Women of Freedom- A look at important Pakistani Women

Arts & Culture Culture, Arts, Literature & Linguistics
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I would like to take the chance to remind guppies of the valuable contributions of strong, intelligent women in the Pakistan Azadi Movement. If you have the time, do visit the website for more articles.

Source: http://www.storyofpakistan.com/person.asp?perid=P030

Fatima Jinnah [1893-1967]

Miss Fatima Jinnah, younger sister of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was born in 1893. Of his seven brothers and sisters, she was the closest to the Quaid. Jinnah became her guardian upon the death of their father in 1901. Due to her brothers’ keen interest, and despite strident family opposition, Miss Fatima received excellent early education. She joined the Bandra Convent in 1902. In 1919 she got admitted to the highly competitive University of Calcutta where she attended the Dr. Ahmed Dental College. After she qualified, Jinnah went along with her idea of opening a dental clinic in Bombay and helped set it up in 1923.
Miss Fatima Jinnah had first lived with her brother for about eight years until 1918, when he got married to Ruttenbai. Upon Ruttenbai’s death in February 1929, Miss Jinnah wound up her clinic, moved into Jinnah’s bungalow and took charge of his house. Thus began the life-long companionship that lasted till Jinnah’s death on 11 September 1948.

In all, Miss Jinnah lived with her brother for about 28 years - including the last nineteen trying years of his life. Quaid discussed various problems with her, mostly at the breakfast and dinner table. Paying tribute to her sister, the Quaid once said, “My sister was like a bright ray of light and hope whenever I came back home and met her. Anxieties would have been much greater and my health much worse, but for the restraint imposed by her.”

Miss Jinnah not only lived with her brother but also accompanied him on his numerous tours. In 1932, she joined him in London when he remained there after the second Round Table Conference.

When the All-India Muslim League was being organized, Miss Fatima Jinnah was taken as a member of the Working Committee of Bombay Provincial Muslim League, and worked in that capacity until 1947.

In March 1940, she attended the Lahore session of the Muslim League. Fatima was convinced that the Hindus intended to subjugate and dominate the Muslims completely. It was primarily due to her initiative that All-India Muslim Women Students Federation was organized in February 1941 at Dehli.

During the transfer of power phase in 1947, she was an inspiration to Muslim women and formed the Women’s Relief Committee, which later formed the nucleus for the All Pakistan Women’s Association. She also played a significant role in the settlement of refugees in the new state of Pakistan.
Despite her old age, she continued to help social and educational associations. During the Quaid’s illness, she remained passionately attached to him. After his death, she often issued important statements on important occasions, as a reminder to the nation of the ideals on which Pakistan had been established.

In 1964, Miss Fatima Jinnah ran for President as a candidate of the Combined Opposition Party (COP). Even a conservative party like the Jammat-i-Islami accepted her, a women, as a presidential candidate. Miss Jinnah’s great advantage was that she was the sister of the founder of Pakistan and had been detached from the political conflicts that had plagued Pakistan after the founder’s death. The sight of this dynamic lady moving in the streets of big cities, and even in the rural areas of a Muslim country, was both moving and unique. She proclaimed her opponent Presidential candidate, Ayub Khan, to be a dictator. Miss Jinnah’s line of attack was that by coming to terms with India on the Indus Water dispute, Ayub had surrendered control of the rivers over to India. Her campaign generated such tremendous public enthusiasm that most of the press agreed that if the contest were by direct election, she would won against Ayub.

It seems that the thought of doing a biography of her illustrious brother came to Miss Jinnah about the time when Hector Bolihtos’ “Jinnah” was first published in 1954. It was felt that Bolihto had failed to bring out the political aspects of Jinnah’s life in his book. Miss Jinnah started looking for a Pakistani author to do a biography of the Quaid. G. Allana was her choice. G. Allana assisted Miss Jinnah on the assignment but they parted company due to reasons undisclosed. Later both carried on their independent works on Jinnah. Her book “My Brother” was published by the Quaid-i-Azam Academy in 1987.

The people of Pakistan hold Miss Fatima in high esteem. Due to her selfless work for Pakistan, the nation conferred upon her the title of Madar-i-Millat (Mother of the Nation). She died on July 8, 1967 at Karachi. (In some books the date of demise of Miss Fatima Jinnah is indicated as July 2, 1967.)
Madar-i-Millat’s Message to the Nation on Eid-ul Azha, 1967:
“The immediate task before you is to face the problem and bring the country back on the right path with the bugles of Quaid-i-Azam’s message. March forward under the banner of star and the crescent with unity in your ranks, faith in you mission and discipline. Fulfill your mission and a great sublime future awaits your enthusiasm and action. Remember: ‘cowards die many times before death, the valiant never tastes death but once.’ This is the only course of action which suits any self-respecting people and certainly the Muslim Nation.”

Madar-i-Millat’s Message to the Nation on Eid-ul Azha, 1965:
“Let us sink all our differences and stand united together under the same banner under which we truly achieved Pakistan and let us demonstrate once again that we can – united - face all dangers in the cause of glory of Pakistan - the glory that the Quaid-i-Azam envisaged for Pakistan.”

Madar-i-Millat’s Message to the Nation on Quaid-i-Azam’s Birthday, 25 December, 1963:
“The movement of Pakistan which the Quaid-i-Azam launched was ethical in inspiration and ideological in content. The story of this movement is a story of the ideals of equality, fraternity and social and economic justice struggling against the forces of domination, exploitation, intolerance and tyranny”.

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Begum Shah Nawaz [1896-1979]

Jehan Ara (Begum Shah Nawaz) was the daughter of the famous Muslim League leader, Sir Muhammad Shafi. Born in April, 1896, she was educated at the Queen Mary College, Lahore. Jehan Ara was married to Mian Shah Nawaz.
With the emergence of the All-India Muslim Women''s Conference, Begum Shah Nawaz devoted all her efforts towards its cause. She was successful in moving the organization to pass a resolution against polygamy in its session held at Lahore in 1918. She was also associated with the educational and orphanage committees of the Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam, Lahore. She was an active member of All-India Muslim Women’s Conference and remained President of its provincial branch for seven years. She was Vice-President of the Central Committee of the All-India Muslim Women’s Conference.

Besides being a member of Lahore Municipal Committee, she was also associated with several hospitals and maternity and child welfare committees. She was the first woman to be elected as Vice-President of the Provincial Executive and was a member of the All-Indian General Committee of Red Cross Society. She was a women delegate to the Round Table Conference. In 1935, she founded the Punjab Provincial Women''s Muslim League. In 1937, she was elected as a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly and was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Education, Medical Relief and Public Health. In 1938, she was taken on by the Women''s Central Sub-Committee of the All-India Muslim League. In 1942, the Government of India appointed her as a member of the National Defense Council. Meanwhile, the Muslim League called upon the league members to resign from the Defense Council. Upon refusing to abide by the its decision, she was dismissed from the League.

In 1946, she re-joined the League and was elected as a member of the Punjab Assembly. The same year, she was sent along with M. A. H. Isphahani on a goodwill mission to the United States of America. Their mission was to explain the Muslim League's point of view. She played an important role during the civil disobedience movement in Punjab in 1947, and was arrested along with other Muslim League leaders.

She passed away on November 27, 1979 at the age of 82.

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Begum Viqar-un-Nisa

Begum Viqar-un-Nisa, an Austrian by birth, was married to Sir Feroz Khan Noon in 1945. They left Dehli for Lahore the same year, after Sir Noon resigned from the Viceroy's Cabinet. Because of her husband''s leading role in Indian politics, Begum Noon had the opportunity of studying the political situation and public opinion very closely. She organized election campaigns and became a member of the Punjab Provincial Women’s Sub-Committee. In pursuance of the League's cause, she organized a band of the girl students and other women volunteers and made tours of other districts of the province for promotion of the cause of the Muslim League.
During the Civil disobedience movement in Punjab, Begum Noon was one of the leading women leaders responsible for successfully organizing the processions and demonstrations against the British backed Khizar Ministry and courted arrest on three occasions.

During the period of mass transfer of population after the partition, she rendered invaluable assistance to various refugees committees and camps. She has been closely associated with Red Cross and represented Pakistan on various occasions.

After a protracted illness, she passed away on January 16 2000, in Islamabad.

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:k:

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good post RF, I'll see if I can find some to add to this..

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zakk: *
good post RF, I'll see if I can find some to add to this..
[/QUOTE]

Salaam Zakk

Thanks for the compliments. Please do share more articles with us :)

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Hey RF; here’s an interesting article…this gal’s not done much but shows potential:

‘I feel alone now that my parents are no longer in the federal government,’ Sughra Imam
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_31-10-2002_pg7_6
By Ayehsa Javed

LAHORE: After finishing her undergraduate studies at Harvard University with a major in Government and a minor in Economics, Sughra Imam hopped back to Pakistan with the intention of simply taking some time off before going to Oxford for a degree in Law. However, as she herself puts it, life does not always go the way one hopes it will.

Her maternal grandmother had fallen seriously ill by the time she came back and so her mother, Abida Hussain, packed her off to Jhang to assist her grandmother in taking care of the family’s agricultural concerns. In Sughra’s own words, she spent the next year or so farming.

Spending a year and a half in Jhang provided her with ample opportunities to become familiar with the concerns of those living in her home constituency, which is why by the time the local bodies elections rolled by in 1998, she did not need much convincing to put her name forward as a candidate. “That was my first election,” reminisces Sughra. Since then, she has contested in three more, winning two and only loosing the third (the elections for District Nazim) by a narrow margin. Not bad for a twenty nine year old who had never really thought of playing a role in mainstream politics.

“I did harbour a great interest in Pakistani politics and even my thesis at Harvard discussed South-Asian politics. But I was not necessarily interested in representing people. Had my grandmother not fallen ill or had the local bodies elections not been announced while I was here, I might have been involved with the media or gone into law. Though political issues greatly interested me, I might never have thought of contesting elections had things not turned out this way,” comments Sughra. One of the honours that Sughra is very proud of is being elected chairperson of the district council of Shaghenva. That makes her the second woman ever in the history of Pakistan to be chairperson of a district council (the first person was incidentally her mother).

Living and working in Jhang did not prove as difficult for Sughra as one would have thought it would be. “After leaving Harvard, I spent two years working with a think tank on foreign policy in Manhattan and I feel that after living and working there, every other city in the world seems like a village. So it was difficult to even adjust to Lahore and Islamabad in the first place. Adjusting to Jhang was not that difficult because I went there not expecting much in the first place. Thus, nothing that came my way was a surprise.”

In one word, Sughra describes the experience of living in Jhang as interesting. “It was one big anthropological experiment,” states Sughra with a smile. Anthropology is a subject that greatly interests this young woman. “Jhang is actually great because there are so many opportunities for learning here. One gets to meet so many different kinds of people here ranging from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds. In a strange manner, Jhang is as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan.” The greatest barrier Sughra had to overcome, when campaigning in Jhang, was the deep-seated prejudice of the people of Jhang towards women.

“Nothing else was really that much of an issue. Not my education, not my degrees or anything else.”

And interestingly enough, despite the prejudice, Sughra mentions all three women candidates from Jhang managed to beat their male counterparts. Sughra attributes the astounding numbers of women in the provincial and general assemblies to the BA condition.

“Thanks to this ban, many men were disqualified. That left them with no choice but to send their women to fight the elections. Though I do feel the BA condition is a violation of fundamental human rights in some ways, I also feel it was a needed measure for this time and place. Though I am generally against the imposition of artificial barriers, I fully approve this one.”

One of the major reasons for Sughra opting for the Provincial Assembly and not the National Assembly was the fact that she felt with her parents in the Federal government, she would be able to carve out her own identity in the Provincial Assembly.

“I never thought they would not be there and now that both have been defeated, I do feel rather alone.” Despite the unprecedented defeats of her parents, Sughra feels the elections on the whole were fair and free.

“At least in Jhang that is.”

Now that she is a part of the Punjab government, Sughra has many ideas up her sleeve. But currently, the issue that she is most interested in is the sharing of power between the provincial government and the local bodies. “When the local bodies were formed, the provincial government ended up devolving a lot of its powers to the local bodies. But that was in the absence of an elected government. It would be interesting to see how things will be different now,” comments Sughra. Her pet issue is the rightful financial empowerment of women.

“We keep discussing Islamic law with respect to the rights of women but no one really goes beyond the hijab and the burqa. I am particularly interested in the law of inheritance prescribed in Islam, which gives women a rightful share of their father’s wealth. But this is completely ignored in the country’s legislature, where the father’s wealth is simply handed down to the son.”

When asked about concerns regarding MMA’s surprising victory in the elections, Sughra stated that her only concern was how the MMA would function together.

“It’s one thing to form an electoral alliance and manage to stay together on the issue of elections, but it is quite another thing to function together in the parliament especially when the parties in the MMA have serious ideological differences between them.” Furthermore, Sughra feels that despite the legal and constitutional backing that Gen Musharraf has given himself, the parliament should not feel handicapped.

“All one requires is a little maturity and the parliament should be able to handle the situation. Of course, a lot remains to be seen.”