Rising 2.0: Celebrating Ismat Chughtai, Fiesty Writer Way Ahead Of Her Time

Rising 2.0: 20 More Women Who Changed India brings you the stories of 20 exceptional Indian women, who tackled the tough circumstances of their time head-on—whether through protest or perseverance—and rose to have a lasting impact on the world. With stories ranging from the pre-Independence era to the present day, this book explores the struggles of women who were army captains, botanists, lawyers, chefs, writers, performers and so much more. 

With Rising 2.0, Kiran Manral aims to continue the work of acknowledging the contribution of women that she had started with her previous book, Rising: 30 Women Who Changed India.

Here's an excerpt from Kiran Manral's Rising 2.0: 20 More Women Who Changed India 

Short-cropped hair; a pair of spectacles over sharp, twinkling eyes; a hearty and quick laugh; and piercing wit-Ismat Chughtai was a legend in the space of the Urdu short story. Novelist, short-story writer, humanist and filmmaker: Ismat Chughtai wore many hats and wore each disarmingly. She began writing in the 1930s, a time of political and creative ferment, and wrote on themes considered daring at the time. She wrote about female sexuality, feminism, middle-class gentility and class conflict viewed through a Marxist lens, written in the style of literary realism. 

She came from noble antecedents; the Chughtai clan traced its ancestry back to the Mongol warlord Taimurlane. She was born on 21 August 1915 in Badayun, Uttar Pradesh. Her parents were Nusrat Khanam and Mirza Qaseem Baig Chughtai, and she was the ninth and the youngest child. Her father was a civil servant, and this resulted in her always being on the move in her childhood, thanks to his job transfers. She lived in Jodhpur, Agra and Aligarh as a child. Her sisters were much older than her and were married off when she was still a child.

As a result, she grew up in the midst of brothers, which perhaps accounted for her tomboyish nature. To quote her on tomboyishness from one of her fictional stories, ‘At my age my other sisters were busy drawing admirers while I fought with any boy or girl I ran into! [...] Amma always disliked my playing with boys. Now tell me, are they man-eaters that they would eat up her darling?” 

Competing with her brothers, she would play street football, ride horses, climb trees and defy all set norms at the time for 'good girls' to follow. To quote her, 'I do not think men and women are two different kinds of beings. Even as a child, I always insisted on doing everything that my brothers did." The family was quite unconventional, in that no topic of discussion was considered taboo. She once said: 

I never had the feeling that, being a woman, I should be shy and nervous. Because of that upbringing, I am this way. And we discussed sex freely; even in those days sex was not a taboo subject for conversation in my house. We freely discussed it. [...]That was a peculiar thing and we were all considered quite mad. Peculiar, mad people!

She studied up to the fourth grade in Agra, and then till the eighth grade in Aligarh, when her parents felt she did not need to study further. They instead wanted her to learn to be a good housewife. Ismat had absolutely no intention of being a good housewife. Instead, she threatened her parents that she would run away from the house and join the missionary school. Her father decided to convince her of the need to learn cooking and household chores. As quoted in one of her works: 

'Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?' he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him. 

'If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook,' I answered.

Her father relented, and she had her way and went on to complete her education. Her brothers had a great influence on her. In her later years, her second-eldest brother, Mirza Azim Beg Chughtai, who was also a novelist, was her mentor. When her father retired from the civil services, the family settled in Agra. 

She received her education from the Women's College at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and graduated from the Isabella Thoburn College with a bachelor of arts degree in 1940. She went against her family's wishes and decided to get her bachelor of education (BEd) from AMU. It was at this time, while studying for her BEd, that she became acquainted with the Progressive Writers' Association (PWA). She attended her first meeting in 1936, where she became acquainted with Rashid Jahan, who was, at the time, one of the leading feminist writers in the movement. 

Rashid Jahan had a powerful influence on Ismat. It was possibly her influence, along with that of her older brother, that led Ismat to begin writing. Jahan was a formidable woman, with multiple accomplishments. Along with being a qualified doctor, she was also a journalist, a short-story writer and a playwright, who wrote and directed her own theatre and radio plays, as well as adapted the stories of Chekhov, Gorky, James Joyce and Premchand for the radio. Rashid Jahan was one of the first women to join the Communist Party of India (CPI) back in the 1930s. She introduced Ismat to the basics of communism.

About Jahan's influence on her, Ismat later said, 'Fidelity and beauty, which are considered a woman's virtues; I condemn them. Love is a burden on the heart and nothing else. I learned this from Rashid Aapa." Rashid Jahan's influence on Ismat's thinking, and, eventually, her writing, was immense. Ismat speaks of it, saying: 

She actually spoiled me. That was what my family used to say. [...] She influenced me a lot; her open-mindedness and free-thinking. She said that whatever you feel, you should not be ashamed of it, nor should you be ashamed of expressing it, for the heart is more sacred than the lips. She said that if you feel a thing in your mind and heart and cannot express it, then thinking it is worse and speaking it better, because you can get it out into the open with words.

To quote Ismat on her early writings from a 1972 interview with Mahfil, 'When I started writing, there was a trend-writing romantic things or writing like a Progressive. When I started to write, people were very shocked because I wrote very frankly. [...] I didn't write what you'd call "literarily”. I wrote and do write as I speak, in a very simple language, not the literary language.'

She first wrote a drama titled Fasadi which was published in the Urdu magazine Saqi in 1939. It was her first published work. She had been writing since she was 11 or 12 but had never tried to get her work published. Interestingly, when her first work was published, most readers thought it was written by her brother who was already an acclaimed humorist.

To quote her, 'In the beginning, people thought these pieces were by my brother, Azim Beg Chughtai, but under a different name. He was also shocked and said, "Who's writing in my name and in my style?" Our styles were similar because we were brother and sister.'

Her brother was a mentor to her, and encouraged her to read widely and across Western literature. The Progressive Writers' Movement (PWM) had a profound bearing on her writing. She was fascinated by Angarey (an anthology of short stories in Urdu written by members of the PWA). Among her other influences were William Sydney Porter, George Bernard Shaw and Anton Chekhov.

Emboldened by the success of her first work, she began sending her work out for publication to newspapers and magazines. Her early writing included Bachpan, an autobiographical work; Kafir, which is considered her first short story; and Dheet, a soliloquy. In Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings of Ismat Chughtai, selected and translated by M. Asaduddin, she says 'Purdah had already been imposed on me, but my tongue was an unsheathed sword. No one could restrain it.'

Extracted with permission from Kiran Manral's Rising 2.0: 20 More Women Who Changed India; published by Rupa Publications