INTRODUCTION

This book contains some of the best work by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, popularly known as “Begum Rokeya.” Begum is an honori c accorded her posthumously by her readers in Bangladesh and West Bengal (India) to express their admiration for her and her legacy as a writer, educationist and social activist; she is now widely recognised as one of the leading  g- ures of the Bengal Renaissance, together with such prominent culture icons as Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891), Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824–1873), Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) and Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976). Rokeya wrote, over a period of more than 30 years, in both Bengali and English, and in genres ranging from poetry, polemical essays,  ction, allegorical narratives to social satire, burlesque, letters and journalistic vignettes. Her  rst piece, “Pipasa” [Thirst], an inter- rogative narrative of the tragic tale of Muharram (martyrdom of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein ibn Ali), was published in a Bengali mag- azine, Nabaprabha in 1901, and her last piece, “Narir Adhikar” [The Rights of Women], found incomplete on her table after her death, was published posthumously in Mahe-Nao in 1956. Rokeya generally published her work in various newspapers and magazines before considering them for inclusion in her books. Accordingly, she published in some of the best journals and news- papers of her time, such as Nabaprabha, Mahila, Nabanur, Bharat-Mahila, Bangeyo Muslim Shahitya Patrika, Swagat, Sadhana, Dhumketu, Al-Islam, Mohammadi, Sabujpatra, Muazzein and Mahe-Nao in Bengali; and Indian Ladies’ Magazine and The Mussalman in English. Rokeya has left behind  ve books and scores of uncollected essays, stories, poems and letters. The books are: Motichur (A String of Sweet Pearls), Vols. I (1904) and II (1922); Sultana’s Dream (1908); Padmarag (Ruby, 1924), and Aborodhbashini (The Zenana Women, 1931). In this collection I have put together selections from Motichur, Vols. I and II, and two of her books in full, Sultana’s Dream and The Zenana Women. I have also included some of her essays and stories from her uncollected works, and a handful of letters which were written to the editor of The Mussalman. However, I have left out her only novel, Padmarag, because it was recently published in English translation by Penguin Books. I have also left out all her poems because Rokeya never had the native genius of a poet, and her poems hardly measure up to her prose works which were more in keeping with her temperament 2 introduction and sensibility as a writer. Besides, although principally a writer in Bengali, Rokeya also occasionally wrote in English. To separate her output in the two languages, I have organised the material in the book into two sections; the  rst section provides a selection of her Bengali work, translated into English by myself, and the second section brings together selections of her work in English. Thus, in the  rst section we have English translations of several essays and stories from the two volumes of Motichur, several pieces from her uncollected work and all the 47 journalistic vignettes included in The Zenana Women. In section two we have two essays, Rokeya’s second book and her most immortal work, Sultana’s Dream, and several letters, all of which were written originally in English. In all, these selections give us the best representation of Rokeya as a writer, both in terms of her artistry and her moral imagination; and encapsulate, as stated in the book’s title, the essential Rokeya.1 Rokeya was primarily a realistic writer. She depicted the society around her as she saw it, impartially and objectively, without any attempts to glo- rify or magnify the truth. She never dwelt in the realm of divine illusion or wrote in the vein of, to borrow Matthew Arnold’s words for describing the English Romantic poet P.B. Shelley, “a beautiful inefectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain” (“Shelley: Unacknowledged Legisla- tor”). Nor did she write merely for the sake of giving pleasure or entertaining her readers. She believed in the ethical function of literature; that literature should arouse sympathy for the oppressed and the exploited in society and heighten the consciousness of readers to the reality of the human condition; she wrote for the practical wellbeing of her society, mainly for the Muslim community of her time, who were, in Rokeya’s words, “ship-wrecked” for “earnestly neglecting the feminine portion of the society” (Rokeya Rachan- abali 537). One of her precursors in Bengali literature, Bankim Chandra Chattopad- hyay (1838–1894), once said, “If you think by writing you can do some good for humanity or create something beautiful, then you must write” (Syed 73).2 This is the spirit Rokeya inherited, although her heart was more in doing good for humanity than in creating beauty. Her imagination was essentially practical and she wrote more for the edi cation of her readers than for mere aesthetic or literary purposes. There is a recurrent tendency to moralise in her writing, because she saw literature as a tool or medium for reforming

1 Translation of Rokeya’s work in this book is based on the text in Abdul Quadir, ed. Rokeya Rachanabali (The Collected Works of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain). 2 All translations from Bengali in the Introduction are by me.