WOMEN’S rights movement has come a long way and looking at festivities on international Women’s Day, commemorated every year on March 8, one can hardly realise how hard it has been for women in the past.

Though life was difficult for women, and still is in majority of cases, it was especially so for those who expressed themselves with words. Women poets and writers were so discriminated against that our literary historians of the past pretended as if women poets did not exist. The tazkirahs — literary histories recording in Urdu and Persian the biographical details and samples of poetic works — simply ignored women poets though they had been writing poetry in Urdu and Persian for ages.

But this gender bias was not limited to the East and in the West, too, women authors were discriminated against. George Elliot is a glaring example. She was born Mary Anne Evans but took the pen name George Elliot so that critics would take her works “seriously”. This by itself is a comment on the standards of criticism in the Victorian age. But the history of women writing poetry in the West goes much farther. Sappho, the Greek female poet from the island of Lesbos (from which the word lesbian was derived) was one of the earliest women poets in recorded history and is said to have been exiled from Lesbos to Sicily, circa 600 BC. The ‘charges’ against her are shrouded in historical mist, but she is considered one of the first lesbian poets in history.

In the Islamic world, there have been quite a few female poets. Rabi’a Bint Ka’ab Quzdari, also known as Rabia Balkhi, was perhaps the first woman poet of Persian. It is said that she was in love with her brother’s slave and when her brother knew of the affair he cut her veins and locked her in a room where she died of bleeding. But before dying she inscribed her last couplets with her blood on the walls of that room. Nana Asma’u was a 19th century Nigerian woman poet. Much respected, she worked for women’s education too. Nigar Hanim, the Turkish poet, used the pen name Nigar Bint Usman. She is considered a major poet and a scholar.

In Indo-Pak subcontinent, there have been quite a few women poets. For instance, Mira Bai, the 16th century woman poet wrote poetry in Avadhi language, an old dialect of Hindi or Urdu. She is considered a major Hindu mystic poet of her times. Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir’s daughter Zaib-un-Nisa was a Persian poet and ‘Makhfi’ (meaning “the hidden”) was her takhallus or pen name. Aurangzeb imprisoned her for the last 20 years of her life. There are many theories about her imprisonment, the ‘charges’ against her included a presumed love affair, composing poetry and, which is more plausible historically, writing letters to her brother, Prince Akber, who had revolted against Aurangzeb. Her Persian divan, named Divan-i-Makhfi had been published by different publishers.

Mah laqa Bai Chanda, who died in 1240 Hijri or 1824-5 AD, is believed to be Urdu’s first woman poet to have composed a complete divan. She composed poetry in Urdu and Persian. Her divan was edited by Shafqat Rizvi and published by Lahore’s Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab (MTA), in 1990. Zahida Khatoon Shervaniya (1894-1922) died at the age of 28. Her poetry was remarkable but she wrote under the pen name Ze Khe Sheen (ZKS) to hide her identity.

Coming back to tazkirahs, most of the tazkirahs ignored women poets and if they made a mention of women poets at all, it came as a passing reference. History was created when Hakeem Fasihuddin Ranj Meruthi (1836-1885) wrote Baharistan-i-Naz, the first ever book listing the women poets of Urdu. First published in 1864 from Meerut, it introduced 70 women poets from the subcontinent. Though the second edition, published in 1869, was a replica of the first one, the third one, appearing in 1882, listed 174 women poets. In 1965, MTA published its fifth edition, edited by Khalil-ur-Rahman Dawoodi.

Gulshan-i-naz, another Urdu tazkirah introducing women poets, was compiled and published by Durga Prasad Nadir Khatri Dehlvi in 1876-7. It gave brief biographical sketches and glimpses of poetic works by 144 female poets. He wrote another tazkirah listing women poets, their works and samples of poetry and published it a year later with the title Chaman andaz. Later, both the books by Nadir were published in one volume in 1878. Luckily, these books are available online at rekhta.org.

Today, there are hundreds of female poets of Urdu and many books have been written to highlight their contribution to Urdu literature. In many cases, poetry by woman is a way of asserting one’s self and one’s role in the society. The peculiar feminine sensitivity that these female poets of Urdu have brought with their poetry is indeed unique and it was, of course, beyond any male poet.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2018