Roke Na Ruke, Rokeya!

She is popularly known as the 'harbinger of Muslim women's awakening and emancipation. A significant force of change, sweeping away the age-old injustice against women, reinforcing equality in the misguided society and constructing a 'feminist utopia'.

The changing face of feminist revolution; Image Source: steemkr.com

The feminist movement is today’s one of the most crucial topics of discussion- for any country, for any society. For years, the rise of feminism has been witnessed. The movement also changed with time. The notions and the aims are still open to be inclusive of more transpositions if needed in future. With newer orientations and definitions of ordinary people, the course of movement can’t be expected to be still or rigid. One’s certitude of feminism, which is extremely common, is that it empowers women. No! The movement was never aimed towards the sole development of women, but the deprived class as a whole. A class, lacking the taste of Renaissance; a class towards which the society had turned a blind eye.

The modern winds of change blew around an iron-willed lady, obstinate and mulish of ideals, paving ways to redefine feminism- encouraging and burgeoning both men and women. Especially, from the community of Muslims. Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain apportioned her life towards predating headway for the Muslim women, who were lamentably trapped in the noxious web of social injustice, religious bigotry and ignorance.

Conventionally known as the emancipator of the Bengali Muslim women, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain took the charge of educating women and releasing them from the shackles of child marriage or polygamy. She is highly held as a pioneer of the women’s liberation movement in South Asia.

She was born in a Bengali Muslim village of Rangpur, Presidency of Bengal, in 1880. Her ancestry can be traced back to a part of the Mughal regime. Though Zahirudin Muhammad Abu Ali Haider Saber, her father was a zamindar, he was well equipped with the intrinsic knowledge of various languages. However, he himself being an orthodox Muslim, insisted on the implementation of purdah in his own vicinity and allowed women to learn Arabic- only to make them educated enough to read Quran. With the fortune of securing support from their brothers, Rokeya and Karimunnesa, her sister, somehow learnt English and Bengali. Taking it as an instance, she understood that the lives of women in her own community can never be improved without education.

Her sister, Karimunnesa, is said to be the heyday of her compositions and her ideas contributing to the upliftment of women. In Rokeya’s words, in that period women were equal to ‘showpieces in a glass casket but with an iron curtain’. This opinion of hers was strengthened by seeing her sister’s remunerative future coming to an end with her early marriage at the age of fifteen.

Her unpropitious childhood ended with her marriage at the age of 16. She was married to Sakhawat Hossain, who supported her and had a thought, same as Rokeya, about the breaking of chains that were acting as constraints to keep the misogyny intact. The only pillar of support, her husband; she lost him in 1909. The man ensured Rokeya’s wellbeing and dreams to be fulfilled even though he wasn’t alive to witness it by leaving her with a prominent share of the money. In her husband’s memory, she set up Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School, bearing the grail of pushing these little, unfortunate girls to what they had been deprived of- education and economic independence. Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School, an initiative she inaugurated with 5-8 students, provided classes in English, Bengali, Persian, Urdu, first aid, nursing, sewing, cooking, music and art, physical exercises, etc. Today, it is one of the leading schools for girls in West Bengal.

She stationed a pedestal for the Bengali Muslim women, the Anjuman-e-Khawateen-e-Islam or Islamic Women’s Association in 1916 to arrange for the financial help or the educational support that was needed to secure a better future of the hapless women community. It was Rokeya who came up with a unique concept of maanoshik dashotto; that slavery can be connected to mental sanity, how the patriarchal society had snatched the right of women to nurture and build an individual character. With her liberal and logical arguments, she defeated the egoistic orthodox Muslims, who challenged her with their swords of superstition. It can’t be denied that she was way ahead of her time.

However, it’s very disappointing to be an onlooker of how she was shunned from society for her progressiveness. She lost her husband, she lost her children. The only way she could retaliate was to work for her cause tirelessly so that no other Bengali Muslim woman would have to sit on the throne of criticism any longer.

“Narir Odhikar” remained unfinished as she passed away on December 9, 1932, while writing it. To remind you of the lingering injustice that is there in our society even now, Rokeya, invited as the chairperson, talked about the illegitimacy that put a purdah on her success at the Bengal Women’s Educational Conference (1926), “Although I am grateful to you for the respect that you have expressed towards me by inviting me to preside over the conference, I am forced to say that you have not made the right choice. I have been locked up in the socially oppressive iron casket of ‘porda’ for all my life. I have not been able to mix very well with people- as a matter of fact, I do not even know what is expected as a chairperson. I do not know if one is supposed to laugh or, to cry”