Zahida Khatun Sherwani (1894-1922) is one of the early female poets of Urdu literature who took the giant leap of challenging the normative structure. The courageous young mind challenged the prevalent hierarchy and paved the way for upcoming female poets to make their presence felt in the world of Urdu literature.
Shah Alam, TwoCircles.net
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind,” asserts Virginia Woolf in her extraordinary work A Room of One’s Own.
There exists a long queue of many such progressive minds whose feminist writings have contributed enormously to the cause of women’s emancipation even from the confinement of four walls of their houses. Unfortunately, their works and voices could not receive due credit and acknowledgment even today. A century ago, when the doors of formal education were almost closed for most Muslim women of the subcontinent, some audacious Muslim girls countered the established hegemonic patriarchy by exercising their literacy senses and speaking their hearts through writings.
Zahida Khatun Sherwani (1894-1922) is one of the early female poets of Urdu literature who took the giant leap of challenging the normative structure. The courageous young mind challenged the prevalent hierarchy and paved the way for upcoming female poets to make their presence felt in the world of Urdu literature. Her allegiance to bring reality to the fore made her the first woman poet to appear on Urdu’s literary horizon and be followed by poets of successive generations like Ada Jafri and others. Her magnum opus Masnavi Aina-i-Haram, on women’s rights, has been considered at par with Allama Iqbal’s Shikwa. Lauding her poetic work, Allama Iqbal extolled, “When Zahida attains my age, she will be considered among the best poets of the country.”
The walled poetess, Zahida Khatun Sherwani (Zay Khay Sheen), was a remarkable woman about whom very few people know today. She made her prominence in literary circles as a distinguished writer and poet and used her pen to raise her concern for women’s rights when women, particularly Muslim women, faced gender discrimination in the landmass. She preferred not to disclose her identity and used to be known by the initials of her name Zay Khay Sheen because her conservative family did not allow her to pursue a career as writer or poet or even raise her voice for the rights of women.
Zahida was born into a politically and intellectually vibrant family that blended with a progressive and conservative system. On the one hand, the family was an ardent supporter of education, whether Islamic or western, and promoters of women’s education, but on the other, they were of the view that the women of the family should be educated under strict purdah within the households.
Zahida lost her mother at a tender age and was brought up by her father. Zahida expressed her dream to become an established poet when she wrote a couplet at the age of ten:
Aisi banuun main sha’irah jaisi koi na ho,
Saara jahaan nazm meri dekhta rahe.
(May I become like no other poetess,
That the whole world reverberates my verse.)
Zahida assiduously wrote on women’s issues by contributing her poems and articles either under the pseudonym Zay Khay Sheen or as Nuzhat to the well-known magazines and periodicals like Khatun of Aligarh, Ismat of Delhi, Sharif Bibi of Lahore, and others. Her poems were read and acclaimed by the readers, but they were not aware of who Zay Khay Sheen or Nuzhat was. Apart from her devoted love for his father, Zahida felt scared that she had hidden the fact from him that she was publishing her poetry.
Living under the confinement of four walls and under the shadow of family restrictions, she renegaded against the established structure of gender bias from a very early age. At the age of nine, Zahida started a campaign for women’s rights from the ‘Young Sherwanis’ League’ platform and used to have meetings periodically with a formal list of aims and objectives. The platform’s main goals were to start schools for Bhikampur and Datauli and donate money as a part of a drive for a boarding house at Aligarh Girl’s School.
She belonged to a family that played a significant role in establishing Aligarh Muslim University. Being the daughter of Nawab Muzamillah Khan, a friend of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Zahida took part in various feminist activities to promote and encourage women’s right to education and empowerment. A young lady with a vision and progressive mind courageously carved out her path. She wrote poems on farming and farmers, the World War, Politics, Nationalism, Aligarh Muslim University, and the Khilafat Movement. A staunch supporter of Mahatma Gandhi’s Swadeshi Movement, Zahida left this world succumbing to an unspecified fever on 2 February 1922, at the age of 27.
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Shah Alam is an Assistant Professor, Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, Aligarh Muslim University