Syeda Mubashar Jehan chairperson of the UK chapter of the All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA) shares her memories of working with Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali and the need for today’s women to know their rights

The chairperson of the United Kingdom chapter of the All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA) Syeda Mubashar Jehan goes by the name Bashan Rafique. Though the UK-APWA was founded just three years back, it has roots in the women’s movement started by Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan soon after the Partition.

“I joined APWA in 1971 but my mother and mother-in-law were both founding members of the organisation with Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan. I accompanied my mother to APWA’s meetings and their Meena Bazaar, etc.

“My mother was from Hakim Ajmal Khan’s family of Delhi. She was educated at home. She could only write Urdu and Arabic but was the most intelligent and dynamic woman I know. Married at 15 and widowed at 36, she brought all of us up but also told me not to study so much. She would say, ‘if you become too educated it will frustrate your husband’. And then she said educated women don’t pay attention to their home and keep it untidy. So even today I keep my home very clean thinking about what she said.

“With Partition, many refugees came to Pakistan. We had a house in Jamshed Road back then and my mother opened a school for women at the back of that house. We had some 40 to 50 women coming there everyday to learn how to read, write, sew or learn any other craft as it was a very confusing time for them. They didn’t know what to do, where to go. And as the Prime Minister’s wife Begum Ra’ana had the facility to set up things like industrial homes, hospitals, schools and colleges like the Sir Syed Girls College, the Home Economics College, etc.,” she recalls.

“Of course, later, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto became the prime minister, he nationalised them all, leaving APWA with nothing to run all of a sudden. Still, they picked up the pieces and created more such schools with high-quality education and low fees,” she adds.

“My mother-in-law, Margaret Rafique, was the longest-serving member of APWA in London. My father, Syed Ahmad Ashraf, a Bar at Law, was with the Muslim League. Coming to Pakistan after Partition, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan sent him back to be the liaison officer in the Pakistan High Commission in India. He worked there for one year. Later, he became the refugee commissioner in Peshawar but resigned from there after Liaquat Ali Khan’s assassination. Due to my father’s close association with Liaquat Ali Khan, my mother, too, was involved in the women’s movement started by his better half,” says Mrs Rafique.

Coming back to the early years of Pakistan, Mrs Rafique says that she remembers how her father had taken her brother to meet Quaid-i-Azam. I must have been very little then and was so sad at not being taken there that I fell sick. Later, on my insistence he let me accompany him to the Prime Minister’s House in Karachi. That’s when I met Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan for the very first time. She was truly an amazing woman. And APWA, the organisation she created to resettle and rehabilitate women is just as amazing,” she points out.

“I joined APWA just before getting married, in 1971. And after marriage I moved to England. Our women in the UK are marginalised. Their conditioning is such that they are expected not to mix in British society. But they are really British women of Pakistani descent. They should know the facilities they have in the UK. Some 2,000 girls disappear from the school every year in the UK. They don’t get any higher education. They don’t find employment. They are not in the employment register. They are no where! And we don’t know what happened to them. Have they been sent to Pakistan? Have they been married off somewhere? Have they been kept inside? We don’t know. Just last year a 17-year-old girl was killed by her parents. They killed her and hid her body. Nobody knew till her sister spoke up. So even there in the UK we Pakistanis think it is okay to control our daughters in whatever way we like,” she regrets.

“As an APWA member and its vice chair when I came here a few years back, the organisation’s president, Mrs Laila Haroon Sarfaraz, took me for my first Congress in 2009 to Switzerland. She wanted me to attend it. And when I went there I met all these women from all over the world discussing women’s issues in their countries. Till then I had not realised how big these issues were. The issues of women all over the world unify you. That’s when I became very involved in women’s issues. And the next year I joined the International Alliance of Women as an individual member and as an APWA member.

“The International Alliance for Women was formed in 1902 by an American woman named Catt. She travelled for two years all over the world talking to women in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Europe, India … all of whom she got to fight for the rights of women. They all joined together to try to get women the right to vote as there was no vote for women in Europe and in most of the world at the time. The women she took on board became activists who finally got women the right to vote after the Second World War. Then they also went on to come up with the Charter of the Human Rights for Women with the US. Anyway, to make a long story short, I became the executive director of the International Alliance for Women in 2010. The same year I also formed the UK chapter of APWA, which is registered as a charity there.

“We have 60 APWA members in London. In Birmingham, there are another 250. Our aim is to empower women of Pakistani descent in the UK. They are not Pakistani women. We need to make them understand this first. Some women are fighting against forced marriages in Britain, some are married and then after having children their husbands dump them in Pakistan and go back with their children. The British High Commission is helping them fight their cases. Britain at least helps the women. The laws for them are in place and these women need to know that,” stresses Mrs Rafique.

“Even here in Pakistan, very few women know about the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This is a convention that the United Nations has passed for our protection and we should know about it. But no body knows. Every convention I go to I ask if women know about this and there is a blank. So I say please understand that the UN has made this an international convention for the whole world but our government in Pakistan has not even looked at it. Benazir did try but it didn’t go through. Just two years ago they tried again. … didn’t go through again. There should be a campaign to make women here understand that this is their right and they can demand it,” she says.

Coming back to APWA, Mrs Rafique says that the UK-APWA is doing far better than its parent organisation in Pakistan. “It has become difficult for APWA to take off in the 21st century. They need money to hire expertise. This organisation really needs to be injected with finance and more memberships, volunteers, so that they can continue the good work. UK-APWA is doing far better. We are sending in funds from UK-APWA here. With more women being victims of violence, honour killings and other senseless injustices, there are more opportunities for APWA to help here as we are just a marginal community in Britain but here we are part of the mainstream,” she explains.

“I think Began Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan created a great organisation for the betterment of women. Every woman in Pakistan should join it,” she concludes.