Enlightened, Bold, Iconoclastic, Progressive And Feminist - Ismat Chughtai
By Rauf Parekh
August 30,
2015
ISMAT
Chughtai (1915-1991), one of Urdu’s most accomplished fiction writers,
epitomised the 20th-century women writers of Urdu: enlightened, bold,
iconoclastic, progressive and feminist.
Chughtai
penned her early pieces in the late 1930s but was not much known in the
literary circles until 1942, the year ‘Lihaaf’
was published. Urdu literature of that era showed a marked tendency towards
Marxism and Realism. The idea of feminism in its true sense and spirit had not
quite arrived in the subcontinent in the 1940s, but much of what she wrote,
with a touch of progressivism, was about the social, psychological and sexual
problems faced by women. Traditional feminine sensibility of the 18th and 19th
centuries demanded women to be virtuous, modest and obedient. Chughtai stressed
that real feminine emotions and sensitivities are hardly ever understood in an
orthodox, male-dominated society such as India’s. Never before in the history
of Urdu fiction were such thoughts expressed so articulately and vividly as did
Chughtai in her writings.
In 1942 she
emerged on the literary scene with a bang as her short story ‘Lihaaf’ appeared in Adab-i-Latif, a
literary magazine published from Lahore. Its central theme was female
homosexuality. Themes related to sensuality have never been a rarity in Urdu
literature, especially in classical poetry, and a few Urdu Masnavis (longish
poems, often narrating a romance) are known for being too explicit. Male
homosexuality had not been a taboo subject in Urdu poetry but somehow female
homosexuality was not approved of, except for Rekhti, a genre of classical Urdu poetry that depicted female
homosexuality, mostly in implicit and symbolic terms. In the subcontinent’s
conservative society these covert and occasionally overt expressions of
sensuality were thought to be offensive but were quietly smiled upon.
‘Lihaaf’
sent tremors across the subcontinent and Chughtai had to bear with scathing
criticism for it. ‘Lihaaf’ is about two women, one of whom is deprived of her
husband’s love and the other is the maid servant. It is strange that ‘Chai ki
pyali’, Muhammad Hasan Askari’s short story that had covert gestures to female
homosexuality, published in the January 1942 issue of Adabi Duniya (Lahore), and later included in the collection of his
short stories titled Jazeeray, did
not invoke as much criticism as did ‘Lihaaf’;
neither did Rekhtis written by the male poets. In fact, Askari’s story was not
taken much notice of, for reasons not known. On the contrary, Chughtai’s story
was considered more offensive, perhaps because of her gender. ‘Lihaaf’ brought Chughtai much notoriety
and she was even summoned by a court for the alleged ‘obscenity’. Ironically,
it was exactly this kind of attitude of a male-dominated society that Chughtai
used to scoff at.
Many of
Chughtai’s short stories revolve around the odds faced by women. Oppressed
women fighting it out on their own fascinated Chughtai. In most of her short
stories she points a finger at society for unjust treatment of women. Though
she did write about the problems of women from underprivileged classes too, it
was women from middle-class families she was truly interested in portraying.
Describing UP’s middle or lower middle-class Muslim women and homes in a
parlance peculiar to the milieu was her forte. Here, Chughtai excelled, since
it was the environment she was brought up in and had personal experience of.
But
Chughtai’s exposure to trade unionism and political activism, unlike Rashid
Jahan, a progressive female writer and a contemporary of Chughtai’s, was rather
limited. She could possibly not have been as well-versed in Marxist philosophy
either, as some of her contemporary progressives were. This is one of the
reasons why she, at times, sounds shallow when she tries her hand at depicting
economic issues at length. Considering her leftist leanings and close
association with the Progressive Writers Association, her short stories, based
purely on class conflict and Marxist themes, are not as many as one would have
expected.
Chughtai’s
flowing and spontaneous style, occasionally peppered with satirical or witty
remarks, makes reading a delight. Writing idiomatic and colloquial Urdu in a
seemingly effortless manner is something she is known for. Her mastery over
presenting women’s parlance or expressions peculiar to native speakers of Urdu,
especially women from UP, is a domain in which Chughtai is unrivalled by any
male or female fiction writer. In this regard, only Qurratulain Hyder is a
close second, but that too only occasionally.
This indeed
can be traced to the locale in which Chughtai grew up. She was born on Aug 21,
1915, in Badaun, UP, but Agra was her ancestral hometown (her date of birth is
often quoted as Aug 15 and place of birth as Agra, but, according to some
researchers, Aug 21 and Badaun are more likely to be correct). She was brought
up in Jodhpur, Agra and Aligarh since her father, a civil servant, was posted
at different places and the family had to move quite often. From among her nine
siblings, wrote Chughtai in Naqoosh (Lahore) describing her early life, her
elder sisters got married when Chughtai was quite young and she spent more time
in her childhood playing in the company of her brothers. This, according to her
own account, turned her into a girl fond of playing hockey, football and Gilli
Danda. In other words, she had become a tomboy, which was quite shocking to
some women of Agra where the family had moved after her father’s retirement. It
was equally embarrassing for her mother, wrote Chughtai, but the “culprits were
my brothers”. This formative phase played a role in carving out her
personality, which was marked with boldness, courage and outspokenness.
Despite
fierce resistance from some of her relatives, Chughtai did her BA in 1938 from
Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, and obtained a degree in teacher training
from Aligarh the next year. In 1941, she was appointed the superintendent of
Municipal Girls School, Bombay (now Mumbai). She married Shahid Lateef, a film
director and scriptwriter from Mumbai, in 1942. By the time Chughtai began
writing, her brother Mirza Azeem Baig Chughtai (1895-1941) had become an
established novelist and humorist of Urdu. Though her brother had an influence
on her, she was most inspired by Rashid Jahan and Saadat Hasan Manto. The other
influence was, of course, some Western writers such as Sigmund Freud, G.B. Shaw
and D.H. Lawrence. Later, she settled in Bombay and wrote dialogues for movies
as well as scripts for movies in collaboration with her husband.
With a
number of collections of short stories to her credit, such as ‘Kalyaan’, ‘Choten’, ‘Do Haath’, ‘Aik Baat’
‘Chhui Mui’ and ‘Thori Si Pagal’,
Chughtai is ranked among Urdu’s most influential short-story writers of the
latter half of the 20th century but she was not as successful in novels. Her
novel Terhi Lakeer is, indeed,
counted among the best Urdu novels, but her other novels, such as Ziddi, Masooma, Saudai and Dil Ki Dunya,
could not impress the critics much, though they are not without their own
merits.
Some of her
other books, such as Dozakhi, are
collections of plays, short stories and essays. In plays, too, Chughtai could
not make her mark and her plays can pose some difficulties to those who want to
stage them. According to Patras Bokhari, the famous humorist who was a fine
connoisseur of drama too, she simply did not know how to separate scenes and
acts. Yahan Se Wahan Tak includes
miscellany, such as her brief memoirs, an account of her journey to Pakistan in
1976, and a few short stories. But Dozakhi,
her pen-sketch of her brother Azeem Baig, written a few days after his death,
is one of the best pen-sketches ever written in Urdu. It is humorous and
saddening, sentimental and analytical, all at the same time.
Chughtai
died in Mumbai on Oct 24, 1991. But controversy chased the writer even after
her death: she was cremated, which, according to some relatives of hers, was
her will. But some contradicted this and it remains a mystery what her real
will was. Chughtai is relevant even today. No study of the Urdu short story,
feminism in Urdu literature or Progressive philosophy in Urdu literature can
truly be called complete unless her works are taken into account.
Original Headline: Ismat Chughtai: her life, thought and art
Source: The Dawn, Pakistan