A Not So Banal Evil: Rokeya in Confrontation with Patriarchy

Abstract

This essay addresses Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s evaluation of the causes of women’s misfortunes in early twentieth century India even as it underscores her invaluable contributions to the improvement of women’s predicament in the public sphere. It shows how unnecessary vilification of activist women, in order to situate them within the limits of a prescriptive patriarchal vision, intensifies the difficulty of their work. Rokeya’s interrogation of such limits remains exemplary in a historical context in which gendered, binary ways of thinking were the norm. The essay also focuses on Rokeya’s strategy of combined exposure of patriarchal ills – both through direct address in her non-fiction and through deployment of artistic tropes in her fiction. In this regard, it locates and analyses a “trope of excess†in her work, a trope that often operates together with more specific themes of illness, entombment and homelessness.