Rashid Jahan is remembered as a woman of great charisma, who treated everyone as an equal. Her writings reflect not just a feminist sensibility, but an empathy for the poor and the deprived
Just a few of days ago I was at a literature conference in the Doon valley and was pleasantly surprised when a scholar from Kurukshetra presented a paper on Rashid Jahan, who lived in the Doon valley at one time and was a writer much ahead of her times.
The paper was titled “Material Feminism: A Study of Rashid Jahan’s Angarey.” I was glad that such a large audience from all over the world was getting to hear about this amazing lady who is one of the earliest writers known for inaugurating a new era of Urdu literature written by women. Yet people in the Doon valley remain largely unaware of her life and contribution to the world of letters.
Rashid Jahan and her husband, Mahmuduzzafar were residents of the Dalanwala area of the Doon valley. Mahmud was the son of Sahibzada Saiduzzafar who was the owner and resident of the beautiful house “Nasreen”, which is part of the the Welham Girls School now. He was from Rampur and had settled down in the Doon valley.
In 1931, Rashid Jahan, who was from Aligarh, graduated from medical school in Delhi and in 1934 she married the writer Mahmuduzzafar. 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 1931, Rasheed Jahan shot into prominence. 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 literture’s first “angry young woman”.
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.
The genesis of the movement was the 1932 publication of a collection of ten Urdu short stories, Angaray, by four young writers, Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmad Ali, Mahmuduzzafar and Rashid Jahan.
Rashid Jahan is known for the influence she had on a new generation of younger women writers by teaching them to tell harsh truths. 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 an empathy for the poor and the deprived.
A biography of Rashid Jahan by renowned Urdu critic Rakhshanda Jalil titled A Rebel and Her Cause (Women Unlimited), which also includes English translations of her stories and plays, gives us a wonderful insight into this unique writer’s life. She died in 1953. It is always fascinating to know more about this forgotten figure who was so much ahead of her time .A doctor by profession and an amazing writer. A vibrant and strong personality associated with the Doon valley.