knew that only education could strengthen women‟s self-esteem and prepare them for total
independence. So at that point of time her only priority was to bring the students to school,
and she was ready to go to any extent for that. The parents or the guardian would ask her
Page | 48 what the use of women‟s education was if they were not going to work outside. So all those
apparently not-so-liberal writings in different dailies and weeklies for which the
conservatives affiliate her with Islamic feminism were in fact Rokeya‟s explanations and
justification of her works. The orthodox society sometimes resorted to unfair means to silence
her and disrupt her plan. For instance, they spread lies about her; she was reportedly accused
of flaunting and advertising her youthfulness on the pretext of establishing a school (Hasan).
But this kind of cheap trick could not deviate her from her purpose and intention. She says:
I wish our sisters well, I do not want to take them out in the open air breaking all their
ties with religion and society. In order to have mental advancement a Hindu needs not
relinquish Hindutva or a Christian, Christianity. One can liberate their minds even by
protecting and maintain the differences that exist in their own community. What I,
myself, want to understand, and explain others is that the reason behind our degrading
state is the lack of proper education. (“Ardhangi” 31)
These lines must have been in response to the accusation that by asking freedom for women
she wants to make them irreverent to their own culture and community and turn them into
Godless beings.
In her fictions she, by letting her imagination loose, pursued what she had dreamed
about. It was unlikely that she would be able to create the society she had envisaged without
taking societal rules into consideration. In her utopian works like Sultana’s Dream (1905)
and Padmarag (1924) women empowerment and gender inequality are manifested.
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Padmarag is Rokeya‟s long work of prose fiction centering on female education and
philanthropy. This fiction as a matter of fact is the reflection of Rokeya‟s vision of the school
she wanted to build for the women. We find Rokeya in the portrayal of Deenotarini who
manages aschool the way Rokeya wanted to. It is as if Rokeya unabashedly does everything
Page | 49 in Padmarag that she could not do otherwise. Here women get education which in turn makes
them financially independent. They grow in self-esteem and become confident enough to
assume responsibility and take decisions. Sultana’s Dream is an inverted image of her own
society where instead of men, women are the rulers; in this imaginary land women show
efficiency in everything they do. Theirs is a knowledge-based governance. All branches of
knowledge, particularly science and technology, help create a peaceful, eco-friendly and
modern land. In this morally and intellectually advanced land everything is governed by
rationality. Men have been dismissed from the important positions of the state as they could
not deliver. Rokeya shows by examples how women are better in all respects. Hence men in
this text are portrayed as conquered, diffident and absolutely insignificant and invisible in the
society; and furthermore, they, in a satirical inversion, are confined to men‟s quarters, the
mardana, previously called the zenana when its occupants were women. This is the reason
why we do not see a single male character in this text. But that does not stop us from getting
an idea of how the condition of men are in the Ladyland—they are what women are not. By
the help of this binary we are able to create in our mind a shape of a homogeneous group who
are totally absent from our view. ““Even their brains are bigger and heavier than women‟s.
Are they not?” Yes, but what of that? An elephant also has got a bigger and heavier brain
than a man has. Yet man can enchain elephants and employ them, according to their own
wishes. (492)” When Sultana refers to men‟s relative biological advantage over women,
Sister Sarah brushing aside men‟s so-called superiority in physical strength, shows by
example that intelligence is more important to manage things. Women in this land show that
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brain is more powerful than physical strength. When Sultana expresses her doubt in women's
ability to protect themselves saying men are physically stronger than women, it is the
conventional patriarchal perception of women she is voicing, and Rokeya does it on purpose.
She contests this stereotypical construction of women as weaker and dependent by saying
Page | 50 through her character sister Sarah that despite its strength it is the Lion who is put in the cage.
Man does not use his physical strength to do that. So Rokeya shuts up her dissenters and
literally crushes them into the ground by her logic. Using this logic we can also dismiss the
necessity of chivalrous men to give protection to the weaker sex in the modern era. With the
progression of time and the advancement of science and technology the knight in armor has
become redundant in a woman‟s life. In Sultana’s Dream Rokeya strongly criticizes men‟s
ways of governance, their nature and their sense of aesthetics; so something playfully written
came to be considered as a famous feminist utopian fiction. It is said that having learnt
English from her husband, she wanted to test her proficiency in the language and
consequently wrote something as fine as Sultana’s Dream. Written out of such a casual
occasion, it was rather unexpected that it would deal with such a serious topic. Surprisingly, it
turned out to be something quite the opposite. In Rokeya‟s Ladyland, we see a society free of
crime and violence where the perpetrators of crimes are totally banished from sight. In real
world, however, if gender based violence is to be prevented, it has to be done “by educating
and working with young boys and girls promoting respectful relationships and gender
equality” (“Focusing”). If the environment is unsafe for the women, it is the state‟s
responsibility to make it safe and right. Rokeya writes in Sultana’s Dream, ferocious animals
are caged in the zoo as they pose threat to our life; it is not the other way round. Criminals
should be deprived of freedom not the victims; it is wrong to snatch away freedom from the
victims for the crime done against them. According to Rokeya, keeping women indoors to
save them from any kind of mishap or gender-based atrocity is not a solution. By her logic we
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infer that she clearly rejects the necessity of any kind of protection of women from men,
especially when it curtails her freedom. She wants the country or land to be safe from any
kind of atrocities and crime so that no one feels unsafe to move around freely in the land. She
places great importance on women‟s freedom, even at the expense of men‟s freedom as it is
Page | 51 the men who could be a threat to women. In Rokeya‟s ideal land there is no violence or
oppression of women by men in the name of different religious customs. “Our religion is
based on Love and Truth. It is our religious duty to love one another and to be absolutely
truthful,” Sister Sarah tells Sultana (495). This is a land “where religion is humanistic, non-
sectarian and does not lead to the formation of cults, or serves no potential to be
discriminatory or violent to others (Murthy). But in spite of the presence of such a religion
guided by love and truth we see no visible attempt to decrease what seems to be an
insurmountable gap between two genders of this land; instead, under which persecution is
still going on; notwithstanding the positive changes, the repressive, discriminatory law of
segregation still persists. By the age old repression in the unconscious, a desire to assume the
role of the oppressor in an alternative world is created with the help of the imagination, and
the reality is flipped by exchanging the roles of the oppressor and victim. The latter has been
done to defamiliarize the things apparently natural in the real world in order to show the
oppressors its absurdity, but “the quintessential tone of the story is not rejectionist but
reformist” despite its use of “negativism, fantasy and laughter” (Islam 113). In Sultana’s
Dream we also see a manipulation of words to create a language structure to suit new
environs: “Some of the passers-by made jokes at me. Though I could not understand their
language, yet I felt sure they were joking. I asked my friend, “What do they say?” The
women say that you look very mannish. “Mannish?” said I, “what do they mean by that?”
They mean that you are shy and timid like men. (487)” In Ladyland women move freely and
fearlessly outside with confidence. They do not need to cover themselves as there is no man
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within their sight. So in the ideal state women move freely without veil and Rokeya desired
women to be like that. Words and expressions have lost their old connotations and have been
relocated to new semantic structures to break patriarchal hegemony. Everything is in a state
of utter confusion for Sultana, a visitor from another reality; she cannot make sense of
Page | 52 anything in this land; she needs to be acclimatized. Each of her attempt to establish a familiar
basis of meaning lands her in more confusions.
It is clear from the discussion above that in spite of being tied down to her time and
culture Begum Rokeya was a true champion of women rights. It is not an easy task to fit her
in any specific mould even after critically analyzing her writings and her context. The things
that she said and wrote at different times and the references she used in her essays show that
she was adequately aware of the contemporary Western world. But being conscious of her
own colonized, subordinate status she was cautious about preserving her culture and did not
believe in the blind imitation of the Western culture. As she was rational she always criticized
the misogynistic, illogical and superstitious customs and statutes related to any religion; she
put forward her arguments in her habitual sardonic style. She did that with impunity when it
was about Hinduism and Christianity as she was an outsider to these religious cultures.
Sometimes she might sound communal in some of her comments about Christianity and
Hinduism for this reason. Regarding Islam she sometimes reinterpreted the misogynistic
customs and laws by her own reasoning. She took the middle path regarding the so-called
Islamic attire called burqa because in her cultural context she thought it was the most
pragmatic step. When in her earlier writings her criticism against religion rubbed the
authoritarian figures of religion in the society the wrong way, she became cautious and
stopped criticizing religion or, for that matter, Islam altogether. Another thing to be noted
here is that neither she publicly apologized for her famous or infamous remarks about the
religious scriptures, nor did she disown her writing. She simply scrapped those lines in the
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later versions. That means her thoughts about organized religions and the supposedly divine
scriptures were unchanged. Although many ingredients can be found in Rokeya‟s writings
which clash against the view of modern day secular feminists, they are only on the surface;
they can be explained in the light of her life, the backgroundof all her works and
Page | 53 correspondences. When we delve deep down we find an extraordinary human being who kept
fighting relentlessly against the injustices done towards women, the manacles approved by
the religious scriptures or holy books. She was never at peace; all her life she faced
continuous opposition from the institutions of patriarchy like religious institutions and family.
The conservatives considered her to be threatening to the prevailing social structure and for
this reason they continuously created barriers on her way. Rokeya‟s feminism makes her
more at one with the secular feminists than the Islamist feminists of this country because of
this constant clash between her and the religious authority. It seems that she did everything in
her life to withstand the powerful and negative forces in the society which always acted
against the advancement of women. She thought that for true emancipation the womenfolk
had to prepare themselves, and this preparation would come through education. It is through
this enlightenment true empowerment would come and corrode the shackles put on them by
patriarchy. She believed that women were in a deep collective slumber. Begum Rokeya had
been trying to wake them up almost all her life before she died. Women were not spared from
her scathing remarks for their immaturity and addiction to material objects. Begum Rokeya‟s
struggle to create a gender equal society provoked condemnation from both men and women
of her time. They alleged that she wanted women to forsake their homes, be influenced by
Christianity after being educated and become irreverent to religions. Rokeya‟s life can be best
summarized in her introduction to Abarodhbashini: “While travelling in Karseong and
Madhupur I collected beautiful coloured stones. And from the sea shores of Orissa and
Madras, I picked up shells of different sizes and colours. But I picked up only the curses of
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the kath-mollahs (orthodox clerics) after renderings social services for twenty-five years”
(qtd. in Joarder 23). So Rokeya always faced opposition from the orthodox clerics and the
conservative section of the society. Her works are still relevant in our society as women on a
regular basis still face discrimination, physical and verbal abuse, sexism in every sphere of
Page | 54 life. As long as conditions of women resulting from sexual objectification, oppression,
discrimination approved by the organized religions, stereotypes and, above all, patriarchy
exist in the society, the struggle of the feminists to remove all of this will continue. Begum
Rokeya‟s life and vision will always set alight their way in the darkness and guide them to
eradicate every form of oppression against women in the society.
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