The publication of two volumes by and about Ismat Chughtai to mark 70 years of India’s independence is indeed a laudable initiative and both publishers deserve unstinted appreciation. The six short stories and a play that comprise Ismat Chughtai’s Quit India & Other Short Stories volume not just re-validate the power of the pen over weapons, but establish the fact that the secular, liberal and liberated Ismat Chughtai could tease and trigger sensitive and sensible discourse about the oppressive and systemic stereotypes that define South Asian patriarchal structures.

In her short fiction and play, Chughtai unequivocally points out how religion and gender discrimination have been used with destructive effect by power brokers that include family members, neighbours in communities, politicians, priests and other self-interest groups.

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The very first short story, Kafir (Infidel), published in colonial India in 1938 is a love story between Pushkar, a Kashmiri Pandit and Munni, a Muslim girl. They were childhood friends and they loved each other without any inhibition as they stated, “There’s a chasm separating us, religion… To Hell with this religion! Religion is for our good, we’re not there to sacrifice ourselves for it.” The story ends as we learn that both of them had secured jobs after their formal education and decided to elope in order to get married, as they knew that their families would disapprove of their inter-religious marriage. It is truly strange that almost 80 years have elapsed since the publication of this story by Chughtai and yet Indian society still remains mired in caste and religious prejudices. It is disturbing to witness how inhumanity, often encouraged by state politics, leads to ever increasing brutal barbarism not just in India but across the world.

In the following stories too, Chughtai sketches characters in situations that demand social justice, empathy, emotions of love and affection that cement human relationships. The perpetrators of riots, murder, bloodshed and the misery of orphaned infants are described with subtle skill of narration that encodes the tragedy of a riot-torn country. Quite remarkably therefore, the deeply emotive play, Dhaani Baankein (Green Bangles) published in 1947 celebrates the arrival of a new world and a new dawn celebrating the birth of young independent India.

Interestingly, after 1947, the bigotry, hypocrisy, selfish interests of power and material gain become rampant, manifested through the looting and destruction of life and property in Quit India, a touching narrative about a lone British officer. Chughtai also traces the uneven graph of post-independence India in Kacche Dhaage (Fragile Threads) published in 1963 as she observes, “There are no police standing guard on illegal alcohol…no guards on black markets…none on thieves and plunderers…every conceivable filth is growing and blooming. … But there’s a guard standing over those who seek peace. … Terrible crimes are sheltered by the canopy of law while satanic fires rage over burgeoning humanity… “The use of sarcasm and irony along with the nuanced promise of human values and human solidarity inform all the six short stories and the play.

The second, recently published book titled, An Uncivil Woman Writings on Ismat Chughtai includes an introductory essay by the editor Rakhshanda Jalil and 14 essays by critics and admirers of Ismat Chughtai who argue in favour of her claim to fame as a writer not beca-use of her feminist views but her committed political ideology about social justice, gender justice as well as commendable handling of the art of narration.

Jalil’s book about Chughtai as a writer can be read as complementary to Jalil’s earlier book, Rashid Jahan: A Rebel and her Cause, as not unlike Chughtai, Rashid Jahan was a fearless writer and a vocal member of the Communist Party. Though an ardent supporter of the Party, Chughtai however was too free-spirited to become a dedicated member. Yet, both these liberated Muslim women writers were members of the Progressive Writers Association and their responses to the inequities of their times were not dissimilar.

It is a known fact that Chughtai’s confident stand against caste, religion and class politics, her anti-imperialist stand and her sense of outrage and disenchantment with the governance of independent India, disturbed vested interests. Many critics have referred to Chughtai’s distress that readers and critics repeatedly referred to her daring lesbian narrative Lihaaf (The Quilt) as if that was the only story she had written. In fact, Chughtai had written five collections of short stories, seven novels, three novellas and sundry other essays, plays and film scripts along with actively participating in the film production work of her producer husband, Shahada Latif.

As an active member of the Progressive Writers Association and a critical supporter of Marxist ideology, Chughtai had earned herself the reputation of being a radical, transgressive author along with her intrepid fellow writer, Saadat Hasan Manto. Both were summoned by a Lahore court in 1944 on charges of obscenity for their respective stories Lihaaf and Bu.

The essays in An Uncivil Woman are not all written in English but are translated versions of Urdu essays. The literary critics such as Fatima Rizvi, Syeda S Hameed and Krishan Chandar among others all reiterate the candid and confident narrative style of Chughtai who believed in exposing issues and characters rather than eliding challenges and problems by writing in a sentimental so-called non-threatening, non-transgressive feminine style.

However, this does not necessarily mean that Chughtai’s writings were agitprop texts without literary merit. The subtlety of the art of short narratives that Chughtai has been credited to have introduced into the domain of Urdu literature, bears this out, as argued by critics such as Krishan Chandar and the Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder who described Chughtai as “Lady Chenghez Khan”.

Also, in an interview with Asif Aslam Farrukhi, Chughtai’s spirited and insightful response merits attention, “Women’s liberation? I actually believe in the liberation of man. He needs to be freed. He has a heavy load to carry. But he is proud of his chains. He has to provide for home and hearth, earn his daughter’s dowry all the while as the wife stays home and eggs him on like a beast of burden. If a woman goes out to work, he calls it ‘rebellion’… Man has been so conditioned that he is very proud of his bondage”.

The publication of these two books will definitely expand and enrich researchers’ and students’ interests in Chughtai’s (1915-1991) life and works. She undoubtedly established herself as a free-spirited writer whose rationality, intelligence and uncompromising attitude would not permit her to be bound by the conservative codes of ethnicity, religion, gender and the concomitant sexual/textual politics.

The reviewer is former Professor, Department of English, Calcutta University