We still dream of the things that Sultana dreamed of

In 2017, it was suddenly all over the news that a prominent Saudi cleric stated that women are not fit to drive because they only have a quarter of a brain compared to men. At 13, considerably unsettled by this news, I asked an elderly family member if there was any truth to the statement, and she said, "Well, yes. Women's brains are smaller than men's," with mock pity in her tone and self-satisfaction at how my heart shattered at her smile.

This was needless heartbreak, as a hundred and twelve years earlier, in 1905, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain had written in her utopian fiction Sultana's Dream (1904), "Yes, but what of that? An elephant also has a bigger and heavier brain than a man has. Yet man can enchain elephants and employ them, according to his own wishes."

While we've made considerable progress in terms of women's education, employment, and mobility since Rokeya's time, 118 years later, many of Sultana's dreams still remain unfulfilled. Before we can fully admire Rokeya's extraordinary perception in Sultana's Dream, and understand the sustained significance of the dreams to begin with, we must address certain allegations the text sometimes endures.

Sultana's Dream is a piece of satirical fiction. The plot is simple, where Sultana falls asleep, and dreams of a utopian world named Ladyland. Sultana's friend Sister Sara is aware of her outsider status and gives her a tour of her house and garden, while describing to her how this place differs from the real world.

Ladyland is ruled and run by women, while the men live indoors and do domestic work. Certain characteristics of the story have resulted in some branding Sultana's Dream as misandrist and dismissing its significance as a historic piece of literature. For example, when Sultana asks sister Sara where the men are, she responds with "In their proper places, where they ought to be." Later, upon being asked that if women do all the work by themselves, what is left for the men to do, sister Sara says, "They should not do anything, excuse me; they are fit for nothing. Only catch them and put them into the Zenana."

To me, the quotes sound familiar and taste bitter. It's how many speak of women in the real world, most recently into mics inside the safety of one's own home or studio. However in the text, all they do is signify a neat flip in the gender roles and perception of men and women in society.

Read more

Toward Ladyland: On the life and work of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

This need for the flip is rooted in the context of Rokeya's life experiences, time, and region. During Rokeya's lifetime (1880-1932), all aristocratic and well-to-do Muslim women, and many aristocratic Hindu women, lived in Purdah, meaning that they veiled themselves, lived in the inner quarters of the house, did not allow themselves to be seen or heard by anyone except immediate family members, and only travelled in fully concealed vehicles. This way of life gave women very limited mobility, deprived them of their right to education, and as Rokeya argued in her collection of essays in Motichur (vol. 1 1904 and vol. 2 1922), intellectually crippled them. While women of low-income families did work as maids and have more mobility, it is needless to say that they did not have the same access to education and employment opportunities as men.

The practise of Purdah was based on religious reasoning and interlinked with class identity, with the most successful purdahshin women perceived to be of higher status and virtue. The vast majority of women internalised this and took disproportionate and self-destructive measures to maintain Purdah. A vivid picture of what life under Purdah looked like for women is available in Rokeya's Oborodh Basini (1931). It reports 47 brief, factual accounts of women's lives under Purdah. It features gore, suffocation, and voluntary death by burning.

Thus, at a time of such regressive societal values, where women being the subject of repression was the natural order of things, the absurdity of such practices and perceptions could be effectively highlighted through a portrayal of men being the subject of it instead. That is what would invoke empathy in the reader because the very real treatment of women in this manner in the real world never achieved the same. The treatment of women as objects to be hidden in order to "preserve its value" over the greater period in history has compromised on the perception of them as fully human.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was a resolute feminist, not a woman supremacist or misandrist. We should not reach any conclusions on her values based off of her satirical fiction, a better suited source for this would be her collection of essays directly expressing her opinions and views, Motichur. Here, she wrote: "Though at present economically dependent on men for historical reasons, women are not innately inferior to them mentally or spiritually. Given equal opportunity, they can easily prove themselves men's equal in mental and spiritual endowments."

If we look closely, Sultana's Dream is not a feminist utopia, it is a complete utopia. The perfection of life and society in Ladyland was not meant to be shown as a result of women ruling it. Rokeya took everything she felt was wrong or lacking in the real world, and portrayed its opposite in Ladyland. The only reason women dominate society is for the sake of a neat flip. Ladyland also has no epidemic disease, no rain, no storm, no mud, no mosquitoes, and no one ever dies young except in rare accidents– no explanation. At the end of the story, Sister Sara screws "hydrogen balls" to a wooden plank, the two characters sit on it and fly off to the queen's castle. Surely, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, one of the most influential pioneers of women's liberation in South Asia, did not seriously claim that simply handing over domination to women from men would immediately transform this Dunya into Svarga? 

In fact, the heavenly qualities only reinforce the full utopian quality of Ladyland, and reaffirm that it is not a proposal of what a world ruled by women would look like.

Even if we were to entertain the possibility that Sultana's Dream is a misandrist, I believe that can be forgiven and the piece of literature celebrated as an impactful and necessary portrayal of an Oborodh Basini's rage and vindication. Considering the above described context of Rokeya's life, a conscious citizen would understand the justification of it. Rokeya's husband, a regretful witness of women's confinement at the time and an avid supporter and sponsor of Rokeya's work, first reacted to Sultana's Dream by reading through the whole text without sitting down, impressed, and stating, "A terrible revenge!" He sent it to his friend, a divisional commissioner, for comments, who wrote back "The ideas expressed in it are quite delightful and full of originality…"  What else could be the captive's idea of utopia other than giving the captors a taste of his own medicine?

Read more

Celebrating Rokeya

Today, we have a lot of the things that Rokeya asked for and Sultana dreamed of. At least in the more privileged parts of the world. But Sultana's Dream is still very much a utopia. 

In the text, Rokeya emphasised on the importance of the advancement in technology and women being trained in it. In Rokeya's time, the women who received any education at all were never taught science or maths. Muslim women such as herself were only offered lessons in Arabic and Urdu languages, cooking, stitching, embroidery, etc. 

Today, careers in STEM are in high demand, by virtue of their high salaries, job-security, and workplace flexibility. But women are deprived of these lucrative prospects. While Bangladesh boasts of more girls passing secondary and higher secondary studies than boys, only 8% of them end up enrolling in science departments, with just 1.5% in engineering and technology, as of 2019. Globally, research company WISE predicts that women will be in only 29% of STEM positions by 2030. Engineering not being a womens' profession is a particularly widespread local perception, with girls being actively dissuaded by their families from pursuing it for fear of unsafe, unsuitable, or discriminatory work and study conditions. 

This fear is not unfounded. Globally, women experience disproportionately higher cases of assault in the male dominated, systematically disinclusion spaces of STEM. Within academia in the U.S, a 2018 National Academies of Science (NAS) report found that more than half of women faculty and staff, and up to half of women students, have experienced sexual harassment.

In other words, Sultana's dream lives on, in the form of women's representation in STEM, and flourishing women scientists who are not harassed out of the field. 

More so, while one doesn't have to adhere to certain religious standards for one's feminism to be valid, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain is an embodiment of how feminist ideals are independent of and not contradictory to Islamic ideals, that feminism is contextual and multifaceted. Rokeya being one of the most successful pioneers of the feminist movement in the Indian Subcontinent in and of itself discredits the widespread efforts to subdue or challenge the feminist movement in the name of religion. She was a practising, visibly faithful muslim woman, who valiantly fought against the patriarchal framework of society. In Motichur Vol 1 (1908), she argued:

"By confining women to the household, men deliberately deprive women of equal opportunity to cultivate their minds and to engage in gainful employment, thus making them dependent and inferior in status."

Sultana's Dream, and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's entire body of work, was indispensable then, and it is indispensable now. And it goes beyond feminism. In Sultana's Dream, she expresses her stance against state expenditure on arms and military power. Today, we are living at a time of five active genocides in the world. Ladyland entirely runs on sustainable, clean energy, in a world that isn't under the threat of boiling over.

As long as the problems addressed in Sultana's Dream continue to exist and be relevant, we must uphold Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's work, values, and ideologies. We cannot afford to dismiss her based on misinterpretations of her work. We direly need her incredible foresight and wisdom transcending generations to guide us out of this mess that we have created. 

Amrin Tasnim Rafa is a writer, student, and intern at Star Books and Literature. Reach out to her at [email protected].