Ismat Chugthai

“… I’m a very troublesome woman…I have been breaking chains all my life. I won’t be bound…now. It doesn’t suit me to be an obedient, virtuous woman…’

 

Ismat Chughtai (1915 – 1991) was an Indian Urdu writer and filmmaker. From the 1930s, she wrote comprehensively on themes including female sexuality, feminism, middle-class gentility, and class conflict, often from a Marxist perspective.

Chughtai was  born in Utter Pradesh – the 9^th of 10 children. Although they moved cities a lot owing to her father’s job, Chughtai credited her brothers as having a strong influence on her – especially her second eldest brother who was also a novelist and whom she regarded as a mentor.

Despite strong resistance from her family, she completed three degrees, graduating from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1941. She had several jobs including headmistress of a Muslim girls’ school and a school inspector before she came to earn a living from her writing. She married an Indian film director in 1942.

During her university years, Chughtai became involved with the Progressive Writers' Association, having attended her first meeting in 1936. Here, she was introduced to Rashid Jahan, one of the leading female writers of the movement, who was later credited for inspiring Chughtai to write "realistic, challenging female characters". Chughtai began writing in private around this time, although her work was not published for several years.

Her first published work was a drama published in an Urdu magazine in 1939. Disappointingly, readers assumed that this had been written by her brother using a pseudonym. She published a few other stories shortly after, for which she was accused of blasphemy for supposedly insulting the Quran. Regardless, she continued to write ‘about things she would hear of’. Chughtai's continued association with the Progressive Writers' Movement had significant influence on her writing style; she was particularly intrigued by Angaray, a compilation of short-stories written in Urdu by members of the group.

Chughtai's first novella Ziddi, which she had written on her early twenties was first published in 1941. Her book was praised, not only for its skillful writing, but for providing "[glimpses] into a world where women try to break out of the shackles created by other women, rather than men". I think this is a really important point – too often it is the internalised misogyny of women who seek to shame and control other women which is more – or at least equally – damaging to the female psyche as male oppression. If women fail to understand and support one another, there is little hope of men doing so.

In 1942, Chughtai came to public attention for her short-story Lihaaf (The Quilt).  This story caused controversy for its implication of female homosexuality and in 1945 she was charged in court with “obscenity” alongside her friend and fellowe PWM comrade, Sadat Hassan Manton (also an amazing guy if you wanna look him up). Both were exonerated. However, their trial drew much attention to the now-notorious pair. Chughtai was more favourably received by the media, however she later spoke of the distress caused to her by the whole scandal: "[Lihaaf] brought me so much notoriety that I got sick of life. It became the proverbial stick to beat me with and whatever I wrote afterwards got crushed under its weight." Her burden was eased however, when she was introduced to the woman who had inspired the novel who claimed that Lihaff ‘had changed her life and it is because of her story now she was blessed with a child".

In 1943, while pregnant with her daughter, she published a quasi-autobiographical novel Tedhi Lakeer (The Crooked Line).  This book details the lives of the Muslim community, women in particular, in the context of the waning British Raj (I really have to read this considering my thesis’ look at interreligious and gender relations in colonial/post-colonial India!).  Chughtai's study of the "inner realms of women’s lives" was highly acclaimed for being ‘probing and pertitent’ and ‘empowering.’ She recalled that the book was inspired by her own experiences and the conversations that she had with woman in her family and community: "I write about people I know or have known. What should a writer write about anyway?”

“I always considered myself a human being first and a woman second.”

Her husband also introduced Chughtai to the Hindi film industry and she began writing scripts in the late 1940s. Her screenwriter’s debut was Latif's drama film Ziddi which became one of the biggest commercial successes of 1948. Chughtai's association with film solidified when she and Latif co-founded the production company Filmina. In 1958, she produced and wrote the film Sone Ki Chidiya which was well-received and directly contributed to Chughtai’s rising popularity.  

She continued to writer inbetween film projects and her fourh collection of short stories, Chui Mui (Touch-me-not), was released in 1952 to an enthusiastic response. The eponymous short-story has been noted for its "pertinent dissection of our society" and contesting the venerated tradition of motherhood, especially its equation of womanhood. This was especially controversial in India where the idea of women and mother is especially synonymous as evidenced by the frequent exhalation of “Mother India” and the “Mother Goddesses”.

Beginning in the 1960s, Chughtai wrote a total of eight novels, the first of which was Masooma (The Innocent Girl), published in 1962 which deals with themes of sexual exploitation and social and economic injustice and how these especially affect women.

Despite a lukewarm  response to her 1960s novels,  Chughtai received greater praise for her fifth novel Dil ki Duniya (The Heart Breaks Free), which became one of her foundational texts. The novel documents the lives of a varied group of women living in a conservative Muslim household in Uttar Pradesh, which again drew on experiences for her own early life. She also released some works based on the scandalous lives of famous men in the Bollywood film industry, something which had been relatively undiscussed before.

In the late 1980s, Chughtai was diagnosed with Alzheimers which sadly limited her work. She died at home in Mumbai. . Although Chughtai was a liberal Muslim, she spoke of coming from a family of "Hindus, Muslims and Christians who all live peacefully". She openly spoke of reading not only the Quran, but also the Gita and the Bible. Her religious fluidity and toleration is reflected in her work, which show the cultural legacy of the region in which she lived. This was best demonstrated in her story "Sacred Duty", where she dealt with social pressures in India, alluding to specific national, religious and cultural traditions.

She refused a traditional Muslim burial, and was instead cremated in accordance with her wishes.

"flowers can be made to bloom among rocks. The only condition is that one has to water the plant with one’s heart’s blood".

Following the translation of numerous of her works into English, a renewed interest in the Urdu literature of the twentieth century, and subsequent critical reappraisals, Chughtai's status as a writer rose posthumously. This began with reappraisals of Lihaff, which was now seen as a landmark depiction of sex which remains a taboo subject in South Asia.

Her work is now considered among the best in the Urdu language, notable for their explorations of themes of gender and nationalism which continue to be major issues in South Asia today.

Unsurprisingly, many of her writings were banned in South Asia because their reformist and feminist content offended conservatives (for example, her view that the Niqab, the veil worn by women in Muslim societies, should be discouraged for Muslim women because it is oppressive and feudal. Many of her books have been banned at various times.

This censorship failed to dampen her access, but remains as a testament to the power of her work which was clearly viewed as a real threat to the conservative patriarchal hierarchies of traditional Indian society. Some critics had condemned Ismat for writing only about and for women, but I think this is what makes her so remarkable. She gave a voice to the millions of South Asia women, especially those within the already oppressed Indian Muslim community, and challenged the tradition of keeping matters of sex and sexuality behind closed doors. For a non-white, Muslim, woman to have achieved such success would be remarkable even today, but that she did so in an era where any one of those things regardless of the controversial content of her work should have made her success impossible.

As an Indologist, feminist, and aspiring writer myself there is so much I admire about Ismat and her work. My masters (and hopefully PhD) thesis’ focus on gender and nationalism in India and how these affect interreligious relations in South Asia – so Chughtai is an especially inspirational (and helpful) woman to me and I can’t wait to learn and read more of her work as I progress with my studies. I’m very wary of commenting further on the power of her work owing to the fact that I am a straight white outsider who is neither Muslim nor Hindu and who could never fully understand the experience of the women Chughtai brings to life in her novels. However, from my studies at least, it seems to me that Chughtai beautifully amalgamates all the most important issues affecting Indian women – and Indian society more generally – in her work and shines an important light on the darkest aspects of a patriaerchal society which has done its best to sweep its shame into the shadows.