Tag: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

RE-READING BEGUM ROKEYA ? CONCLUDING PART


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Mapping female emancipation
autonomous womanhood vs. dasi

By rahnuma ahmed

His comments made me stop in my tracks, I began re-thinking why I had proceeded as I had. I’d suffered nagging doubts about Part II after it had been published. May be, the discussion had been too academic, may be it had turned some readers off.
My brother, the one in London, had e-mailed me, saying among other things, ‘[I look for] what can you tell me that reveals a little more about the relationship [she] had with [her] work…[I read, to discover what], as people say, delivers that one ‘a-ha’ moment.
As I began working on Part II, I remembered something which I’d been told long ago by a faculty member at Sussex university just before her seminar began. ‘Oh, 90% of my presentation will be a preamble.’ ‘Preamble? You mean as in the constitution…?’ ‘Yes,’ she chuckled. ‘It’ll be about the purpose of my study, it’s philosophical underpinnings, how I steer and navigate myself through what has been written thus far on the subject…where I situate my own efforts.’
May be I could re-direct Saif’s comments toward myself, I thought, my relationship with this business of re-reading. It would help recap what I’d written in Part II. It would also help readers see where I situate my own efforts.

Begum Rokeya (1880-1932)

Re-reading Begum Rokeya for me, has involved taking stock of what has been written about her. Of critically thinking through what sense we have made of her life and struggles, her achievements, what we think she was up against and why. It has meant engaging with some thorny issues in feminist theory. And of course, it has inolved returning to Rokeya Rachanavali (1984), again and again. Continue reading “RE-READING BEGUM ROKEYA ? CONCLUDING PART”

RE-READING BEGUM ROKEYA ? PART II


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Mapping female emancipation
autonomous womanhood vs. dasi

By rahnuma ahmed

In yesterday’s column, I had written that Bangladeshi scholars, researchers and intellectuals who have sought to understand and appreciate Begum Rokeya (1880-1932) have ignored issues of class and gender. Gender, too? you might well have wondered. Since Rokeya is a woman, how could any author who has written on Rokeya ignore the issue of gender?

Begum Rokeya (1880-1932)

Yes, gender as well, and to explain what I mean, I draw on an essay written by Marxist intellectual Farhad Mazhar, which, I hasten to add, is not about Rokeya but about Karl Marx’s theoretical attention to the question of women’s emancipation, ‘Narir Mukti o Shompotti: Itihash Bigyaner Moulik Obosthan Proshonge’, Women’s emancipation and property: The central position of scientific history (Proshongo: Nari Mukti Andolon, edited by Liakat Ali, Dhaka: Pothikrit Prokashoni, 1999).
In an otherwise brilliant essay, a couple of sentences by Mazhar in the opening paragraphs will surely not escape the attention of discerning scholars of women’s history. ‘Needless to say, the amount of work written by Karl Marx on ‘capital’ in no way equals the amount which he wrote on women. Women were not his subject. But does that mean that he lacked any original scientific thoughts on the issue of women? This is the central question that our essay engages with. In other words, our enquiry will be concerned with whether he did or did not have any original ideas on the issue of women, and that, whatever be the reason, these thoughts were not written down.’ (p. 80). Continue reading “RE-READING BEGUM ROKEYA ? PART II”