Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Also called: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain · Topic: Print Culture and the Modern World · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World"

Meaning

Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932), also spelt Hossein in NCERT, was a Bengali writer and educationist. She fought for Muslim girls' education. She founded the Sakhawat Memorial Girls' School in 1911 and wrote Sultana's Dream in 1905 [2]. In 1926 she attacked men for keeping women away from education in the name of religion.

She matters because she shows how print and schools together helped the women's question. She argued from inside Islam, not against it, and she backed her writing with a real school.

Explanation

Background: why a reading woman was feared

• Print made books cheap. Reading moved into middle-class homes, and many women began to read.
• Muslim conservatives had a special fear. They believed an educated woman would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances (love stories).
• Hindu conservatives had a parallel fear. They believed a girl who learnt to read would become a widow.
• Both fears were really about control. A woman who could read could choose what she read. Her family could no longer decide what she knew.
• Rokeya grew up inside these limits.
• She got no formal schooling [2].
• She was taught at home, mainly by her elder brother [2].
• This followed the route the NCERT chapter describes: some liberal male relatives taught women at home.

Her argument in print (1926)

• In 1926 she condemned men for denying women education in the name of religion.
• Her key point: Islam itself gives women an equal right to education.
• So the men were not following religion.

• They were using religion as an excuse to keep women ignorant.

• This made her case hard to dismiss. She used the community's own faith as evidence, so critics could not simply call her anti-religious.

Her work: a school and a book

• School (1911): She founded the Sakhawat Memorial Girls' School in present-day Kolkata. It was meant mainly for Muslim girls [2].

• This turned her argument into an institution that kept running. Words alone did not change things.

• Book (1905): Sultana's Dream imagines Ladyland, a country run by women [2][3].

• Men are shut inside the "mardana" (men's quarters). This reverses the zenana (the women's quarter where women were kept in seclusion) [2][3].
• The working day is only two hours [2][3].
• By flipping the roles, the story shows how unfair purdah and seclusion were. It makes the point without a lecture.

Results and legacy

• She is treated as a pioneer of women's liberation in pre-Partition Bengal [2].
• UNESCO inscribed Sultana's Dream on its Memory of the World regional register in May 2024 [3]. This keeps her in the news, which makes her a likely topic for current-affairs questions.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: Late colonial India, 1880–1932 [2]. Her main works date from 1905 (Sultana's Dream), 1911 (school) and 1926 (attack on religious excuses).
• Region: Bengal, before Partition. Her school was in present-day Kolkata [2].
• Wider setting: Women's reading and writing in print across India:
• Rashsundari Debi in East Bengal
• Kailashbashini Debi from the 1860s

• Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai in 1880s Maharashtra

• How we know:

• The NCERT Class 10 chapter "Print Culture and the Modern World" records her 1926 statement.
• Britannica gives her dates, her home schooling, the school and Sultana's Dream [2].
• UNESCO records the 2024 Memory of the World inscription [3].
• Her own printed works are primary evidence of her ideas.

Don't confuse with

• Rashsundari Debi: She was a housewife from East Bengal who learnt to read secretly in her kitchen. She wrote Amar Jiban (1876), the first full-length autobiography in Bengali. She was not a reformer and founded no school. Rokeya was a public reformer who started a school.
• Pandita Ramabai and Tarabai Shinde: They wrote in the 1880s in present-day Maharashtra about upper-caste Hindu widows. Rokeya worked in Bengal and focused on Muslim women's education.
• Ram Chaddha's Istri Dharm Vichar: This was a Punjab book that taught women to be obedient wives. It used print to keep women in place. Rokeya used print to free them.
• Zenana vs mardana: The zenana is the women's quarter. The mardana is the men's quarter. In Sultana's Dream the men are shut in the mardana, not the women in the zenana [2][3].

Prelims Hooks

• Begum Rokeya, 1926: She condemned men for denying women education in the name of religion and argued that Islam grants women an equal right to education.
• Dates: 1880–1932. She had no formal schooling and was taught at home by her elder brother [2].
• Sakhawat Memorial Girls' School: Founded 1911, present-day Kolkata, mainly for Muslim girls [2].
• Sultana's Dream (1905): Imagines Ladyland, where men are kept in the mardana and the working day is two hours [2][3].
• Sultana's Dream was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World regional register in May 2024 [3].
• Chronology trap: Amar Jiban (1876) → Sultana's Dream (1905) → Sakhawat Memorial School (1911) → Rokeya's attack on religious excuses (1926).

Mains Points

• Reform from inside religious language. Rokeya did not reject Islam. She argued that Islam's own tenet gives women an equal right to education. Because of this, conservatives found it hard to dismiss her. It shows a common pattern in Indian social reform: change came most easily when it spoke the community's own language.
• Print plus institutions. Her 1926 argument was in print, but she had already built a school in 1911 [2]. Print spread her ideas. The school made them last. This shows that print alone did not change women's lives. Print worked when it was joined to schools and organisations.
• Satire as social critique. Sultana's Dream (1905) reverses purdah by putting men in the mardana [2][3]. Fiction let her challenge seclusion openly. Its UNESCO recognition in 2024 [3] shows that women's writing from the colonial period is now treated as world heritage. It is no longer seen as only a regional story.

Related concepts

• Rashsundari Debi
• Tarabai Shinde
• Pandita Ramabai

Read more

• Women and print