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I HAVE NO WINGS |
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Urdu Writers' Workshop |
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20-23 February 1999
Hyderabad |
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Urdu in Hyderabad
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To understand what is happening in Urdu literature we need to look at this language and its history. Also called Dekkani (belonging to the Deccan Plateau and very different from the Urdu spoken in the north), it was born of a mix of local languages 400 years ago. When the Arabs came to the Deccan they came as tradesmen, leaving their women behind. They married native women who they converted to Islam, and settled down here. It was the communication between husband and wife, of different races and cultures, that gave birth to Urdu. It is therefore romantically called the language of love, though more practically it was the language of daily necessity. The Sufis played an important role in the growth of Urdu, but it was the intermingling of the native languages, Telugu and Marathi with Arabic and Persian, that gave birth to Dekkani Urdu. The syntax and grammar of Urdu, which was essentially feminine, was gradually ‘developed’ and corrupted by the north Indian language, which was masculine. Courtly language and the language of literature were masculinised, while the language of the ordinary people, particularly women, remained feminine. The first woman poet in Urdu, Meqhla Bai Chanda, wrote poetry using the masculine gender for herself. Even in this workshop, Nusrat Rehana, who is from the Zore family (Dr. Zore was the first Dekkani scholar who founded the Idare Adatbiet Urdu and was a good critic, teacher, poet and creative writer) uses the masculine gender when referring to herself.
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Today it is important to examine this context to see where we are going. While Urdu is spoken all over India, the political turmoil and the consequences of Partition have been such that its foundations have been shaken. The language is in shambles, and women poets and writers even more so. Among the writers today, only Jeelani Bano commands a lot of respect, media coverage and admiration. The reasons for this could be her popular television serials, her family background, and her literary status. While she is undoubtedly deserving of the honours she receives, she is a solitary figure. The literary environment in Hyderabad has changed and mushairas, which were the heart and soul of Hyderabadi culture, have now become a mockery. Crowds flock to them, but a real appreciation of literature is missing. The language, which is a reflection of culture, is slowly dying out. Bringing women writers together to discuss this situation was very necessary. To get women to see this and speak about the bitter realities that have sealed their lips, was important.
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Censorship in literature and the arts is a universal phenomenon—more so in the case of women. It was to explore the contours of this censorship, a censorship that is gender-based, that we organised a three-day workshop of Urdu women writers in Hyderabad. Twenty Urdu poets, novelists and humorists were invited. We had mailed an Urdu translation of The Power of the Word to them a week before the workshop to stimulate writers into thinking about how they, as creative women writers, were censored from time to time. To quote from The Power of the Word
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But gender-based censorship, as we see it is much broader and more pervasive than this official organised suppression. It is embedded in a range of social mechanisms that mute women’s voices, deny validity to their experience, and exclude them from political discourse. Its purpose is to obscure the real conditions of women’s lives and the inequity of patriarchal gender relations, and prevent women writers from breaking the silence, by targetting women who don’t know their place in order to intimidate the rest.
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Women find their voices suppressed in the name of culture and tradition. They are told that a precious cultural heritage is being desecrated by such writing. And when women continue to write, struggling to express something through the interstices of these limitations, they are told that their writing is mere tarkari-sabzi,
vegetable and curry. Vegetable curry is synonymous with effete domesticity in a culture where meat-eating is the symbol of manhood. The few women in Hyderabad who have attempted to break these barriers have been attacked and isolated for descending into the obscene and vulgar.
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The consumerism in which we are engulfed today humiliates women further and reduces them to their traditional roles. The advances of modern technology have succeeded in promoting a uniform culture of violence and sex, which now enters every home in the remotest village. Women are constantly redefined and reified by this culture. The reaction to this sex and violence and loosening moral codes, is that religion and community take over, in an attempt to control women and protect them from the corruption and licentiousness of a global culture. They impose ever-increasing restrictions on women, which are enforced through violence. Women urgently need to raise their voices so that they can be heard across continents and above the bans that are placed on them.
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In selecting the participants for the workshop we took care to span three generations of writers, and a variety of genres. Rafia Manzoorulamin writes T.V. serials and is famous for her scripts. Bano Tahera Sayeed is 80 years old and has written poetry all her life. Qamar Jamali is proud of being a short story writer, edits the literary page of an Urdu newspaper and has started a magazine called Tanezur. Jameela Nishat is a poet who uses a new form called jadeed shaire, modern verse, which is different from the conventional ghazal and nazam. Some poets who write conventional ghazals and nazams as well as women who write prose, were also invited; so were young college students who keep personal diaries and write short stories. Rafia Manzoorulamin, who firmly believes in a patriarchal order, also came to the workshop, primarily to disrupt it, but stayed on to participate when the discussions drew her in.
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Most of the women mentioned how their families played an important part in their writing. Mothers, husbands, fathers, children were all encouraging or inhibiting factors, but their real support and solidarity came from the Mehfil-e-Khawateen, an association of women writers that came into existence in the ’70s. Bano Tahera, one of the earliest women poets in Hyderabad, was the force behind Mehfil-e-Khawateen and was responsible for encouraging several young women to write. Many women found the support and environment they needed to write in the Mehfil-e-Khawateen. They also edited a women’s magazine called Khatoon-e-Dakan. Saleha Altaf, a writers, edited the magazine for twelve years, after which it was discontinued abruptly. When women find it so difficult to get published even today, a women’s magazine like that must have made a world of difference.
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So, what do women write about? About love, modestly. About longing, delicately. Sajida Sultana said that using obscene language is wrong. But what is obscene? Sex? Emotion? The human body? Human desire? If all this is expunged from the canvas of women’s writing, what is left? Sultana Sharfuddin said that contemporary Urdu writers lacked a women’s perspective and lived in world of illusion and fantasy, they did not present the reality of their lives. But given the seclusion of women and the gendering of space, both material and ideological, what options do women have? Ashraf Rafi says, “I am not me. Another picture of me is set out.” Fatima Taj says, “I don’t write about sex or society but I am present in each piece that I write. It is my identity.” Yet another writer said, “My lips are sealed but my heart is bubbling.” Many women felt that both their voice and language had been taken away by men, that a writer needs experience and yet language is a limiting factor.
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Jameela Nishat
Workshop Co-ordinator
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Participants |
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1. Abida Mehboob (52) Essays. |
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2. Anjum Qamar Soz (60) Poetry. |
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3. Asra Omar (32) Essays. |
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4. Athari Fiza (50) Poetry. |
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5. Aziza Mehboob (72) Humorous pieces. |
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6. Bano Tahera Sayeed (77) Poetry. |
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7. Farha Tazeen (22) Short stories. |
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8. Fatima Taj (52) Poetry. |
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9. Habeeb Zia (65) Humorous pieces. |
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10. Hoor Fatima (22) Poetry. |
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11. Jameela Nishat (43) Poetry. |
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12. Nusrat Rehana (52) Poetry. |
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13. Qamar Jamali (50) Short stories. |
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14. Rafia Manzoorulamin (66) Novels. |
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15. Sajida Sultana (40) Short stories. |
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16. Sakeena Waseem (65) Short stories. |
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17. Saleha Altaf (65) Essays. (passed away on April 12, 2000)
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18. Sultana Sharfuddin (70) Poetry. |
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19. Syeda Afroz (52) Short stories. |
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20. Tasneem Johar (40) Poetry. |
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(Figures in brackets indicate the ages of the writers.) |
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