Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and the Debate over Gender Relations among Muslim Intellectuals in Late Colonial Bengal

Abstract

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was undoubtedly a remarkable intellectual and social reformer of her time, and in recent decades, her work has rightfully found its place among writings by “exceptional,†“early feminist†women from colonial India. This paper is an attempt to situate Rokeya’s contribution as a writer and reformer within the  larger context of debates over the “woman question†as it unfolded in discussions of  Muslim intellectuals in late colonial Bengal. It proceeds from the premise that without  such contextualisation, Rokeya and her work is too often cast as “out of†or “ahead ofâ€Â  her time, when in fact Muslim intellectuals – a number of women among them – were  engaged in vibrant debates over a range of social and political issues in the first half of  the twentieth century that has been marginalised within normative histories of that  time.