Ismat Chughtai: The first female rebel of Urdu fiction?

The Arts Council of Pakistan initiated on Saturday a monthly lecture series featuring talks of distinguished writers, poets and critics on literary luminaries.

The literary personality chosen for the first lecture was Indian fiction writer Ismat Chughtai and the speaker who shed light on her art and ‘rebellion’ was literary critic Nasir Abbas Nayyar, who came from Lahore to deliver the first lecture of the series.

The speaker gave a detailed perspective to understand the fiction of Ismat. His speech, however, did not justify the title ‘Urdu Fiction Ki Pehli Baaghi’. The Urdu title could be interpreted in two ways. One could interpret it as a claim that Ismat was the first rebel of the Urdu fiction, including both the male and female fiction writers. Another interpretation could be that Ismat was the first female rebel of the Urdu fiction.

Nayyar’s speech went against both the possible interpretations of the title. He spoke about the publication of Angaray, a collection of short stories by four writers, in 1932, which created a lot of hue and cry due to its content that was viewed as rebellion to the existing norms. As Ismat started writing in 1939, the authors of Angaray are more qualified for the title of the first rebels of the Urdu fiction.

The speaker also mentioned many female writers who tried to break taboos before Ismat and had an influence on her writings such as Hijab Imtiaz Ali and Rasheed Jahan, who was also one of the four writers of Angaray. This fact seems to falsify the claim that Ismat was the first woman rebel of the Urdu fiction.

The critic said Ismat’s rebellious tendencies against patriarchal norms of society were interestingly strengthened by some male members of her family such as her father and eldest brother Azeem Baig Chughtai, who is ranked among prominent Urdu humourists of his time.

Nayyar said Ismat had herself written that her mother never got along with her, but she would convince her father to allow her if she wanted to do something against societal norms, such as continuing with college education after finishing school. When her father was reluctant to allow her to join college, she threatened that she would join a missionary college after converting to Christianity, and her father yielded.

Regarding the influence of Azeem on Ismat, the speaker said that besides humour, Azeem had penned some serious books as well, including one that argued that covering face for a woman was not compulsory in Islam. These ideas of Azeem were even not acceptable to his mother but his younger sister got much inspiration from them.

Ismat, later on, lived on her own terms. She took a job when women were not supposed to work. She later went to Bombay and worked in the film industry. She continued her rebellion till her death, as in her will, she asked for her body to be cremated instead of a burial.

In his interesting remarks, Nayyar said that whereas words like ‘rebellion’ and ‘disobedience’ were loathed in religious and historical discourses, the same words were cherished in literature as writers often found the world full of flaws and rebelling against the world order to them was the right step for correction.

Citing her short story ‘Lehaf’ and sketch of her brother Azeem ‘Dozakhi’ as her two most famous works, the speaker said both of them were overtly rebellious. Regarding Dozakhi, Nayyar remarked that it was often misinterpreted because Ismat considered the present world as a hell in which her brother was doomed to live.

The critic said Ismat was considered a feminist icon of the Urdu literature, but she would not have liked the label of feminist. He added that she never blindly followed any trend even if it was modernism and progressivism.

He went on to say that surprisingly Ismat had not acknowledged prominent female fiction writers like Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf among those who had an influence on her writing. She, however, named Somerset Maugham, Thomas Hardy, Bernard Shaw and Dostoevsky among the writers who had inspired her.

Nayyar particularly spoke on Maugham’s influence on her saying that Ismat was inspired by autobiographical fiction championed by the British writer. He said Ismat took the genre of autobiographical fiction, which means presenting one’s own lived experience in a fictitious style, in Urdu to new heights.

He said that although Ismat died in 1991, her greatest works were written in her early decades of writing — 30s, 40s and 50s. He said Ismat’s shifting to Bombay from UP proved good for her finances but bad for her literature as she had to write for films, which was a commercial genre. Nayyar remarked that ironically, Saadat Hassan Manto’s shifting to Bombay had good results for his writings.

“The Urdu fiction was without a house before Ismat. It was Ismat who gave the house to the Urdu fiction,” Nayyar opined. He elaborated that Ismat considered the house where a man was born to be his first cosmos and so her short stories were often based on the theme how the various aspects of living in a house could create or destroy one’s personality. “No one before Ismat presented brighter or darker sides of a house regarding the building of human relations.”

The event was presided over by poet Zehra Nigah, who met Ismat on various occasions both in India and Pakistan. She said she had also recited many short stories of Ismat for the BBC when she lived in London. She discussed some of her favourite short stories by Ismat — Nanhi Ki Naani, Chauthi Ka Jora and Chabaray.

Zehra narrated that once she mustered the courage to ask Ismat about why she changed her name after her marriage for a brief period to Ismat Shahid Latif and then again started calling her Ismat Chughtai. She replied that the change of name was a fatal somersault on her part that could have broken her neck.

The event was moderated by poet Ambreen Haseeb Amber. She said among various surprising aspects of Ismat’s corpus of work was Ek Qatra-e-Khoon, a novel she wrote on the tragedy of Karbala.