- Rashid Jahan
Rashid Jahan (1905 – 1952) was an
India n writer who inaugurated a new era ofUrdu literature written by women. She wrote short-stories and plays and is perhaps best remembered for her involvement with the explosive "Angarey" (1931), a collection of groundbreaking and unconventional short stories written by young writers inUrdu likeSajjad Zaheer andAhmed Ali .She was born in
Aligarh . Her father, Sheikh Abdullah (not to be confused with the 'Sher-e-Kashmir'), was a leading pioneer of women's education in India and established the Women's College at theAligarh Muslim University .Rashid Jahan trained as a gynaecologist at the
Lady Hardinge Medical College inDelhi .She was an active member of the
Communist Party of India and a leading voice in theProgressive Writers' Association . She married fellow revolutionary Mahmuduz Zafar.Rashid Jahan died in Moscow where she had gone for treatment for
uterine cancer . She is buried in a cemetery there.Her famous short-story "Dilli ki Sair" is a little narrative about a burqa-clad women watching life on a railway platform waiting for her husband to turn up and take her home. The story is a brief but penetrating meditation on life behind the 'veil' and the blindness of male privilege towards the experience of women behind the purdah.
Some of her writings have appeared in collections like "Aurat aur Dusre Afsane wa Drame" (1937) and "Woh aur Dusre Afsane wa Drame" (Maktaba Jamia, 1977).
Her sister
Khurshid Mirza 's memoirs recently published in English includes a chapter on Rashid Jahan (Pp. 86-104, "A Woman of Substance: The Memoirs of Begum Khurshid Mirza", New Delhi: Zubaan, 2005).
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