gency is rooted in a person whereas the person is situated in a society and an environment. Whether the society or the individual comes first is like the famous question about the hen and the egg. One cannot make an authoritative statement about both, logically or historically. The moment a person is born, society goes to work on them. It transforms the individual from a biological being to a social unit. An individual inherits the earliest ideas from others in the society. A pertinent example can be cited about the primary language that one learns as a mother tongue which is completely a social acquisition, and not learning per se.

The agency of an individual is contextual, not independent or based on free will. It is, to a large extent, determined by the context in which one operates. George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant which first appeared in the literary magazine New Writing in 1936 is the story of a colonial official who killed an elephant because of social pressure and esprit de corps of the class that he belonged to, although he did not wish to kill the poor animal. Likewise, Dostoyevsky’s Devil is the story of a person named Kirilov who kills himself to demonstrate his freedom and agency. It lays bare that suicide is the only perfectly free act for a person to commit, every other act involves the society.

In the Western tradition, theoretically viewed, feminist discourses are diverse but their common objective is to enhance, through various means, the social and political role of women. Among the prominent theoretical strands are liberal feminists, also called equal-rights feminists, who stress the reform of the public sphere and do not focus on reordering of the private sphere. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Betty Friedan’s The Fountain of Age are their inspirational texts and theoretical frameworks. Some socialist feminists are inspired by socialism and its contribution to empowering women. In their eyes, the have-not women are doubly marginalised, being women and being resource-less and powerless.

A third group is radical feminists. Their motto is: the personal is the political. It means, as opposed to the liberal feminists, that the domestic sphere needs also to be changed because women need to be empowered at all levels. Moreover, personal empowerment will lead to the expansion of the public role of women and gender equality. For them, men are ‘the enemy’ and a radical change is needed. The ideologues of all these shades of feminism agree on the point that society is characterised by sexual and gender inequality and that this inequality-based structure of male dominance can and should be overturned.

Temporally, the earliest wave of feminism was provided a theoretical base and steered by pioneering activist Mary Wollstonecraft. The women suffrage movements of 19th and 20th Centuries were also part and parcel of this phase. The second-wave feminism emerged in 1960s. It was more radical, being part of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Kate Millett, along with many others, is credited with providing theoretical sustenance and activism to it. The third-wave feminism began in early 1990s and has continued. It is inclusive of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender identity and acknowledges that such intersections matter for feminist struggle. Rebecca Walker and Judith Butler are prominent figures associated with this phase of feminism.

Because of the colonial baggage of the Victorian sense of morality and ethos, women are facing more hurdles to get equal rights as compared to their compatriots in pre-colonial South Asia.

Feminist agency is contextual. It can be properly understood when historicised and contextualised. For instance, the colonial framework in India changed the state structure as well as social norms, morality, gender roles and attitudes towards women. The colonial dispensation created a male-female dichotomy and discriminatory attitudes towards women were institutionalised. The transgender people and dancers were pushed to the margins of the society. Even literature was sorted out to be cleansed of its so called immoral and erotic content. Various genres like rekhti, hezel, wasokht and sarapa were proscribed. While colonialism opened many avenues, it also closed many. It shut some of the doors that were open for women and the transgenders.

Many women played remarkable public leadership roles before the colonial take over. Razia Sultan of Delhi sultanate and 16^th Century warrior queens, Chand Bibi and Dilshad Agha of Bijapur were famous for her horse riding, use of artillery and archery. Unlike their Persian counterparts, the Mughal Indian women were empowered. Nearly half of the monuments in Delhi during Shah Jehan’s time were built by women. His daughter Jahanara constructed several mansions, a famous garden and palatial caravanserais. Jahanara also wrote the biography of the celebrated sufi adept, Muin-ud Din Chishti as well as several volumes of poetry and her own epitaph. Aurangzeb’s daughter Zeb-un Nisa was a scholarly woman who mastered the Arabic and Persian languages, did calligraphy and collected an exemplary library.

Mah Laqa Bai Chanda, a courtesan from Hyderabad, was renowned for her intelligence and was regarded as Hyderabad’s greatest contemporary poet. Her poetic works were famous as far as Delhi and Lucknow. She built a great library filled with books on every kind of arts and sciences and she commissioned a book Mahanama, history of the Deccan. She patronised poets and poetesses and such was praised her wisdom that the Nizam gave her rank of a senior omra, she could attend the durbar and advise the Nizam on state policy. She was reputed for her riding skills, archery and use of javelin and participated in several campaigns.

Nur Jahan, the wife of Emperor Jahangir, was the most powerful woman of 17th Century India. She was a patron of arts, music and architecture and built many grand monuments, majestic forts, mosques and tombs. She is omnipresent in the folklore of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, in all three post-colonial states, women are struggling to get their rightful socio-economic and political status. Because of the colonial baggage of the Victorian sense of morality and ethos, women are facing more hurdles to get equal rights than their compatriots in pre-colonial South Asia.

The writer heads the History Department at University of Sargodha. He has worked as a research fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He can be reached at abrar.zahoor@hotmail.com His X handle: @AbrarZahoor1