By Dr Mohammad Sajjad,
Zahra Daudi, born at Chapra, Bihar on 16 March 1923; was a left-leaning freedom fighter and a champion woman who stood upright for labour rights. Her father Maulana Ali Asghar, a staunch nationalist, was close to the luminaries of the freedom movement like Maulana Azad and Dr Rajendra Prasad. He preferred to wear hand-woven Khadi clothes, participated in the Non Cooperation-Khilafat Movement and was a rabid critic of the Muslim League. He regarded Muslim League as disgusting collaborator of the British colonialism, besides being communal separatist.
She was extensively well read particularly in the literature on socio-economic status of women in the History, on the trajectory of the institution of prostitution and feminist movements all across the globe. Through her readings she discovered that the first instance of women as ruling elites came from the Egyptian history. Her findings were as such that, the Arab women started losing their freedom when they started to link closer with Iran and Turkey, since then the Prophet Mohammad [PBUH] undertook a lot of steps to improve the condition of women.
She read Anne Hutchinson, Mildred, Brown Miller, Susan, Mary Astel, Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystic, Germaine Greer’s Female Eunuch, and John Stuart Mill’s Subjection of Women; besides she read a lot of classical Urdu and Persian texts including that of Deputy Nazeer Ahmad, Rashidul Khairi, Ashraf Ali Thanwi’s Bihishti Zewar, among others.
Zahra Daudi [1923-2003]
Her autobiography travelogues written in Urdu were: Lazzat-e-Sahranoordi (Wanderlust), Girdaab ki Shinaawari (Delving into the Vortex) and Manzil-e-GurezaaN (The Elusive Destination). She travelled widely across the globe and has detailed her observations on the history and culture of those countries, particularly focussing on the plight of women there.
She had her studies from Patna’s Girls School and Magadh Mahila Women’s College. Her first master’s degree was in Economics; five years later she opted for another MA in Political Science and finally did a post graduation in Law as well, all from the Patna University. From her very student days she was an activist and had participated in various movements for which she was imprisoned in Bihar Sharif and Patna. Even when imprisoned she continued her politics of protest against objectionable treatment against the prisoners. Having read the Communist Manifesto, she got attracted to the communist ideologies and became a member of the CPI. Thus she was an underground activist of the CPI for long.
The lineage of Zahra Daudi’s in-laws:
Zahra was first among the Muslim Girl students of Bihar, to have performed distinctively in the High School exams. This impressed Shafi Daudi (1875-1949) of Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Thus she was married to Shafi Daudi’s son Habib Daudi, who was later an officer in the Railways. Habib Daudi’s father Shafi Daudi and mother Begum Zubaida Daudi were well-renowned freedom fighters. Shafi Daudi had later joined the Jamaat-e-Islami. [Mohammad Sajjad’s Urdu essay on Shafi Daudi in Jamia vol. 100, Nos. 4-6, 2003, pp. 33-50]
Zahra’s mother-in-law, Begum Zubaida Daudi had played important role in mobilizing the Parda nashin Muslim ladies of Muzaffarpur to join the Non Cooperation Movement. She, along with Bi Amman, the mother of the Ali Brothers, had addressed public meetings after her husband, Shafi Daudi was jailed for his brave anti-colonial crusades.The District Congress headquarters, Muzaffarpur (Bihar) owns a huge plot of land, named Tilak Maidan; it was Shafi Daudi who played a prominent role in obtaining that land for the Congress, during the Non Cooperation Movement.
Begum Zubaida Daudi, belonged to the Syed family of Paroo (Abida Samiuddin, Tehreek-e-Azaadi mein Muslim Khwateen ka Hissa, Idara-e-Tehqeeqaat-e-Urdu, Patna, 1990). The family sources claim that being influenced by the movement of Shah Waliullah (1702-60) and of Syed Ahmed of Rae Bareilly (died in1831), Nadir Ali of the Syed family moved towards north Bihar and went up to the village Chandi Dhanki [Lalganj, Vaishali] after the upsurge of 1857. He had intensions of helping the Muslim community, who were hopeless due to the colonial retribution unleashed against them. His sons, Qazi Abdul Waahid settled at Syedani, near Saraiya and Qazi Abdul Nasir settled at Churihar and Qazi Syed Abdur Rahman settled at Paroo, all in Muzaffarpur district, near the historic village of Vaishali. They settled in these villages in order to help the Muslims, overcome the post-mutiny frustration.
Rahman was also the founder of the Registrar office for sale and purchase of lands at Paroo. Qazi Rahman, along with another village notable, Raghunandan Prasad, was instrumental in establishing English cum vernacular school for modern education at Paroo, under the auspices of the Bihar Scientific Society, Muzaffarpur. This indeed was an off-shoot of Syed Ahmad’s movement for modern education in Aligarh. The then Sadr Amin (Sub-Judge) of Muzaffarpur, Syed Imdad Ali, followed the footprints of Syed Ahmad (1817-98) and established the Bihar Scientific Society on 24 May, 1868.
This was initially called the ‘British Indian Association’ and had the objective of ‘criticizing the proceedings of the government, and defending the people from oppression by conveying their true complaints to the government’. It was only in 1872, it came to be called as the Bihar Scientific Society. The aim of the Society and its fortnightly, Akhbarul Akhyar, edited by Ajodhya Prasad Bahaar, was to bring intellectual, social and moral well-being of the people by spreading knowledge of European sciences through the vernacular and by establishment of schools, printing presses and newspapers under it. They aimed at collecting Arabic and Persian works and to deliver lectures on those collected works.
This Society established a chain of schools across Bihar and a Collegiate school in Muzaffarpur, later on it developed into a big prestigious Post Graduate College, paving way to the beautiful campus of the Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. [see my, “Sir Syed’s Movement for Modern Education in Muzaffarpur, Bihar”, in s. Iraqi (ed.) Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: Vision and Mission, Manohar, Delhi, 2008, pp. 181-197].
Syed Sulaiman Nadvi’s (1884-1953) had his second marriage from this family of Paroo. It is said that Mr. Amir Subhani, one of the most upright and efficient IAS officer and presently the Home Secretary of Bihar, received his elementary education at Paroo [it was his naanihaal]. He had secured All-India top rank in the competitive recruitment exams 1986, and his success inaugurated a change in the social composition of the elite civil services, as the new generation of lower middle class of the backward province of Bihar (particularly Muslims) got a confidence that education from non-elite rural institutions were no impediment, for a success in the civil services exams.
Zahra often opined that the Daudi family of Muzaffarpur were fairly progressive, even though they had a repulsive mind against the Leftist ideologies. Zahra’s husband Habib Daudi, shifted to Calcutta to join the Railway services, and she practised law there. After the communal riots of Calcutta [1964], she, along with her husband and children, migrated to Karachi in July 1965.
Lifelong, she remained puzzled on her husband’s decision to migrate, and her state of mind to follow this decision without any question. There in Karachi she taught Political Science in the PECH College, she was active in the Pakistani College Teachers Association [PCTA] and on its behalf she had to meet Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, after a week-long hunger strike. On Bhutto’s instruction she formed a separate teachers association affiliated to the Pakistan People’s Party. She was a member of the PPP but was sympathetic towards the National Awami Party of Wali Khan.
She always had criticisms against the PPP and Bhutto, who according to her was an arrogant political leader with dictatorial and authoritarian streaks. The success of PPP in 1970 contributed towards marginalization of the conservative and reactionary mullahs to an extent, and gave way for certain equitable, socialistic agenda like land-reforms, led to some acceptability among a section of common people and the intelligentsia of Pakistan. Thus the PPP’s success helped dispelling a notion that Left- oriented people are essentially apostates and atheists.
Zahra, for her non-conformist and rebellious views, particularly for her views on Pakistan’s policies towards Bangladesh, was dismissed from the college services in 1979. Later she practised law at Karachi, in order to earn livelihood to look after her four sons; as her husband was demised in the due time. The radicalism in Zahra often forced her to express certain critical and provocative views on the scriptural and normative location of women in the Muslim societies. She was equally harsh against certain symptoms features associated with the otherwise ‘liberated’ women of the West.
Unlike many radical feminists, she had firm faith in the institution of family, and had an opinion that the grandparents have a crucial role to play in inculcating moral values and desirable disciplining among the growing children. Later, she migrated to and settled in Canada to join her sons, where she died in September 2003. Her children, Tanvir, Jawaid, Naaheed and Nadeem are leading lives as successful professionals in Canada, with the suffix ‘DAUDI’ in their names.
In some ways this real-life character resembled, the fictional character Dipali Sarkar of Aakhir-e-Shab Ke Hamsafar [1979], a wonderful novel by Qurratulain Hyder [English Translation, Fireflies in the Mist, 1984].
[Dr Mohammad Sajjad, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University].