Sultana's Dream by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Author:Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain [Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat; Jahan, Roushan; Papanek, Hanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558617353
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

*The small Parsi community in South Asia is descended from Persian Zoroastrians, who migrated to India many centuries ago. They retain their distinctive religion, live mainly in western India, and tend to marry within the group. Parsis were among the first to work with the British during colonial times, to accept English education, and to allow women to wear western dress.

Afterword Caging the Lion: A Fable for Our Time

Hanna Papanek

ROKEYA SAKHAWAT HOSSAIN’S STORY, written so long ago, is just right for our time, a time when social and religious movements in many countries and many religions want to use women, once again, to show that men are right-minded. Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists of many kinds are propagating similar messages in many parts of the world. It all seems so simple: There is something wrong in the world and one way to fix it is to put women “in their place,” a place most women would not choose for themselves. Rokeya’s most important message speaks directly to this point. She rebukes women for failing to recognize and act on their self-interest in a passage where the Guide tells the Dreamer:

“Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up? You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.”

This must have been heady advice to Rokeya’s readers and explains her passionate commitment to female education. It is no less relevant today.

The quiet revolution in women’s lives—the emancipation and education of more than a few—which was once safely launched is again endangered today by indirect threats to women’s ability to perceive and choose their options. To be sure, more women are going to school in countries around the world and more women are taking jobs outside the home. But at the same time, and in the same places where educational enrollments and employment figures are rising, there are social and religious movements that seek to limit women’s options in other ways. In the United States, for example, movements that seek to prohibit all women’s access to abortion and contraception, and similar movements in parts of Europe that oppose the granting of divorces, all use religious traditions as a basis for trying to change public morality and private behavior.

Rokeya’s specific concern was the practice of purdah among the Muslims of Bengal; in this essay, I take a somewhat broader view. It is not easy to define purdah; the word is a kind of shorthand for practices that might include, depending on choices made by families, veiling the face, wearing a concealing cloak, living in secluded quarters, and never meeting men outside the family. It is making a comeback: Veiling is being revived in a number of countries, and some women are carefully limiting their contacts with men. Even where veiling has not been widely revived, other changes in women’s dress (long skirts, long sleeves, head coverings) signal change in belief and practice.

Seen from a global and historical perspective, the rejection of purdah and its recent partial revival present a striking paradox.

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