The woman who challenged her times

Strap: Dr Rashid Jahan, Urdu literature’s first “angry young woman”, who was an important part of the Progressive Writers Movement

Jaskiran Chopra

She shocked many, she impressed many and she also influenced many. Dr Rashid Jahan was indeed a firebrand writer, the first woman writer in India who was as bold as can be. She was a woman, and a Muslim woman at that, who expressed her views without fearing for the consequences. However, not many people are aware of her work and her personal life, much of which was spent in Dehradun where she came after her marriage to Mahmuduzzafar, the son of Sahibzada Saiduzzafar from the family of the Nawab of Rampur. This family was one of the most distinguished in the town. Their house, the grand Nasreen, today houses the famous Welham Girls’ School.

Rashid Jahan was born on August 25, 1905. She was the eldest of five children born to Sheikh Abdullah and his wife, Waheeda Begum, in Aligarh. She studied at the first girls’ school in Aligarh, which was set up by her parents. At 16, she went to Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow and then to Lady Harding Medical College in Delhi. She passed out in 1931 and, three years later, married writer-teacher Mahmuduzzafar.

Around the same time, She was 29 years old then. It was in Amritsar that Rashid Jahan met the poets Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Mohibbul Hassan Qasi, and came into contact with the important Lahore-based group of Marxists thinkers and activists led by Miyan Mukhtar-ud-Din. A collection of her writings, Aurat aur Dusre Afsane wa Drame (Woman and Other Stories and Plays), was published in Lahore in 1937.She also edited a political monthly called Chingari.

After her short story “Dilli ki Sair” (A Tour of Delhi) and play Pardey ke Peecche (Behind the Veil) appeared in the Urdu anthology Angarey in 1932, Rasheed Jahan shot into prominence. This collection of ten Urdu short stories had stories by four young writers, Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmad Ali, Mahmuduzzafar and Rashid Jahan.

There was a storm of controversies and the book was banned in 1933. She had written openly about the problems faced by women of middle class and lower middle class Muslim families.She wrote about their enclosed and oppressive world.She was lampooned as Rashid Jahan “Angaarewali”.

Though Rashid Jahan is better known in the late twentieth century as a writer of short fiction, she herself considered drama a more forceful medium and was among those who laid the foundations of the progressive theatre movement. She wrote and directed several plays, including adaptations of works by Anton Chekhov, Munshi Premchand, and James Joyce, and moved back to fiction only when failing health and lack of time restricted her involvement in the theatre. A medical doctor and a communist by ideology, she broke all rules by which a Muslim woman was expected to live in pre-independent India in 1920s and 30s. She is known as Urdu Literature’s first “angry young woman”. She was also called “the bad girl of Urdu literature”. Progressive families saw her as an emancipated woman while the conservative ones found her shocking beyond words.

In 1935, Faiz Ahmed Faiz became a lecturer in English literature at MAO College, Amritsar. During the years in Amritsar (1935-42) Faiz carved for himself the role that he was to play to the end of his life. He joined a group of forward-looking writers in founding the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) . His service at MAO College gave him the opportunity of coming closer to Sahibzada Mahmuduzzafar, Principal of MAO College and Dr .Rashid Jahan. Faiz, due to the influence of Mahmuduzzafar and Dr Rashid Jahan, was attracted to the Progressive movement .

Rashid Jahan is known for the influence she had on a new generation of younger women writers by teaching them to tell harsh truths.Rashid Jahan was the literary forerunner of writers like Ismat Chughtai, who was her junior at the Aligarh school. For Chughtai, Rashid Jahan was a freethinker and rebel she modelled herself on. “She spoiled me because she was very bold and would speak all sorts of things openly and loudly, and I just wanted to copy her,” Chughtai wrote in her autobiography. She is remembered as a woman of great charisma, who treated everyone as an equal. Her writings reflect not just a feminist sensibility, but also an empathy for the poor and the deprived.

A biography of Rashid Jahan by renowned Urdu writer critic Rakhshanda Jalil (in 2015) titled A Rebel and Her Cause:The Life and Work of Rashid Jahan.which also includes English translations of her stories and plays, gives us a wonderful insight into this unique writer’s life. She died of cancer in Moscow ,where she had gone for treatement,in 1952. She lies buried there. It is always fascinating to know more about this forgotten figure who was so much ahead of her time .

Dr.Hamida S aiduzzafar, sister-in-law of Rashid Jahan, in her autobiography (in the chapter titled Rashid Jahan) writes, “ Rashid Apa taught me a lot of things about real life ,especially about women ,their problems and their sufferings I a male-dominated world….she used to stay awake until late into the night writing short stories and plays.” Though her works are not excellent as far as their literary merit is concerned, they will always be remembered for the issues they raised, ahead of those times.

Box

The story of the Saiduzzafar family which lived in Doon valley for a good part of the twentieth century is heartwarming in many ways. It would be interesting to look at how the entry of Dr. Rashid Jahan, a medical doctor, into the family added to the vibrant times spent by them here. Even people in the Doon valley remain largely unaware of her life and contribution to the world of letters.